Olympus Em1 Mark 1

[Madison Rapelyea]

Whenthe Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark III was announced in February 2020, it caught my attention. This camera promised pro-level performance in a compact, lightweight and weather-sealed body. It ticked absolutely every box on my list. The Olympus lens selection looked as if it had been personally tailored to my exact needs. I realised that I could consolidate my mismatched kit into a single system, and so I started boxing stuff up and putting it on eBay. The only real question mark was what disadvantages would come along with downsizing from an APS-C sensor to Micro 4/3, and if they would matter.

Theoretically the Micro 4/3 sensor yields greater depth of field than a larger sensor. While this is true, in practice DOF has more to do with distance to subject and the lens you are using than sensor size. I have never felt the need for a shallower depth of field than I can achieve with the E-M1 III.

Of course, this is without using the battery grip. With the grip, which I added for better balance with my big telephoto lens, you get an additional battery and often an additional 6-700 frames between charges.

No two ways about it: at ISO 3200 and above image quality is not great. Noise begins to intrude, detail collapses, and in certain lighting conditions the whole image can start looking a bit muddy and mushy.

Overall, this is a massive upgrade over the wildlife setup I was using before. Combined with advances in my knowledge and fieldcraft, the lens has helped me to make significant improvements in the quality of my wildlife photography over the last year.

Equivalent to a mid-range zoom (24-80mm), and one of the lenses that first prompted me to switch to the Olympus Micro 4/3 system. When backpacking I usually carry a single lens of this type, so I have steep requirements for a good mid-range zoom.

Although bokeh is beautiful, its rendering of colour is perhaps best described as consistent and neutral rather than opinionated (probably what you want from a portrait lens). I often prefer the more colourful and contrasty look of the Panasonic 35-100mm. Images from this lens tend to require a bit more processing to get where I want them to be. Occasionally, however, it comes out with a stunner that I absolutely love.

Build quality is just as good as my other Olympus Pro lenses, with full weather sealing and all the bells and whistles, but it is quite big and heavy. It only balances well on the camera when I have the battery grip attached.

Equipped with two Olympus OM-D E.M1 Mark II bodies I started the new year and my main interest was to test them for my purpose. My focus hereby was not so much anymore the comparison between DSLR and MFT, pixel peeping or checking all the technical spec promises from Olympus marketing.

Because last year during a trip to Spain to shoot vultures, i recognized some issues with the contrast based autofocus that made me struggle to focus with changing background situations. I was searching for improvements on this.

O.k. I needed to go deeper with my tests and therefore i planned a trip to Sweden close to the polar circle to meet with my friend Conny Lundstrm hoping for some golden eagle and small birds close-up photos and after that to a specific place in the Swiss alps for bearded vultures.

Additional to the specific bird situations I was interested in testing the cameras, lenses and power behavior on low temperatures, because I am planning a longer trip in September 2017 to Svalbard, Greenland and Iceland where I need to trust the gear.

Weather in north Sweden was not as cold as I expected this time, but anyway I had days with -15C and the cameras had to stand temperature gradient of more than 30C from front lens to the back of the body while I was sitting in the hide or outside for hours far below 0. Both was totally no problem and the gear was perfect in function.

On some small detail i have seen that the Olympus engineers are really practical thinkers. The new batteries are delivering enough power even in cold conditions that you can work with 2 of them during a shutter intensive day.

But also the battery plastic box is well designed and has a mark on one side of the box that you can use to separate full or empty ones very easily. Great little feature! Who knows the problem changing the batteries with hurry and grabbing the wrong one out of the bag losing valuable time?

Most of the time i was waiting for the eagles. Therefore I started experimenting a lot with all the small birds in front of the hide. Autofocus is working very fast and precise on the small birds even with high contrast backgrounds on the same level as i was used to it with my former DSLR gear. But now I have additional advantage that i can use most of the sensor frame for composition because of the well distributed 121 cross type focus pixels.

A group of bull finches were escaping all few minutes just to come back again. That was a good opportunity to test the ProCapture function what I did over hours with several settings. My excitement grew from round to round!

ProCapture is the answer to get THE moment because i had up to 14 photos before i released the trigger. Later on the computer, i was able to pick the ideal moment out of a sequence. Amazing possibilities!

In such situations speed, endurance and a very precise working auto focus is crucial, because the vultures are moving always across very different backgrounds like rocks, snow, sky ore forest and they dont wait for the photographer.

What I liked in comparison to all my colleagues with the big gear was the capability to work without tripod. With the 300mm PRO lens i can work a long time without getting tired and was able to react very freely on every changed situation. I like this much, also the fact, that I do not need to carry all the heavy stuff anymore on top of a mountain.

C-AF mode with 18 pics/sec. is pretty fast. The CF was filled up much more then I was used to. Later on computer I was happy to see that the AF worked very fast and precise and was not disturbed by all the changing backgrounds with contrasty pattern. Much better than my first experience with the former M1. Check!

After the analyses of the day on my computer I was happy to see the good results with lots of very sharp pictures. In the night, I got out again to try some photos with LiveComposite capturing the clear night and sparkling sky. I love the possibility using the same gear for so much different facetts of nature photography.

By comparing the results directly against the big high end DSLR flag ship gear of the two market leaders almost double in weight and triple in price i need to say that you can see an advantage of the full frame on higher ISO values and resolution in edge situations with 4 times more sensor area. Even Olympus is not able to overcome physics.

But for me , this test tour made it clear without any doubt that the switch over to MFT was a very good decision and I can travel with a good feeling and trust on the Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II and the M.ZUIKO PRO lenses to Greenland or everywhere else around the globe.

No matter if a want to shoot action or calm scenes, lively birds, landscapes, details or star trails. I dont need to care on technical limitations anymore and can fully focus on my creative ideas and composition.

You state in the 'Power' section that the camera has Focus Bracketing and Focus Stacking, This is incorrect. Only the E-M1 has Focus Stacking; both the E-M10 II and E-M5 II have Focus Bracketing but not Stacking.

I have so many questions. Can the Olympus ed Mark II, also do time lapse photos? I wanted the sky to move not the remainder.

Not a video but a picture where I could black out the rest but leave the sky blended in on several photos

Thank you

Hi Lin. If I understand you correctly you want to blend cloud movement over a longer period of time. You can achieve that by using the time lapse feature and stacking the images in a software application like StarStax. One other option is to use the Live Composite feature on Olympus cameras. I have another blog post that highlights that ( -composite-beyond-the-stars). I hope that helps.

I have tried Olympus OMD EM10 ii with Samyang lens 12mm f.2, but I was disappointed that the wide angle appeared to be just the same as my other Sony NEX5 with 18-55mm. This is something I didn't consider well before that Olympus OMD EM10 ii is a micro 4/3 camera, while Sony is full frame, so practically any wide angle on Olympus will show only 3/4 of actual size. Do you think the Zuiko 12mm lens will make a difference?

Hi, I love my M10II as well, but have been having difficulty focusing with the 9-18mm lens for astrophotography. I've been thinking to get the 12mm lens, not only for astrophotography but because it is much faster too. How do you find the infinity focusing for astrophotography on the 12mm? If it's a major pain, I may just go to the Rokinon 12mm but would prefer the Oly 12mm for fast wide angle shooting around town.

Hey Eric!

That's a good question. The F(X) buttons on your camera can be programmed to have a 10x magnification. What you will want to do is use this feature when focusing.

Get your camera pointing to the brightest star your can find, select the focus point it falls in and then use the 10x zoom. This will allow you to get the sharpest focus possible, eliminating 99% of the guesswork. Then simply zoom out, compose and shoot.

I know this doesn't apply to the 12mm specifically, but it is the all around best way to get the focus needed for astro shots, because the infinity marker on lenses can (and will) be wrong. I hope this helps a bit!

Hi!

Is the kit lens 14-42mm able to achieve the same results as your landscape shots? I just got my em-10 mk II planning to take some landscape shots in New Zealand. Did you use any filters to acheive the results? Thanks! :)

I'm thinking about getting this camera and this lens, as well as the 17mm F1.8. However I'm sort of on a budget and would prefer to get just one lens, either the 12mm or the 17mm. Which would you recommend for street/travel/landscape if i had to go with one or the other lens?

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