Pro Review: Is the Olympus OM-D the perfect digital camera?
camera review compact system camera e-m5 micro four thirds mirrorless olympus om-d pro review

by Scott Bourne

Why would you carry a heavy camera when a lighter one would do the same job? That's a question they have been asking at Olympus for decades. Waaaay back in 1974, I was the proud owner of an Olympus OM-1 MD. It was a trend-setting 35mm film camera in many ways, not the least of which was its light weight.

Fast forward to today and Olympus has done it again - they've introduced a new digital version modeled after the OM-1 called the OM-D. Okay, it's actually called the OM-D E-M5. I don't know who names these things but he or she should be reassigned.

The Olympus E-M5 is the natural progression from the Olympus PEN E-P3. At the time of this writing the street price for the body-only version of the E-M5 (available in silver or black) was $999 less a $70 mail-in rebate, good through July 21, 2012. For about $300 more you can get the 12-50mm kit lens if you purchase it with the body (it's about $500 by itself).

The Olympus E-M5 is much more squarely aimed at the prosumer market. Like the E-P3, the OM-D is a lightweight, Micro Four Thirds camera that has interchangeable lenses. Thankfully, all the lenses that work on the E-P3 (or any other Micro Four Thirds camera) will work on the OM-D, along with all the various accessories already sold in the PEN line. (The only accessory that will not work is the E-P3 battery.)

For a guy like me who already owns all the cool stuff for the E-P3, this is great news.

Olympus makes some great (and under-rated) lenses for this format, and two lenses in particular that, when paired with the OM-D, make for a stupendous combination of quality and light weight.

I tested the OM-D briefly with the kit lens. It's a variable zoom 12-50mm f/3.5 to f/6.3 (which as per usual Olympus' silly factor does NOT come with a lens hood -- if you want one it's an extra $34.99 from Oly: Model LH-55B.) It's capable for a zoom, but I am not a zoom fan and this one is good, but nothing special. Magic -- and I mean REAL magic starts to happen, however, when you throw on the Olympus M.Zuiko 12mm f/2.0 lens (24mm equivalent focal length) or the Olympus M.Zuiko 45mm f/1.8 lens (90mm equivalent focal length.) Then you have some pretty amazing opportunities.

The OM-D has an articulating three-inch OLED touchscreen that is absolutely beautiful. Like all these screens it's hard to use in bright light, but I will say it is useable and better in sunlight than most. It's just not AS useable as it would be in shade, dim or low-light conditions. The OM-D also offers a new five-axis image stabilization system that promises to outperform previous camera body-based stabilization systems. More on that in a moment.

One of the craziest and coolest new features of the OM-D is the Continuous mode, which offers up to nine frames per second (fps) in single auto-focus mode. Yep, nine fps. I tested this and it really works. It allows for hand-holding of some marginal shots because you can fire a nine-shot burst and pick one in the middle, which will usually be more stable. The camera shoots at a respectable 4.2 fps in continuous autofocus mode (tracking) without image stabilization, 3.5 fps with.

Speaking of autofocus, Olympus touts the AF on the OM-D as the fastest in the world. I have no way to prove or disprove that promise, but I can say the AF is absolutely fast; it doesn't hunt and seek. It's spot on in most (but not all) situations. Like most cameras in this class, in lower light the AF speed and accuracy falls off.

The sensor is all new. It's a brand new 16-megapixel Live MOS image sensor. The new sensor provides much better low-light performance. This, combined with the ability to add a battery pack to the bottom of the camera makes the OM-D more competitive with the current crop of higher-end DSLRs.

For me, the specs never really matter much. What counts for me is what kind of images I can make when I'm out using the camera in real-life situations.

I have an advantage when using the OM-D because I am a regular user of the E-P3 and many of the menus and controls look familiar. But the OM-D is far more customizable. You can set this camera up pretty much any way you like and keep it there, which I really like. Not so much to like is the amount of menu-hopping you have to do to achieve this. Like many cameras sold today, the OM-D has a bunch of nested menus that can drive even a calm person batty. But it's worth the trade-off when you look at how customizable it is.

The camera handles really well. Whether or not you like its size will be dependent on your physical make up and preferences. I am a big guy but I like a small camera that's easy to carry. And I like a well-built camera. This one is. But what about image quality? It's great. Exposure was consistently about a third of a stop under-exposed on my test unit, but otherwise the camera did an amazing job in all the ways you want it to. The button placement takes some getting used to, especially if you've added the grip, but after an hour or so shooting I had it all figured out.

I only shot a few images in JPG mode and they looked good but got soft fast using the default JPG noise reduction. You can turn that off -- something many reviewers have apparently not discovered. Once turned off, the JPG images were all consistently good. The auto white balance works very well and there's little color fringing or discoloration. Shooting in RAW mode, the camera produces very high quality images, but there is some noise at the higher ISOs. The new built-in image stabilization is camera-body based. Usually I'm not as big a fan of these systems as I am lens-based IS. But in this case, I'm a convert. The five-axis stabilization really works.

Video. I've always thought Olympus did a decent job with video and now things have improved in this department. Olympus got rid of the dreaded MTS containers and replaced them with MOV, making files generally easier to work with. YAY! Olympus also significantly reduced rolling shutter on this camera. This is in part thanks to the new five-axis image stabilization.

While Oly dropped the ball not including a mic jack right on the camera, the good news is that you can use their accessory slot on the top of the built-in viewfinder to mount the Olympus SEMA-1 Mic Adapter Set ($60 street price) and solve that problem. I've used that accessory on the E-P3 to wire up lav mics on people being interviewed and it produces wonderfully clean audio for a $60 interface.

There's a dedicated video button and the video is 1080i.

Olympus E-M5 provides for external flash strobes courtesy of a hot shoe--but note that it is shared with the accessory port, so use of flash or accessories is an either / or proposition.

The E-M5 comes bundled with an accessory flash (FL-LM2) which has a guide number of 10 meters at ISO 200 equivalent (that works out to about 7m at ISO 100), with coverage specified at 14mm (28mm in 35mm format).

Flash modes include Auto, Fill-in, Red-eye Reduction, Slow Synchronization (1st curtain), Slow Synchronization (1st curtain)/Red-eye Reduction, Slow Synchronization (2nd curtain), Manual (Full, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32, 1/64), and Off.

The E-M5's hot shoe is compatible with the FL-50/FL-50R, FL-36/FL-36R, FL-20, FL-14, FL-300R and FL-600R strobes. Flash sync is possible up to 1/250 second depending on the flash, and the E-M5 also allows Super FP flash up to 1/4,000 second, if supported by the attached flash. Flash exposure compensation is available within a range of +/- 3.0 EV, in 1/3, 1/2 or 1 EV steps which can be optionally added to exposure compensation. Finally, the E-M5 supports four-channel wireless flash with the bundled strobe acting as a master, and off-camera flash strobes configured in up to 4 groups.