Olympus PEN - Recent Questions, Troubleshooting & Support
Epl2 black screen
I can't think of much. Perhaps you pressed the button, to change the view from monitor display, to extra view finder display?
Try pressing that again.
I don't thin it has anything to do with the brightness settings of the screen.
How does this camera take videos?
If I understand your question correctly, you are wondering how to connect this camera to an AC power source to do long term video capture. This would also be helpful for bulb exposure. Unfortunately, natively this camera does NOT support power over an AC outlet (240V or 115V in North America). Best solution I can find is to build a battery pack for it, but that might not work as I think the camera requires the battery door to be shut to function. You could likely build a battery pack and make it work, but you would likely need to do some case modifications.
If you want AC powered camera, you normally need to step into the higher end DSLR's (the mirror-based DSLR cameras). I do not believe that any of the PEN series has power over AC or over USB.
This camera supports up to 7 minutes recording in Video mode (due to an AVI limitation). I think the limitation is moreso in the compression algorithm used, but 7 min is the max it will record so having AC power isn't really required in my opinion. Bulb mode photography goes up to 30 minutes, so that may require some fancy power adapters. If you took the camera apart and swapped out the crystal for a slower cycle crystal you could get longer video and bulb exposure at the cost of no longer having an accurate clock or if you hack the firmware, but neither method is supported by Olympus (nor me) and goes beyond the scope of the original question.
At the time of this post, the E-P5 was the latest in the PEN series and that one does NOT support power over AC or USB.
My pl1 camera has blurred pictures but when lens taken out, its ok.
Are you using an auto-focus m4/3 lens? I have about 20 lenses for this camera and only 1 of them is an auto-focus m4/3 lens. I have an adapter so I can use my 4/3 lenses on it in auto-focus mode along with other various mounts (including cctv) that do not support auto-focus. So if you are using a non-auto-focus lens, you will need to manually focus the pictures.
If you are certain it is an auto-focus lens, are you sure you have it set to auto-focus?
What settings do you have your camera set to (aperature mostly is what I'd like to know)? Try adjusting your aperature to be small (to increase your DOF).
Also what lens are you using and what is your focal distance? It could be your lens has a larger or shallower focal distance than what you are trying to achieve (like a macro lens doesn't work that great for landscape photography or a telephoto lens doesn't work great for macro photography).
Last thought: is your lens or sensor dirty? A dirty lens can cause focusing issues if it is REALLY dirty and a dirty sensor can too (sensor is a bigger pain to clean. I strongly recommend taking it to the pros as they scratch really easily). Dirty lenses can be cleaned with a blower and a lint free cloth and rubbing alcohol if those 2 things don't clear it out.
Sleep function deactivation
Looking through the menus of your camera, it seems you can't change the setting for sleep. The camera must protect you for draining your battery, when you are walking outside. In page 113 of the manual, it only shows the setting can be added to the Myset menu, not if or how you could switch it of or extend / shorten the time before the camera shuts off.
E-pl1 service manual
I don't have the manual from this camera. But when I have this problem I look on ifixit dot com (to prevent me from reading this stupid code I won't place the name) There you find lots of help, when toy want to repair a modern electronic thing, including camera's
Media card will not format in my camera
Sounds to me like your SD card is dead. I would try a second SD card and see if that solves the issue. I have an android cell phone that has had that problem with 2 different SD cards. I would try either a second SD card and see if the camera is happy with that OR try the card in the computer and see if the computer is happy with it. If the computer can read it, try formatting it with the SD formatting tool (
https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/) and see if that fixes the issue or not. But I'd be willing to bet that the card is toast. They are only good for so many writes before they fail and, at least with my cards, when it fails, everything is gone on it and it asks to be re-formatted in every device you put it into. Mine worked on the computer for data transfer after a format until I unplugged it and plugged it back in; then it was asking to be formatted again.if you have the original receipt you may be able to get warranty repair/replacement on the SD card.
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