IT'S ALL ABOUT TECH AND SOFT: Olympus OM-D E-M5...

MRP: 77000

Digit Rating: Good

3.5/5

Features:

Performance:

Value:

Design:

PROS

Dedicated electronic viewfinder
Great ergonomics
Beautiful image quality
Impressive low light performance

CONS

Expensive

REVIEW

We had a brief hands-on time with the latest and probably, the greatest micro four-thirds camera from Olympus – the OM-D E-M5, and we had promised of doing a detailed review.

The OM-D E-M5 made it to our labs last week, and after exploring it for a good 7 days, all we can say is – this camera is an improvement over the Olympus EP3 (read our review) which had left us speechless with its fast AF, great image quality, etc. and that is saying a lot.

Olympus definitely deserves a pat on its back for coming out with a wonderfully retro-looking micro four thirds camera, and for providing that one feature that was missing from its previous micro four thirds offerings – a dedicated electronic viewfinder. Trust us when we say this, there is no way you can enjoy shooting unless you have a viewfinder. LCD visibility in sunlight has improved with the newer generation of cameras but shooting through a viewfinder just gives that much more surety when it comes to the lighting conditions. There is no parallel to having the camera close to your face while composing your frames.

Without further ado, let us go straight to the OM-D E-M5:

Features and Design
The Olympus OM-D E-M5 houses a 16.1MP Live MOS sensor with a TruePic VI image processor, which was also seen on the E-P3. The OM-D E-M5 comes with some really wonderful features, some of which have been introduced for the first time. The 5-axis image stabilization system for instance is one such feature which goes beyond the vertical and horizontal movement compensation. According to Olympus, it compensates for yaw, pitch, vertical motion, horizontal motion and roll - the diagram below will show a correct representation of each terms.

5 Axis IS

There are as many as 35 point to select the focus from. These points are arranged in a 7x5 array and you can select one box, a group of 9 boxes or the entire array. You can shoot movies with the ART filters on. There is a new addition to the video shooting menu called one-shot echo and multiple echo.

If you are the kind of discerning photographer who wants his or her camera to look the part, the OM-D E-M5 wins hands down. Although we had got the black bodied E-M5, there is one with a silver body, which looks like a compact version of the older generation Olympus OM series of cameras. While the thickness of the camera isn’t much different from that of the EP3, the EVF does add some inches to the height of the camera. Although the EVF housing looks very similar to the pentaprism housings that one generally sees on DSLRs, the OM-D E-M5 does not have a pentaprism. The best part about the dedicated EVF is that it offers you an extra port to attach an external flash or any of the accessories that Olympus sells for its micro four-thirds camera. With the EP3, you could add only one accessory to the camera, so if you wanted the EVF, then you had to forget about adding an external flash unit to the camera or vice versa.

The camera is made of a magnesium and aluminium alloy and comes with a dust and splash proof chops. The bundled lens is also weather sealed. But this does not mean that this camera can be used underwater.

The camera is comparatively heavier than the EP3 and you will need to support the lens barrel with the other hand to keep the camera steady. It offers a decent patterned grip on the front face along with a much better rubberized thumb grip on the rear. The thumb grip tends to protrude out by a bit to ensure optimal grip. The front grip can get a bit tricky if you have sweaty fingers, but Olympus does offer extensive grip options.

Coming to the top of the camera, there is the mode-dial on the left hand side of the EVF, whereas the right hand side has two control dials along with a shutter button. Just beside the shutter button, you have the Fn2 button also known as the Highlight/Shadow control button, below which is the dedicated video record button. The mode dial has nice click and roll mechanism, whereas the control dials are placed at just the perfect distance from the thumb and index finger for quick adjustments even while viewing through the EVF. The feedback on the shutter button is quite good, but the dedicated video record button needs a proper vertical press to activate/deactivate it.

Just above the thumb grip on a slight left hand side you have the Fn1 button which can be programmed to activate certain functions out of the many on offer. Beside the function button there is preview button. Both buttons offer really good feedback. Just on the right hand side edge of the EVF, you will find a button which toggles between live-view mode and menu mode. It is best to keep the LCD in the menu option mode, while shooting through the EVF as it gives you a quick way to tweak the settings. Of course you can still do it in the live-view mode by pressing the OK button and then up/down arrow keys to select the right option. Having the menu mode selected in the LCD itself, saves on some time.

Coming to the rear side, there are a few buttons just below the thumb grip, starting with the Menu button at the top beside which is the Info button which displays the camera’s current setting information. The four-way buttons with a central OK button help in selecting the focus point. A delete button is placed below, on the right side of which is the power switch. The feedback on all the buttons is quite good, but some of these buttons might be a bit too small for someone with fat fingers.

The camera comes with a 3-inch 610k dot tilting OLED screen. The display is quite vivid, and you still see all the details while using this OLED in sunlit conditions, which is a definite plus. While the tilting OLED allows you to shoot over your head and at the ground level easily, we still love the articulating LCD offered by the Canon cameras, which allow you to point your camera at a 90 degree angle of view from the LCD screen, giving you one more angle to explore. Just like the EP3, the OM-D E-M5 also offers the capacitive touch sensitivity option to the OLED screen, allowing you to fire the shutter by selecting your focus point. You can also swipe through the images while in the preview mode. Another thing that comes naturally to heavy smartphone users, is the pinch zoom ability, which is sadly missing from the OM-D E-M5 as well. If you want to zoom into the image, you double click on the image, to get a 2x magnification view.

M Zuiko 12-50mm

The lens that is bundled with the camera is an M Zuiko 12-50mm lens going from f/3.5 to f/6.3. With a crop factor of 2x the range is equivalent to 24-100mm on a 35mm camera. While the build quality of the lens is top notch, we like the features on the lens. There are two kinds of zooms – E-Zoom or electronic zoom and M-Zoom or mechanical zoom. The E-Zoom operates slowly keeping the object in focus as you zoom in and out, specially while shooting video, whereas the mechanical zoom can be operated comparatively faster. By pressing the Macro button and pulling the lens barrel behind, you get into the macro mode, where manual focusing is not available. Placement of the manual focusing ring at the outer edge of the lens is quite helpful ergonomically. Recently we had tested two FujiFilm superzoom cameras, which had the manual focusing ring on the inner edge of the lens barrel which would affect the stability of the camera while adjusting the manual focus.

Multiple exposure is another fun feature allowing you to superimpose one image onto another. In the example below we superimposed the Tokyo subway map onto a dragon wall-hanging using the multiple exposure setting.