Olympus E-PL5 Super Control Panel & Custom Menu.

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It is strange that out of the box the amazingly useful SCP (Super Control Panel) and the Custom Menu is disabled. We have to face the menu maze as the very first thing we do to enable them and that can be a bit frightening for some.

The Up/Down/Right/Left are of course the direction buttons of the control dial. Turning the dial also moves the selection but here we will stick to the four direction buttons.


Fresh out of the box the E-PL5 menu looks like this.

(Press the Menu button to get this far).

Hey, no Custom Menu, so let's turn that on first.

Either use the Down button a few times to go to the wrench/spanner setup menu item, or the Up button will wrap top to bottom in this case and save a few finger presses.
Press OK or go Right and then Down a few times to get to the line shown.


Press OK or go Right to get to the menu enabling screen.

First time into here out of the box these will be Off as shown.

Press OK or go Right again to the choice of Off/On selected by using the Up or Down buttons.


When you select On the diagram shows that the Gear Wheels Custom Menu is to be enabled.

Press OK to make that happen and take us back to the next screen below.

The above step puts us back here showing that the Custom Menu is now On but the Accessory Port Menu is Off.

To get this display we pressed Down and then next press OK or Right to get to the next screen below.
This shows that the Accessory Port Menu is Off and next we press Up or Down to get to the On choice.
When On is selected then the diagram shows that the Accessory Port Menu will be enabled, so press OK.

Back out after pressing OK by pressing the shutter button or the Menu button.
Now, next time we press the Menu button we will see this screen with all items present and correct. Here to save space and time we have already pressed Down a few times to highlight the Custom Menu items.

Next we need to face the task of getting the SCP to appear whenever we press the OK button in shooting mode.
Oh yes, nearly forgot, this is what the Accessory Port Menu looks like. If you attach the VF-2 or VF-3 viewfinders, then the last item becomes active and allows brightness and colour adjusts for the viewfinder. Presumably as other accessory port devices are invented then they will be added to this menu but most likely not in this model but in future models.
So from the main Custom Menu two screens above we need to go Right then Down quite a few times until we get to this Control Settings item in the D.Disp/Sound/PC sub-menu.
Press Right on the Control Settings line and we get this display listing the various modes of the camera.

Press Down once to get to the next screen.
Initially most people are concerned with the usual PASM camera modes and how they display so that will be the first thing discussed.

Press Right to get to the screen below.
Next we have the choice of Live Control and Live SCP so here we make the choice of On/Off for both, so we determine what shows when we press the OK button in shooting mode.

If both enabled then after pressing OK the Info button will cycle through the enabled choices.

Press Right to get to the next screen.
Here we have the On/off choice, press OK to store that choice.
If we go back (use the Menu button) and select Art mode to be customised then we have three screens that may be enabled or disabled, it's all up to you and how complex you need to make it.

After all that Menu work we now have the SCP enabled so will appear in shooting mode when OK is pressed. If some other screen appears, then press Info until the correct screen appears.

April 20, 2013
Back to where we came from