Reading so many superlatives about Olympus OMD E-M5, and taking into account the spec sheet, it was somewhere on the wish list - but rather low. I spent couple of minutes with it one day and didn't feel very well with its wobbly, undersized buttons. Some extras also weren't that important for me and obviously you have to pay premium for them. So if any, it was rather E-PL5 or E-PM2 to be picked.
Yet one April day I found an advert announcing Spring price drop, and incidentally Winter promotion giving away 45mm f/1.8 lens and a battery was still running. It felt a decent deal, so I went for elegant silver version.
After some 7000 shots I can say these things (+ for positive, '-' for negative, '):
Appearance:
+ it is very good looking piece of equipment, and its retro styling actually fools (in a good way) many people into believing it is a film camera.
Ergonomics:
- pursue of the style unfortunately led to some ergonomic compromises, the biggest being the grip. The thumb part is actually great, by far the best I've tried, but the front is not protruding enough to give secure one-hand handling. In my opinion, with properly styled bigger front grip (see Really Right Stuff) it would still be a sexy camera.
- playback and Fn1 buttons are located really bad: moving them to the right would possibly help, although then there is a chance of accidentally pressing with a thumb
- all the buttons feel cheap, move around, and do not respond well. They also are pretty small, so operation with gloves is tricky. Even though having two top dials I could navigate menu, I'm missing dial on D-pad. I think I'm used to operate menus from that location, and being limited to flimsy buttons only, it shows up.
- on/off lever is placed in a bit awkward place (hard to reach with thumb) but worst of all it is really small and not much protruding
- the hump could be slightly lower, but most of all hot shoe/accesory cover should be made as one piece (as on all the other Olympus m43 cameras)
- flip action of the screen is pretty stiff (I understand it is touchscreen requirement, but it withstands tappping, not only touching, so might be not updated legacy from previous models) and there is no decent place to grab by the edge
+ off centre tripod mount allows to change battery without removing tripod plate
+ I love top dials - very nice grip, good feedback. I use left eye with the viewfinder, so can't operate the left hand side dial as intended, but luckily it is still accesible with index finger from the front (although moving the dial slightly to the front, maybe with increase of diameter, would help in this situation, without much affecting operating with a thumb. Two dials is a standard in better cameras, but having them both on the top plate is actually a step ahead - it makes it more consistent to operate (thumb - functions+options, index finger - values), and frees space for better thumb grip
- eye sensor is a bit too sensitive: when using 70-300 and engaging right hand more due to poor grip, I found it natural to use left hand to do adjustments on the dials, resulting in display switching. Using touch shutter with the screen flipped up is impossible.
- touchscreen: totally wasted opportunity. Buttons seem to be ported from lower resolution screen without scaling, so are tiny. Especially in Super Control Panel, together with its default clutter, it renders pointless to approach with fingers. Touch to focus and touch shutter button are anchored in lower left corner, I would prefer in upper top (for thumb to activate it) - or at least option where to place it
- non-standard USB plug: there is enough mess with USB standards to add another one to the collection. I presume it is legacy of tethering capability, but this model sadly lacks of it. Apart from data transfer it is used for remote control. The issue is the connection is pretty loose (the most frequent reason the remote won't work) and I actually lost one: it was swinging thanks to wind and then slipped into a river below - on the first day of the trip...
Operation:
+ Base ISO 200 - so far all my cameras started at 100, so having base sensitivity higher (assuming noise level not being worse) is speed for free
+ Live Time/Live Bulb - that is a really good feature and I just wonder why Olympus doesn't advertise it better.
--- Controls. There are 3 negatives, because it so bad for me. Apart from the lovely top dials, I found many annoyances:
- customization: word very often used to describe Olympus' menus, but wrong. It only offers adjustment (= selecting options given by Oly), but doesn't allow really to do things one likes, with some of restrictions being really strange. Examples to follow:
- drive mode (single/continuous/self-timer) cannot be assigned to any of the function buttons. When any of continuous modes chosen from Menu 1/ LV/SCP, frame rate can be selected only deep in Settings menu - lack of 2-tier menu
- bracketing mode cannot be assigned to any of function buttons (nor is available from Live Control/Super Control Panel). That ends up in 14 (!) presses of buttons to get not very sophisticated +/- 1EV 3 image bracketing.
- no other options than Highlight&Shadow Control, WB, Magnify and Image
Aspect when Fn1 set to multi function option, and no other Fn button can be assigned as multi function
- Highlight&Shadow Control available only through multi function (apart from diving in menu)
- main menu: Menu 1 and Menu 2 option choices don't make too much sense for me, would be lovely to actually pick what should be there. Settings options nicely divided, but I'd rather not have to dive into them as ofted as I was (bracketing and continuous rate especially)
- lack of MySet naming capability (touchscreen keyboard is already there, used for Copyright Settings entry)
- highlight/shadow warning & histogram display - I can't find any reason why when switched on (screen switched to display them), status icons on the sides disappear after short time.
- waste of touchscreen: no 'soft' Fn buttons available, Super Control Panel too crowded and squeezed. Actually if SCP was divided into 2 pages and slightly expanded, that would make very good interface (like 20-odd virtual Fn buttons)
- SCP useless, but Live Control annoying too - transition/animation: wasted 1 second before any parameter change can be applied. It's OK for lower-grade cameras (it will take long to adjust parameters anyway), but the top-of-the-range could at least offer way to disable it. Also confusing way of displaying which direction to scroll to get to required option (ability to choose which options to display would be welcome - something like Panasonic Q-menu)
- AF area selection - the idea being clever, but use of the poor D-pad undermines it. Relying on All-AF option doesn't make sense, the camera picks random points within the scene every time shutter is half-pressed.
- Continuous AF - works with slow objects only, but even then focus hunting is terrible. Because of that movie mode (C-AF being default mode) is useless
- AF tracking - slow objects only, manages to loose tracking even with good contrast
- inability to delete multiple images - although bin/thrash button can be set to quick delete mode (single press to remove file, but it takes pretty long to physically delete anyway), or images can be 'locked' and then only these unlocked - deleted using Shooting menu 1> Card Setup > All erase function (make sure the keepers are locked before executing!!).
Plenty of 'minuses' - was it a bad camera? No, not at all. Image quality and number of available controls in reference to body size, 5-axis stablization and retro look to name the most obvious reasons to love it.
It is a perfect camera for travel photography: thanks to sensor's dynamic range, excellent lenses choice, being weatherproof and having it all in small, light package, Olympus E-M5 leaves competition far behind in that field.
When it comes to action though, either fast objects or fast settings adjustments, it is not that good any more.
Many operation quirks could actually be solved in firmware upgrades, yet not even that, but no functionality has been added over time, like:
- mode dial MySets assignment
- lack of Self-timer Custom
- focus peaking
so E-M5 lack some features younger (and considerably cheaper) models have.
Olympus does not seem to introduce new models very frequently, so it is either sign of being conservative (as the menu system is carried virtually unchanged from previous generations) or arogant (knowing what is the best).
As a result OM-D E-M5 got replaced by PEN E-PM2 - that way I can keep fantastic image quality, fast continuous capture, good focusing speed, with only slightly worse controls. I do miss twin dials and viewfinder, but growing up on TZ7 I know I can cope with buttons and LCD only.
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