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Archive 2020 · om-d em1 mkII soft faces and eyes

JayHH
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · om-d em1 mkII soft faces and eyes

Hi All,
OMD EM1 Mark II

I'm trying to diagnose what I'm doing wrong. I continue to suffer from "soft eyes, sharp noses" problems.

I continually attempt to rely on face and eye detect of the camera and generally end up with slight out of focus faces, and especially eyes.

The eye detect almost never works, even in studio with adults who sit still. Usually the most I get is the box around the face. I find a lot of "in focus" nose tips or ears, but not always the eyes or even the face - they are just.. "a little soft", enough to notice. There are times when I do get the eye box, and still don't have a sharp eye.

I'm usually shooting in these situations with a 12-40 pro or a 40-150 pro Usually at F4 - F8 and shutter speeds at the sync speed of 250.

Can anyone offer any advice? Am I over relying on the eye detect abilities of this camera body? Maybe I'm not holding myself still enough...

Nov 02, 2020 at 05:01 PM

Imagemaster
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · om-d em1 mkII soft faces and eyes

Your first post, so a bit of advice. When asking for such help, post some examples showing the problem,

INCLUDE EXIF.

Nov 02, 2020 at 05:23 PM

JayHH
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · om-d em1 mkII soft faces and eyes

I’m light on time right now. I’ll get something recent on Flickr and post it after I get the kids to bed

Nov 02, 2020 at 05:41 PM

JayHH
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · om-d em1 mkII soft faces and eyes

Ok, here's an example from the other day.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/shootbetterstories/50561498536/in/datetaken-public/

I'm not sure how you guys make an image just show in the forum.

Nov 02, 2020 at 09:04 PM

Imagemaster
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · om-d em1 mkII soft faces and eyes

Sorry, in this example, I see no problem with the eyes or face.

With objects behind and in front of subject, it would have to be motion blur of face and nothing to do with AF.

What kind of lighting? If handheld, why are you not using a tripod? Also if subject is sitting still, why not just move spot focus point to an eye? No idea if you have image stabilization on or off.

Read about posting images here: https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/faqforum.php

Nov 03, 2020 at 02:20 PM

JayHH
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · om-d em1 mkII soft faces and eyes

Yes this was handheld. Full ibis was on. I was not in a tripod simply because I was shot a multitude of images in a row from differing angles and zoom lengths. This was lit by 3 Paul c buff digi bee 800’s

The only reason I used the face eye detect was because it happened to be turned on and I thought I would give it a try.

Once I zoom in to work on the eyes I realize they aren’t sharp, but the bangs are in this image.

Mom wouldn’t notice, but I am wanting to solve this by correcting my technique as it’s happening a lot to me.

In this shoot I was quite low to the ground. Not the steadiest place to be even though I was on a very short step stool. And this was with my 40-150 I believe.

This is also cropped by probably 15%- 20% of the original image size.

Nov 03, 2020 at 02:26 PM

Robin Smith
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · om-d em1 mkII soft faces and eyes

Image looks fine. You are looking for detail that is not there. If you want it to look more snappy increase sharpness.contrast or clarity, not that I think you need for this kind of shot. I agree with Imagemaster, if you want to be sure things are right on the eye, use small spot AF on the eye.

Nov 03, 2020 at 03:56 PM

Imagemaster
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · om-d em1 mkII soft faces and eyes

Robin Smith wrote:
Image looks fine. You are looking for detail that is not there.

Now that you mention that, it is rather meaningless looking at a high magnification view of the eyes when they are such a miniscule size compared to the whole image. Just looking at the whole image at a sensible viewing distance the eyes are perfectly sharp in relation to everything else.

Pixel-peeping can be a debilitaing disease for some photographers.

Nov 03, 2020 at 11:39 PM

JayHH
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · om-d em1 mkII soft faces and eyes

I agree the peeping can be an issue. It’s not so noticeable in this image, but at 1.2 on a pro lens it very much so is. So I was just wondering if any one else has noticed mis-focus from using face detection focus

Nov 04, 2020 at 06:09 PM

SpecFoto
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p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · om-d em1 mkII soft faces and eyes

JayHH wrote:
Hi All,
OMD EM1 Mark II

I'm trying to diagnose what I'm doing wrong. I continue to suffer from "soft eyes, sharp noses" problems......

Can anyone offer any advice? Am I over relying on the eye detect abilities of this camera body? Maybe I'm not holding myself still enough...

I use the eye detect on mostly outdoor portraits, but have used it in studio, usually with the 42.5 f1.2 Nocticron or Olympus 75mm f1.8 lenses. Many years with the EM1 and now the EM1.3. The EM1.3 is definitely better at eye detect than the EM1, and from what I have read the EM1.2, though this was improved. Soft eyes, sharp noses usually meant the eye detect was focusing on the eyebrows, rather than the eye pupil itself and this was an issue with my EM1. So the first question is does your EM1.2 have the latest firmware?

You mention the f1.2 Pro lenses and despite the DOF being twice what a FF camera has, with my Nocticron at 2m and f1.2 or 1.4 the DOF is still very thin. If the head is turned the front eye can be in focus and the rear out OOF as the DOF is only about 3 inches.

Shooting with flash at 1/250ss flash sync is fine, but is that set or does the ss fluctuate because you have set the aperture, i.e are you shooting in manual or allowing the camera to adjust some settings? With flash I shoot full manual, even though the camera may not like my settings because it can't see non-Olympus flash. Also F8 is where most M4/3 lenses start to get some softness due to diffraction, maybe shoot at f5.6.

With my new EM1.3 the eye detect is very good, but if it is off focus, it is easy to move the focus point using the joystick. I would say my hit rate on eye detect sharpness is close to 90%, but that decreases as the subject is farther away from the camera, say 6m or so.

Nov 04, 2020 at 09:58 PM

JayHH
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p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · om-d em1 mkII soft faces and eyes

When I shoot with strobes, usually it's all 100% manual.

I do also have a pair of AD200pro's and I'll go TTL with those sometimes.

Even without the strobes, if we're just talking about casual shooting... If the face detect activates, it always seems to focus dead center of the box around the face or right on the nose. I figured in a studio at a tighter f stop this wouldn't matter much. At f4 it still does somewhat. Maybe it's just that I'm over framing and then cropping too deeply in the end and the detail simply isn't there.

There are occasions where I get the sharpest eyes I've ever seen, but this normally only on the prime lens and from a close subject to camera distance.

I can't make up my mind if I want to continue to double down on Olympus and add a .3 body plus the longer primes... or make a change to a different system. I'll keep the Olympus no matter for it's size and weather sealing and the 300mm pro lens, but as far as being my work camera, I'm not sold.

Maybe it's that's I'm relying too heavy on the 40-150.

Nov 06, 2020 at 03:37 PM


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