In March 2022 I made this image of a tawny owl at twilight at an ISO of 16000 with the OM-1 camera and there’s barely has any noise present!

The High Res mode on the OM-1 can be used handheld to make a 50MP image. It does this by taking 12 images and combining them, and it does this relatively quickly, about 5 seconds. Because wildlife usually moves it’s not a feature used very often for wildlife photography. However, whenever the situation presents itself it’s an amazing feature to have at your fingertips.

The default quick button for the High Res feature is the record button on the OM-1, but since I shoot a lot of video I’ve changed it to the button to the left of the viewfinder. (This button is regularly used for switching to the LCD view, but I like to have that easily reached on the front of my camera with my ring finger).

Some of the benefits of using the High Resolution feature are increased sharpness, more accurate colours, higher dynamic range and less noise. I was amazed when I looked at the image on my computer afterwards to find that at ISO 16000 I didn’t even need to use any kind of denoising software on the photo!

Check out my course on the OM System for Wildlife Photography to learn how I setup my OM System/Olympus cameras and use them for wildlife photography.

---