So...I’m Back From My Recent Road Trip; How Did The OM-1 and 12-100mm f/4 PRO lens perform And How Does It Compare To The Nikon Z7II And 24-200mm f/4-6.3 lens

Caterpillar; Roaring Fork Nature Motor Trail; Great Smoky Mountains N.P.
All images (except as noted) made with an OM-1 and 12-100mm f/4 PRO lens
(click to enlarge any photo)

As you might be aware, I just returned from a 12-day road trip.  Three of my lifelong friends joined me and we randomly traveled through western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee.  We're all in our 70s and we've been friends since we were 2-years old—in other words since we have any memories at all.  We've kept in touch all those decades and manage to get together at least once a year and just hang out together with no agenda.  Having lifelong friends and being able to get together regularly is such a wonderful experience and blessing in life.  But that is another story.

The entirety of my travel photo kit.  I purposefully
did not take a tripod. (click to enlarge)

The road trip was not a photographic road trip but I did want to take a quality camera and lens with me in order to seize any photographic opportunities I may encounter.  I decided to take my recently purchased OM-1 with the 12-100mm f/4 PRO lens as my only dedicated camera.  That said, I also had my iPhone 14 Pro MAX that I used primarily for documentary and record photos.  Additionally, I made the conscious decision not to take a tripod.  Would I regret that?  We’ll see.

Finally, for the first time I believe, I didn't take along a laptop with Lightroom Classic and my Lightroom catalog.  On past road trips, each evening I would upload, backup, keyword and take a preliminary look at the day's images.  This year, I took my relatively old iPad Pro (2nd generation) to see how well a simplified backup, upload and editing procedure could work for future trips.  Remember what I've written about for years—I've wanted to go smaller, lighter, less expensive yet maintain excellent image quality.  This setup is about a small, lightweight and simplified as I think I can get.

What I set out to accomplish by taking the OM-1 kit was four-fold.  First, I wanted to see how well the camera/lens combination would serve me.  Would it give me the versatility that I would need or would I regret not taking a different camera and possibly another lens or two?  Second, I wanted to better understand the image quality using high ISOs in this newest Micro 4/3 sensor.  I know the image quality using lower ISOs is excellent.  But how would it do at high ISOs in the real world?  Third, I wanted to use several of the advanced features in the OM-1 to better understand just how well they work in a practical sense.  Would they really be useful or are the features more marketing hype and not really practical?  Are they easy to invoke or would it be a pain to try to use them?  Fourth, I wanted to compare using the OM combination against my Nikon Z7II and 24-200mm f/4-6.3 lens I took on a 30-day road trip last year.  Which would I prefer to take in the future?

Understand that this post is not a review of the OM-1 or lens.  You can find dozens on the Internet.  This is just my experience on one short road trip for my personal knowledge.  I like to share my experiences so you may be able to benefit.  No scientific or quasi-scientific testing was conducted.

Did I change or modify the kit before leaving?

At the last minute I decided to take an Upstrap camera strap with Peak Design connectors attached in case I wanted to carry only the camera without the sling bag (see photo above). Typically I have only a Peak Design wrist strap attached to my cameras as that is how I prefer to carry them.  Also, I grabbed my Western Digital My Passport Digital Pro, which is a standalone battery powered 1TB hard drive (with its own electronics) that not only can connect via wi-fi but also has an SD card slot.  I thought I would throw that in my suitcase in case the iPad Pro backup/upload plan went awry.  It is a shame they don’t make these hard drives any longer as they are very handy and I've found them to work very well.

Falls; GSMNP; example of using Live ND (neutral density); handheld; Worked perfectly!
The shutter speed effectively became 1/2 sec.  A single properly exposed file was made at 1/320th sec. so you can see the advantage of having Live ND at your fingertips.

How did the OM-1 perform?

Spoiler Alert!  The OM-1 was perfect in every way.  I had absolutely no issues.  It’s all praise.  But I kind of expected that.  In the past I’ve shot extensively with the Olympus E-M1 Mark I, Mark II and Mark III.  The OM-1 was a familiar friend.  I found the new menu system to be much easier to use, find features that I wanted to enable or disable and I never had to stand there scratching my head and wondering why a menu item was grayed out.  The camera's menu tells you why.  The camera is built like a tank, impervious seemingly to any bad weather with controls simply laid out and easy to find without looking for them.  I still prefer the controls on my Fujifilm X-T5, but these were good for being a completely different engineering philosophy.  The IBIS was tested and exceeded my expectations.  

The image quality produced by the camera/lens combination lacked nothing.  The new stacked backside illuminated sensor is fast, responsive and provided all the detail, dynamic range and low light capability that I needed.  The camera sensor and lens combination produces very sharp images.  One hundred percent of my images are in sharp focus.  The combination of the two made for a relatively small, versatile and lightweight combination.  In other words, the combination made it a joy to carry and have with me at all times.  I really didn't feel the sling bag on my back when out and about all day.

How did the Olympus 12-100mm f/4 PRO lens perform?

I’ve owned this lens previously and it is, in my opinion, still the best all around super zoom lens on the market.  It is a 24-200mm full frame equivalent and is perfect for almost everything as a single travel lens.  It is sharp across the frame and into the edges at all focal lengths, its image stabilization synchronizes with the OM-1’s IBIS which gave me a potential of 8 stops of stabilization.  I tested it at very slow shutter speeds in a large cavern and was pleased with the resulting sharp images.  The snap ring to change from AF to MF is much appreciated.  Additionally, this lens has the ability to focus very closely which allowed me to make images of butterflies, caterpillars, bees and even a blue-tailed skink!  I can highly recommend this lens either as a single travel lens or as part of a kit with a wider angle lens along with a more telephoto lens.

The day was bright and sunny.  The inside of this 19th century animal enclosure was very dark  I exposed the image at 1/15th sec. @ f/6.3 and was able to easily bring the overexposed outside highlights down to retain detail.  An example of dynamic range and IBIS.  Roaring Fork Nature Motor Trail, GSMNP.

What features did I use and how did they perform?

We visited Hidden Caverns.  I set the OM-1 to ISO 3200 (just guessing what might be a good compromise ISO to balance digital noise, shutter speed and the IBIS.  I made exposures as slow as 1/6th of a second with most around the 1/10th to 1/15th of a second speed.  All were in sharp focus.  I was amazed!  Additionally, I photographed the interior of some 19th century cabins in Great Smoky Mountain National Park as slow as 1/2 second and, surprise!  All in focus.  Considering I'm going on 72 years of age and I'm not nearly as steady as I was in past decades, I continued to be amazed at how well the IBIS worked.  Where was this feature for the first 45 years of my photographic career?  lol

This is an in-camera HDR JPEG image.  I was delighted to see the high quality.  The camera successfully retained the foliage in bright sunlight as well as capture the dark interior.  It is sharp and highly detailed.  No complaints.  Oh! By the way, I shot this a 1/4 second.

I encountered some very contrasty scenes and decided to not invoke exposure bracketing but use the HDR 1 feature.  Yes, it produces JPEGs and the results were technically excellent but I didn’t care for how some of the colors were rendered.  I thought that was strange.  The images just looked a bit ‘off.’  With a little work in Lightroom, I was able to make adjustments to suit my taste.  The good news, however, is I invoked the HDR function because I thought the dynamic range of the scene might be beyond the capabilities of the sensor.  Happily, it was not.  The sensor handled it perfectly.  That was a nice surprise.  Overall, I think the feature is very viable and the color issue can be corrected in editing.  I suspect exposure bracketing raw files may produce technically better images, but I don't see anything technical lacking in these.  The function worked well.

One additional comment about OM and Olympus JPEGs.  Most cameras have three or four levels of JPEGs, Fine, Normal and Basic with the Fine JPEG being the best quality.  Fine compresses your image file by 25% (1/4).  OM and Olympus offer a Super Fine JPEG setting which only compresses your image files by about half that (1/2.7) which gives you better image quality.  Other manufacturers don't offer that.  Here is a link to a chart that shows the various compression ratios.

I also wanted to try the Live ND function.  In Great Smoky Mountain National Park, we encountered a rather robust waterfall through rocks and, at first, I kept the Live ND 'Live Simulation' on.  That allows you to see the effect of the blurred water directly on the LCD.  I'm not sure if it was me or not, but it gave me vertigo watching it.  The key, I suspect, is to not move the camera (tripod maybe?) otherwise the Live Simulation makes for a psychedelic experience.  I turned it off and used the EVF instead.  I tried several different strengths of ND and got the effect I desired.  I think this feature works well and will be useful in the future.

I did use subject and people recognition.  I found they both worked very well.

I shot a few 50mp handheld high resolution photos.  I've written about my experience using that feature in prior posts so I won't expound upon it here.  I will repeat that I think the JPEGs are just as good as the raw files in these specialized images.

During a visit to a huge granite quarry, I made several shots to later merge together as a panorama.  Perfect.

Finally, in the cave as I mentioned above, I shot at ISO 3200.  I was kind of surprised that  no noise was in those files.  I didn't have to employ any noise reduction at all during editing.  Now that was a nice surprise!

You see why they call them the "Smoky" mountains. (no, there isn't an 'e' missing from the word smoky)  This is a five exposure panorama.  From Klingman's Dome, GSMNP.

How did the OM-1 compare with the Nikon Z77II and 24-200mm f/4-6.3 lens attached?

I really don't see any differences in image quality between the two combinations.  I suspect there might be in specific situations, but for general travel photography, I don't think one is better than the other as far as the image quality is concerned.  The OM-1 is much more versatile, has many more useful features, has smaller files which require less memory and has better weather proofing.  The Olympus 12-100mm f/4 lens is a better lens than the Nikon.  It is sharp at all focal lengths across the entire frame and into the corners.  The Nikon lens needs some help at wider focal lengths and apertures.  By help I mean it benefits nicely by being run through DXO or one of the Topaz products.  It loses some sharpness at wide focal lengths as you get to the corners but DXO and Topaz mostly counteracts that which makes it fine.  The Olympus lens is also a constant f/4 while the Nikon lens ranges from f/4 at the wide end to f/6.3 at the long end.  As much as I said good things about the Nikon lens after last year's road trip and I meant them, I would take the Olympus lens over it any day.

Is there anything that I would do or carry differently on a future road trip?

One thing.  The Merrill sling bag didn't work as well as I thought it would.  It was not quite big enough.  When I loaded the polarizing filter and spare battery into the exterior pocket above the main pouch, I found it was very difficult to remove the camera.  It was also difficult to get the camera back into that main compartment.  It fit, but it was cumbersome.  It just needs to be a tad larger.  Otherwise the bag was perfect.  I may look for something with a pouch that is just a little larger but not overall larger.  The size and weight of the sling bag was perfect.

Did I make any mistakes in what I took?

Two mistakes I made.  First, after grabbing the Upstrap, my plan was to just unsnap the wrist strap and snap on the neck strap if I wanted to carry just the camera.  Well, I don't normally have a Peak Design connector on the left side of my cameras.  When I went to attach the Upstrap (which by the way are the only straps I've owned, for decades, that do not fall off my shoulder) I realized I didn't have a connector for the left side.  I forgot to bring an extra one to attach to the camera.  Doh! (as Homer Simpson would say)  Lesson learned (checklist next time?)

Second, even though I intended to bring two extra memory cards did I realize, only after I returned home and dismantled my kit to clean it, that I couldn't find them.  After looking and looking, I found them still in another bag I had stored some of the Olympus gear before leaving.  I neglected to put them in the sling bag.  Luckily, I didn't need them.  That's just carelessness on my part.  Another lesson learned.  (that checklist is looking better and better)

This image and the blue tailed skink below are two more examples of the close-up ability of the 12-100mm lens.  The moth was darting from flower to flower as most of the pollen was already gone.  This was more or less a very close-up grab shot.  The OM-1 locked focus on every exposure. GSMNP

Whenever I tried to get near this skink, he took off.  I had to sort of sneak up on him!  There is incredible detail in his little fingers (?) and I can see the individual fibers in the old wood of the cabin.  GSMNP

How well did the streamlined uploading and backup system using only the iPad Pro work?

Using the iPad turned out to be a good system.  Here is what I did.  I have a small dongle that has the Lightning connector and the other end will accept an SD card.  I bought it from Apple a few years ago.  I would open Lightroom Mobile, click import, find the external SD card and then upload them right into the program.  Lightroom automatically sends them to the Adobe Cloud, therefore automatically backed up.  When I returned home and booted up Lightroom Classic, all of my almost 600 images automatically imported into the "All Synchronized Photos" folder in Lightroom on my laptop.  The only thing I had to do was keyword the images, create the appropriate folders and move them.  It was pretty easy.  

Since this trip was only 12 days, I had no issues in remembering where each image was made.  I have my Lightroom catalog set up by geographic location (state > county or city or town or national park, etc. > year > date, for example) and I knew the location of each of my photos.  If I were to go on another 30-day road trip, I may still take a laptop as keywording and uploading each evening helps keep everything accurate.

By the way, in case you are wondering, my relatively old iPad handled the files and some evening editing just fine.  Fast and easy to use.  But it takes some getting used to since I edit using a Wacom tablet and stylus.  If I replace my iPad when the next generation is introduced, I might buy a stylus and keyboard to expand its function.

I did use the Western Digital backup hard drive.  I just simply pressed the on/off button, allowed it to boot up, placed the SD card into the slot and within a minute, all images were incrementally backed up.  Since the Lightroom Mobile solution worked so well, this was probably not necessary, but I can be a bit paranoid about backing up my image files.

19th century log buildings.  Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail, GSMNP.  This was another contrasty scene.  The bright sunlight on the grass to the left and the very dark interior of the weathered wood.  The OM-1 handled it perfectly.

Wrap up

I couldn't be happier with the kit I took and the backup/upload process I used.  All my images are sharply focused, I didn't want for a wider angle nor more telephoto focal length and all of the features I employed worked perfectly.  They were very useful, indeed.  No problems with dynamic range.  Digital noise was not a problem. Resolution was just fine (I don't think I need more as all of the detail I wanted to capture was clearly in the files and rendered sharply).  All in all, a very pleasant experience that I can recommend to anyone else who wants to travel light but keep a lot of versatility and excellent image quality.

There are a couple of things that you need to keep in mind.  First, what I took for this particular road trip worked just fine.  It might not work for other road trips.  I had a good idea of where the four of us were going and what subjects I might encounter.  But for other trips, a different kit and also a tripod might be necessary.

Second,  as I mentioned above, this road trip was not primarily for photography.  If it were, I surely would have taken a much different kit with me.  In other words, this small, lightweight and excellent kit is not the be all to end all for all trips.

If you have any additional questions and/or comments, please leave them below or email me.

Here are some additional images including some I made with my iPhone 14 Pro MAX.

Hidden Caverns, Sevierville, NC.  Handheld, ISO 3200; 12mm; 1/40th sec. @ f/5; No noise reduction was applied to this image.

I included this image at the top of my last post but I'm also including it here to give you some additional information about camera settings.  As above, ISO 3200, no noise reduction applied, 38mm; 1/20th sec. @ f/4.  Cropped to about half the frame.

Dead tree; GSMNP

Knucklehead pumpkins.  Yep, that seems to be the real name.  Sevierville, TN

These last three images were made with my iPhone 14 PRO MAX.

This is the side of a birdhouse made into a piece of art in Asheville, NC. iPhone 14 Pro MAX

Fungi.  Scottville, VA  iPhone 14 Pro MAX

This is kind of amazing to me.  The iPhone, as just a point and shoot camera, captured this during our tour of Hidden Caverns.  I edited the 48mp DNG file to bring out some shadow detail and to reduce the brightness of the reflected light in the water as the reflections were just as bright as the lighted rocks above which made it difficult to tell at what you were looking.  Still amazing for a point-and-shoot phone camera.  Sevierville, TN  iPhone 14 Pro MAX

Again, for this trip I don't think I could have made a better choice of camera and lens.  Everything worked perfectly and I didn't miss any potential images.  I look forward to using again for future trips.

Join me over at my website, https://www.dennismook.com.  

Thanks for looking. Enjoy!  

Dennis A. Mook  

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