(UPDATED)E-M5 studio test samples. What do you think?


It’s time to make a real JPEG and RAW comparison! Dpreview (Click here) just posted the E-M5 studio test. Take time to compare all ISO settings with other cameras. I leave the judgments to you :)

UPDATE: And here is a full review from the polish website Fotopolis (Click here for the translation).

How much do you like the image quality?

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E-M5 preorders (Click on the names of the stores to see the product page):
Black E-M5 body at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, J&R, Warehouse UK, Digitalrev and Amazon Japan.
Silver E-M5 body at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, J&R, Warehouse UK, and Amazon Japan.
Black E-M5 body with 14-42mm lens at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto , Digitalrev and J&R.
Black E-M5 body with 12-50mm lens at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, J&R, Jessops, Amazon UK, Amazon Deutschland , Digitalrev and Amazon Japan.
Silver E-M5 body with 12-50mm lens at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, J&R, Jessops, Amazon UK, Amazon Deutschland and Amazon Japan.

Olympus E-M5 gets tested by germans. Beats Samsung APS-C sensors!


At least according to B&H (Click here) we are exactly one month away from the first Olympus E-M5 shipment. But seeing that the E-M5 still remains within the top list at Amazon (pre-)order rankings (Click here to see it) I doubt you will get the camera on that day :(

Anyway today we have a very interesting new review:
The German testers from Digitalkamera DIWA lab (Click here for the translation) tested the Olympus E-M5 with the new 12-50mm lens.
They first tested the lens and they were satisfied with the results with the only major issue being the high Chromatic Aberration at the wide end.
And now let’s talk about their E-M5 Labortest. First they discovered that the real sensitivity starts with ISO 120 (when the camera is set at ISO 200) and ends with ISO 14.200 (with the Olympus setting being at 25.600). This means that the E-M5 has a 2/3 stops difference from the official Olympus ISO value. The signal to noise ratio corresponds to a decent 40db at low 200 ISO (120 real ISO). It goes down to 35db at 1600 ISO. At high ISO the luminance noise is strong while Olympus handles the chrome noise much better. Digitalkamera says that up to 1600 the performance is good and from that point upwards the image quality visible decreases. Same thing happens for the dynamic range which up to ISO 1.600 reaches 11 stops (very good result). At ISO 3.200 it goes down to 10 stops, at ISO 12.800 it has 9 stops and at ISO 25.600 8 stops only. The sever German reviewer is positively impressed by the results that are better than the ones reached by the [shoplink 29758 ebay]Samsung NX200[/shoplink] which uses a larger APS-C result.
To see the full graphs and test you have to pay a couple of Euros :(

More E-M5 bits: Olympus E-M5 video at Quesabesde (Click here). A finish hands-on at Sulanto (Click here). Another full German review at Chip (Click here).
Olympus 12-50mm test: Photographyblog (Click here) posted the full Olympus lens review: “Photographers who require maximum sharpness and resolution will of course be better served by one – or more – of the excellent, fast, sharp Micro Four Thirds primes; but the Olympus 12-50mm f3.5-6.3 is hard to beat on versatility and price-performance ratio.Lenstip (Click here) also posted a full review of the lens.

E-M5 preorders (Click on the names of the stores to see the product page):
Black E-M5 body at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, J&R, Warehouse UK, Digitalrev and Amazon Japan.
Silver E-M5 body at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, J&R, Warehouse UK, and Amazon Japan.
Black E-M5 body with 14-42mm lens at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto , Digitalrev and J&R.
Black E-M5 body with 12-50mm lens at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, J&R, Jessops, Amazon UK, Amazon Deutschland , Digitalrev and Amazon Japan.
Silver E-M5 body with 12-50mm lens at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, J&R, Jessops, Amazon UK, Amazon Deutschland and Amazon Japan.

 

 

New Sonnetar 25mm f/1.1 image samples


Click on image to enlarge

KTF-Turbo posted many new image samples of the SOnnetar 25mm f/1.1 Micro Four Thirds lens: http://blogs.yahoo.co.jp/ktf_turbo/28265046.html. As you can see the image quality drmatically increases at f/1.4 aperture. F71.1 has a creamy effect and may be used for emrgency (or creative) reaosns only. I think it’s an impressive performance for such a tiny lens.

Reminder: The designer of the lens is designer Mr. Miyazaki. He is the creator of the well known [shoplink 29386 ebay]Leica Triplet lenses (here on eBay)[/shoplink] and already made a Sonnetar lens for [shoplink 29387 ebay]Pentax Q mount which costs $650 on eBay (Click here)[/shoplink]

Robin Wong final E-M5 review. Damian McGilliCuddy does E-PL2 nude photography!

Robin Wong (Click here) finalized his long and very discussed Olympus E-M5 review. No matter how much you like Robin work, you should give him a nice credit for doing a job that none of the big websites has done! In short what he liked about the E-M5 is the image quality,  the 5 axis IS and the handling. But he also listed some smaller issues. Interestingly the viewfinder gets foggy when shooting in rainy conditions, 3D tracking misses a lot of focus points and the electronic viewfinder still is not on par with the “real light” experience of the optical viewfinder.

Meantime Damian MCGilliCuddy had to return the [shoplink 29074]Olympus E-M5[/shoplink] to Olympus but he now keeps shooting some nude portraits with the [shoplink 18844]Olympus E-PL2[/shoplink] (Click here to see his pictures here). Those are nice shots taken with the supertiny [shoplink 14798]17mm f/2.8[/shoplink] and the super good and cheap priced [shoplink 23577]45mm f/1.8[/shoplink] lens. Amazing what you can do with these two little cheap lenses!

E-M5 preorders (Click on the names of the stores to see the product page):
Black E-M5 body at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, J&R, Warehouse UK, Redcoon Germany and Amazon Japan.
Silver E-M5 body at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, J&R, Warehouse UK, Redcoon Germany, and Amazon Japan.
Black E-M5 body with 14-42mm lens at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto and J&R.
Black E-M5 body with 12-50mm lens at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, J&R, Jessops, Redcoon Deutschland, Amazon UK, Amazon Deutschland and Amazon Japan.
Silver E-M5 body with 12-50mm lens at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, J&R, Jessops, Amazon UK, Amazon Deutschland and Amazon Japan.

Panasonic GX1 versus Canon G1X

Comparison at 1.600 ISO

Canon first attempt to fight against the mirrorless world is represented by the fixed lens Canon G1X camera ($800 at Amazon).The camera uses a Four Thirds ratio sensor that is just a tiny bit bigger than our Panasonic/Olympus Four Thirds sensors. Being used to compare our m43 image quality with the larger APS-C sensor I thought it might be interesting to see how the image quality of the two almost equal sized sensor would be (18.7 x 14mm vs. 17.3 x 13mm)

DCfever (Click here) compared the JPEG quality of the Canon with the one of the [shoplink 26836]Panasonic GX1[/shoplink]. Please notice that Panasonic has an average JPEG engine while Canon is known to be much better. A RAW image comparison would probably show a more “real” sensor performance. The JPEG comparison show a slight advantage of the Canon at Low ISO while at High ISO the difference is less pronounced. I think you want see any difference when looking on real printed images.

The Canon G1X is a very strange concept I can’t fell in love with. It will be much more interesting to see if Canon will launch their new interchangeable lens mirrorless system with exactly the same sensor size of the G1X! …P.S.: Don’t even think Canon would join the m43 system, that’s impossible…or not? :)

New Olympus E-M5 shoots with faster frame rates than expected!


Continuous shooting test (via DSLRcamera).

Four Thirds User (Click here) tested the fps speed of the E-M5. The good news is that the E-M5 actually shoots 10fps instead of the indicated 9fps on all four tested cards: “Olympus also told us that IS would slow the shooting rate down, which it clearly didn’t. Curiously, two of the higher-specification cards, the Lexar Pro and Kingston XX Ultimate, although they shot 12 frames in the sequence, the last frame took twice as long to register as the previous one, so we excluded it, only counting the 11.
This has to be a marketing trick from Olympus to get positive feedback from reviews ;) Thanks FourThirdsUser for sharing that interesting test!

Some more E-M5 bits:
The latest Robin Wong E-M5 review created a lot of buzz and Robin clarified a couple of things on his blog (Click here). P.S: Personal message for Robin: You are doing a great job! Don’t care too much about negative or non sense critics! It’s the price you pay for the popularity ;)
Gabrielle Motola contacted me yesterday because you bad 43rumors readers made crash her website :) She now managed to restore it! Seriously speaking, she was happy you visited the blog ;)
One more fashion image taken with the E-M5 at Damian Mcgillicuddy (Click here). No nude pic that time ;)

E-M5 preorders:
Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, J&R, Jessops, Amazon UK, Amazon Deutschland and Amazon Japan.

Olympus E-M5 versus Fuji X PRO 1


Of course this is a pretty unfair comparison. We are comparing apple with oranges. Both cameras are different priced, have different specs, and different strengths. The [shoplink 29074]Olympus E-M5[/shoplink] is cheaper, has a faster AF, weather sealed body. The X PRO 1 has a super image quality and a very innovative hybrid viewfinder. But ultimately isn’t it interesting to see how great the image quality difference is? :)

Our reader Gabrielle Motola sent me the link (Click here) to a short test made with both cameras. Gabrielle explicitly says that is not a regular and scientific test. Her impression is that “this test clearly showed me is that both cameras are capable of providing an outstanding image. The choice of purchase comes down to preference and operational flow.

Here are the images:
E-M5: Full Size and 100% crop.
X PRO 1: Full Size and 100% crop.

X PRO 1 lens test:
A great lens test has been published by Valentin Sama. read more at MirrorlessRumors.com

Price difference:
The E-M5 costs $700 or 500 Euro less than the X PRO 1:
E-M5 at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, J&R, Jessops, Amazon UK, Amazon Deutschland and Amazon Japan.
Fuji X PRO 1 at Amazon, Adorama, Bhphoto, Epxansys US, Expansys Canada, Jessops UK, Expansys UK, Amazon Japan and eBay Japan.