Giant OM1 I and II spreadsheets of my top settings

In this post, I present a complete list of all my OM menu settings in giant OM1 I and II spreadsheets, with the logic for every non-standard setting explained.

The forest of OM menu items

OM system (previously Olympus) cameras are enormously configurable, particularly the EM1/ OM1/EM5/OM5 ranges. Including sub-menu options, there are between 400 and 500 different settings available in these cameras. They also allow the saving of up to 4 independent menu configurations in custom settings, which means that there could be up to 2000 different menu settings stored.

In reality, only a small subset of menu items are typically changed between say a landscape configuration and a street configuration. It’s fun tuning these settings to get the camera exactly to your liking. The big problem comes when changing cameras, for example, from the OM1 Mark I to the OM1 Mark II. Which of the 450 or so settings did I change? And why?

Menu backup and camera migration

All the EM and OM series of cameras allow their settings to be saved to your phone or computer. This is amazingly helpful as a backup, but there are two limitations. Firstly, the saved file is unreadable – so you cannot tell from the file what the settings actually were. Secondly, the file can only be restored to an identical camera. So if you replace or backup an EM1, it’s perfect. But if you move from an EM1 to an OM1, or from an OM1 Mark I to an OM1 Mark II, you cannot transfer the settings.

It’s at this point, after buying a new OM camera, that you realize there are 400-500 settings, and you can’t remember which ones you changed (or why). This happened to me. After two years with the OM1 Mark I, along came an OM1 Mark II which I wanted to be identically set up. The only way to achieve this was to go through every setting on the OM1, note them down (including all the custom settings) and transfer them to the other camera. I did this. It was a lot of work. I didn’t want to lose the information, so I looked around for a way to make a record of everything.

Giant OM1 I and II spreadsheets

There is very little on the Internet that systematically lists all the menu items on OM cameras. There are innumerable Youtube videos some of which are quite helpful, and many blog posts, but none of them contain every menu item, written down.

In fact, only one person has done this AFIK, and I am hugely indebted to him. This is the meticulous BobCS, who in 2022 posted a link to an OM1 spreadsheet on DP review. Just in terms of spreadsheet construction alone, this is a masterpiece.

Bob even included the actual OM1 menu icons in his marvellous and beautiful piece of work. Bob does not seem to be active any more on DP review and this may have been his only post. But what a cracker! At the time, he had just bought his OM1, and so his settings entered were tentative. But this has provided a magnificent base for me to enter all of my settings over 3 years of shooting and testing these cameras.

The menu system on the OM1 I and the OM1 II are 99% the same, but in their wisdom, OM systems actually changed the menu numbering starting at the page the menus diverged. So I have spun off an OM1 II variant from Bob’s original, and AFIK this is the only one available on the internet.

I made a few other changes to the original, putting some less relevant page tabs at the end of the workbook, for example. But the main improvement was to fully populate all the custom settings, and add a column that explained why the changes were made in every important case. I show an example of the “gear” options tab on the spreadsheet in the image below. Click it to view full-size, but the actual sheet is linked below also.

Giant OM1 I and II spreadsheets links

Here are the links to the Giant OM1 I and II spreadsheets. As I am sure BobCS wanted his work to be widely used, in the same spirit, you are welcome to use and amend my version.

Final notes

• Even if you don’t want to use, or don’t agree with my settings, they may provide a useful basis for you to develop or think about your own, and explore why you have them that way.
• If at any time someone wants the actual OM1 settings files, so they can replicate my camera settings completely, then contact me, and I may link them to this post also.
• Extra nerdy point that only about 6 people will be interested in: I have made a significant change in my BIF settings, which is reflected in the spreadsheets. Instead of using manual control with auto ISO, and then exposure compensation on a control dial, I now have it in full manual, and have ISO on the control dial instead of exposure compensation. This is because I have found the camera using unnecessarily high ISOs on occasion when in auto ISO mode.