Olympus OMD at sports

[The_Traveler]

I have a job coming up to shoot a footrace and I was concerned about the ability of the OMD to focus quickly enough, it's continuous focus tracking is lacking.
So I took it to shoot a kid's soccer game.
The single focus mode is blazingly fast and had no problem catching the action.
These were shot with the 35-100 Panasonic 2.8. (70-200 equivalent)
I look forward to a faster fixed long lens - say 150 2.8

note sharpest focus on the goal netting. I needed to focus manually on the goalie - but didn't. The ref went nuts because I was behind the goal.

 

[usayit]

Yup... that is my only complaint about the OMD EM5. It cannot track worth anything. Coming from the outstanding 1dmarkII, it was like day and night. Continuous focus is almost worthless because it hunts back and forth.

But

Its single focus mode is lightning fast. Faster than anything else I have shot. So when I shot my son's soccer game, I simply "pumped the focus" and predicted were the action was headed. Its highly dependent on the lens too... my 35-100 f/2.8 was a bit faster than the 100-300mm.

Fortunately, sports is something I don't do often....

Couple tips:

* You can shrink the focus box to its smallest and it acquires focus a bit faster.
* I configured the touch screen to allow me to move the focus point. Saves for recompose time.
* Oddly enough, set the EVF quality to high refresh rate also makes it acquire focus a bit faster.

 

[The_Traveler]

Thanks.
Without knowing I used your techniques and they worked well.
I've turned the touch screen off to maximize battery