So I had my time with the OMD EM1. Thanks Olympus and Park Cameras for putting such a scheme into place.
It's a really nice solid camera. I know it's seen as a small camera by most but I use a Ricoh GR most of the time so for me it actually seemed quite heavy, at least initially. As I said in the post the other day I was mainly looking at the long exposure "Livetime" function to see if it would give me greater flexibility and creative inspiration.
Did it do that?
Well....not really. My shots are typically 2 to 5 seconds or so. The updates on the screen can only happen at half second intervals. It felt a bit like playing an old video game where the screen refresh rate was really slow so you make adjustments and the when you see the result of those adjustments you've crashed into a wall and exploded into a huge fireball. Granted me moving the camera a bit isn't quite as dramatic but it didn't give me the feeling I wanted. I also found that I was tempted to use a longer exposure as I seemed to move the camera more slowly. This led to over exposed images. Also when using the livetime function the camera seemed to take longer to finish writing the file than when you just do a regular long exposure. Another thing that I was interested in was whether the image stabilisation would help freeze an image nice and sharp before I moved the camera. Unfortunately stabilisation wasn't available in livetime.
All of the issues I had are very peculiar to what I do. The livebulb/livetime function isn't designed with me in mind....I can't believe they didn't call me when they were designing it......I imagine that when used as expected it will be really useful and why would anyone want stabilisation when doing a long exposure anyway as you would obviously have the camera on a tripod....wouldn't you?
The image quality with the 12-40mm lens seemed really nice and would be absolutely fine for my needs although I would have to watch that I didn't blow the highlights as they seem to react slightly different from my existing cameras.
This shot below shows some nice shallow depth of field and good sharpness. I've obviously messed around with it a bit in Lightroom but quite like how the tree in the middle pops out now.
So in short, it's a great camera and lens but for me, it's not cheap and it doesn't bring anything really useful or new to my personal creative process so I won't be laying down the cash.
One thing the whole process did get me thinking about was looking at something with a bit more reach than my GR as sometimes I see interesting light patterns but I can't get close enough or if I do the perspective from closer is just too different. Maybe an EM5 or an EP5 with the 45mm or 75mm may be a great second camera to put in my bag.
It's a really nice solid camera. I know it's seen as a small camera by most but I use a Ricoh GR most of the time so for me it actually seemed quite heavy, at least initially. As I said in the post the other day I was mainly looking at the long exposure "Livetime" function to see if it would give me greater flexibility and creative inspiration.
Did it do that?
Well....not really. My shots are typically 2 to 5 seconds or so. The updates on the screen can only happen at half second intervals. It felt a bit like playing an old video game where the screen refresh rate was really slow so you make adjustments and the when you see the result of those adjustments you've crashed into a wall and exploded into a huge fireball. Granted me moving the camera a bit isn't quite as dramatic but it didn't give me the feeling I wanted. I also found that I was tempted to use a longer exposure as I seemed to move the camera more slowly. This led to over exposed images. Also when using the livetime function the camera seemed to take longer to finish writing the file than when you just do a regular long exposure. Another thing that I was interested in was whether the image stabilisation would help freeze an image nice and sharp before I moved the camera. Unfortunately stabilisation wasn't available in livetime.
All of the issues I had are very peculiar to what I do. The livebulb/livetime function isn't designed with me in mind....I can't believe they didn't call me when they were designing it......I imagine that when used as expected it will be really useful and why would anyone want stabilisation when doing a long exposure anyway as you would obviously have the camera on a tripod....wouldn't you?
The image quality with the 12-40mm lens seemed really nice and would be absolutely fine for my needs although I would have to watch that I didn't blow the highlights as they seem to react slightly different from my existing cameras.
This shot below shows some nice shallow depth of field and good sharpness. I've obviously messed around with it a bit in Lightroom but quite like how the tree in the middle pops out now.
So in short, it's a great camera and lens but for me, it's not cheap and it doesn't bring anything really useful or new to my personal creative process so I won't be laying down the cash.
One thing the whole process did get me thinking about was looking at something with a bit more reach than my GR as sometimes I see interesting light patterns but I can't get close enough or if I do the perspective from closer is just too different. Maybe an EM5 or an EP5 with the 45mm or 75mm may be a great second camera to put in my bag.
Comments
Post a Comment