Curse of the white square.

[andym]

Has anyone else had this happen.Occasionally while focusing both auto and manual a white square will appear in the viewfinder and move around.Once focus is achieved it goes.
It's the same size as the green focus square.Doesn't affect the operation of the camera.I'm using centre point at the moment but this square seems totally random where it appears.
I'll keep an eye on it,may be a bug or just my camera.

Interested if anyone else has had it.

[Guest]

Re: Curse of the white square.

Not sure if this is right, but I also kept seeing it. Again centre point focus BUT I had eye focus (to begin with) and then face focus only turned on. For me, using a 12-60, I realised (eventually..took too long) that these were best left turned off for that lens. I thought they were indicating a "face focus confirmation" but might be wrong - couldn't find a real answer.
Doug

[Ian]

Re: Curse of the white square.

Is this the face detection system? Have you disabled face detection?

Ian

[andym]

Re: Curse of the white square.

Thanks both ,you could be right.I've disable it now,think I did in the first place but have changed so many things this last week.
thinking about it it seems to come up when taking things with lots of yellow in,I assume face detection work on some kind of colour filter.

Just about got the camera how I want it.

[Guest]

Re: Curse of the white square.

Yes I do mean face detection, but still not 100% sure that the white square is related.
Face detection is a feature that doesn't really appeal to me because I will focus on what I want to focus on, but it (and eye focus) was turned on in the begining.
I found that the 12-60 'chattered' to a large extent and was too slow when trying to lock focus, especially when I was trying to focus on someone's face and I was losing a lot of shots as a result. Eye focus seemed a nice idea at the time (and with the 45mm may still be) but not with the 12-60 so I turned that off but didn't turn off face detection at the same time - that I only did when thinking about things later.
The 12-60 seemed to make such heavy weather of it, especially compared to the 12-50 which focused so very quickly and quietly, that I put it up for sale and will use the 12-50 and the 45 instead. Excellent as the 12-60 is, for me personally, where shots of people are concerned it doesn't work well enough on the OM-D compared to its lighter siblings.That's precisely the reason why I did buy it with the 12-50 in order to compare.

Doug

[bredman]

Re: Curse of the white square.

I get it often. Sometimes it moves around and changes size randomly and it doesn't effect the focusing, maybe it's just looking for a face lol. It appears for less than a second and then disappears.


edit: i just switched off the face detection.

[Ian]

Re: Curse of the white square.

Yep, pretty certain this is face detection - in the super control panel matrix you will see a face and there are various modes. If the live view detects something that might be a face a white outline box will appear over it. The box can be variable in size and if the detection is not very sure the box may appear and disappear.

I find face detection very handy if you are photographing a person who is moving around in the frame - it will maintain focus on the face.

Ian

[Guest]

Re: Curse of the white square.

Thanks Ian
makes sense - and I take your point re a person moving around
Doug

[davidfarquhar]

Re: Curse of the white square.

I'm loving that white square. Much of my photography is of my kids and they don't sit still so having the camera automatically detect the face and focus on it is wonderful. Tried it this morning with the supposedly slower focussing 20mm and it was fast and accurate in moderate light

Green box indicates which face is in focus, occasionally locks on to an eye in the face and shows a smaller green box. Lovely stuff

Works for people on TV (obvious test with no practical purpose), not got it to work on my cats yet- they wouldn't open their eyes and smile for it.

[drmarkf]

Re: Curse of the white square.

I guessed this was what was going on, but its nice to have it confirmed!

Face detection's great for appropriate types of shooting and so far it seems to work well on this camera, combined with Continuous Autofocus tracking and the PanLeica 25mm and the 45mm 1.8, anyway - I feel a mymenu set coming on.

Now, please can anyone tell me where to adjust the sensitivity of the focus tracking switching to objects flashing past in front of the tracked image? I can't seem to find it in the handbook, and currently mine's too sensitive.