Gadgetory

greetings and salutations welcome to my lupine office like what I've done with the place moving on are you down with OMD ask yourself that one question are you down with OMD stay tuned to find out if I'm down with OMD hi everyone this is the olympus om-d e-m1 so excited about this camera it warrants a little history lesson the year 2012 marks the 40th anniversary of the introduction of the om family the OM one was the first member back in 1972 I actually shot with an om and one a decade ago in high school so with that said the new om de my biz the leader of the new digital OM revolution instead of a mirror box in a film spool we now have a brand new 16 megapixel sensor of the micro 4/3 persuasion in addition the camera is spackled with all types of new technology but the big question is can the OM d trump Olympus's pen cameras well without waiting any further let's start out with design the Olympus om-d e-m1 a static reasons look at it stacked up next to my om 1 n from 10 feet away these cameras are almost identical so 10 rounds of applause go to Olympus for retaining the om s aesthetic heritage but upon closer examination you'll find that these cameras are very different we'll start with the OM de m LCD screen in the back its 610 thousand pixels and it's also a touchscreen so there are various operations that could be performed with this camera such as using the live guide in auto mode swiping and zooming in playback mode and selecting options in the super control panel but the more thrilling news in the monitor Department is the fact that the om de mi has a 1.4 million pixel electronic viewfinder with a 120 frame per second for a fresh rate the viewfinder is also intelligent with an eye sensor so when you go to place the camera up to your eye it transitions to the viewfinder from the LCD screen and that is awesome another thing about the new om de emphatically with of course all of Olympus's new micro four-thirds lenses including the 12 to 50 millimeter easy lens easy stands for electronic zoom this lens actually has an electronic motor built in and seamlessly and silently you can also switch to manual mode and there's a designated macro mode as well I was a little skeptical of the electronic zoom at first but after using it I couldn't stop now the OM de my excess report up top as well as a hot shoe this hosted the included flash but it also hosted Olympus's microphone that they offer as an accessory now unfortunately in the sound Department this camera lacks mic and headphone jacks so if you're serious about video that's gonna be something to factor in on the plus side the battery pack was larger than I expected and gave me great life throughout the day one note about the design is that the buttons are fairly squishy it took a while for me to get acclimated to them but they're very responsive and they did the job one of my favorite things about the om-d e-m1 command dial duo Olympus even salvaged some real estate by wrapping one of them around the shutter button but the most glorious thing about the OM de-emphasize instant photography street-cred now as far as features and technologies Olympus took out the giant butter knife and slathered this thing from lens to LCD screen for a manual mode we have a shutter speed that goes from 60 seconds all the way up to one for thousands of a second I love that for long exposure shooting although the easy lens that I shot with had a minimum F 3.5 aperture I was able to stop it all the way down to an f-22 and thanks to the new sensor we had an ISO range of 200 220 5600 so that's currently the highest cap on one of Olympus's Micro Four Thirds cameras some advanced features that you'll find in the DSLR market there's a live histogram a vertical and horizontal level meter all kinds of delicious bracketing like Auto exposure white balance focal length ISO and even art filters bracketing we could do multiple exposure shooting we could shoot at different aspect ratios but one of the biggest introductions was the shadow highlight grid I can actually adjust the shadows and the highlights natively in the camera which was basically adjusting the dynamic range on the fly the OM de my false oh let me adjust gradation saturation sharpness contrast and other image parameters now Olympus claims the Omni m5 has the fastest autofocus in the world I would have to agree with that it is Roadrunner fast there's also a new five axis image stabilization system and I found it to perform very well in image and video mode as far as continuous shooting we could shoot at nine frames per second at full resolution and what would an Olympus camera be without the plethora of art modes the om de mo that could be bracketed all at once and I blame this camera and Olympus for turning me into a dramatic tone junkie video mode also has a new feature it's called multi echo and what that does is blur the framerate a little bit which makes it look like an unsolved mysteries reenactment scene I loved the fact that I could shoot PASM in video mode and the continuous auto focus was exceptionally quick and silent in video mode now of course the Olympus om-d e-m1 of different scene modes however a panorama sweep mode was missing from the fold and you think that a camera with so much technology would have one now lastly if you shoot an intelligent auto mode we have live guide that's a mode for beginners and lets you adjust the shutter speed the contrast the sharpness things like that only it doesn't buy a set of easy sliders so you don't have to fool with all the manual controls the great thing about the OM de my is that paired with the touchscreen it works flawlessly also about the touch screen the sensitivity on this baby is amazing it rivals my iPhones the menu system is also highly responsive although I found that some options got buried down in the deep abyss at times but with all of the different customization available on this camera like the two function buttons it was really easy to walk my way around this camera in no time now let's talk image quality the Olympus om-d e-m1 4/3 ilk that means the sensor is slightly smaller than an aps-c size sensor found on a mid-range DSLR when it came to still picture quality the Olympus om-d e-m1 of the best Micro Four Thirds performers I've seen to date I've always been a big fan of Olympus image quality and their higher tier camera and the olympus om-d e-m1 I al was a bit tricky anything at ISO 6400 or higher was pretty noisy so I really had to watch the higher ISO levels especially twelve thousand eight hundred and twenty five thousand six hundred now video mode was an entirely different animal this camera records 1920 by 1080 60 I videos in the h.264 MOV format you can also shoot in motion JPEG however if you value image quality and compatibility with nonlinear editing programs avoid motion JPEG at all costs from the get-go the thing that bummed me out about the video mode on the OMD m5 was the fact that it lacked a native 24p mode that's gonna be something for more serious videographers to consider in addition to the lack of the mic jack and the lack of the headphone jack for the most part quality was very good and bright and low light however there were some situations where I encountered some strange compression artifacts while the camera was doing auto exposure autofocus and auto white balance so for the most part video mode was good but I think Olympus can do some improving on the next iteration of the OM de m so now it's time for the buffalo call with the olympus om-d am 5 you down with om d this guy's down with om d Olympus has done a fantastic job with this camera especially since the original om ones shoes are so big to fill the OM d EMF is a wonderful way to celebrate the om family's 40th birthday and I salute this guy as the leader of the digital om revolution if you're in the market for a Micro Four Thirds camera do not overlook the Olympus om-d e-m1 calm until next time I'm Mike Pearlman and I'm down with Oh MD one two three Oh get your woman on the floor gotta gotta get up get down gotta gotta get up get down