As you recall we had plenty of discussions on 43rumors about the E-M5 sensor. There were many open questions about the manufacturer and supposed Olympus tweaks on the sensor. And now that the camera has been officially announced discussions are still continuing!
Kirk Tuck (Click here) says that the “The folks at Olympus don’t make it a habit to divulge the provenance of the sensors they use. I guess it’s supposed to be a trade secret. So I asked a few probing questions. As you can see from the specs the sensor is 16 megapixels. I wanted to know if, similar to the Panasonic sensor in the GH2, you could use other aspect ratios such as 16:9 and 3:2 without losing resolution. The answer I got was “yes.” All but the 1:1 aspect ratio. If this is true (and I have no reason not to believe it) this will make me happy.”
But Richard Butler (dpreview) said that Kirk Tuck’s statement: “would directly contradict the conversations we’ve had with Olympus.” (According to them “The camera is built around a 16MP Four Thirds sensor, almost certainly the same one seen in Panasonic’s DMC-G3”).
The japanese Pro Photographer Kimio Tanaka goes even further. He wrote on Twitter that the sensor on the E-M5 is actually not made by Panasonic! His guess is that it is made by Sony.
So nobody is really 100% sure about the sensor but I guess Dpreview is right and the E-M5 indeed uses the G3 sensors. Anyway, what matters is the image quality and I hope some of the big known websites can soon post some well made full size image samples!
More E-M5 news:
Olympus OM-D E-M5 five-axis test at Engadget.
Olympus black E-M5 Micro Four Thirds camera and internals eyes-on (Engadget)
Olympus E-M5 : La prise en main! (OpenPN).
Hands-on at CNET Asia.
Message for readers:
After all the E-M5 buzz I had to rest. Today I have more time to catch up with other news and Panasonic rumors.