Olympus E-M1—A Photographer's Three Month Evaluation

Olympus E-M1/Panasonic 35-100 mm lens @ 100 mm; 1/500th @ F/8, ISO 200
Chincoteague, Virginia

I've had the Olympus E-M1 now for about three months and I thought I would share my thoughts after using this camera for a wide variety of purposes.  This is not an extensive technical review.  If you want that, there are plenty of sites that will tell you everything about the technology and features of the camera body. These are just my thoughts, from an experienced photographer's point of view, after using it extensively for the past three months.  I'll try to comment on all of the important features as well as pass on a few things I I don't like or think could have been done better.

First things first; we all know it is one terrific camera.  It was chosen as "camera of the year" by several sites and groups and that kind of sums things up. Here is an overarching statement I feel comfortable making. "Whatever I have asked of this camera, it has done flawlessly and with excellence!"  and–you can quote me on that.

Feel and Placement of Controls

When I reach for the camera and pick it up, it feels perfect in my hands.  The grip is exactly the right size.  It is solid and secure.  Often times, I carry the camera in my right hand, with no strap, at the ready, so I can quickly raise it to my eye, acquire my subject and press the shutter.  Because the camera is the right size, weight and well balanced, this technique feels good.  With larger cameras, I can't do this for more than a couple of hours as my hand and wrist become fatigued.  I really like how this camera feels in my hand.

The shutter button is exactly where my index finger would expect it to be.  I don't have to contort or feel for it.  It is perfectly placed.  Additionally, the rest of the dials and buttons are very well made. The dials don't turn too easily nor too hard.  There is no danger of accidentally changing a setting.  The buttons are a nice size, well spaced and are positive in pressure.  Olympus' engineers hit this squarely on the head.  Some have had issue with the placement of the Off/On switch, but it is fine for me.  I like it on the top of the body better than on the bottom right of the back, as in the E-M5.  The E-M5's buttons were lacking in size and too close to other controls, making it hard for someone with large hands to work them easily.  In this camera it is done right.

Focus–Without a way to directly measure focus speed, it is my sense that this camera has the fastest focus of any autofocus camera I have ever owned, and I have owned about 20 of them, going back to when Minolta first introduced the Maxxum in the early 80s.  (A bit of trivia. Minolta's Maxxum logo had the crossed Xs with one slightly lowered, just like the Exxon logo. I believe Exxon sued them for trademark infringement so Minolta changed their Maxxum logo slightly after that) There is nothing to complain about here.  What I really like is that when a contrast-detect focusing module locks onto the subject, it is dead on accurate.  Press the shutter button–BOOM!–focus is locked on!  Since it focuses right off the front of the sensor, there is really no need to micro-tune focus between the camera body and individual lenses as I have done with my phase-detect SLRs.  That being said, Olympus even provides you a way to micro-tune each focusing sensor with each lens if you want to double check them.  Read that again.  EACH FOCUSING SENSOR can be tuned, not just a general overall fine tuning.  That is remarkable.  I have not had to fine tune any lenses or sensors and don't expect to.

Tracking focus is what I expected.  It is better than the E-M5 but not as good as my Nikon D800E. Olympus has added some phase-detect focusing sensors on the camera's imaging sensor and it has helped.  I don't require much tracking focus for the kind of photography I do, but this camera handles if "fairly" well, but not as well as I would like.  It works but is not "great." I suspect the next generation mirrorless cameras will have it pretty well nailed.  I have tracked moving grandchildren and fast moving trains successfully.  So, again, it works a lot better than MILCs of previous generations.

The face detection is superb.  Not only will it recognize faces, but it will recognize eyes, even left eye or right eye as well as closest eye.  Now that is nice for street photography and event photography.  I appreciate this feature and use it when appropriate.

Image Characteristics

Color–I love the color from this camera.  The color is natural and accurate and that is the setting I use on the camera.  The color is subtle and not in your face.  I don't like the overly saturated, garish color style I see so much today on the Internet.  I like it natural and accurate.  If I want to increase the saturation of the color, I will do that myself for specific images.  I feel Olympus nailed the overall color.  I almost never have to adjust the color in my images.

I found the auto white balance to be pretty accurate.  I'm not one who uses auto white balance much.  I normally set my white balance for daylight and make the corrections in my image editing software.  I'll use auto white balance if I am inside or in mixed lighting.  It is easy to see the white balance that is set in the camera as it is reflected in the electronic viewfinder.  So, you can change it as needed and the viewfinder won't allow you to forget where it is set.

Also, I use a Passport Colorchecker for white balance.  Typically, I don't have to make any corrections as Olympus' color palate reflects the calibrated Colorchecker palate almost exactly.  Best color of any camera or film I have used.

Sharpness–I only use RAW when photographing. I cannot give you an evaluation of JPEG images. However, I have read that they are excellent right out of the camera.  The camera has no low pass or anti-aliasing filter over the sensor so the raw captures look very good without adding even any capture sharpening.  They look as good if not better than any of the other digital cameras I have owned, even my Nikon D800E.  No issue in this area at all.  I find that I need to add less capture sharpening than in other cameras to equal my visual sense.

Resolution–The camera's 16mp sensor produces highly detailed images.  If you have been reading this blog then you know that I compared images from this camera with images from my D800E.  To read the two posts, look here for the first test and here for the second.  The two image comparison tests speak for themselves.  Bottom line?  The sensor is excellent at resolving its entire surface area and the images, at least up to 20" X 24" (50 X 60 cm), in my experience, are identical.  For more information, read those two posts.

Contrast–The contrast from the images is pleasant.  The image reflect the scenes accurately.  Micro contrast is also good.  The images do not look flat and are not overly contrasty.  Both of these types of contrast have more to do with the lens than the sensor.  I feel the images have "life" and I think you will like what you see.

Dynamic Range–There is plenty of dynamic range.  The camera does not have the dynamic range of my D800E, but it has more than my previous Nikons with the exception of my D700, which I think it equals in dynamic range.  I'm very happy with the highlight and shadow detail that I can draw out of a raw file if I need to.  This isn't an issue.

Noise–A lot has been written about noise in the M4/3 format.  I'm not sure what others' standards are (I am picky about my image quality), but I shoot professionally for stock in a wide variety of situations, and I will tell you that even at ISO 6400, with judicious noise reduction in Lightroom 5 or another state-of-the-art noise reduction program, the noise is not objectionable while keeping all the detail in the image.  And–I'm talking about looking at it at 1:1, pixel level.  At ISO 1600 I don't even apply noise reduction.  There is no need to.  Using ISO 6400 or 3200 is a last resort and I don't use them if not necessary, but the noise is minimal.  During a recent analysis of all of my digital images, I use ISOs above 1600 less than 3% of the time.  If I have to, I won't hesitate to use them as the noise is not objectionable. 'Nuf said.

Video 

I don't use video and have no interest in it so you will have to go elsewhere to find an assessment of the video this camera is capable of producing.

Image Stabilization–Simply said, "amazing!"  I have never experienced anything as good as this image stabilization, which the exception of my Olympus E-M5, which is the same system.  I can hand hold the camera steady down to 1/3 second with a short telephoto lens–and I'm in my 60s!  Unheard of in the past, even with my best Nikon lenses.  This image stabilization sets you free!

Electronic Viewfinder (EVF)–I had used an electronic viewfinder in a digital camera I bought around 2003. It was awful and I found it hardly usable.  I just couldn't see through it clearly.  It was tiny, had low contrast and bad color. I was baffled why it was even on the camera, it was so bad.  The EVF on the E-M1 is terrific.  I first used a modern EVF on my E-M5 and found it pleasurable to use for several reasons.  It was clear, contrasty, colorful and it gave me the image right off the sensor.  It also had a live histogram in the viewfinder.  I could add overexposure and underexposure "blinkies" if I wanted.  Whenever I needed to adjust the exposure, the image would lighten or darkened as I made the adjustments.  The histogram also changed in real time. I call it "Pre-Chimping!"  I could see the final result before I pressed the shutter release.  That was nice.

With the E-M1, Olympus has improved it even more.  It is physically larger, clearer and has a higher magnification.  It is "almost" as good as an optical viewfinder, but doesn't quite get there.  However, it is a pleasure to use for all aspects of photography.  The only thing I see that is not as good as I would like is when the image is totally backlit.  Then it kind of washes out the color.  You can still see clearly and see your histogram, just the colors kind of wash out.  But it doesn't affect the image making experience.

Fujifilm's specs for the EVF on their new XT-1 show it to be a bit bigger, but if you look at a graphic comparison, it is not by much.  The XT-1's EVF also has a bit higher magnification than the E-M1's and its refresh rate is a bit faster.  However, since I have not used the XT-1, I can't tell you if the small differences make a "real world" difference.  I suspect the average user would not notice a difference between the two.

One more comment about the EVF.  With the E-M5, there was a bit of lag to turn the EVF on once it was in front of my eye.  Not with this one.  It is instantaneous.  That short period of time really does make a difference.  With the E-M5, I had to wait a few micro-seconds, but I had to wait.  It was noticeable. It bothered me.  Olympus has improved this in the E-M1 and I am happy they have.

Things I Don't Like or Could Have Been Done Better

As much as I have extolled the virtues of the E-M1 and enjoy using it, there are a few things that frustrate me or could be improved, in my opinion.  But you have to understand that I'm very picky.

First, there are way too many options to configure this camera.  It is pretty well known that too many choices degrade an experience.  Olympus made this camera virtually programmable in any way you want to program it.  Just about any dial or button can be changed to do anything you want it to do.  That seems great on the surface, but by totally reprogramming all the buttons and knobs, you then have to remember, sometimes in the heat of a pressure filled photographic situation, what button does what, especially if there is some other icon or name printed on it.  I found if one doesn't use the reprogramming modifications regularly, one tends to forget what each button or setting does.  I would prefer a more intelligent approach to providing reprogramming capabilities.  How do I handle it?  I don't reprogram most of the buttons and knobs.  I found that about three features that I use regularly and have programs Fn buttons to handle those three features.

A related item is that the menu system is so complex and deep, you really have to know it and understand it in order to quickly find a particular function you may want to change.  The good thing is that the menu is basically the same menu that is on the E-M5, which I also own and have been using for about 20 months.  I didn't have to go in and learn a different one.

When I bought the E-M5, I read through the entire manual twice, played with the menu system for a week before I took the camera out to seriously photograph.  And – then, I took the downloaded manual on my iPad with me! I would estimate, using the E-M5 almost daily, it took a good 6 months for me to feel totally comfortable with the menu system and was able to quickly find everything I needed to find.  Luckily, as I wrote, the E-M1 has the system menu system and I didn't have to go through that again.  It comes down to too many choices for me.  But that is just me.  Your mileage may vary.

I suspect Olympus wanted to provide a camera that could be configured for all photographers for all purposes. That may not be the way to go.  You don't see that philosophy in highly prized industrial design.

This is just a personal thing.  I don't particularly like the 4:3 ratio of the sensor.  I "grew up" using 35mm (2:3), which has a longer to higher ratio, the Pentax 6X7, which is very close to the 8 X 10 format and a Mamiya C330F, a square format.  The 4:3 format is the format of the old analog televisions.  I know the name is M4/3, but I still don't like the format.  Again, it is just me.  Is there a workaround?  Yes, but you lose some quality.

The camera allows me to modify the sensor ratio.  That is a nice feature.  However, if I change it to 2:3 (35mm), my preferred ratio, then I am cropping some of my pixels.  With 16mp, I don't want to lose any pixels unnecessarily.  I work very hard now to get the image right in the camera with no cropping if possible. If Olympus would increase the number of pixels on the sensor to 20 or 24mp (but keep the same quality), then with a 2:3 crop, it would still remain at 16mp or more, then I would be fine with that.  This is just niggling.  Just a personal preference.

The last thing that irritates me is the E-M1's programming for bracketing.  The bracketing function on the button on the upper left (port side) of the camera top when looking at it from behind, has several options. The first two are HDR1 and HDR2.  They combine three exposures in-camera and output them as JPEGS.  I'm not interested in that.  But it is the rest of the options that frustrate me.  There are a variety of bracketing that is available but no simple 3 exposures, 1 stop apart.  For that, you have to delve into the menus to the bracketing function and set it there.  Olympus gives you options that are easily accessed through this button control for 3 frames 2 F/stops apart, as well as 5 and 7 frames, 2 stops apart. They also provide a setting for 3 frames, 3 F/stops apart.  What is that all about?  Why not the most common, 3 frames 1 F/stop apart and 5 frames 1 F/stop apart?  This could easily be remedied in a firmware update.  I hope they do.  Just an aggravation to have all those options at your fingertips but have to go into the menus to find the most useful settings.

So there you have it.  My frustrations are nothing critical and nothing that affects image quality.  They are just handling and programming issues.  For me, none are a show stopper or even big deal.

To wrap this up, all that above being said,  this camera is a Keeper, with a capital K!  The Olympus E-M1 is the camera I wished all my other cameras would have been.  I can highly recommend this camera for excellent images and very satisfying user experiences.

Thanks for looking.  Enjoy!

Dennis Mook

Many of my images can be found at www.dennismook.com.  Please pay it a visit.  I add new images regularly.  Thank you.


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