During a recent street shoot I didn’t realize that the exposure compensation dial on my Olympus Pen F had been at a setting that was not optimal. Most of the shots were underexposed. Since I usually convert my raw images to black and white, the harm was small for this particular outing. The contrast and tone were not the way I like them, but the images were still useful for posting on the Internet. They would not be very good for prints, but none of the images from that shoot had either composition or subject that were good enough to print.
This wasn’t the first time that the compensation dial was inadvertently turned to something other than zero. I usually sling the camera over my shoulder and to my back, especially when I’m riding my bicycle. In that position, the dial sometimes gets turned. When I need to grab an opportunistic shot, I don’t have time to check the dial.
For me the solution was to change the button assignment. I reassigned the exposure compensation to flash compensation Still, I wanted to have an easy way to compensate exposure so that I can have strong back lighting dominate the image. My street lens for the Pen F is the Olympus 25 mm f/1.2 Pro and it has an L-Fn button. One of the assignment options for this button is exposure compensation.
The L-Fn button on this lens is conveniently placed. Pushing once allows the compensation to be adjusted using the rear dial. Pushing it a second time turns the function off. When “on”, the exposure compensation is displayed on the back screen.
I’m happy with all of the other default button assignments. On my most recent street shoot, there were no problems with dials or button for once. This is one less thing to remember and I continue to be happy with the Pen F as a street camera.