Or did I miss that one in the manual?

You didn't. There is no such an option in E-P1.

Some of these are such simple fixes...
- Allow the Fn button to flip between zoomed/unzoomed view for focusing

There are too many things piled onto that button already.  Things I use which cannot be activated any other way.  I spend a good deal of time going deep into the menus changing the function performed by this "handy" button.

Manual white balance, aperture preview, screen blank and face detect (which actually toggles three things at once, but only when set to the function button) are all features that I use fairly regularly, and which can only be done with the function button.

No wonder I've never even considered playing with preset modes.  Yep; same button.  Joy.

This post is long and geeky.....be warned. And its a bit of a rant!


I want a camera that I can program in the way that i can a computer. I want to be able to take a picture when the sun comes up without having to get out of bed, when a blackbird sings, when I am the other side of the world....
I want the camera to take a picture when it feels like it ;-) or when some bizarre combination of events happens. i want to have the camera take a movie of a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis when I am not around to press the shutter button. I find it really weird that in this day and age of modern technology that most camera makers don't allow me to do this with a standard "consumer" product. Even phone cameras are not really integrated with the phone, they are just a bolt on. We still have the "press the button take the picture" interface we had 130 odd years ago. I think time and technology has moved on since then.


 In a way I am a bit of a surrealist.....lots of my best pictures are ones when something unexpected happened, something unplanned when I took the shot. .....

I want to be able to interface my E-PL1 to a microcontroller (thats a single chip computer that you can download code to to implement functions) or a PC/Mac or a Nintendo DS, or my Andriod phone or a Nintendo wireless Wii controller. Imagine being able to send a text message or an email to your camera to take a picture! or using an Android app to control the camera. All of this can be done technically, much of it has been done, but mostly by hackers :-) (in the original sense of the word).

 One use would be to have the microcontroller to be an intervalvelometer, or to monitor sensors and if one triggers take a picture, interface with a GPS, pass data into the camera for adding to the descriptive tags attached to a picture. Now I presume that some of this can be done via the USB port (does anyone have an accurate pinout for this?) but I would need to know how to interface to the firmware. For the dudes that want a scripting language I would respectfully suggest that a host computer is the place to have it...with a nice GUI...not more options to an already overloaded menu system

 With my E400 I can do pretty much all I need with the IR Remote but, sigh, my E-PL1 lacks this. I'll use the microcontroller to talk to the E400 using an Infrared diode and a hack of the remote IR protocol. I'll wire sensors to the microcontroller directly or via a wireless network or the Internet. You can buy off the shelf sensors for temperature, sound, light, proximity, pressure and even radioactivity. Its also pretty trivial to connect the microcontroller to the internet so you could trigger the camera from pretty much anywhere.


I do quite a bit of development work on a microcontroller called the Arduino which is widely used in the Robotics and computer arts communities. (Google "Arduino" for loads of info). This is the platform I'll be using for my E400- project. There are quite a few Arduino intervalveomenter projects out there for canon/nikon SLRs.

If Olympus were really brave they would publish the hardware and software interfaces and source code  for their cameras for free. This would allow third parties to innovate  without having to reverse engineer the firmware which is both tedious, risky and probably illegal (well in the UK it is). I am certainly not going to let the smoke out of my camera by installing hacked firmware....

 In many respects the digital camera industry is like the computer industry was before open systems and the concept of the public domain came in to play. Most of the players in that world who kept their code secret went to the wall even the innovators. Its interesting to note that Apple, Sun and even Microsoft are pretty much open source nowadays and their software development systems are mostly free... back in the day when I learned to program for a living computers of one make did not even talk to each other.....and don't forget, a digital camera is merely a computer with a lens on it! So why, dear Mr Olympus, will you not allow those of us who want to, program the things lol

Thats enough ranting from me!

Steve

unlimited bulb!!

unlimited bulb!!

30mins not enough?

Quote from: tom-ep1 on May 17, 2011, 09:28:39 AM

Quote from: lisandra on April 27, 2011, 12:18:06 PM

unlimited bulb!!

30mins not enough?

The PENs have 60mins and no, thats not enough. 30 or 60 mins is no good for star trailing, which is the #1 reason to have a usable bulb mode. And if you have a G/GH camera like me, bulb is limited to 4 mins.
So yeah, unlimited bulb for M4/3s!!!

Won't multiple exposures work for you?

1. intervalometer
2. more than 1EV for bracketing
3. delay timer should be able to do custom time, not just 2 or 12s
4. delay timer should be able to take multiple shots, not just one (sic!)
5. delay timer should trigger the whole bracketing sequence when bracketing is on
6. bulb exposures by pressing the shutter button, not by having to hold it down or buy a remote release
7. remove those all-caps "OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA" from the EXIF fields for title and subject
8. motion trigger
9. scripting, like with CHDK

Focus peaking....I still want it.

Ha, the OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA is quite annoying.

Omigod--that is SO annoying! Why the heck did Olympus do that?! I sure had a surprise the first time I ran a slideshow with my E-P1 images....

Sad but probably true. The tech world is littered with great technology but poor marketing. I still recall how somebody once said that if HP opened a sushi house, they'd name it "Place to Eat Raw Fish" (a jab at HP's poor marketing at the time).

...and don't forget, a digital camera is merely a computer with a lens on it! So why, dear Mr Olympus, will you not allow those of us who want to, program the things lol

Quite simply: because they don't want you to be able to improve and customize your camera to your liking, or to add new features (even though hardware obviously can do most of the things we listed here). They want to sell you the next camera with some (but not all) of these improvements. User frustration as a sales driving force.

I don't run my business and my life by these principles, and I find them stupid, but people in Olympus obviously think differently.

A message to Olympus: my next purchase will in all likelihood be a Canon G-series just because CHDK is available which enables me to take full control of my camera.

Canon doesn't support CDHK though, so I doubt Olympus will listen to that message.

That's the point: I don't need Canon to support it. It's there, it works, and I can improve it or modify it as I see fit. Besides, note that CHDK has been out in the wild for many years and over several generations of processors. If Canon really wanted to, they could have made it much harder for these modifications to happen. They never took such steps, and I count it as a silent support.

And Olympus should listen to the message, because the message is telling them my money is going to their competitor.