Seven Awesome Camera Features You Didn’t Know You Had
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- 18 Jan 2023
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Menus in modern cameras can be so extensive it’s easy to get lost in them. Angela Nicholson reveals seven great camera features that you may not have known you had.
Live Bulb, Live Time and Live Composite
Olympus, now OM Digital Solutions, was the first camera manufacturer to introduce these clever features. And even now, only Panasonic has introduced something similar. Their purpose is to take the guess work (or maths) out of shooting long exposures.
With most cameras you need to switch to Bulb mode when you want to shoot exposures longer than 30 or 60 seconds. And when Bulb mode is activated, the shutter is held open for as long as the shutter release (either on the camera or a remote release) is held down – although it’s often limited to 30 minutes. It’s great for nighttime photography and shooting with a Big Stopper ND filter over the lens to enable water or cloud movement to be blurred.
Normally, if you’re using an ND filter to extend the exposure time, you have to calculate how long the exposure needs to be on the basis of the shutter speed without the filter. If you’re shooting at night, you can experiment with high ISO settings and a wide aperture to calculate how long the exposure should be at the aperture and ISO that you want to use.
Live Bulb mode does away with all of that because you see the image build up on the screen or in the viewfinder of the camera. You simply close the shutter once you’re happy with how the image looks.
While Live Time mode is similar to Live Bulb Mode, in Live Time mode the shutter opens with a press of the shutter release and is closed with a second press once you’re happy with the way the image looks on-screen.
Live Time mode is complicated by the fact that the long exposure is made up of a series of shorter exposures. The clever part is that the camera composites the images using the equivalent of the Lighten blend mode in Adobe Photoshop. As a result, after the first exposure, only the brighter areas of subsequent images appear in the final image. It means that it’s not the right choice for shooting a scene in which the subject brightness doesn’t change. However, it’s perfect for photographing traffic trails and fireworks.
How to use Live Composite mode
Before you switch to Live Composite mode, it’s wise to take a test shot or two to find the correct exposure for the ambient lighting. Some Olympus OM System cameras have a B setting on the mode dial that allows you to access Live Composite mode. Others and on the Panasonic Lumix G90, you have to turn to Manual exposure mode and extend the shutter speed time until you go past 60 seconds, Live Bulb and Live Time until Live Composite mode is activated. Meanwhile, Live Composite mode is activated via the menu in the Panasonic Lumix S5.
Next, on an Olympus camera, press the menu button and set the exposure time to the base exposure that you found from your test shots. Now, when you press the shutter please, the camera will take the first shot and set the base exposure. With that done, press the shutter release again to set the camera shooting continuously. It will capture a series of images using the same exposure time as the first. Keep a close eye on the image on the back of the screen and press the shutter release again once you’re happy with the image. Read More…
