John & Maria's Photography Pages

Pro Capture on the Olympus EM1 MkII

I've owned the EM1 MkII for about 18 months and I'm still exploring all the features of this camera. One feature that I've only briefly played with and really need to explore further is Pro Capture.

Essentially, the camera can be set up to buffer a series of shots on a continuous loop when the shutter button is half pressed.  Firing the shutter then writes the shots both prior to and after firing.  The number of shots pre and post press, maximum frames per second (60max), and the frame count limiter (25 max) are set up in the C1 | H settings | Pro cap options in the Custom (*) menu.  There are plenty of 'how to set it up' videos on YouTube so I won't look at it in more detail.  It's the results that count.

Effectively it overcomes some of the limitions of human reaction time.  It's so easy to miss a shot that requires split second reactions to capture.  The sparrow coming in to land on our back garden feeder is an excellent example,  Using Pro Capture I was able to sit in comfort with the 40-150mm Pro set at f2.8 and camera at ISO 1000.  As soon as I saw the bird coming in to land I started the Pro Capture loop and pressed the shutter as it landed, capturing enough buffered shots to give me a few reasonable in flight images.

It works for take off shots as well.  This is an Azure damselfly, Coenagrion puella, taking off from a waterside leaf.

All I had to do was focus on the resting damselfly, start the Pro Capture buffer loop and, as soon as I saw movement, fully press the shutter.

It all sounds easy, and, judging by the number of superb in flight and fast action shots using Pro Capture with this and later cameras in the EM1/OM1 line, it's definitely simplifying the generation of impressive results.  

Of course there are downsides.  It's battery hungry. I'll need to get another one or even two batteries if I'm going to use it more extensively next year.  It also generates a lot of files.  Even with the restricted buffer storage of 25 images per Pro Capture run it's very easy to generate hundreds of files in a short space of time.  Add in the ability to capture in RAW and card space can become an issue.  It also takes goodly amounts of time to go through the resulting files to pick out the best and delete the rest (trust me, you don't want hundreds of almost identical shots sitting on your hard disks).

But it's fun - and that's what really matters.