An Unsolicited Recommendation

This is for those of you who own (or are considering purchasing) an OM-1 Mark II camera and practice bird and wildlife photography.   If you own an OM-1 Mark II and want to learn more about the intricacies of how your camera works, you may want to read this as well.

Recently, I purchased an e-book entitled Birding with the OM-1 Mark II from Jason Odell  (luminescentphoto.com) who is also one of the two hosts of The Image Doctors podcast.  The link for the e-book can be found here.  Jason is a professional photographer specializing in birds and wildlife.  He is an excellent photographer and teacher, in my opinion.

Disclaimer:  As I mentioned in the title, this is an unsolicited recommendation in favor of this e-book.  I paid full price for it and, although I know Jason, I have no business relationship with him nor is he aware I’m writing this.  I was made aware of this e-book from a blanket email I received as I subscribe to his weekly newsletters.

I don’t practice bird photography full time but I have found it the most challenging kind of photography I’ve tried over the decades.  I enjoy the challenge.  At first I had limited success and the more I practice the more I continue to improve but I’m nowhere near where I would like my skill level to be.  

One of the reasons I bought an OM-1 Mark II (and the OM 150-600mm lens) was for its bird photography abilities.  I thought I pretty much completely understood everything about the OM-1 Mark II since I have owned several similar Olympus cameras in the past.  Wrong!  After I purchased the camera I spent considerable time learning its new menu system, button layout, additional capabilities and features, new AF system and its sophisticated subject detection abilities. Afterwards, I spent time carefully configuring the custom banks of settings for birds that are (C1) wading, on a branch, or walking as well as (C2) birds-in-flight and using (C3) Pro Capture to capture birds just as they started to take flight or land. As I said, I thought I pretty much knew everything about how to do this. Well, after reading, Jason’s e-book, I discovered I didn’t understand my camera nearly as well as I thought I had.

Jason provides a comprehensive guide to setting up the camera for a wide variety of situations you may encounter when photographing birds and wildlife.  He also explains his logic for recommending each of the settings.  He provides examples of numerous problematic situations in which one might find themselves when photographing birds. He gives viable solutions with specific recommendations for camera settings to each of those tricky situations.  I can attest that I’ve found myself, on more than one occasion, facing some of these difficult situations without much success.  Being stumped in the field and not quite understanding how to overcome a difficult situation is frustrating.  I am positive, Jason’s insight will be of great help on my next outing.

There is a lot more content. 54 pages,  as well including recommendations for various types wildlife, again, with real world examples.

I can highly recommend this e-book to anyone who uses this camera for bird or wildlife photography. I could also recommend it to anyone who wants to learn a lot more about the OM-1 Mark II, how the autofocus system is engineered and a variety of options for custom button settings.

I found the price of the book more than reasonable—$14.99 US.  It was a no brainer for me to make the purchase.  I will also use the e-book as a reference in the field and when traveling as I have downloaded it to my iPhone and iPad.

Highly Recommended.

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

Thanks for looking. Enjoy!  

Dennis A. Mook  

All content on this blog is © 2013-2025 Dennis A. Mook. All Rights Reserved. Feel free to point to this blog from your website with full attribution. Permission may be granted for commercial use. Please contact Mr. Mook to discuss permission to reproduce the blog posts and/or images.