Em1 Mk3 Review for Astrophotography 

Couldn't agree more! and thanks for the kind words.

I am in the market for an Em1X as well but the X does not have the Starry Sky AF yet. Maybe in a latter Firmware it will. For now the Em1.3 is the best things for astrophotography. Hope that helps you out.

My research showed that the LMOS is just marketing talk. They still call it LMOS but it is really a CMOS

Thank yo Adrian!

Welcome to the Olympus Family Simon! There is a lot to learn and learning is fun! The 40-150 is a lens I just picked up too. It's actually waiting for me at the house now. Cannot wait to get home. Ill probably do a review on it soon.

Great news Randy!. Enjoy that little camera. I liked it too. My sister is going to be using mine soon.

Thanks Gary. Ya heat is a huge factor here. I am finding that I can take just as good a photos as those Cannon R guys can. So I mainly used my 100-400 at F6.3 and I also used my one telescope which is a 522mm at f6.3 as well. The Mk2 and Mk3 do have identical quantum efficiency.

It true that many refractor are corrected for a 35mm sensor however they do not have an image circle large enough. The best way to find out is find someone with that scope and ask to see a flat that they have taken. Then you can know for sure. A good example is the Radian Scope. Advertised as a 35mm image circle but in NO way does it have a large enough image circle for a 35mm sensor. Flats taken with it show the outside edges to be almost 80% darker than the center.

I just got the 8mm f1.8 and its pretty swell. Up there you can really use it because of your lower light solution. It pretty sharp. I have been impressed with it.

In the video I did touch on the performance difference between the three. The Em1.3 is about 2.5-3 stops better then the Em1.1 but that depends on exposure lengths. The longer you expose the greater the advantage for the Em1.3. The Em1.2 though it has the same sensor produces more heat so it does about 0.5-1 less then the 1.3

@@TheNarrowbandChannel thanks. The internal intervalometer only goes up to a maximum shutter speed of 60". How do you do multiple longer exposures of 120" or 180", do you just fire each shot manually?

@@stevepearson7493 I use an external Intervelomiter for the long ones. I hope Olympus add longer exposures to the built in intervelomiter soon. Would be a big help.

I think they can get more pixels squeezed on there easy. take a look at phones. They are using 1.4 micron pixels. Thats a lot smaller then the Em1 Mk3s 3.4 micron pixels.

@@TheNarrowbandChannel If you just want more pixels, no problem. If you're not Apple or Google, your main sensor probably has 800nm pixels. Of course, they'll bin four or (Samsung S20 Ultra) nine to deliver a larger shot. That's about 2.4um pixels, same as everyone's 20 megapixel 1" cameras like the Sony RX10. Which would get you to 40 megapixel or so on a M43 sensor. Those are all BSI sensors these days to increase QE. So it's possible. Looking at it from another direction, Sony's A7IV has a 61.5 megapixel full-frame sensor, with about the same pixel size as the E-M1 Mark I. And yet they're claiming 15-bit DR, of course at low ISOs. Good video... taught me a few things! And yeah, I just bough the E-M1 Mark III. I haven't done a huge amount of astrophotography, but I some. I fully grok the focus issues, and it's good to know that Starry Sky A.F. really does work.

​@@DaveHaynie Hi, I certainly don’t usually, already the 50 and 80 MP multi-sample modes are already there and I use them, but then down sample for viewing. As noted, above more could certainly be added in theory, but my guess is that density tends to follow/parallel the progress of overall efficiency, for a variety of reasons, and having reached 20MP, it had slowed, so Oly pursued other methods of advancement. JC

@@DaveHaynie I know the latest phone uses 1.4 and 1.6 micron pixels.

@@TheNarrowbandChannel For a long time just about everyone was using 1/2.55" or so sensors, about a 1.4μm pixel size. That's still what Apple and Google use for their main cameras (the other cameras have smaller pixels), though the iPhone 12 Pro Max has a slightly larger 1.7μm pixel size. A whole mess of phones are using Sony and Samsung sensors like Sony's IMX586, which have 800nm pixel size, but being quad bayer (or tetracell, Samsung's branding), that's a 1.6μm bin, if you're pixel binning. The S20 Ultra has a 108 megapixel, 1/1.3" chip, also with 800nm pixels but a Nonacell CFA, so 3x3 pixels for an effective 2.4μm binned pixel. Which is of course the pixel size on 20 megapixel chips at 1".

The Stary Sky autofocus is much better than doing it manual even with Oly Capture. I actually did not try to see if you can remotely use Stary Sky autofocus though through Oly Capture. I will soon though once my own Em1 Mk3 arrives.

Great Video. So does Stary Sky negate the need for a Bahtinov mask?

I did try Rawdigger once, but could not get it to start on my MacBook Pro. Could you spot a number of images by temperature in it?

This is utter nonsense as it is actually the same sensor the Olympus only differs for the pixels dedicated to autofocus. it is the same off the shelf Sony sensor that is available for wholesale trade and is identical to the OMD EM1MKII

@@Interceptor121 Not sure I understand? What exactly are you talking about in reference to Kamils posts?

@@TheNarrowbandChannel yes

@@TheNarrowbandChannel Regarding to your question. Unfortunately, this is not possible. After all, it is an interesting software. Btw This picture of Orion Nebula taken with markiii is very impressive.

I will be soon. I am working on it. Just need some clear skies. This time of year is nothing but clouds sadly. Worst time of year for me to get a new camera i guess lol.

I can say though that it already looks better in the OM1 then it did with the em1.3

There are examples of this done many times. I might just do one for next summer. Have about half the parts already.

That is one of the short falls of the Olympus Body-IS. Unlike Panasonic they do not use a heavy heat sink, the sensor can overheat. After shooting video continuously for about a quarter hour the picture on my E-M5ii tinges to magenta. This is mentioned in small print in the user manual. Because Panasonic is more aimed at shooting video, they have always had better sensor cooling. An issue possibly associated with this is Olympus have poor colour rendition at the violet end of the spectrum, possibly to mask the magenta tinge. Panasonic do not suffer this problem. Panasonic have had their "Starlight AF" for some time. Possibly a simpler system than the Olympus version. It uses the DFD, which judges the focus point from defocussed images. You do not turn it on, it just does it, you get a red rectangle around a pin point of light such as a planet, very fast, very accurate.

I think it will. I see no reason it cannot. They are probably just holding back on it to give the Mk3 a reason to sell. I would expect a firmware update once the Em1X Mk2 comes out. I do want an Em1x though badly. Might be to heavy but if its runs cooler then it would be worthing changing some things.

They do not always list them. The IMX270 I found on a reviewers website once. That sensor itself is not a plus sensor. Finding which sensor is used sometimes requires a lot of digging. There is no one place to go.

I wish it could but its a hardware limitation. You need a separate set of exposures being read out and analyzed to get signals sent to the mont to compensate for mount errors. If Olympus used a multi aspect sensor that cold have separate sections reading out information at separate intervals it would be possible. And with the Olympus ability to shift the sensor, guiding cold be done all in body.

Yes absolutely. Its perfect for star trails.

I have not. That cameras sensor though I am familiar with. It is the same as the ZWO294. They have a Mono version out now which I am feeling pretty committed to getting. The sensor in the GH5S is actually a binned version of the IMX492. Its binned in hardware though so it cannot be unbind. Would be nice to get a future camera that could bin in hardware and unbind in hardware.

@@TheNarrowbandChannel Oh... cool! I did not know that, and I'm a camera geek! A quad Bayer sensor would be kind of ideal for expanding an M43 camera's resolution without locking it in, though I have enough 16Mpixel and 20Megapixel bodies, I wouldn't be against buying one just for high resolution. Practically every phone uses these, but they're all using very simple, poor algorithms for processing full resolution color: they flip around the pixels to fit it all into their de-Bayering hardware. There are very good algorithms for whole-color-plane interpolation that would deliver far better results from Quad Bayer sensors... just not a phone thing year.

@@DaveHaynie Yes a camera with the option to bin down to a lower resolution and thus combine the pixels for lower light would be great.

Those sensors had a lot of issues. It really did not work the way their advertising says it does. Or at least it is not well communicated. With each layer the light has to pass though a 1/3rd of the light is lost to absorption. But a sensor that can detect and us light at ever wavelength is the future.

I have never been able to get the air to control the actuations of the camera. Sad I know that ZWO does not give us the option. The way I dither is basically I sacrifice a few bad exposures. But it is worth it as the walking noise is completely eliminated. I do a dither ever 5 frames so I am not loosing to many frames.

@@TheNarrowbandChannel Have you been able to use the AISAir for anything with the EM1-Mkiii? I am guessing it still might be useful with a guide scope (i.e., guiding, polar aligning, etc.) but wondering if you've tapped into any functionality with the EM1-Mkiii.

@@thomasheatherington357 So the only things that I have been able to take advantage of so far is the accurate polar alignment and guiding. I do use a second ZWO camera to plate solve and get pointed right at targets. Unfortunately there is no direct tethering yet. I keep asking ZWO to do it and they said it is on the list to add but there are other cameras on the list first. If you have an ASIAIR and can help advocate for it on their Facebook page and website forums that would be great.

It depends but I often do use an STC filter. None of the photos in this video though were filtered.

I have not. I have honestly never even seen a Fuji camera.

Sony has a database and its buried in there. There are also some test that have been done by both myself and also some websites that do testing.

www.photonstophotos.net/Charts/RN_e.htm

@@TheNarrowbandChannel thank you

Correct, mostly. In a round about way well capacity has a lot to do with it. With deeper wells you can expose longer without getting bloated star and that is essentially the same thing as increasing sensitivity since you can then pull out fainter details.