Olympus OM D E M1 Review Introduction and High ISO Shooting

For those of you in Malaysia, you can PRE-ORDER the new amazing Olympus OM-D E-M1 from our Olympus Online Store here (click)

Olympus OM-D E-M1 Touch and Try Session, Kuala Lumpur (21 and 22 September 2013)

 If you happen to be in Kuala Lumpur, you have a chance to touch and try the Olympus OM-D E-M1 in a coming event on 21st and 22nd September!! First come first serve basis, so hurry up and register. I will be there, and hope to see some of you beautiful people there!

Registration here: http://home.olympusimage.com.my/eventlist.php

More information on Micro Four Thirds system here: http://www.olympusimage.com.my/products/dslr/em1/

Important Notes:

1) I am an employee of Olympus Malaysia. I am reviewing the Olympus OM-D E-M1 from a photography enthusaist’s point of view. I was given the liberty to perform the gear review as usual. 

2) This is a user experience based review.

3) All images were shot in RAW and converted directly to JPEG Large Fine via Olympus Viewer 3 (provided by Olympus Malaysia).

4) General camera settings, Noise Filter = OFF, Contrast/Saturation/sharpness = 0, White Balance = Auto (with an option maintain warm color = OFF), Gradation = Normal

5) No post-processing applied to the images. All images were as good as straight out of camera, with minimal cropping for better presentation.

I believe the newly announced Olympus OM-D E-M1 is the camera that many have been anticipating for a long time. This is a professional level camera model, sitting at the flagship position on Olympus system’s hierarchy, making the best of both Olympus micro Four Thirds as well as the DSLR Four Thirds system lenses. Basically, Olympus took in all their existing strengths and combined them all together in their latest Olympus E-M1. Since I am now working within Olympus Malaysia, I have the privilege to be amongst the first to hold and try the E-M1, and the next thing I did was bringing the camera out and gave it a thorough workout. 

E-M1: The Best of Both Worlds

I have been a long time, loyal supporter of the original Olympus Four Thirds DSLR system, and notably Olympus has produced some of the world’s finest lenses in their Zuiko Digital line. I have used my all time favourite ZD 50mm F2 macro, alongside ZD 11-22mm F2.8-3.5 and ZD 50-200mm F2.8-3.5 for both paid assignment jobs as well as casual personal shoots. In fact, Olympus is highly regarded for their high performance zoom lenses, and they have quite a list of professional grade, fully weather sealed lenses to offer from the Four Thirds DSLR Zuiko line, particularly ZD 14-54mm F2.8-3.5, ZD 12-60mm F2.8-4.0, ZD 14-35mm F2 and ZD 35-100mm F2. Those who have used these wonderful lenses before would understand and acknowledge that Olympus knows how to make great performing zoom lenses. 

However, the Four Thirds system users have always felt neglected when Olympus decided to go full force on their micro Four Thirds system, developing more cameras and lenses for the PEN, OM-D and M.Zuiko lenses. In all fairness Olympus still managed to pull out some neat accomplishments, especially with their OM-D E-M5, with image quality surpassing its peers (APS-C sensor DSLR), having the world’s fastest Autofocus, the revolutionary 5-Axis Image Stabilization and the amazing fact that the camera was made of magnesium alloy body and was fully weather sealed. The micro Four Thirds system has matured and come a long way. 

The truth is, the micro Four Thirds system, as great as the OM-D E-M5 could be, it was still not perfect. The key weaknesses are:

1) Non-availability of high quality bright zoom lenses (both standard wide zoom and tele-photo)

2) Focusing speed not optimized in use with Zuiko Four Thirds lenses 

3) Continuous AutoFocus Tracking capability falls below expectations

4) Expectations of better image quality as better and newer cameras are released from competitors. 

Therefore, Olympus’ answer to the above issues comes in the form of OM-D E-M1. E-M1 is a bridge between the DSLR Four Thirds system and the micro Four Thirds system. It is a professional model camera, succeeding the DSLR E-5, and is a much improved version of the OM-D E-M5. The E-M1 is now fully optimized for both the micro Four Thirds lenses (M.Zuiko) as well as DSLR Four Thirds lenses (Zuiko Digital). This was made possible by adding in on-chip Phase Detection AF system built onto the image sensor itself. Having Phase Detection AF not only allows the optimized usage with older Zuiko Digital lenses when it comes to fast Autofocusing, but it also aids greatly in continuous autofocus with tracking capability of the camera, addressing to one of the most commonly pointed out issues of the micro Four Thirds system. More importantly, a completely new 16MP image sensor was developed, with promised better image quality in comparison to the previous E-M5 and even matching up or surpassing the current offerings of APS-C sensor sized DSLRs. Everything that was on E-M5, has been reworked and enhanced a few steps further, and we shall explore the items in my multiple parts review. 

You may find the full specification on Olympus’ official website here (click). I shall highlight some of the specifications which I think are important as follows:

1) NEW 16MP LIVE MOS SENSOR
This new 16MP image sensor has no Anti-Aliasing filter, promising even greater level of fine details captured, though the pixel count stays the same as the E-M5 and E-P5. The new image sensor also has improved noise control which we will explore further specifically in this blog entry.

2) DUAL FAST AF
E-M1 now employs both contrast detect AF that originally provided E-M5 with world’s fastest AF when used together with M.Zuiko micro Four Thirds lenses, as well as new on-chip Phase Detect AF built on the image sensor for use with Four Thirds DSLR lenses. The Phase-Detect AF will also greatly improve the Continuous AF with tracking.

3) TRUEPIC 7 Image Processing Engine with FINE DETAIL PROCESSING 2
The new image processing engine is updated with optimization for different lens profile to correct distortion, chromatic aberration, compensation for diffraction softness and Moire correction. Every lens (Olympus lenses only) mounted on E-M1 will be automatically optimized with the Fine Detail Processing 2.

3) Built in super large Electronic Viewfinder (similar specifications with VF-4) with Adaptive Brightness Technology, new Color Creator (which I shall explore in my later blog review entries).

4) IMPROVED 5-AXIS IMAGE STABILIZATION
Believe me when I say the 5-Axis IS gets better and better, with enhanced algorithm to provide better efficiency for shooting at extreme slow shutter speed than what the E-M5 can do.

5) FULL WEATHER SEALING

Dust-proof, splash-proof, and now, the E-M1 is the worlds first Mirrorless Interchangeable Lens Camera that is FREEZE-PROOF  down to -10 degrees Celcius.

6) 2x2 dial control, and built in Wi-Fi features (fully integrated with smart devices for iOS and Android platforms)

The Survey Poll on Facebook Page: Results

A few days ago I posted a poll on my Facebook Page to have a quick survey on which review items to be prioritized for my coming camera review. 120 people responded (as of 9 September 2013) and this provided me with useful information, thus based on the results of the survey I shall arrange my blog review parts according to the popularity voted. The highest percentage goes to comparison with E-M5, which was unexpected and to be entirely honest I did not consider doing any comparisons at all initially. Since this is quite high in demand, I will be doing side by side comparisons between the E-M1 and E-M5, but in a later part for obvious reasons. I want to explore capabilities and features specific to E-M1 first, since this is the E-M1 review after all, and following that, would be a full comparison with E-M5.

My blog review layout shall be as follows:

Part 1: Introduction and High ISO Shooting

Part 2: Image Sharpness, Continuous AF capability and Handling

Part 3: Compatibility with Four Thirds Zuiko Digital DSLR lenses

Part 4: Comparison with E-M5, Fine Detail Processing 2 and Wi-Fi functions

Part 5: M.Zuiko 12-40mm F2.8 Pro lens review and Conclusions

Please note that this is only an initial plan and may be changed if necessary.

HIGH ISO SHOOTING

I am fairly sure that one of the main things everyone had in their mind is how much better can the micro Four Thirds sized image sensor in E-M1 be than the previous E-M5, knowing that it was the best in class, and surpassing even most APS-C sized DSLR sensors. One of the main parameters used to gauge the performance or ranking of a camera is the high ISO shooting (though I may not necessarily agree with this, but this is a generally accepted opinion). E-M5 was a game-changer, drastically closing in the gap between mirrorless interchangeable lens camera system and conventional DSLR system. To be worthy of a top of the line flagship model, E-M1 is equipped with an all new image sensor, and surely we all have high expectations from this new image sensor in a professional grade camera.

To test the high ISO performance of the E-M1, I have brought the camera to Aquaria KLCC, the location with one of the worst ever lighting condition I can think of for torturing the camera’s low light shooting capability. The only time I did so for a camera review was my very first review for an Olympus gear, the Olympus DSLR E-5. It has been 3 years since then, and it is the right time to revisit the Aquaria and push the E-M1 to the limits. The challenges posed while shooting inside Aquaria KLCC not only include very, very dim available light, but also dealing with poor light quality (horrible blue color cast). Flash was not permitted to protect the animals and sea creatures. On top of that, the creatures do not stay still, they constantly move at quite a fast pace, consequently necessitate the need to bump up the ISO sensitivity a few notches higher to have sufficient shutter speed to freeze motion. I dare say that photography conditions rarely get worse than what was encountered here.

Lets get right to the point: how did the camera performed?

Important note: please do not use the following images to review the image sharpness. I was shooting through glass with scratches and patches of wet spots (water condensation, they keep it humid for the creatures to survive). The following images are only valid to strictly demonstrate high ISO shooting. Also note that noise filter was OFF. Full size unedited images (straight convert from RAW in Olympus Viewer) are available for download at the end of this blog entry.

ISO 16,000

M.Zuiko 75mm F1.8 lens, ISO 16,000, 1/160sec, F1.8 

100% Crop from previous image

ISO 8,000 

M.Zuiko 12-40mm F2.8 Pro lens at 40mm, ISO 8,000, 1/50sec, F/4

100% Crop from previous image

ISO 6,400 

M.Zuiko 75mm F1.8 lens, ISO 6,400, 1/200sec, F/4

ISO 1,600 

M.Zuiko 12-40mm Pro at 35mm, ISO 1,600, 1/60sec, F5

100% Crop from the previous image

I think most people would think I am crazy to start my review photographs with extreme high ISO images. Kicking off with an ISO 16,000 image of an adorable otter may be on the extreme side of things but it is very evident even from this single image to display a huge step upward in terms of high ISO performance on the E-M1. I dare say that the ISO6,400 image of the iguana was completely usable with details still intact. The bar of usable high ISO has been raised, by how much, is not for me to conclude in this entry. I shall do a full side by side comparison with E-M5 in my later blog review entries. From rough observation, E-M1 has confidently more than one stop EV improvement over E-M5. 

I think the crucial difference observed thus far was the level of details being retained, even at very high ISO. Even at ISO 16,000, somehow the chroma noise (color noise) was suppressed and only luminance noise was visible. The luminance noise was not destructive, it added structure as well as maintaining very useful details. At ISO 8,000, the 100% crop of the frogs eye still showed impressive sharpness. These high ISO settings posed great challenge even with highly respected APS-C sized DSLRs.

Things get even more interesting as I ventured into the ocean tunnel, when all the sea creatures were constantly in motion. Again, do take note that the glass was very thick, not fully transparent and worse, full of scratches. It was rather difficult to get completely sharp images, unless I was on the other side of the glass, swimming side by side with the sharks. Ok maybe that was not such a bright idea, but we would have to make do with what we can. Therefore please understand and forgive the slightly fuzzy images, and as I have mentioned before, strictly use these image samples on this blog emtry to review high ISO performance only. 

One interesting thing to note, though the glass was in badly scratched condtition, the M.Zuiko 12-40mm F2.8 focused amazingly well. There was very rare case of hunting, but the lens, in combination with the E-M1 always successfully locked in focus, extremely quickly. In such terribly dim condition (just check the EXIF data!) the lens still managed to perform so well, even without the AF assist light. 

ISO 6,400

M.Zuiko 12-40mm F2.8 Pro at 12mm, ISO 6,400, 1/80sec, F2.8

ISO 5,000 

M.Zuiko 12-40mm F2.8 pro at 12mm, ISO 5,000, 1/80sec, F2.8

ISO 5,000 

M.Zuiko 12-40mm F2.8 Pro at 12mm, ISO 5,000, 1/80sec, F2.8

ISO 4,000 

M.Zuiko 12-40mm F2.8 Pro at 12mm, ISO 4,000, 1/80sec, F2.8

ISO 5,000 

M.Zuiko 12-40mm F2.8 Pro at 32mm, ISO 5,000, 1/80sec, F2.8

Besides Aquaria KLCC, I have also brought the E-M1, with the amazing Zuiko Digital 7-14mm F4 lens for some night landscape shooting around Kuala Lumpur area. It was actually raining that evening, and still drizzling with varying intensity, but that was not a problem because both the E-M1 and 7-14mm lens were fully weather sealed. I mounted the camera on the tripod so I can shoot a same scene, but with varying ISO from 200, all the way up to 25,600. To compensate for the varying ISO, shutter speed was adjusted accordingly. The built in Image Stabilization was turned off, and I used 2 seconds self timer to mitigate any unintended shake after pressing the shutter button. 

The first scene was shot right in front of the KLCC Twin towers. The lens was pointing upward, and we had light rain, hence you might find a few water spots in the images. I had to constantly wipe the front lens element. Bear in mind that all the following images are also available for download in full size, unedited JPEG format, at the end of my blog entry. 

HIGH ISO COMPARISON TEST 1

ISO 200

Zuiko Digital 7-14mm F4 lens at 7mm, ISO 200, 0.67sec, F8

ISO 800 

Zuiko Digital 7-14mm F4 lens at 7mm, ISO 800, 1/5sec, F8

ISO 1,600 

Zuiko Digital 7-14mm F4 lens at 7mm, ISO 1600, 1/10sec, F8

ISO 3,200 

Zuiko Digital 7-14mm F4 lens at 7mm, ISO 3,200, 1/20sec, F8

ISO 6,400 

Zuiko Digital 7-14mm F4 lens at 7mm, ISO 6,400, 1/40sec, F8

ISO 12,800 

Zuiko Digital 7-14mm F4 lens at 7mm, ISO 12,800, 1/60sec, F8

ISO 25,600 

Zuiko Digital 7-14mm F4 lens at 7mm, ISO 25,600, 1/125sec, F8

AMAZING 5-Axis Image Stabilization

During the product briefing with Olympus Malaysia staff I was told that the 5-Axis Image Stabilization has been improved further. My spontaneous reaction was, come on, what else do you expect us to do with the Image Stabilization? In my OM-D E-M5 review previously I have stated that I can shoot confidently with shutter speed as slow as 1/2 second hand-held, and I believe that is already more than sufficient for most shooting needs. In case where we need to shoot slower than half a second shutter speed or for long exposure shooting, logically we would use a tripod. The existing 5 Axis Image Stabilization was already effective and sufficiently capable for handheld shooting. 

I was going to be proven so WRONG, and honestly, I was still quite shocked at this discovery. 

After the ISO comparison shoot in front of KLCC Twin Towers, I decided to shoot hand-held and see how far I can push the slow shutter shooting with the 5-Axis Image Stabilization. 

Since we can confidently shoot at 1/2 second with the E-M5, I started by shooting with 1 second shutter speed on the E-M1. The first image reviewed was SHARP. I thought, well, maybe it was luck that I managed to hold my hands steady for that 1 second shot. So I tried again. And again. And again. To my horror (at that moment, this was the word that popped out in my mind) ALL of my shots came out SHARP! That 5-Axis Image Stabilization did something and whatever it did I was getting sharp images, shot after shot. 

HANDHELD AT 1.6 SECONDS Shutter Speed

ZD 7-14mm at 7mm, ISO200, 1.6sec, F9

It is one thing to have steady hands and pushing slow shutter speed shooting, sometimes we get one or two sharp shots out of a series of trials. And even the successful images may not be 100% blur free, there would still be traces of blur/shake. The 5 Axis Image Stabilization in the E-M1 gave me 100% hit rate when shooting at 1 second hand-held, and that was something I never saw coming, or thought possible. 

How about 2 seconds?

When I reviewed the 2 seconds shutter speed image, I wished there was someone around to record the expression on my face because I really do not know how to explain what I felt to you guys. Seriously, 2 seconds shutter speed image, sharp, shot after shot. It is very hard to believe, and I agree it is quite impossible to do hand-held shooting at 2 seconds, especially me because I do not exactly have steady hands. Furthermore I was shooting while standing straight, with nothing to lean on or brace myself against. The M.Zuiko 7-14mm F4 lens was not exactly small, and it was very heavy on its own. I do not quite know the logic behind how the 5-Axis Image Stabilization works, but it just did, and I have evidence to show you. 

I have compiled 11 full resolution photographs to show you that I have taken multiple trials of 1 sec and 2 sec shutter speeds in the download section at the end of this blog, and they were all sharp. Of course at 2 seconds you can see small traces of blur, but I am sure you will find the images still very usable. 

Do not take my word for it, as usual I always suggest that you find an E-M1 and test out the 5 Axis IS and see how effective it is in steadying your shots. As I said I do not have the steadiest hands around, and in the hands of those who spent time in challenging hand-held shooting, I am sure they can do better than me. 

Now that I was left speechless with the 5-Axis Image Stabilization trials, I went on doing another high ISO comparison scene, with similar setup as before, at KLCC Park. 

HIGH ISO COMPARISON TEST 2

ISO 200 

Zuiko Digital 7-14mm F4 at 7mm, ISO 200, 13sec, F9

ISO 800 

Zuiko Digital  7-14mm F4 at 7mm, ISO 800, 3.2sec, F9

ISO 1,600 

Zuiko Digital  7-14mm F4 at 7mm, ISO 1,600, 1.3sec, F9

ISO 3,200 

Zuiko Digital  7-14mm F4 at 7mm, ISO 3,200, 0.6sec, F9

ISO 6,400 

Zuiko Digital  7-14mm F4 at 7mm, ISO 6,400, 1/3sec, F9

ISO 12,800 

Zuiko Digital  7-14mm F4 at 7mm, ISO 12,800, 1/6sec, F9

I could not finish the test of ISO 25,600 because after the ISO 12,800 shot it started to rain very heavily, and I was already drenched from the earlier drizzling. And I did not intend to catch a bug just before publishing my review!

Again the chroma noise was very well controlled yet at the same time useful amount of detail was able to be maintained all the way to ISO 6,400. In fact the ISO 12,800 image is quite usable with some application of noise reduction and a little sharpening. 

When it comes to high ISO shooting and tolerance to noise, it differs from one to another. What may appear to be acceptable level of noise to me may not be the same case for you. However it is also a stretch too far to expect any image sensor to deliver images completely free of digital noise. In fact even full frame DSLR image sensor would exhibit visible noise shooting from ISO 3,200 and beyond. Of course it all comes down to how well the cameras built in noise reduction software in handling the high ISO noise. In this blog entry I have taken all shots with the Noise Filter set of OFF. The files would surely look cleaner with a little bit of noise reduction applied. 

ZD 7-14mm F4 lens at 7mm, ISO 200, 20sec, F7.1

100% Crop from previous image

ZD 7-14mm F4 at 7mm, ISO 200, 8sec, F9

I understand that some of you may not trust the images being displayed here, since they have been reduced in resolution, and obviously compressed to a certain degree. It is difficult to judge the image quality with so much size reduction, hence as usual, for your pixel-peeping pleasures, I have compiled selected images in full resolution (unedited, unprocessed, and converted directly from RAW to JPEG Large Fine via Olympus Viewer 3) for your download as follows:

E-M1 FULL RESOLUTION SAMPLE IMAGES HERE

DOWNLOAD 1

High ISO Image Samples (click)

DOWNLOAD 2

5-Axis IS Test, slow shutter speed handheld (click)

I was very pleased to find that the Olympus OM-D E-M1 did not disappoint when it comes to high ISO shooting, and as a bonus, the newly improved 5 Axis Image Stabilization allowed me to slow down my shutter speed to 2 seconds and still be able to shoot confidently. The high ISO images were richly detailed and noise level was very well controlled. I shall do side by side high ISO shooting comparison with E-M5 vs E-M1 in my later parts of blog reviews. 

Coming up next, PART 2: Image Sharpness, Continuous AF with tracking capability and Handling.

Just a little teaser. We already know that Olympus cameras with combination with amazingly sharp lenses such as M.Zuiko 60mm F2.8 macro can produce images that are full of fine details. Now Olympus has decided to remove the Anti-Aliasing filter from their image sensor, surely an important move to improve the level of details captured! Added the new Truepic 7 Image Processing engine, with improved "Fine Detail Processing 2", how much better can the E-M1 output get?

Theory may usually differ from practical real life application. So I shall leave you with a 100% crop image from my coming Part 2 review. 

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