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Bridging Tech and Creative Photography
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How to Use the OM SYSTEM Live ND Feature for Beautiful Photos

Chris Gampat
No Comments
11/23/2022
4 Mins read
Chris Gampat The Phoblographer OM SYSTEM OM1 Live ND 43.2s200

If you’re a landscape photographer who lugs around tons of ND filters, you’re probably already aware of how photographers rave about the OM SYSTEM series of cameras. OM SYSTEM has a feature that makes photographing the sunset even better. It’s called Live ND, and it helped me create one of the most beautiful photos I’ve made in recent times. Lots of folks loved it in my social media feed, and I’m positive you will too!

This piece is presented in partnership with OM SYSTEM. We’ve independently and ethically reviewed all the products in this post already without sponsorship. And we worked with them to recommend a few key gems to you.

Table of Contents

  • Computational Photography in OM SYSTEM
  • What to Know About Live ND
  • Get the Shot!

Computational Photography in OM SYSTEM

Computational photography is a huge part of OM SYSTEM cameras, and the processing power inside these cameras is equally as powerful. Besides the Live ND feature, there are things like Live Composite, Focus Stacking, HDR, and more. Since OM SYSTEM cameras are so small, these modes help you carry less gear and spend less time in post-production. I mean, isn’t it every photographer’s dream to just be out and shooting photos all day and night?

Why not live your dream?

What to Know About Live ND

The Live ND feature is pretty awesome. It won’t replace a full ND filter in every situation, but it’s incredibly useful in the vast majority of situations. The OM SYSTEM Live ND feature includes various strengths: starting at ND2 and going all the way up to ND64 in the OM SYSTEM OM-1. Each strength allows you to set the camera to a minimum fastest shutter speed but gives you almost full control of how much slower you wish it to be. Of course, there’s also the lens aperture and the ISO.

The native ISO on most OM SYSTEM cameras is ISO 200: low while being versatile for most shoots. You typically don’t want to stop your lens down too much. With larger format cameras, you often need to stop the lens down to f11 or lower. The OM SYSTEM gives the same depth of field at f5.6 as a full-frame camera at f11. As a result, lots of Micro Four Thirds photographers don’t want to stop their lens down beyond that when photographing landscapes and sunsets. This is where Live ND comes in handy. In most situations where you’d use an ND filter, you don’t need to stop the lens down as much. Additionally, you can also use one in combination with an ND filter if you need to.

With all this said, you shouldn’t use Live ND with a flash. For starters, the camera gets set to silent shutter mode; which uses the electronic shutter. For years, many photographers have used ND filters and a flash to overpower the sun’s output while cutting down the ambient light. But OM SYSTEM has a flash system that can do this for you.

With lower strength settings, Live ND lets you set a faster shutter speed. When the OM SYSTEM camera is set to higher Live ND strengths, you need to shoot at slower shutter speeds.

What’s also really cool about this is that Live ND applies to your RAW photos. So if you’re not in the mood to bring an ND filter, or forgot one at home, you’re covered in at least some small way.

Get the Shot!

When you’re shooting with the Live ND feature, bring a tripod. Sure, the camera shoots in silent shutter speed and OM SYSTEM has fantastic image stabilization. But let’s get it right in-camera so that we don’t have to do much if any post-production. Using a tripod helps you get the best photos they can possibly be.

The Live ND feature isn’t meant to completely overpower the sun’s light. If you search on Instagram, you’ll see that it’s mostly used around sunset and in forests where a flowing river is photographed. So if you’re photographing a body of water in the shadow, you’ll be in a perfect place to use Live ND. Where I had the most fun with it is doing something I haven’t seen done before.

People in a city have our own ways of photographing flows and streams. Those include long exposures of cars moving around during sunset and, in my case, the NYC subway system. With the OM SYSTEM OM-1 and the M.Zuiko 7-14mm f2.8 PRO lens, I took a tripod onto the subway platform during sunset. It was a race because sunset doesn’t last long in the fall months in NYC. With the OM-1 set to ND64, I set the lens to f5.6 and photographed trains coming in and out while the setting sun was created the most gorgeous thing you could stare at. As the trains passed, it created fascinating compositions that were too good to pass up.

Eventually, I brought the images into Capture One and made minor exposure and color edits. That’s how I got these photos.

But that’s just my story. The more important thing here is the OM SYSTEM OM-1 has the tools to help you be insanely creative in-camera without needing to spend an entire evening in post-production layering photos. Because it’s so lightweight and doesn’t require all the tools needed with other systems, you can be more flexible in a pinch. Considering just how good modern cameras are, who wouldn’t want that?

camera colors feature live nd nd filter neutral density filter OM SYSTEM OM SYSTEM OM-1 sunset water
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Chris Gampat

Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.
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