Fine Tuning the EVF on Your Olympus OM-D

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Personally, I like electronic viewfinders. And part of the reason why I enjoy composing with them is because I can calibrate the view to better match the results that I actually see afterward on the camera's LCD.

Olympus OM-Ds actually provide a fair amount of control for their EVFs. I just went through the process again while setting up my new Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark II. These adjustments also work with other OM-D bodies.

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  • Press the Menu button and navigate to the Gear tab and choose Gear J Built-In EVF.
  • While in the Gear J submenu, scroll down to EVF Adjust.
  • Inside EVF Adjust, set EVF Auto Luminance to "Off".
  • Move down to the manual adjust submenu, and as a starting point, try -1 for temperature and +2 for luminance. Press OK.
  • Compose a photo through the EVF and take a picture. Compare the rendered image to what you saw through the viewfinder. Adjust accordingly to fine tune.

I've found that this process is easier if I change Rec View to 2 seconds. That way I can take the picture then seen the image follow right there in the EVF. Rec View is located in the Wrench Menu at the bottom of the general Setup Menu.

A new option with the Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark II is the Simulated Optical Viewfinder. It's listed as S-OVF in Gear J. The intent of S-OVF is to simulate what your eyes would see in real life. It's great for those who want to bring a little of the DSLR experience to mirrorless.

When you enable S-OVF, realtime exposure compensation feedback is disabled, much like shooting with your DSLR. You have to look at the rendered image to see if you nailed it. The way I use S-OVF is that I programmed the Fn3 button to toggle it on and off. So when I'm evaluating a scene through the EVF, I can look at it a couple different ways.

I think you'll like your camera even more after customizing these adjustments to your personal tastes. And I've found that it makes my results even more predictable.

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