Godfrey
somewhat colored
The new Olympus E-M1 arrived yesterday. I picked it up on the way to the office and charged the battery there. My first test of it after I got home from the office was to stick a lens on it, and drag it out to the club.
With the Panasonic/Leica Summilux-DG 25mm lens, focusing for still snaps was near instantaneous and quite accurate. Out of 200+ exposures I made, just snapping around like a tourist with an instamatic at a party, only about six were poorly focused.
I left the camera on its defaults, changing only that it would capture JPEG Ln + raw and setting the ISO to 6400 and 12800, and setting it to S-AF+mf so I could play with the manual focus. Here are a few JPEG+raw pairs at what I think is somewhere around EV 0-1 light in club lighting (mostly red and purple gels). (There's also a video at ISO 6400, again made using the camera defaults; the link is right near the bottom of the page below.)
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/25268645/oly-em1-low-light/index.html
I'm satisfied that the E-M1 has plenty of sensitivity for my needs. It's a very fast and responsive camera in use too. It's a bit small for my hands without the HLD-7 battery grip fitted, I hope that arrives soon, but even so it was comfortable to hold and use, and all the controls work nicely. I had NO trouble focusing manually even without any focusing aids enabled, the electronic viewfinder is terrific. So is the image stabilization, best I've used. I found its defaults good enough for a quick session, I hardly used anything other than the super control panel display and the shutter release.
Today I'll snap about in some more normal lighting and lower ISO settings. I'll fit it with one of my favorite FourThirds SLR lenses too: the ZD 11-22/2.8-3.5.
G
With the Panasonic/Leica Summilux-DG 25mm lens, focusing for still snaps was near instantaneous and quite accurate. Out of 200+ exposures I made, just snapping around like a tourist with an instamatic at a party, only about six were poorly focused.
I left the camera on its defaults, changing only that it would capture JPEG Ln + raw and setting the ISO to 6400 and 12800, and setting it to S-AF+mf so I could play with the manual focus. Here are a few JPEG+raw pairs at what I think is somewhere around EV 0-1 light in club lighting (mostly red and purple gels). (There's also a video at ISO 6400, again made using the camera defaults; the link is right near the bottom of the page below.)
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/25268645/oly-em1-low-light/index.html
I'm satisfied that the E-M1 has plenty of sensitivity for my needs. It's a very fast and responsive camera in use too. It's a bit small for my hands without the HLD-7 battery grip fitted, I hope that arrives soon, but even so it was comfortable to hold and use, and all the controls work nicely. I had NO trouble focusing manually even without any focusing aids enabled, the electronic viewfinder is terrific. So is the image stabilization, best I've used. I found its defaults good enough for a quick session, I hardly used anything other than the super control panel display and the shutter release.
Today I'll snap about in some more normal lighting and lower ISO settings. I'll fit it with one of my favorite FourThirds SLR lenses too: the ZD 11-22/2.8-3.5.
G
--
Well-known
Congrats
How do you think the buttons will be to operate with light gloves on (like thin fleece gloves for instance)?
Cheers,
Xpanded
How do you think the buttons will be to operate with light gloves on (like thin fleece gloves for instance)?
Cheers,
Xpanded
Godfrey
somewhat colored
Congrats
How do you think the buttons will be to operate with light gloves on (like thin fleece gloves for instance)?
It's a darn nice piece of equipment. It's very rarely an issue here, but I pulled out my Mechanix gloves (my usual cold weather with a camera hand protection) and tried it. All the buttons and dials except for the four way controller are easy, the four way buttons take a little more concentration.
G
Tejasican
Well-known
Godfrey,
Out of curiosity, any idea how the EVF performs with polarized eyeglasses?
Out of curiosity, any idea how the EVF performs with polarized eyeglasses?
Godfrey
somewhat colored
LCDs (and thus EVFs) of all kinds generally black out when the polarized eyeglasses go orthogonal with them, as a result only my dark glasses for driving are polarized.
But I'll check when next I'm going out in the car and have the camera in hand ...
G
Range-rover
Veteran
Looks to be a super camera, enjoy it.
Range
Range
plummerl
Well-known
I can only dream! I'm going into day 33 on my pre-order with B&H. To make matters worse, I held one in my hands today at Glazer's in Seattle.
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Well-known
That sounds very promising. Ideally I would have wanted two SD-slots for immediate backup. Let's see for how long that thought will hold me at bay ;-)
