Olympus E-M1 mark II review 

Hi! I'm constantly tempted to switch to micro43 system (considering Fuji also) but two major thing prevent me: 1. low light 2.value; I would have to sell perfectly good Canon gear for much less than i payed for it altogether and still add lot of money to get what I would like to have in new system. So as I said in my "why I still don't have a mirrorless" video, I will wait for this year's Photokina to see how that mythical Canon FF mirrorless will look like (and cost) and then decide what to do.

Ah, I hadn't seen your other video yet - I'll check that out now :) Thank you for replying. Your thoughts echo exactly what I'm thinking at the moment. My fear though is that Canon (and Nikon) will continue to hold off producing a proper full frame Mirrorless camera, based solely on past performance. But maybe, just maybe, the A7R3 will have shaken them up enough to finally get their act together.

Pick Olympus. As good as it is, GH5 is still very much video optimized and doesn't have ideal color rendering (at least for my taste). It is also quite big - as big as any DSLR. E-M1 II is smaller while still sits comfortably in hand and has those famous Olympus colors! Take a look at my E-M1 video recording review - it is also surprisingly capable for video; more than any Olympus so far.

Thank you for your very prompt reply.

No problem, glad I can help :)

Not sure yet, I will try continuous AF in more detail when I get 40-150 and 300mm prime.

That's really hard to say without trying it out... these brand combinations sometimes work perfect and sometimes not...

Yes it works really well with the Em1.2. I have the lens. Go to fredmiranda 's site. There is a forum with loads of seriously good pics with the EM1.2, that lens and birds in flight. There is one caveat: do not use the focus limiter on the lens but use the one in body. If you activate the one on the lens it becomes a complete and useless mess. The AF performance of this lens on the EM1.2 is exemplary. It works like a charm, don't be afraid. Also: the lens stabilisation is first of all the best I ever had with any lens (I have the 12-35, 35-100 f2.8 for instance) and it is also better than when you pick IBIS of the Em1.2. That is really good but at these FLs IBIS does not work to well on its own. Will it work better than on your GX8: a resounding "yes!" GX8 and this lens= shuttershock. With the Oly there is no shuttershock. Also it shoots much higer FPS, there is virtually no jello (rolling shutter) in stills, the EVF of the Oly is far more responsive so you an track action clearly better. But here is the downside: so you own a GX8...oke...be prepared to be seriously amazed by how different the Oly is to set up. The reviewer here makes a good effort in explaining this and how cluncky it is. In my view, in total, the GX8 is a much nicer cam to use. Even though it is worse.

Serenoj69 thank you very much, your comment is so useful, that I'd make a separate post out of it. price of a bit used or new grey em1-ii is falling quickly, it's already ok to buy it.

Nice to be of any help. Many greetings from The Netherlands to Russia and may be we can see how beautiful your country looks through the Em1.2 one day! Have fun!

The Inception bit made me laugh out loud :D

All the high resolution ones without AA filter will be superb: Nikon D810, Sony A7R2, Canon 5DSR... paired to good lenses of course. Canon maybe lacks DR compared to Sony and Nikon so you might want to narrow it down to Nikon&Sony. New Fuji GFX50s medium format will be brutal probably but is most expensive of all.

Canon 5DMarkIV is a very very nice cam with much better DR than the 5DSR. It would be certainly one of the contenders if I had to go for a DSLR. Even when not, Canon has a lot of great glass. Only small downside is the 30 MP vs 36 on the Nion or 42 on the Sony. Sony A7R2 is indeed a great cam for this with the right glass.

I agree, with 5Dmk4 and 80D Canon made an impressive progress on DR front. If 30MP is enough this one goes to the list. And A7R2 can be used on Canon glass with metabones adaptor (full functionality - AF, IS, EXIF...). It is not fast enough for sport but for landscapes as Colin asked... those mountains are not going anywhere any time soon. :)

True! good point forgot about the metabones!

Thanks everyone. Colin.

Why was this video the funniest ? have I missed something !!???

“Can I maybe expect spades and diamonds in the mark iii?!... oh my god I expect Leonardo’s wife to jump out at me...”

Please be realistic young lady, there is nothing funny in this video it is very comprehensive and useful.

Diamond is exposure delay with user selectable time. It is used for tripod exposures - it allows potential vibrations to settle down once you push the shutter button.

Eh...my experience is the opposite. I LOVE HiRes for landscapes and I do not find it so picky at all. In fact I am very much like you: I actually pretty much DISLIKE the Oly OMD Em1 mark2 for it (to me) idiotic, stupid, unfotographiclike, clucky, unituitive, annoying, abhorrent andsoforth interfacing. I hate it. I have the cam fro 5 months and if Panasonic introduces Hires that is at the level of Em1.2 I sell Em1.2 immediately at a loss of hundred euro. I don't mind. Good...I made myself clear for those who think I am a fanboy. Always happens when you actually express some love for some part of a cam....And what I love is basically Hires for landscapes. I have GREAT results, I can compare with D800E on one hand, Em1.2 single shot files and if I had three hands than GH4 on the third. Hires mode does not always work, when there is a lot if wind things move nearby you must cut that part out and replace it with an upsized part of your single shot which is of course less than ideal. I never did it. But I have shot with a lot of wind and then the tripod can virbrate and indeed cause unsharpness. Yet on 28 februari I was under a storm that was near prdoucing a tornado (in fact it did but I did not see it) so there was inflow. I took three sHiRes shots for a panorama of the storm. the left and right part were sharp as heel, the middle had vibration. But that is with lots of wind. the trees etc in the distance look perfectly sharp. etc. with less wind, with leaves blowing gently in the wind, with water flowing and small waves...I found very little problems. On top of that colours are quite a bit nicer, colour gradation ios better. noise is MUCH lower. Easily 3 stops lower which is what you always get when you do superresolution too (look it up). What it has over superresolution however is all three colour are measured and superresolution (taking multiple nearly identical shots and merge them in ACR for instance) cannot do it. I can't speak for you but I bought EM1.2 for the same reason as you and I am surely not disappointed at all. But if you never used an Oly I would seriously advice you to try the cam in a stroe and see how you can set it up to our liking ...Quite a task in my view.

Serenoj69 many thanks for sharing your experience!

In fact yesterday evening I wnet to the beach again and now shot pics with boars passing by. In my estimation these were 500-700 m away. I live in an area with a lot of boats passing by (between Antwerp to the South and Rotterdam to the north..large harbours). The ship when shot at fullspeed in HiRes was ample sharp. Not 100% pinsharp but again better than the single shot because it lacked the detail from that side. Mind you: the single shot IQ of the OMD Em1.2 is already really good. So suppose it doesn't work with HiRes. Never mind: you still have your single shot RAW to work with.

I honestly don't know what went on in his example here, maybe had an unsturdy tripod somehow? I have the EM5 mk ii and use the High Res Mode frequently, though mostly on still subjects like interiors, studio work, and architecture. It is amazing for this. I can make 32 x 18in prints from the little 16mp em5 mk ii that rival if not exceed my Pentax K1. So I can say for these purposes it is capable of fantastic resutls. The few landscapes Ive taken have all came out great, though some leaves werent sharp because of movement. I don't find this to be an issue at all however.

Hi! Once customized, E-M1 has direct buttons for 12 features that can be adjusted directly with standard "press button-rotate dial to adjust" (if I counted correctly from memory). What more do you need? It takes some time to get used to - yes; and setting this all up is a pain but once made those controls are left the way they are and become "dedicated" buttons. GH5 uses a bit different logic behind its controls and I agree that SAF/CAF/MF switch is a joy to use but GH5 is a big brick of a camera - it feels like a DSLR in hands while E-M1 is more compact and lighter - I can clearly notice that in use. It isn't as heavy and uses less space in my camera bags. As for high res mode - I tried it on tripod with exposure delay - same effect as using remote control so I don't see what I did wrong. I also got similarly bad results last year with PEN-F. Could you upload two of your samples somewhere (normal + high res) so I could see how they look like?

Hi...well once customised. Now you have to remember which button was what...Even on my GH4 which had 10 Fn buttons at least there was a map of what I attributed to which knob but still. Try to work with EM1.2, a Nikon D800e and a GH4 (or now GM5 which I just ordered) and use them in a mix. You (or at least me) tend to forget what knob was assigned to do what. I canpick up my GH4 after 5 months of no use and it works immediately and fast. I shoot a landscape and see a bird fly by..Switch to C-Af, burst mode and ready. Not so with my EM1.2 although I have now assign C2 to action shooting. What I need is a camera with the basic features hardwired on the body. Always, always on the same places but slight adjustments are fine I guess. Why do you think Fuji cams are so popular: it is their manual controls (and not all love it). There are two cams that get constant critique on the user interface: Sony and Olympus. And it is not positive critique. There is this trait that is called "intuition" and at I know a guy directly who studies this purely on the university and he is in 100% agreement that it is very important and the argument used by many Oly users (it is so complex, so it can't be made easy) is an error seen many times when it comes to interfacing with complex devicies and not true. etc. You can look here for just an example of my HiRes shot in which you can see water moving (look at the mirrored cloud) and see some details of foreground and background. The colours/tones are FAR superior to single shot mode. Again: if not this EM1.2 was sold off by me immediately. Even though indeed it is also better birds in flight etc I was aleady happy with my GH4 for that stuff....www.dpreview.com/forums/post/59609813 So I added a pic completely and then added two 100% (chose full resolution or 100% or whatever). You can see the water is moving. There is a whole sea on the back but it is too far off I guess. The tones are great, the detail stunning and this is not in a windless situation. Think of 2-3 m/s wind (so it ain't much either).