Alex Mustard reviews Olympus OM-D E-M5

by Alex Mustard Friday, June 1st, 2012

5. LENS PERFORMANCE, AUTOFOCUS & STABILISER.

One of the attractions of M43 format is the wide lens choice, but don’t be mislead, they may be pocket sized but they will empty your pockets to a similar degree as SLR lenses. Irrespective of format you still pay for quality.

The prime (non-zoom) lenses (8mm fisheye and 45mm macro) produced quality images and are useful focal lengths for underwater photography. I used the fisheye for this shot of diver and cuttlefish.

I love shooting fisheye and I really liked the 8mm fisheye lens (which is made by Panasonic) on M43. The lens is sharp and because of the small format delivers excellent depth of field without needing to be stopped down that much. This means we can illuminate wide angle scenes without the need for very large strobes. Or shoot available light scenics with ample depth of field with faster shutter speeds. With 16MP of resolution there is room to crop if you are unable to fill the frame with this ultra wide optic.

The 8mm fisheye also has a filter slot, ideal for filter photography underwater. Just FYI, Magic Filters have recently released blue and green water filters sized specifically for the filter slot on this lens.

We did not have the correct dome to shoot the 8mm fisheye on the E-M5 without some cut off. Hopefully the correct dome for the E-M5 will be available soon. This was shot with the E-PM1 and 8mm fisheye using a mini-dome from UWCameraStuff.com. Hopefully someone will produce a good mini dome for the E-M5.

The M43 format offers quite a few options for wide angle and mid range zooms. I was only able to try the 9-18mm during this short review. This rectilinear lens covers a useful range of coverage, being ideally suited to bigger creatures and diver portraits. We did not have an optimum port setup available for the 9-18mm, but as long as it was stopped down beyond f/8 is produced quality results. Certainly much more forgiving than shooting such a lens on a full frame SLR.

This lens is also designed for video shooting, giving smooth changes when apertures are adjusted during recording. On video it gave good corner to corner sharpness with very little distortion. However, I think that auto focus should be locked while recording. I find the AF adjustments in the clip of Bluefin tuna below a distraction. It should be noted that this was not an easy situation for autofocus with multiple subjects moving through the frame in low contrast conditions.

Video footage of tuna shot with the 9-18mm. The corner sharpness and lack of distortion is impressive. This clip was shot with the autofocus ON and I find the adjustments a distraction. For tricky subjects like this I would recommend shooting video with focus fixed. Please don’t let this video fool you into thinking there are many Bluefin tuna in the seas. These were in a pen and the only place they are swimming to is someone’s plate. I am surprised by the number of divers who won’t eat shark fin soup, but will eat Bluefin sashimi.

For macro I used the 45mm, which was very sharp. I know people are excited about the forthcoming 60mm macro lens, but I think the 45 might be more useful in lower visibility diving. The focus was swift and accurate with this lens.

A small nudibranch shot with the 45mm macro lens and 2 x S2000 on TTL. ISO 200, f/18 @ 1/250th.

Autofocus.

Olympus state that the E-M5 has the world’s fastest auto focus. It is a fun claim, and I am not sure how it is measured, but using it in the low contrast underwater world it is clear that the AF is inferior to the very best SLRs. But it is nonetheless impressive in AF-S mode. The AF was rarely found hunting in the sunny, clear Mediterranean waters that bathe Gozo.

AF-S is good for static subjects and high magnification photos, but is less helpful for frame filling shots of erratically moving subjects such as fish. The focus tracking of the latest SLRs is impressive with these subjects and it is one of the few areas the E-M5 cannot match them. I tried AF-C once underwater and it really struggled. I gave up with it and switched back to AF-S, which quickly picked up the subject again.

A fast, erratically moving wrasse can be a challenge to focus and frame. This is a male in breeding colours and he was racing around courting females. As such he was a good AF challenge. AF-S would focus on him swiftly, but you would have to shoot straight away before he moved significantly. AF-C would not lock on him. 45mm lens, 2 x INON S2000. ISO 200, f/7.1 @ 1/160th.

The AF also struggled in low light shooting. I tried it in very dark conditions, where some SLRs would also struggle and the E-M5 would only focus with a focus light. In fact, in the caves I would focus and then switch off my Sola and switch (through the menus) to MF before shooting a series of images.

I think it is worth making the point that underwater photographers don’t often shoot swimming fish. Almost all the fish pictures that you see are of non-moving, slow moving or site attached species. For these species the E-M5 excels. 45mm lens, 2 x INON Z240. ISO 200, f/8 @ 1/250th.

If this section reads critically it shouldn’t, I am judging the camera against SLR standards. The E-M5 has very good autofocus, a different world from any compact and much better than any M43 camera I have tried. But to believe the advertising hype that it is a world-beater is misguided. Much of the time it matches SLR performance, but lags behind when shooting moving subjects like fish in the low contrast underwater world.

Stabilization.

One of the most exciting features of the OM-D E-M5 is its image stabilization. It is an area that the E-M5 arguably outperforms SLRs, using an in-body system with 5-axis image stabilization. Being built into the body, this system will work with any lens that is attached to the E-M5. This has significant advantages for long exposures underwater, which underwater photographers traditionally use when shooting balanced light wide angle images in low light, blue background macro shots when we don’t want to sacrifice depth of field and scenic shots in ambient light. No SLR can offer an image stabilized fisheye.

The cushioning effect of being suspended in water means that we can commonly surpass where established wisdom places the limits of shutter speeds for hand held long exposures. But even so, the E-M5 exceeded my expectations to such a degree that I didn’t really push it far enough to establish its limits. It produced excellent images pretty much whatever I tried. Image stabilization doesn’t just benefit ambient light shooting, but also allows us to use continuous light to add colour to our images, instead of strobes.

This macro shot of a scorpionfish was illuminated with a SOLA 600 light. There is no strobe used in this shot to freeze the movement. The combination of the E-M5’s high ISO performance and image stabilization have allowed me to produce and high quality file without flashes. The second image is a 100% crop from the same image. ISO 640, f/8 @ 1/30th.

The image stabilization combined with the ISO performance will allow E-M5 shooters to use available and continuous light sources in new ways and create original underwater images. There are few more exiting things that an underwater camera can offer a photographer than new types of image.

Just for fun I decided to try a super long exposure here of ½ second to test the limits of the image stabilisation. This photo does not use flash, the colour comes from continuous lighting from a SOLA 600 torch beam on low power. ISO 400, f/16 @ ½ second.

I should make it clear that the long exposure limits of the E-M5 aren’t a safety blanket for poor technique. Instead they will reward good technique. If you are stable in the water and used to pushing exposure times, you will be amazed by how far you can push the E-M5. If you are not stable in the water, your images will still be blurred!

Introduction.
Olympus OM-D E-M5 camera and specs.
The Olympus housing and underwater handling.
Image quality: ISO, resolution, dynamic range.
Lens performance, autofocus & stabiliser.
Conclusion.

Hi, Just a question I have an olympus omd em5 but when I want to use mode M the exposition adjust itself, I can adjust speed and focus but no the exposition. Is it possible to change this problem?

Posted by sandrine on 2016-04-06 18:32:01 Scubysnaps: Alex is used to life at the top of the food chain but my take was that the OM-D is as fast as could be reasonably expected. Few of the Gozitan dives with it were undertaken with the fast MSC lenses - like any SLR folk we wanted to try the extremes. Mostly we used the Panasonic 8mm fisheye and 45mm macro. Excellent optically but not famously fast. The D90 is one of the few Nikons I've used much so this isn't completely without a point of reference :) Like the Olympus SLRs I use a lot of the performance depends on the lens. I didn't find the D90 remarkably fast but the only ultrasonic lens I tried was the Sigma 150mm macro. Using the OMD since with the 12-50 and 14-42 I'd say it was very fast but that's not to say it works in quite the same way as an SLR. I know I can place the AF target on my E420 on the eye of a mysid or rhinophore of a nudi but the OM-D has a focus box that looks for image detail within 'video' bounded by the box and has no qualms at all in flitting from foreground to background in no time flat in a way that few SLRs can. I'd suggest that it doesn't offer/suffer from the limited/precise scope of SLR AF and that can be a strength and weakness. To make the most of it you need to plant the AF area well. I've been driven around the countryside shooting oncoming cars with it (which it'll do in SAF or CAF as well as being able to track objects around the whole screen) from an intial lock. So there's potential there for it to do great things but I've yet to try to pick a single fish out of a shoal. I think the water would need to be very clear and my reflexes superhuman! Only dives will tell how all the configurations work out but I was mightily impressed by the combination of the 12-50mm in macro mode and an Inon 165 - the most rapid macro setup I've tried. When the 60mm lens arrives it will be quite an interesting comparison.
Posted by ReallyMadRob on 2012-07-29 14:15:38 Thanks for the review Alex, and Pete for arranging it, unsure about the auto focus abilities on fast subjects, what would they be like compared to my D90?
Posted by Scubysnaps on 2012-07-19 08:56:11 Just wanted to add a thank you to all those who have commented and shared knowledge, opinions and information. Greatly improves the amount of information available here to others.
Posted by Alex Mustard on 2012-06-12 07:37:53 To clarify the port question: (as far as possible) The port is (I'm 99.9% sure) an RDX port - so there's a choice there to start with. There's an adapter - which we had out in Gozo - to allow threaded Olympus ports to be fitted. The housing comes with a standard flat port which is functionally the same as that one the first 2 Pen housings and 'suits' the 14-42mm and 9-18mm lenses. They don't say but it's a good fit of the 12-50mm as well and I'm just working on a zoom ring for that. I'd be surprised if an adapter back to Pen ports doesn't appear quite soon :-) I'm still not sure what would account for the 'pre flash delay', I didn't suffer it but we were mixing and matching strobes and modes at a furious rate :-) I wanted to factory reset the bodies before we started but time didn't allow that. I can say that I dived with it in Cornwall yesterday using the 12-50mm in macro mode along side a single RC protocol TTL strobe and suffered no such delay. Rob P.S. The strobe problems mentioned were down to a duff batch of brand new AA rechargeables - undone by the best of intentions. So it was a shame we weren't able to demo the Oly strobes fondness for macro.
Posted by ReallyMadRob on 2012-06-12 04:45:48 How disappointing the PEN lens ports don't fit out of the box. And I just bought one hoping to use it in the future for the E-M5.
Posted by Jak Crow on 2012-06-12 03:32:05 Dynamic range on the E-M5 far exceeds that available on APS-C DSLRs like the Canon 7D. In a single image, one can pull large amounts of detail from both the highlights and shadows. For an example see: http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1041&message=41718774 A raw image can be downloaded for those interested in investigating the DR themselves.
Posted by coroander on 2012-06-11 00:47:58 Alex, thanks for the acknowledgement.It was a pleasure having you and the rest of the gang aboard. Hope to see you again sometime
Posted by Ocean Dreams on 2012-06-05 07:23:36 @ Klaus - thanks for the suggestion on the shooting delay with TTL. We've discussed it a bit more in the forum and what we want to reduce is the delay for a pre-focused shot while still using TTL. Your suggestion might be the answer. Discussion here: http://wetpixel.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=46536&st=31 Alex
Posted by Alex Mustard on 2012-06-03 04:25:34 It's a super camera and it's lesser siblings are pretty good too, That shot of the cuttlefish, as Alex has pointed out was taken on the Pen Mini, the E-PM1, what Alex didn't say was that he took it within the first 20 minutes of picking up the camera for the 1st time. He is a fantastic photographer too. Thanks for coming out Alex. :)
Posted by PeeBee on 2012-06-03 01:48:44 Alex, you mentioned "One big frustration with the flash system is TTL lag. The E-M5 does not have shutter lag, but when used in TTL mode there is a pre-flash lag before the photo is taken. On manual flash there is no noticeable delay." Might it be that you had "Anti-Shock" activated in the release options? In case it is set to ½sec in the E-menu, the E-M5 will first pre-flash, wait half a second, then fire the main flash. In manual mode there is no pre-flash, so the ½sec delay is not so evident.
Posted by KlausCR on 2012-06-02 17:57:58 Thanks again for directing this review towards DSLR shooters as well as compact and M43 shooters. I have been shooting the E-M5 out of the water since it arrived and no longer look at the image quality as being from a small sensor and just as a great image machine. This system has great glass for U/W use and new quality lenses like the just announced Panasonic 12-35 F/2.8 X keep coming. Phil Rudin
Posted by Phil Rudin on 2012-06-02 11:09:56 I went on this trip with an open mind having never shot with a M43 camera before, to say I'm impressed with these little cameras is an understatement, Alex has done them the justice they deserve in this review. Nice job Doctore!!
Posted by Nige Wade on 2012-06-02 05:50:59 I can't give you a 100% answer on the ports - as I no longer have the housing in front of me. But my best guess is no. We weren't able to use the mini-domes we had (which I guess were PEN fit). The dome we used was an Olympus one - and was old - presumably from an older Oly SLR housing - but fitted. I suspect that someone will make a port adaptor given the number of PEN users who will fancy upgrading to this camera. Sterling, thanks. I look forward to hearing what you think. I was very impressed. But didn't want to write a review totally gushing with praise because I was writing for current SLR users and felt it important to comment on both the areas it is ahead of an SLR and behind.
Posted by Alex Mustard on 2012-06-02 02:29:42 Alex, Could you answer if the PT-EP08 housing will accept the same ports from the prior PEN housings or third party ports (Zen, Athena, Precision) already in production or did Olympus use another style port connection as rumored? Thank you for the great review
Posted by devildiver on 2012-06-01 17:57:48 Awesome review, Alex. Thanks for posting. I am really excited about this camera. It's good to hear that the performance lives up to its promise. I look forward to shooting it soon. Thanks for the in-depth first look.
Posted by Sterling Zumbrunn on 2012-06-01 15:39:27