Has OM Digital Systems' (Formerly Olympus) Customer Service Gone Downhill Or Is It Just My Experience?

One of 569 almost identical images that should have never been written to the memory card.  This
was just one instance out of several.  (click to enlarge)

Not to get too much into the weeds, so to speak, I've tried to interact with OM Digital Systems customer service without any satisfactory results.  Here is my story.

Last fall I purchased an OM-1 Mark II.  Several weeks ago, for the first time, I took a road trip to photograph birds and wildlife.  I drove over to Virginia’s Eastern Shore to the Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge.  Prior to that trip, I had used the camera just for general photography.  The camera performed perfectly.

As my intent was to photograph birds for this trip, I had programmed three of the custom banks of settings for bird photography, one of which was to have Pro Capture SH2 @ 16.7fps (no viewfinder blackout at this setting) enabled, 15 pre-capture frames buffered (just under 1 second’s worth), along with AF-C, bird subject detect enabled, manual exposure mode, 1/2500th sec., etc., in other words, standard kinds of settings for wanting to catch birds taking flight or capturing the peak of action.  I have used the Pro Capture feature many times with my previous Olympus/OM cameras with much success.  It had always captured the action perfectly.

After returning to my hotel the first evening, I found I had over 2000 images on my memory card.  What?  What happened?  How did that many images get exposed?  I was expecting a few hundred exposures at most from the day's shooting, not over 2000!

After some detective work in Lightroom Classic, I discovered that several times when I had used Pro Capture SH2 (as configured above), instead of just continuously buffering and discarding those 15 pre-capture images upon half-press of the shutter (then recording the last 15 buffered images upon full press), the camera was recording images the entire time the shutter was half-pressed!  It is not supposed to do that.  Obviously!  I've never experienced that before when using Pro Capture.  I surmised either the firmware had a bug or my shutter button had an issue.  I know I had not fully depressed it.

The next day I was closely monitoring what was going on in my viewfinder while using Pro Capture and the same thing happened on a couple of occasions.  Now being aware of the issue I did notice that the frame counter near the top left of the EVF would count down from 99 when Pro Capture was malfunctioning.  When buffering it should stay at 99 and only count down when actually exposing frames.  Also, again, I can assure you I did not have the shutter button fully pressed the entire time.  I've used Pro Capture on many occasions using my Olympus/OM cameras with no issues at all in the past.  This was not user error.

Upon my return home, I reached out to a couple of very knowledgeable and seasoned photographer friends who have OM cameras to ask if either had ever heard of a thing such as this.  Neither had.  One even conducted several tests with his camera and found no issue.  The mystery continues.

Subsequently, I went online to find OM's Bethlehem, Pennsylvania customer service telephone number.  Several times in the past I had contacted Olympus customer service and they were always very helpful and informative.  This call connected me with a woman with a heavy Indian accent.  I know it is dangerous to make assumptions, but with the accent and common business practice to outsource customer service to India, the Philippines and other countries, I'll assume she was located in India.  To shorten the story of my interaction with her, as pleasant as she was and as helpful as she was trying to be, she either had very little technical knowledge of this camera feature or just didn't understand what I was trying to convey to her.  I even explained it to her two times in two different ways.  After that initial conversation, she put me on hold for almost 5 minutes and then came back with information on how Pro Capture worked.  I know how it works and that's why I'm calling because it isn't working as it should!  Again, I explained the issue to her in a third way.  She put me on hold once again and after waiting for 3-4 minutes, I just hung up.  At that point, being a bit frustrated, I didn't think she had the resources or knowledge to adequately address my issue.  I would try to find another way to get answers.

I went online and then found the OM business email address for Mike Amico.  Mike Amico is a U.S. technical representative and presenter for OM (and previously for Olympus) based in Ohio and has appeared in many of OM's YouTube videos answering questions and giving good information.  Mike Amico is well versed in OM/Olympus cameras and lenses.  On January 23, 2025, I sent a very detailed accounting of what occurred along with all of my camera settings (to ensure some setting didn’t cause this) to Mr. Amico.

After waiting for a week or so to hear back and hearing nothing, I was able to find his Yahoo email address so on February 3, 2025, so I thought I would try that.  I sent the same highly detailed email to that address.  As of this posting, it has now been over 6 weeks and I have heard nothing back.

At this point, I can't criticize Mike Amico as he may never had received my emails.  I can't verify his email addresses are still valid.  I would think the corporate email would be valid, however.

Next I tried, to no avail, to find David Smith's email address.  David is the UK technical rep, Mike Amico's counterpart, who is very knowledgeable of all things Olympus and OM.  He conducts many OM Systems live YouTube presentations.  If anyone has it, please let me know.

So, is it just my experience or has OM's online customer service gone downhill.  I'm hoping it is just me.  In the past calling the tool free telephone number always resulted in a satisfactory response.  I hope others have had a better experience.

My plan now is to keep testing the Pro Capture feature periodically to ascertain if it continues to malfunction.  If it does, I will send the camera to OM's Pennsylvania repair facility and see if it will also malfunction for them.  I don't have high hopes.  It is like when your vehicle is doing something strange but it won't ever do it for the mechanic when you take it in for service.  Being that Pro Capture is randomly malfunctioning, I don’t have high hopes it will do it on cue.

Anyone else out there have this or other issues with their OM cameras?  I think we would all be interested to hear your stories.

If I have any update on this, I'll post a follow-up.

Join me over at my website, https://www.dennismook.com.  

Thanks for looking. Enjoy! 

Dennis A. Mook  

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