Update (9 March 2012): "Jumping" issue of the video has been fixed. It was due to the post-production technical fault, not the camera.
Important Notes:
1. This is a user experience based review.
2. All images were shot in RAW and converted directly to JPEG Large SF (super fine) via Olympus Viewer 2 version 1.3 (provided by Olympus Malaysia).
3. General camera settings, Noise Filter = OFF, Contrast/Saturation/sharpness = 0, White Balance = Auto (with an option maintain warm color = OFF), Gradation = Normal
4. No post-processing applied to the images. All images were as good as straight out of camera, with minimal cropping for better presentation.
It has been a long and painful wait for everyone, since the worldwide announcement of Olympus OM-D E-M5 almost a month ago. Finally I have had my hands on the initial production unit of the E-M5, fresh from Olympus Malaysia for my testing and review purposes. I received the review unit on Friday night, and immediately I went off shooting merrily, and basically burned off my entire weekend just to capture loads and loads of images to be shown in my review entries here. I have so many images to show and so much to share with you beautiful people out there, so lets get on with it in this Part 1 of Olympus OM-D E-M5 review.
Video done by FULLCIRCLEPIX
Music from a fast rising and upcoming local star: SILENT SCENERY
(do check out their music page, they are simply awesome!!)
(do check out their music page, they are simply awesome!!)
I am sure you have come across the Teaser video of me shooting all around Kuala Lumpur which I posted earlier. This time, we are doing things slightly differently. As usual I am shooting and concentrating mainly on the photography part of the camera (still photographs), and I rarely did any testing or review on the video part of the camera. I am not exactly that well versed in videography, hence this time around, I am working very closely with a great photographer/videographer friend of mine, Sanjitpaal Singh throughout all my shooting durations. He is an amazing guy and has done a fantastic job shooting me in action, while testing out the video capabilities of the Olympus OM-D E-M5. The video clip above is a compilation of footages for two separate parts of my blog reviews (Part 1 and Part 2), and I shall only cover one part in this entry. Do bear in mind that all the video footage was shot HAND-HELD. There will be a dedicated entry to discuss specifically on the video recording with Olympus OM-D E-M5, featuring the awesome Sanjit soon. Lets just focus on photography for the time being.
Before we dive right into the review, allow me to clarify a few items. This review will be written from a photography-enthusiast’s point of view, because I am not a professional photographer. This will be a user experience based review, sharing on what I think and feel as I use the E-M5 in real life shooting situations. Therefore, this is not a technical review as there will not be elaborative technical explanations, which can be easily accessible on many professional review websites such as DPreview and DXOmark. In addition to that, I will not be doing direct side by side image and performance comparisons between E-M5 and any other cameras. Instead, I will share my opinion on how different the experience was shooting with the new E-M5. In a nutshell, it is about what I can do with the camera, not what the camera can do by itself.
12mm F2 lens: 1/320sec, F/8, ISO200
45mm F1.8 lens: 1/250sec, F/8, ISO200
IMAGE SAMPLE 1
The age-old song of corner to corner sharpness being a strong advantage of using 4/3 or micro 4/3 system is ever-green.
The age-old song of corner to corner sharpness being a strong advantage of using 4/3 or micro 4/3 system is ever-green.
100% crop from IMAGE SAMPLE 1. Crop from bottom right corner.
45mm F1.8 lens: 1/800sec, F/1.8, ISO200
45mm F1.8 lens: 1/2000sec, F1.8, ISO200
I have also written my preview (here), please read if you have not done so) on the E-M5, hence I will not be repeating myself on my initial impressions of the camera and its features or specifications. I shall just focus on what a camera and a photographer do best together: making beautiful images happen.
Photography is about seeing and capturing the beauty all around us. The world around us is full of people, ideas, culture and passion. Photography as a culture enables us to express our vision of the world and its beauty, through our photographs. Therefore, with the Olympus OM-D E-M5 in my hands, it was my desire to go out, explore and shoot the beauty of my world, wonderful Malaysia, and share it with you beautiful people.
I shall break down my review to FOUR parts where I can separate and explore different aspects of the camera extensively.
In this particular entry (Part 1 of 4), I shall be focusing on two major items:
1) Dynamic Range of the new Live MOS 16MP sensor
2) Resolution/Sharpness
12mm F2 lens, camera fixed on tripod: 0.6sec, F/8, ISO200
BATU CAVES
The first shooting location was Batu Caves , about 30 minutes drive from the heart of Kuala Lumpur. Batu Caves is a limestone hill, housing a series of caves and cave temples located in Gombak district. The cave temple in Batu Caves is one of the most influential and well known Hindu Shrines, most notably known for its focal point during the Thaipusam festivity that drew millions of crowd. If you are visiting Malaysia, do make sure that this is a place to stop by.
The main reason why I chose to shoot in Batu Caves is the diversity of subjects that can be found there. Batu Caves is a colourful place, rich of people and culture, breathtaking cave sceneries, and abundant of wildlife (sort of). It is a grand temple with majestic hill all around, providing good scenery shots. People there are generally very friendly, giving me good human portrait opportunities. The surrounding small forests were houses for wild monkeys, which have been in contact with humans and that itself is another good subject to attack.
DYNAMIC RANGE
Batu Caves poses a significant challenge to any cameras, particularly on the dynamic range handling. This should come as no surprise, because the interiors of the cave is notoriously dark, while shooting it against the light that comes out from the opening will surely cause dynamic range limitations. We purposely chose to arrive in afternoon when the sun was at its strongest intensity, and this is the perfect opportunity to stretch E-M5’s ability to capture as much dynamic range as possible within a frame.
To test out the dynamic range while I was inside the cave, I set the camera up on a tripod and placed it low, close to the ground level. I fixed the camera settings manually, but I used the autofocus, targeting mostly the center of the frame. I switched off the Image Stabilization while the camera was on the tripod, but I press the shutter button manually with my finger (did not use any anti-shake or self timer), mainly because this was not to test the sharpness of the image, but more specifically, only the dynamic range. I composed the frame to include the extreme highlight (intense afternoon harsh Malaysian sun) coming from the cave opening against the dark corners. I shot a series of images from the same frame, varying the ISO settings to test out the limitations of the corresponding dynamic range.
12mm F2 lens: 1.6sec, F/8, ISO200
IMAGE SAMPLE 2
CROPS FROM IMAGE SAMPLE 2 taken at different ISO settings.
Important Note: Due to my own error/negligence, I have set the AF "green box" to the center of the frame, hence the hand-guard rail in front was in focus, but the far background was out of focus. However, the purpose of the crops in from Image Sample 2 is to show dynamic range, and I chose this photograph and this particular crop because in the frame of crop, it consists of the darkest region of shadow to the brightest region of highlight. To judge the resolution and sharpness, there are half a dozen more other photographs as better examples
Important Note: Due to my own error/negligence, I have set the AF "green box" to the center of the frame, hence the hand-guard rail in front was in focus, but the far background was out of focus. However, the purpose of the crops in from Image Sample 2 is to show dynamic range, and I chose this photograph and this particular crop because in the frame of crop, it consists of the darkest region of shadow to the brightest region of highlight. To judge the resolution and sharpness, there are half a dozen more other photographs as better examples
1.6sec, F/8, ISO200
1/3sec, F/8, ISO800
1/5sec, F/8, ISO1600
1/10sec, F/8, ISO3200
1/20sec, F/8, ISO6400
1/40sec, F/8, ISO12,800
12mm F2 lens: 2.5sec, F/8, ISO200
IMAGE SAMPLE 3
100% crop from IMAGE SAMPLE 3
Viewing the images at 100%, at base ISO200, amazing amount of details were preserved, both in the highlight and shadow region. The images look very balanced, and the transition from the shadow and highlight region was smooth and pleasant, something not seen on any Olympus cameras before. All previous Olympus cameras I have shot with (E-P3 and E-5 mainly) will have extreme difficulties to capture such images, normally with those older cameras the highlight region will be all blown out to total whiteness, and the shadow will be filled with ugly patches of grain and chroma noise with minimal details. This is a significant improvement in the sensor, and I believe many Olympus users will treasure having more headroom to work with especially faced in outdoor shooting in harsh lighting conditions. I cannot think of any more extreme dynamic range test than shooting at Batu Caves (practical, real shooting conditions, not staged or arranged), and I am impressed by the dynamic range of the E-M5 sensor.
Pushing up the ISO, things get even more interesting. The capabilities of the camera to handle extreme dynamic range in Batu Caves are still very good, up to ISO1600. At ISO3200, some loss of detail can be seen, but seriously, anyone who prioritizes dynamic range would not simply push up the ISO thoughtlessly. To know that the details captured in both shadow and highlight regions in the frame were still acceptably good even at ISO1600 is certainly good news. Dynamic range restrictions would have been disastrous even at ISO800 for the older E-P3 and E-5 !! I am sure those who are using, or have used the older Olympus cameras can relate.
I have provided full size image samples (JPEG Super Fine) of the dynamic range comparison shot at varying ISO settings (from ISO200 to 12,800) for your pixel peeping pleasure. Please kindly take note that I did not use self timer or anti-shake on the tripod, so these images are not best to be used to judge the sharpness and resolution of the camera. Furthermore, I used autofocus, hence there might be some inconsistencies in the zone of focus. Just use these images to review the dynamic range ONLY.
DYNAMIC RANGE TEST:
RESOLUTION/SHARPNESS
Olympus has always been known for having good resolution capture and impressive sharpness in their images, if good lenses (lovely Olympus Zuiko lenses and some newer more capable micro 4/3 primes) are coupled with the camera. The decision of Olympus to use a thinner Anti-Alias filter in front of their image sensor, starting from the E-5 onwards, has proven to be very beneficial to reveal even more details in their image quality, optimizing the “per-pixel-sharpness”. The marketing term coined for this is “Fine Detail Processing”. It is great to find that Olympus continues to use a thinner Anti-Alias filter on their new live MOS 16MP sensor. Unfortunately, even at this moment, no information has been released about who made and manufactured the new sensor for the E-M5. I am fairly sure, and as mentioned officially by Olympus on several accounts, this is in fact, a completely new sensor.
12mm F2 lens: 1/50secsec, F/2, ISO1250
12mm F2 lens: 1/8sec, F/2, ISO500
12mm F2 lens: 1/5sec, F/8, ISO200
IMAGE SAMPLE 4
100% Crop from IMAGE SAMPLE 4
12mm F2 lens: 1/40sec, F2, ISO200
12mm F2 lens: 1/40sec, F7.1, ISO200
12mm F2 lens: 1/20sec, F4.5, ISO200
I will not only review on the resolution and sharpness in this particular entry, as I have even more interesting subjects to test the camera on. Rest assured I have more interesting subjects to review the sharpness in my coming entries. I intentionally used only the Olympus 12mm F2 wide angle lens and the 45mm F1.8 lens in this session, because they are both the sharpest lenses in the Olympus Micro 4/3 lens line-up. I understand that the Olympus 12-50mm F3.5-6.3 is the kit lens, but to fully test how much detail the camera can capture it makes more sense to smack the sharpest lenses Olympus has into the camera. After all, I have reviewed the 12-50mm lens not too long ago, and I have tested and written extensively on the 12-50mm lens.
Looking at the 100% crop images, the amount of details captured was nothing short of excellent. Very impressive amount of fine details were revealed and the sharpness of the lens evidently shines through the images. There really is not much to comment further on the sharpness of the images. Olympus has always produced excellent sharp images.
45mm F1.8 lens: 1/800sec, F1.8, ISO200
IMAGE SAMPLE 5
100% crop from IMAGE SAMPLE 5
45mm F1.8 lens: 1/1000sec, F/1.8, ISO200
IMAGE SAMPLE 6
100% crop from IMAGE SAMPLE 6
45mm F1.8 lens: 1/1000sec, F1.8, ISO200
45mm F1.8 lens: 1/1000sec, F1.8, ISO200
IMAGE SAMPLE 7
100% crop from IMAGE SAMPLE 7
An observation made by me: even with the noise filter off, the JPEG compression artifacts were kept very minimally, and did not look intrusive at all. This is a crucial part in the changes of Olympus JPEG engine: they have mitigated the problem of default over-sharpening as seen in E-P3 and E-5. The images were sharp, because of the amazing amount of fine details captured, not due to the in-camera sharpening tricks. Turning on the noise filter to LOW would have cleaned up all the grains. This is an important improvement for people who shoot mostly JPEG (straight out of the camera) and expect the original camera JPEG files to be as optimized.
RESOLUTION/SHARPNESS TEST:
Just a little comment on the high ISO performance before I conclude this entry. If you have downloaded and seen the full size image comparisons of different ISO settings for the dynamic range, you can also simultaneously review the high ISO capabilities of E-M5. Do bear in mind that all the images were RAW converted to JPEG directly with noise filter OFF. From what I see in the image so far, even at ISO6400, the image was very clean, with almost no trace of chroma noise at all, and the luminance noise looked very fine.
12mm F2 lens: 1/800sec, F/8, ISO200
I cannot believe what I have just said there !! Olympus camera, ISO6400, with no traces of chroma noise, with non-ugly luminance fine grains only. The first time I saw the images, my eyes almost popped out of the sockets too, I know.
From the video you have seen above, I have also brought along the Olympus E-M5 to do some night shooting. Lets explore the high ISO capabilities of the camera next, in my coming review, Part 2: Night Shooting in Bukit Bintang.
If you have any questions or feedback, please feel free to say something in the comment section on this blog entry, or email me directly at hamish7ian@gmail.com
