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Great video my friend, always love it when a photographer discovers another neat feature. Handheld assist is one of my favorite features on OM System cameras, yet another neat tool that separates OM from the rest. I often do 1-2" hand held waterfalls without a tripod and just focus in on the little cube and try to hold as steady as possible 😂 Great work! Be sure to try out all of the computational modes like starry sky autofocus, night vision, live composite, focus stacking, live GND, and so much more

Thanks for the tip.  I forgot about this feature.  On my dog walks I usually bring a small MFT body with the 30mm macro.  This will help a lot with flower pics

I've gotten 6 seconds hand held with sharp results. I'll have to toy around with it on closer subjects now - these were near night landscape. I'm also shooting OM-1 Mark ii.

Keep trying. If you shoot in bursts and do it while exhaling slowly, you can get perfect 2-second shots, or even longer, with a 12mm lens. Excellent video, as always.

The hand-held assist is really great - as long as your subject isn't moving too much (wind/birds).  One thing I found is that it will also work with non-OM lenses, like the Lumix ones, but needs the IS turned off on the lens.  One effect I like is using this for really long hand held exposures in art galleries/museums.  20 to 30s handheld with the digital ND will capture the scenes but you'll have ghosts - depending how much the people move during exposure.  Love the Bluetti pun too - "current prices"...

I dont use hand held assit , just dont like it but the computational features of these cameras a fantastic. My first Olympus camera was the EM 1 Mk IIi after using a Nikon D 7200 and the D 500, I found the foucusing sooooo much better and of course the Ibis. I changed to the OM-1 and now use the OM-1 Mk II. The most used feature foe me is the 50 mpx hi res hand held, it is magic for landscapes, mostly handheld but sometimes  on a tripod. Also the focus stacking in camera hand held. Another great video. Cheers from New Zealand

Ian, don’t use f16 to get the slower shutter speed as you are majorly bringing in diffraction on micro 4/3 which biases your results Use a ND to get your slower shutter speeds

For a 2 second exposure, I would want to be braced against a wall or have the camera to the eye and the elbows resting on a horizontal surface. All the advice that was given in the analog film area would apply to digital hand-held long exposure. If your arms and hands are not supported somehow, you are going to get the results that you got. Kneel on the ground, elbows close to the body, one elbow on the knee, even turn the camera upside down and press the body of the camera against your forehead. These are other things that you could try.

Use this feature quite often in fact used it at Broughton bay blue pool yesterday very useful especially on the moutains where a tripod would be to much to carry . On another note is this castle dock woods

Interesting video.     Cheers

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As long as it doesn't need an uncomfortable position, with the 50-200 I can get good results with in-camera focus stacking and also single shots up to 2 or 3 seconds. The assist feature I haven't found to be that useful, as to me it distracts/clutters the screen.

I'm trying to figure out the best power bank so this was helpful. The only thing I have noticed with the 300 is that its not battery expandable but for vanlife it looks like a good option. Enjoying your video content as usual! Cheers from Bulgaria.

I've never tried this feature but for the longer exposures you'll really need the right conditions to get the best out of it. Hunched over and looking down is very difficult way to stay steady but also the distance will be an issue. The motion blur of a barely moving macro shot is worse than a bird flying at 80mph because those few millimetres take up the entire frame. Step back a bit to take a photo of a waterfall or beach where you want to get the motion of the water and it's much easier and far more likely to succeed.

Thank you for sharing your experience. With the OM5 and unstabilized lenses, I usually get 2secs almost always, but I found, it works best for me standing upright, all tucked in and forehead on the finder. On a „good day“, 3secs in that position and occasionally 4 (50/50). Finding something to learn my back on helps me also. Crouched down or bend over something, I always struggle too, even with just a sec or half a sec. All in all, I still found the stabilization amazing and it let me leave the tripod at home more than not, certainly for blue hour stuff with lights in it („cityscapes, castles, …). For close ups, I guess I need to either bite the tripod or the washer bullet (kneeling, laying …).

Thanks Ian. When shooting handheld I require three contact points plus a secure stance and a slow exhale for any hope of getting a sharp shot. Being 73 and a one-handed southpaw means practice is critical. Cheers.

Cars, most have an always-on 12VDC outlet somewhere, or fit one. This means we do not need a second power tank. We can stick a USB adapter into it, or an inverter to charge the laptop. A starter motor can draw 600A during cranking, 3.6kW. Whilst not ideal as a leisure battery, the starter battery has excess charge to maintain a few devices.

Hi Ian. I have no problem getting 1/2 or even 1 second at 12mm on my OM-5 with 12-45 non stabilized lens. Try this. Buy a silver Sharpie pen. Put some spots on the end of your  lens shade. With the lens strap round your neck pull the camera away from you until the strap is tight. Compose and focus. Then notice what the silver spot on the lens hood lines up with in your scene. When you press the shutter and the screen goes black you can keep the silver spot lined up with what it's on in the scene. Best I've done sitting down is 2 seconds up to 20mm. 1 seconds up to 30mm standing up and 0.25 seconds at 45mm. As the focal length gets longer the ibis is less effective. That's why I'm saving up for a used Panasonic 35-100 and will switch to the lens stabilisation that's built into that lens. I bought the OM-5 because Henry always talking about it. It's colours are not as nice as my Canon, but the convenience of the OM is fantastic. I also find the built in 4 stops ND not long enough. So I keep a 6 stop physical filter in my pocket, a polariser and a circular graduated filter. I know I can't move the line but it's a very soft grad and it's gotten me out of trouble on windy days with moving trees when I can't exposure blend. My canon R7 sensor is invariant above ISO400 so I can expose for the highlights at ISO 400, raise the shadows and let DXO noise reduction do it's work, but I can't do that on the OM-5 as the sensor is not invariant, so that circular graduated filter can really be important. That said, our monthly challenge at our club is photographing movement so the OM5 it is and the canon is in the draw. Let me know if that putting spots on the lens hood technique works for you. I sort of invented it myself. A bit of surgical spirit will rub it off if you come to sell the lens.

The OM 1 does a decent job of focus stacking when there is some subject movement. I was quite surprised by the results using OM Workspace to stack a bracketed set on some spring flowers last week. I was using a Panasonic 12-60 so the stack couldn't be done in camera. The result from OM Workspace was far superior to Helicon Focus, which  gave a lot of ghosting. Try it some time. I doubt that windy conditions would work well, but there is almost always subject movement when photographing flowers.