Olympus Malaysia has unveiled their official pricing for the OM-D E-M5 and they are starting to take local pre-order (9 to 31 March 2012). There are promotions with FREE gifts too, choice of MMF-3 adapter or 32Gb Sandisk EXTREME card. Do check out their official promotional page here (Click).
Important Notes:
1. This is a user experience based review.
2. All images were shot in RAW and converted directly to JPEG Large SF (super fine) via Olympus Viewer 2 version 1.3 (provided by Olympus Malaysia).
3. General camera settings, Noise Filter = OFF, Contrast/Saturation/sharpness = 0, White Balance = Auto (with an option maintain warm color = OFF), Gradation = Normal, Picture Mode: Monotone
4. No post-processing applied (except picture mode set to "monotone") to the images. All images were as good as straight out of camera with minimal cropping for better presentation.
5. Lenses used for this entry: M.Zuiko 12mm F2 and 45mm F1.8
This entry is the final part of my Olympus OM-D E-M5 review episodes, please read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 if you have not done so.
In this Part 4, I shall be summarizing the important highlights of my findings while shooting with Olympus E-M5 in the previous parts of my review. I shall also be discussing about a few negative points of the camera which I thought could have been improved. Basically you will find the summary of pros and cons of the Olympus E-M5, based on my brief encounter and shooting experience with it over the weekend.
In addition, I believe Olympus E-M5 is a very capable street photography machine. Street photography has been picking up pace all around the world lately. In my final shooting session with the Olympus E-M5, I have brought the camera to my usual shutter therapy session, doing street shooting at my favorite grounds in Jalan Masjid India and Chow Kit, Kuala Lumpur. Therefore, I shall talk about how well the Olympus E-M5 performs as a street photography camera, and how I find it suitable for my shooting style and preferences.
Video by FULLCIRCLEPIX
Awesome music by SILENT SCENERY
Track title: Tale of a Wooden Door
Kindly visit Silent Scenerys Facebook Page
This video highlights me in action shooting the streets. This was my first time seeing myself doing my shutter therapy. Quite interesting to see myself from a third persons perspective. Thanks again Sanjit for the wonderful video.
All the photographs in this entry were taken in the above-mentioned street shooting session in Jalan Masjid India and Chow Kit, hence let’s just take all the technicalities out of the way. In street photography, technical perfection is not a priority, there are many things that will help you make the shot, which I will discuss in the later part of the entry. You all have seen many photographs as examples of what the Olympus E-M5 is capable of producing in my previous three parts (almost 100 photo samples) with dozens of full size JPEG downloads, where you can scrutinize the sharpness of the images, the high ISO and dynamic range performance, as well as judging the beautiful Olympus signature colors. Since I was doing my shutter therapy session, it was a personal shooting experience, and I shall be presenting all my street photographs in black and white instead. I want to draw your attention away from pixel-peeing and being a technical nerd, and just turn your street photography mode “ON” for this entry. Why, you ask? Because I love street photography, and only by really doing what I usually do in street photography with the E-M5, can I tell you, honestly and fairly, how the camera fares in my shooting session.
Concurrent Events
Clouded by Bubbles
Play date.
WHAT I LIKE ABOUT E-M5
IMPROVED IMAGE QUALITY (High ISO, Dynamic Range and Resolution)
Olympus cameras over the years have been plagued with a universally agreed presumption that they all lag behind competition when it comes to high ISO shooting and dynamic range. Having the smaller sensor size in comparison to APS-C and Full Frame DSLR is the main attacking point used by competitors to talk Olympus down. I have to admit, despite having wonderful camera system with loads of innovative features and well thought out designs for practical photography usage, ultimately the world still chases high ISO and megapixel race (so sad, right?). It is a huge news that Olympus finally, has caught up with the best in class (APS-C DSLR) in terms of image quality.
It is a breath of fresh air when the image quality in the new 16MP LIVE MOS Sensor used inside the E-M5 has spotted a huge jump of improvement over the previous Olympus models. Usable, clean ISO6400 images with minimal chroma noise and still maintaining good amount of details is unheard of from Olympus, until the E-M5 arrived. In fact, at ISO3200 and below the images appear to be excellent, and I will have no hesitation using such settings when necessary. When I was shooting with the E-5 (my main camera), I would have had to think a lot more before turning up to ISO1600. Similarly applied to dynamic range, where transition between the bright and dark areas is smoother, and the E-M5 did a splendid job in maintaining details in both the highlight and shadow region, even being used at higher ISO settings (up to ISO800). This surely is a sign of better things to come for Olympus system, both micro 4/3 as well as the native and much neglected DSLR 4/3 system.
I was very glad to find Olympus finally breaking the barrier they set for themselves when they restricted their Pixel count to only 12MP a few years ago. I agree 12 MP is sufficient for most usage today, but sooner or later, when everyone else is having higher and higher megapixel count, the old 12MP will not be able to keep up anymore. I am not supporting the megapixel race, but having a little bit more will surely be advantageous to any photographers.
Religious Man
Gold
Difference in Decades
Food in mouth
NEW 5-AXIS IMAGE STABILIZATION
I was surprised when I found out that I was able to shoot sharp images, not just by luck, but confidently doing it again and again with the new IS system built inside the E-M5 body. The furthest I dared to push shooting handheld was the shutter speed of half a second. I believe if you want to shoot anything with ONE second or more shutter speed, you might have thought of that in mind before hand and prepared a tripod along with you. Being able to shoot half a second hand held and get away with many sharp images surely opened up a whole new world of possibilities.
As evidence, you may download half size JPEG samples (no need for full size, since the purpose to show the images is to prove that I have taken many shots with half a second shutter speed, yet they all turn out to be sharp).
IMAGE STABILIZATION TEST
The IS works wonders when I was shooting macro. Firstly, the effect of the IS can be seen through the viewfinder while I was shooting, and this helps to mitigate the “shaky and jumping” view, thus greatly improving comfort while shooting. I rarely find blur images as I did extreme magnification macro shots, holding the E-M5 with 50mm F2 macro lens (mounted via MMF-3) by one hand. The new IS certainly added a lot of flexibility when it comes to real, practical shooting.
Besides hand held slow shutter speed, and shooting extreme macro, the new IS also benefits handheld video recording, as shown in all the videos taken by my dear friend Sanjit. He shot all the footages hand-held with another E-M5 on his hand, and we shall be exploring the video capabilities of the E-M5 in a separate entry, and I shall get Sanjit to talk about that instead. As you know, I am a photographer, and I know nuts when it comes to video world.
VERY GOOD HANDLING
The E-M5 by itself is very small, and does not offer good enough balance and gripping, especially for larger hands. However, coupled with the additional battery grip pack, HLD-6, the story changes. I find myself loving the horizontal grip (landscape) a lot, and it certainly added the much needed bulk and weight to steady my shots better. I personally find the portrait grip being added to be a little too large and heavy for my liking. Nonetheless, having options to add on is a smart move, and I must admit there are people who want the camera to be as small as possible. For me, balanced handling is more important, and yes, I highly recommend the use of HLD-6, if you intend to shoot with larger lenses (eg telephoto-zoom lenses).
I also like the rugged construction and built of the camera. It felt very solid in my hands, and perhaps, up to date, E-M5 has the best built of all mirrorless (or compact system cameras) cameras in the market. I often complain on how fragile the PEN series cameras are, easily dented and cracked if you unknowingly knock the camera on hard surface, or have minor accidents. Strong magnesium alloy body on the E-M5 is surely adding confidence to the photographers like me, who usually handle their equipments very roughly.
Innocence
Looking for an answer
Negligence
Same Level
OPTIMIZED STRAIGHT OUT OF THE CAMERA JPEG
As always, Olympus produces excellent out of the camera JPEG files, with very accurate auto white balance, true to life colours, pleasing skin tones, and optimized resolution, maintaining great amount of details. I know many photographers shoot RAW most of the time, but having a reliable JPEG engine will surely come in handy in many situations when you do not have the time to transfer your images to your computer and do our photoshop magic.
USABLE ELECTRONIC VIEWFINDER
I do not think that the electronic viewfinder is perfect, but having one makes a whole world of difference, especially when it comes to manual focusing works, and shooting directly under the bright sun.
IMPROVED BATTERY LIFE
The new battery is a lot better than the BLS-1 (as used in all previous Olympus PEN cameras). In most of my shooting session (except the butterfly park), I did not kill the battery, and the capacity was sufficient to last me until I reach home, with more than 400 shots each session. I cannot tell you how many total shots a single charge can last, because I immediately charge up the battery once I got home, before I head out again. I only killed the battery in butterfly park after over 300 shots, mainly because I used the add-on flash to fire and trigger the extermal flash FL-36R wirelessly in ALL my shots. Considering the heavy use of the add-on flash and incredible amount of chimping in butterfly park (yes I do chimp a lot, when I needed to ensure my focus accuracy when I manual focus), that was a respectable performance.
Plastic
Unsure
Street tailor
Crossing lines
Waiting for the world to pass
There is no such thing as a perfect camera, and obviously there are also things that I wish could have been improved in the Olympus OM-D E-M5.
WHAT I DISLIKE ABOUT E-M5
FOGGING ISSUE
I managed to test the weather-sealing of the camera twice. The first encounter was shooting in the rain at Bukit Bintang during nighttime, as I have blogged in Part 2 of my review. The second encounter was having the camera run under small sprinkling water fountain in the Butterfly Park, KL, as shown in Part 3 (the last part of the video). In both encounters, the Electronic Viewfinder fogged up from the inside, with the moisture appearing as a thick white blanket covering the view. Both my camera and Sanjit’s camera experienced the same problem, because we both shot in the rain. Logically, being a weather-sealed camera, the moisture should not have gotten inside. I have no such problem with my previous DSLR E-520 and E-5, when I brought the cameras to high humidity places such as the rainforest. I have also placed the E-5 directly under a running waterfall (small one of course) and there was no moisture ingress into the viewfinder. Being rated as weather sealed, I am surely not expecting this issue to be found on the E-M5, following Olympus’ great reputation with their previous weather sealed cameras since E-1 days.
Update (14 March 2012): In all fairness, the fogging in the electronic viewfinder did not cause any hiccups or issues to the cameras performance, everything continued to operate fine as usual. As an alternative, the live view on the 3 inch OLED screen still appear to be as clear as ever, and was used an alternative to compose my subjects instead. The fogging in the viewfinder lasted for about half an hour, on both Sanjit and my E-M5 units. I hope that Olympus somehow will rectify this issue before the first batch of E-M5 mass production hits the market.
Update (14 March 2012): In all fairness, the fogging in the electronic viewfinder did not cause any hiccups or issues to the cameras performance, everything continued to operate fine as usual. As an alternative, the live view on the 3 inch OLED screen still appear to be as clear as ever, and was used an alternative to compose my subjects instead. The fogging in the viewfinder lasted for about half an hour, on both Sanjit and my E-M5 units. I hope that Olympus somehow will rectify this issue before the first batch of E-M5 mass production hits the market.
NO SUPPORT OF PDAF LENSES
There is no doubt that E-M5 has very fast autofocus. However, there is no improvement when it comes to using the older 4/3 DSLR lenses that worked optimally with phase-detect autofocus system. I think a lot of us, long time Olympus users who have held onto the marvelous Zuiko lens lineup, would appreciate some sort of engineered compatibility on the micro 4/3 camera system to enable “reasonable fast and usable” focusing with the 4/3 lenses. That would open up the micro 4/3 to a more complete range of lenses, including some very respectable fast zoom lenses, which the micro 4/3 line up is seriously lacking at the moment. I am not sure how Olympus is going to fix this missing link, but if they did, the micro 4/3 system from Olympus will step up to another level, mainly because of how excellent their Zuiko lenses already are. It is my wish that Olympus will not take this lightly, as they still have many 4/3 system users.
Late market
Friendliness
Painful truth
Honest living
CONTINUOUS FOCUSING WITH 3D TRACKING
While I did notice some improvements with the continuous focusing on the E-M5, especially when face detection is turned on, I still feel that there is much to be improved. Do cut the camera some slack, because I have tested the camera in very difficult shooting conditions. Perhaps, in good lighting situation, the camera would have fared better. However, as I tested the continuous focusing in my shooting sessions, I did miss a lot of focus (Turkish Dance in Part 1 review). Not being happy with the results I was seeing, I decided to switch back to the default Single AF and the original single click autofocus was fast enough for me to capture a high hit rate. Bear in mind that I am not a continuous focus shooter, and probably do not exactly know how to optimize the usage of it. Well, perhaps I was being misguided by that ballet dancing girl as advertized in the youtube video (click). That sort of superb continuous AF performance was nowhere seen when I was shooting the Turkish Dance on stage !
However, the continuous focusing seems to work better in video recording, based on my observation while Sanjit was shooting. Lets explore this in a separate entry, where Sanjit will share his video shooting experience with the E-M5.
OPTICAL VIEWFINDER
As much as I have noted the importance of having the electronic viewfinder and how it has improved overall shooting experience, I still think that nothing beats shooting through a real, large, bright Optical Viewfinder. I like the idea of what you see is what you get through the viewfinder. The Electronic Viewfinder is built to mimic the end-result after you click the shutter button. It may be useful to some, but I prefer to see what is happening during the process of shooting, not after. I want to see exactly what my eye can see without any modifications, and I believe 100% real life representation of the optical viewfinder helps in this regard. Perhaps (once the technological barriers have been broken down) a hybrid viewfinder of some sort, for example an optical viewfinder with electronic display overlay will benefit the photographer with the best from both worlds.
Strategist
Different worlds
Chill
Three Men and a road divider
Now or Never
STREET PHOTOGRAPHY WITH OLYMPUS E-M5
Recently, it is interesting to note that some cameras have been designed to fit the “descriptions of a street photographer’s machine”, and being marketed as such. Street photography is an important genre of photography and is being practiced widely everywhere in the world. How does E-M5 fare in street shooting?
First of all, I really treasure the smaller sized and lighter camera for street shooting. It makes walking long distances more comfortable, and I was able to hold the camera with one hand while I was hunting for subjects. Furthermore, people are less “threatened” when you point a smaller sized camera at them, a camera that does not scream paparazzi or serious photographer who has ulterior motives when you shoot them. Generally, the locals here would quickly associate anyone who has huge black professional cameras with large lenses as someone who works for the media, being a reporter or journalists working for the local newspaper, trying to do some story in their local neighbourhood. Giving out that kind of impression when you use a large DSLR will pose some kind of intimidation to your street subjects, and they will react differently to you when you approach them. Most of the time the attention you get with large cameras will hold you down and prevent you from getting the “natural” look from your subjects. People are less friendly when they think that you want something from them.
Having the small E-M5 that appears retro (like a film camera) is less intimidating, and I find my street subjects to be more acceptable when I go near them. It is either they do not care at all since I do not look like I pose a threat with such a small camera, or I look more like just another person in the crowd. I was able to blend into the street much better with smaller cameras like E-M5 and any other Olympus PEN cameras, than larger alternatives such as my E-5. If you are serious about street photography, you would agree that blending in is an important part even before you start clicking the shutter button.
On the streets, it is not about capturing nice colours or aesthetically pleasing shots all the time. It is about capturing emotions, expressions of people passing by in that small trace of time, and moments that happen so briefly that you capture that one frame to tell a wonderful story. Being able to capture the decisive moment (as popularized by Henri Cartier Bresson, and no I am not a fan of his) will demand a lot from the camera, when it comes to Autofocus. Having very fast, accurate and reliable autofocus in the E-M5 allowed me to nail my shots at that precise moment I wanted the shutter to click. I know many people rely on zone-focusing (lets hope this statement wont spark a whole new firestorm elsewhere), personally I prefer NOT to use zone focusing because I want bokeh and I use high shutter speed on the streets, hence good Autofocus is a necessity for me. Of course you may devise your own shooting style that fits you, but you have to admit that being able to focus and freeze the moment instantaneously is crucial in street photography. Any lag or pause will surely cause you to miss precious moments, and those moments will not repeat itself. Olympus has advanced their Autofocus mechanism so well that if I miss any shots, it was due to my own fault for not pressing the shutter button fast enough.
Intense
Open
Umbrella
Stealth, is another important weapon in street photography. All street photographers will tell you the same thing: GET CLOSER to your subjects. How can you get close enough without polluting your scene with the subject being aware of your presence and that he is being photographed? This is the area where I find the tiltable OLED screen with touch screen shutter activation to come in very handy. The trick of not drawing attention from the crowd is not to have eye contact. If you do not look into your subject directly, he would not know that you were shooting him, and this is the safe and good approach to get near your subject. Shooting from waist level, with the tilt screen facing upwards towards me, I can frame my subjects just by looking downwards, without establishing eye contact with my subject, and then I do not even have to press the shutter button to cause any alarm, I just touched the screen to shoot. I have used this trick on the E-M5 for quite a number of shots in this entry, and they all turned out to be very natural and as if I was not there at all. I was close enough, and I still can get “unposed” natural expression on my subject’s faces.
Of course, another important factor not to be forgotten, would be the very muffled, soft, shutter sound. Thanks to the new shutter mechanism encased inside the thick magnesium alloy body shell, with full weather sealing, the shutter sound is soft and rounded. Being on the street, it was almost inaudible, and this added a lot of advantage when you intend to be stealthy.
I find myself enjoying shooting the street tremendously with the E-M5. In comparison to the E-P3, I welcome the better handling due to the beefier added horizontal hand grip, the tiltable OLED screen and also the much quieter shutter sound. Indeed, the Olympus E-M5 is well suited as a street photography weapon.
Small opening
I thank you all beautiful readers for being here supporting my review work on this blog, and all the kind, encouraging remarks I have received from you all. It has been a great honor and privilege to be able to test, shoot and write about the new Olympus OM-D E-M5. The encounter was very brief, but I have truly enjoyed myself, and the experience was very fulfilling. I appreciate the overwhelming response in comments, emails, and any feedback.
While I have finished my part of user experience review focusing on photography alone, Sanjit, the great friend who have shot me in video all this time will have something to say about the video capabilities on the Olympus E-M5. I shall feature him on my blog soon to talk about that.
If you have any questions or feedback, please feel free to say something in the comment section on this blog entry, or email me directly at hamish7ian@gmail.com
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