Oly E-620 Low light shots Not working so well

[nissanman]

I do a lot of very long exposures with my E-P1 which uses the same sensors. A sturdy tripod, low ISO and long exposures are the key.

Unless you need to have short exposures, stick to ISO100 and ISO200. I do the occassional ISO400 but don't venture to ISO1600 at night unless I am doing hand-held work (which is very rare).

Also make sure you don't have continuous shooting turned on as that turns off noise processing.

Thanks mate. Ive done a few more and there getting better

Oh i forgot to mention, if you have a remote use that or use self timer to take the shot. Then there will be no camera shake as you wont be depressing the camera button.

Yea i use a 2 sec delay, cheers

There's a few issues here. The blur may be due to one or combination of:
1. camera shake 2. subject movement 3. DOF.
To eliminate 1, you either need a faster shutter speed (and upping iso and/or wider aperture to compensate at the expense noise and DOF respectively), or a sturdier support (ie. good tripod).
2. To eliminate subject movement you need a faster shutter speed. In all 3 photos, there are leaves/branches that are very likely to have some movement during the exposure. The more movement, the faster the shutter speed you require. And the faster your shutter speed, the more you'll need to compensate your exposure with ISO and/or aperture.
3. To increase DOF, you need to use a smaller aperture, among things. But now you're letting in less light so you need to compensate by increasing ISO and/or lengthening the shutter speed.

As you can see, there's no hard and fast rule on the perfect setting. Doing one thing will affect something else. You just need to understand what each setting does and select your best compromise.
A quick note on exposure compensation. It biases the camera's meter but in manual mode, it will only indicate (usually in your viewfinder) where your exposure is based on current exposure settings. It will not compensate your settings automatically like in the auto and semi-auto modes eg. Program, Shutter and Aperture.

Great help mate, appreciate your time. That's very informative