Delay in Olympus E-410

[apokon]

I was taking closeup pictures of students in my classroom yesterday and became extremely annoyed by the delay. On Auto and pushing the button halfway, the flash pops up and blink several times but the red focus lights would not come in for quite a long time. It was very irritating to my students to have the repeated flashes and no picture taken. After a while, I noticed that I could get the focus to come in if I moved the camera slightly. I've noticed this problem before at Christmas but was too new to the camera to think anything of it.

The pictures were taken with my Olympus E-410 using the 14-42mm lense shooting with at 42mm from a distant of about three feet away from the students and the camera shot at 1/80, f5.6, and ISO 100.

I will try setting the ISO to 400 or 800 and see if this helps. Do you have this problem? What have you done about it? Thanks,
Rich

[cmason]

Sorry, not an Olympus owner, but issue like this usually mean it was too dark for camera to get focus lock, esp if the flash was emitting several bursts, on some cameras flash is used to illuminate the subject to get focus lock.

Did you try your lens on manual focus?

Other times this can be a low battery, as the camera waits for the flash to recharge.

[silversx80]

I have an E-410 with the same deal. I believe that it uses a contrast-detect type of focus, so finding something not white or black helps me a little (when using the flash to focus). I usually keep it on aperature priority and either boost the ISO or leave the AF-assist off (no blinking flash). I've also found the S-AF/M (I can't remember if that's what it shows) setting helps (Single-Auto Focus with manual adjust). That way, I can focus lock on something close to my target (that has light on it) and fine-tune with the focus ring.

[apokon]

So glad to hear that I am not the only one experiencing this. I get it that I have to configure the camera at times like this. I tried it today with a higher ISO and the pictures were much better but the delay still the same. I did not think of MF but will give it a try. Thank you for replying.
Rich

I have an E-410 with the same deal. I believe that it uses a contrast-detect type of focus, so finding something not white or black helps me a little (when using the flash to focus). I usually keep it on aperature priority and either boost the ISO or leave the AF-assist off (no blinking flash). I've also found the S-AF/M (I can't remember if that's what it shows) setting helps (Single-Auto Focus with manual adjust). That way, I can focus lock on something close to my target (that has light on it) and fine-tune with the focus ring.