In OM System cameras there is a feature called "Live ND" (neutral density) which, in OM's words, "emulates slow shutter speed effects". In other words it's like having an ND filter on the front of your lens without having an ND filter on the front of your lens.

Why not just use an actual ND filter? I gave up on those some time back after moving from Canon to Olympus. The downside of the otherwise excellent Olympus electronic viewfinder (EV) is that unlike a true DSLR (where you see (through a mirror) the real scene as the lens sees it), the EV will try to work out what you are supposed to be seeing and adding ND filters (or indeed most filters) confuses the hell out of it. On my old E-M1 my variable ND filter was virtually unusable because I simply could not tell how dark it really was. At least with a fixed ND I could meter before attaching it and compensate accordingly.

On the OM-5 you can get between 1 and 4 stops of neutral density. (The OM-1 allows up to 6 stops, but I bought what I bought, the milk is spilt, and the water is long since under the bridge.)

I found it difficult to frame the image properly with Live ND on since it seemed to be insisting on showing me a live preview (which is supposed to be a separate menu item), so the scene in the viewfinder would be fixed for the exposure time. (Thankfully, unlike a real ND filter, I could just turn off Live ND for a bit to frame and check the standard exposure settings.)

This isn't the first time I've used the feature on the OM-5, but it's one that I want to become familiar enough with that I've added it to my custom menu so that I can find the damn thing amongst the billion and one menu options in any modern camera, of which the OM-5 is no exception. (Provided that I remember one thing, anyway. I normally shoot in AV (Aperture Priority), but Live ND is only available in S (Shutter Priority / Time Value) or M (full manual) modes.)

My intention was to hit the shooting sites during nautical twilight. My Random Beach Selector for this morning settled on Woonona rock pool. So off I went, hauled my gear into position on the terrace over the rock pool, looked down on the pool and... no swimmers. No water. Lots of sand. A "Pool Closed" sign.

Dammit.

I hiked back to the car and pointed it toward Bulli Beach rock pool, the next one to the north. By this time we're well into civil twilight and rapidly heading toward sunrise. In fact this specific shot is 2 minutes post-sunrise, not that you can tell with the accursed band of cloud that seems magnetically affixed to the coastal horizon off the Illawarra, even on the sunniest day.

So this is what I got. Bulli Beach Rock Pool, with some swimmers frozen, others smeared into the glassy water (which had a nice choppiness to it which smoothed out rather well texture-wise, I thought), with the waves, if you can call them that, breaking behind the pool. (The waves were more dramatic earlier. Of course, my cameras have always had "magic wave flattening" as a built in feature. As soon as I point my camera at anything dramatic, that thing stops dead.)

I think I need more than 4 stops, but I'll need to play around with the combination of a physical and a virtual ND filter.