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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Olympus E-M1 MkII does equestrian dressage | |
Last week I covered an equestrian dressage show. The day before that they held a riding clinic, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to run thru a number of camera and lens combinations back to back to compare them. Obviously that's not something I would want to do during an actual show, so this was the perfect time to play around. During the morning I ran thru my normal Nikon kit for fairly close action, D5, D500, 70-200mm f/2.8, and 200mm f/2. (When that doesn't give me enough reach I'll use the 200-400 f/4 lens.) While that was fresh in my mind, I spent the entire afternoon with the E-M1 Mk2, Olympus 75mm f/1.8, and 40-150mm f/2.8 Pro to see how it stacked up.
I've used the E-M1 Mk2 a fair amount so far for personal use, but the only action type events were an airshow where I was less than overwhelmed by the performance. I must say I was much more pleasantly surprised than I thought I'd be. The E-M1 is tantalizingly close to being extremely good, but there are still a few things that won't let me use it on paid equestrian gigs.
Battery life was very good, especially since I was using the extra grip. I'd be able to get almost an entire 8 hour show day on just the 2 batteries, around 3,000 shots including reviewing and culling during the day. Two years ago I had a memory card go bad on me in a Nikon camera during an event, so I always either mirror the second card or write RAW to one card and the JPG to the second card for safety. Olympus needs to speed up the buffer clearing. I was using Sandisk and Lexar UHS-II U3 Class 10 SD cards in both slots, and far too often had to wait for the buffer to clear. This is especially annoying as after each burst I'll cull shots by reviewing the pics and mark those that are keepers for later use. Not being able to even start that while the buffer is writing to the cards is frustrating. The continuous autofocus was very good, although I used single point most of the day. I did try tracking, and it was kind of cool to watch it track a face or saddle pad for a while, but then it would inexplicably move to the horse's rump or nose for no reason since it was actually less contrast than what I had initially had under the focus point. That alone makes the mode unusable for this purpose. I was very pleasantly surprised by the dynamic range of the raw files, and the ultra fine JPGs were exceptional, especially with regard to not blowing out the highlights while keeping a good contrast range. Center weighted metering was easily on par with Nikon, and was very predictable. There is no excuse to missing the perfect horse position with the extremely fast frame rates available. I briefly tried 20, 30, and 60 FPS, but the slow buffer clearing killed that trial quickly as it's an insane amount of frames in each burst.
The 75mm f/1.8 lens focused more than quickly enough, but I was surprised at how much CA it had and how often the results were a bit soft looking wide open. I absolutely love this lens for tripod work, especially in museums. The 40-150mm f/2.8 Pro lens is perfect for this kind of event with just the right zoom range. Focus, CA, sharpness, everything was exceptional. However, if Olympus is serious about getting more sports shooters to start using their equipment, they need to come out with more extremely fast long lenses. There just isn't enough separation with the available depth of field at the distances most sports shooters need to work from. I shot both the lenses wide open, and both were noticeably softer than slightly stopped down, and even then I would have liked a narrower depth of field. The last photo illustrates what I mean and what I like to try to get in terms of separation if I can. Of course, a Nikon D5 and 200mm f/2 lens is a very hard act to follow, so I'm obviously a bit spoiled by my normal gear and I'm sure it influenced my impressions of the E-M1 Mk2. I do like it enough that the M43 system has become my primary pleasure camera since a backpack full of gear is less than half as large or heavy as the Nikon kit, which is why I added the Olympus to begin with.
Erich
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