{"id":5197,"date":"2012-02-08T12:49:30","date_gmt":"2012-02-08T02:49:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/?p=5197"},"modified":"2012-02-19T16:28:40","modified_gmt":"2012-02-19T06:28:40","slug":"olympus-announce-their-exciting-new-mirrorless-camera-the-om-d-e-m5-at-last-an-olympus-mirrorless-with-built-in-evf-how-does-it-compare-to-the-panasonic-gh-2-and-fuji-pro-x-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/?p=5197","title":{"rendered":"Olympus announce their exciting new mirrorless camera – the OM-D E-M5 – at last an Olympus mirrorless with built-in EVF – how does it compare to the Panasonic GH-2 and Fuji Pro X-1?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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See Olympus website<\/a>\u00a0and the press release pdf<\/a> and for a nice preview, see pekkapotka<\/a><\/h3>\n

This is indeed a very exciting camera!<\/h3>\n

Please also check out the preview on dpreview.com<\/a> where this image is located:
\n\"dpreview.com\"<\/p>\n

To me, it brings the mirrorless camera genre into real contention as a serious, versatile\u00a0camera system\u00a0designed with photographers in mind whilst still offering\u00a0what appears to be high enough movie mode specs for most of us.<\/p>\n

This camera for the 1st time introduces a weatherproofed robust body to the mirrorless genre and the 1st to offer such a highly effective image stabilisation system which\u00a0has been re-designed\u00a0to allow use during movie mode, and will be of great benefit in use of those excellent prime lenses now available as well as legacy lenses such as using a Canon 135mm f\/2.0L lens on it\u00a0– this will be absolutely awesome!<\/strong><\/p>\n

I am very happy they have added the tilt out OLED touch screen which will be indispensible, and you can even add the PEN external electronic viewfinders if you want to look down through a viewfinder.<\/p>\n

The flash capabilities far exceed anything Panasonic make<\/strong> with remote TTL flash, flash sync of 1\/250th sec for the new flash, and full range of manual flash outputs, plus I presume the TTL flash will work well with legacy lenses which is certainly not the case with my Panasonic GH-1.<\/p>\n

The high ISO quality seems usable<\/strong> for web sized images up to ISO 6400 and perhaps ISO 12,800 according to these images<\/a>, but I suspect I would not use it past ISO 800-1600 – see these images<\/a>, and as usual with Olympus cameras, I would turn the in camera NR down and use software NR instead. We will have to wait until Olympus finishes tweaking firmware to see how good image quality really is at higher ISO levels. As long as the image quality is as good as my GH-1 I will be happy – and there is good reason to expect it will be significantly better.<\/p>\n

95% of my shots I do at ISO 400 or less (even on my Canon 1D Mark III) so I don’t care much for high ISO as if I need high ISO, the lighting is usually lousy anyway and I would use my own lighting to remedy the quality as well as quantity of light – an exception of course is astrophotography or sports under lights. If high ISO quality is very important to you, get a full frame dSLR such as a Canon 1D X or Nikon D4 (not the 36mp D800!).<\/p>\n

What is missing from the E-M5 – nothing that would be a show stopper!<\/strong><\/p>\n