The only bad points I can see are the weight is a little too light for me,
The HDMI port is a mini... The max shutter is still 4k instead of 6 or 8k... and The USB is v2.0
I guess with the battery grip it'll be about right concerning the weight aspect...
"In simplistic terms, the Olympus E-M5 and Panasonic DMC-G3 are pretty similar cameras, offering similar 16MP sensors and built-in viewfinders. But, for the extra money, the E-M5 offers twin control dials, a magnesium alloy body, weather sealing, in-body 5-axis image stabilization and a 1.44M dot viewfinder (rather than a 1.44M dot equivalent, phase-sequential design)."
That's like saying they're almost the same except for the fact that they're totally different! Tards!
The classic OM design is a beaut, glad to see it revived. If it wasnt m43 i'd totally ditch my NEX and jump ship. In body image stabilization is impressive.
kwalsh wrote:
It does, and nice write up! One quibble on your write-up, 14-bit RAW will buy you nothing but larger files with the sensor on this camera. Read noise is way higher than the quantization noise from a 12-bit RAW file.
The DPR preview shows that the button customizations are excellent. Five custom buttons! They don't describe the dial options though.
Ken
Jman, enjoyed the write-up, thank you.
Ken, huh? You obviously know more about this stuff than me, enlighten us, what does this mean "read noise" vs. "quantization noise"... seriously, thanks.
In the past, Olympus had plenty of good lenses, including 21/2, 50/2, 90/2 100/2, 180/2, 250/2, 350/2.8...
I don't know why they still choose to embrace a heavily cropped sensor that suffers from noise easily. If this OM-D was FF, it will definitely be a hot seller.
phuang3 wrote:
In the past, Olympus had plenty of good lenses, including 21/2, 50/2, 90/2 100/2, 180/2, 250/2, 350/2.8...
I don't know why they still choose to embrace a heavily cropped sensor that suffers from noise easily. If this OM-D was FF, it will definitely be a hot seller.
Not if they didn't have a good lineup of lenses to go with it and producing a new camera just for those with a bunch of old Zuiko lenses makes little sense.
It would be like Canon making a 5D mkIII using the out of production FD mount
You can have a great camera but if you don't have a good lineup of glass ready to go as well you end up with the same situation as the Sony NEX.
phuang3 wrote:
In the past, Olympus had plenty of good lenses, including 21/2, 50/2, 90/2 100/2, 180/2, 250/2, 350/2.8...
I don't know why they still choose to embrace a heavily cropped sensor that suffers from noise easily. If this OM-D was FF, it will definitely be a hot seller.
Yeah, and that'd require an all new mount and lens lineup. That'd take years to build from scratch.
I can see it in the distance calling my name. I think we might be going on a date this summer.
Looks hilarious next to the already small Rebel T3. Once you carry a M43 with a couple of feather weight lenses in your camera bag all day long, there is no going back.
^^^I agree...my bag with a GX1, 45/1.8, 12/2, 25/1.4, 17/2.8 and 40-150 weighs next to nothing and offers a huge range at high quality. I will often carry the exceptional 7-14 instead of the 12, or my Rokkor 135/2.8 instead of the zoom....but gives great flexibility in a kit 1/4 the weight of what I was carrying with my DSLR bag, and that's including the bag.
I also love that I can put my GX1, 12/2 and 45/1.8 in a tiny hip pouch and basically carry nothing, but have a very capable little walk around kit.
The E-M5 looks realty sweet, but I will need to sit out the early adotin phase on this one and wait until prices drop, since I just got a GX1, and my GH2 is also great and offers almost all of the real things the E-M5 does with the exception of weathersealing , that awesome IBIS and the sweet looking aesthetics. If I can...maybe next Christmas I'll sell my gH2 and get a bunch of gift cards for Christmas to get this. :-)
Last week I thought I'd love to afford one of these but I got pretty sad with the f/6.3 max aperture of the 12-50 zoom in the tele end... and 0.58x viewfinder also sucked big time... maybe I'll change my mind till my birthday or xmas but for now my first option is still E-PM1, kit and Pana 20, thanks.
wjmeyer wrote:
Ken, huh? You obviously know more about this stuff than me, enlighten us, what does this mean "read noise" vs. "quantization noise"... seriously, thanks.
Bill
At the risk of dragging off topic...
"Read noise" is the minimum amount of noise from a sensor. So if I read a perfectly dark frame (no exposure at all) rather than getting a uniform image of black there will actually be noise in the image. There are other sources of noise as well that depend on other parameters, but no matter what you'll always see at least the read noise. A short write up:
"Quantization noise" is kind of a misleading term. "Quantization error" would be more descriptive. When you take a measurement of the pixel value and convert it to a binary number (say 12-bits in this case) somewhere the measurement is rounded to a whole number. For instance, 12-bits can express the numbers 0 to 4095, if the value being measured was actually 1011.43 we'd actually measure 1011 and there would be an error of 0.43. It turns out for real world data if we look at the rounding errors over a large number of measurements (say 16 million pixels) these "quantization errors" (you could think of them as "rounding errors") look perfectly random and noise like. Hence the name "quantization noise". Another short write up:
A natural question when measuring and storing data is "how many bits do I need to measure/store?" The answer is enough bits that you don't corrupt the measurement with too much "quantization noise". The less noisy the measurement was to begin with the more bits you need to store. The noisier the measurement the fewer bits.
For the example at hand, we are assuming the OM-D is using the sensor from the G3/GX1. From measurements derived from DxO (see sensorgen.info) we know the saturation capacity of the pixels is 12554 electrons and that the read noise is 11.1 electrons. For a 12-bit RAW file lets say it uses only 3800 of the 4096 available levels (at least that's what Panasonic does in their RAW files) then each bit is recording 12554/3800 = 3.3 electrons. That means the maximum quantization error (rounding error) is about 1.6 electrons. But the read noise is 11.1 electrons, nearly 8 times as large. So from that we know 12-bits is more than enough bits to record the sensor data without increasing the noise of the measurement. Going to 14-bits wouldn't help us.
By comparison the Nikon D7000 has a saturation capacity of 49058 and a read noise of just 3.1 electrons. Making the same assumptions above a 12-bit RAW would record 49058/3800 = 12.9 electrons per bit, a maximum quantization error of 6.5 electrons - nearly double the read noise! Hence for the D7000 sensor 12-bit data is not enough, and that's why they offer a 14-bit RAW file for that camera.
Well, way off topic - but you asked
I hope it was slightly more useful than confusing!
kwalsh wrote:
At the risk of dragging off topic...
"Read noise" is the minimum amount of noise from a sensor. So if I read a perfectly dark frame (no exposure at all) rather than getting a uniform image of black there will actually be noise in the image. There are other sources of noise as well that depend on other parameters, but no matter what you'll always see at least the read noise. A short write up:
"Quantization noise" is kind of a misleading term. "Quantization error" would be more descriptive. When you take a measurement of the pixel value and convert it to a binary number (say 12-bits in this case) somewhere the measurement is rounded to a whole number. For instance, 12-bits can express the numbers 0 to 4095, if the value being measured was actually 1011.43 we'd actually measure 1011 and there would be an error of 0.43. It turns out for real world data if we look at the rounding errors over a large number of measurements (say 16 million pixels) these "quantization errors" (you could think of them as "rounding errors") look perfectly random and noise like. Hence the name "quantization noise". Another short write up:
A natural question when measuring and storing data is "how many bits do I need to measure/store?" The answer is enough bits that you don't corrupt the measurement with too much "quantization noise". The less noisy the measurement was to begin with the more bits you need to store. The noisier the measurement the fewer bits.
For the example at hand, we are assuming the OM-D is using the sensor from the G3/GX1. From measurements derived from DxO (see sensorgen.info) we know the saturation capacity of the pixels is 12554 electrons and that the read noise is 11.1 electrons. For a 12-bit RAW file lets say it uses only 3800 of the 4096 available levels (at least that's what Panasonic does in their RAW files) then each bit is recording 12554/3800 = 3.3 electrons. That means the maximum quantization error (rounding error) is about 1.6 electrons. But the read noise is 11.1 electrons, nearly 8 times as large. So from that we know 12-bits is more than enough bits to record the sensor data without increasing the noise of the measurement. Going to 14-bits wouldn't help us.
By comparison the Nikon D7000 has a saturation capacity of 49058 and a read noise of just 3.1 electrons. Making the same assumptions above a 12-bit RAW would record 49058/3800 = 12.9 electrons per bit, a maximum quantization error of 6.5 electrons - nearly double the read noise! Hence for the D7000 sensor 12-bit data is not enough, and that's why they offer a 14-bit RAW file for that camera.
Well, way off topic - but you asked
I hope it was slightly more useful than confusing!
Thank you Ken, that was excellent and yes, I do understand better what you are talking about. I remember many posts about the D700 and whether or not to use 12 or 14 bit, some pretty heated. I know nothing about the technology of the sensor, other then what I can see in the final image. I used 14-bit on my D700 but to be honest I never tested to see if it was any better than a 12-bit setting. Sounds like 12-bit will be just fine on the E-M5 based on your information, so thank you for that. One last thought, is there a difference between jpg and RAW files when using your above "read" vs. "quantization"?
For me, I'm hoping there is more room in the E-M5 RAW files for adjustments
Tards!
