Jman13 Offline Upload & Sell: On
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OM-D E-M1 Rolling Impressions | |
Well, I have the E-M1 in my hands for a week, and took it out for a tiny bit of a spin last night. Thought I\'d do a first impressions type post and add any other pertinent thoughts leading up to my full review.
The camera:
While I admit it isn\'t the best looking camera from the front, it looks good from the back, and that\'s how you see it when you\'re using it. The grip and rear thumb rest/grip is also extremely comfortable. The contouring of the grip conforms exactly to the way I hold a camera. Really nice. If you have larger hands, you\'ll probably wish the camera was about a 1/2 inch taller, though.
It is a small camera, though a little larger than the E-M5. It\'s a good compromise in size for comfortable use of controls without being too big (like the GH3).
There are so many buttons and dials and switches and direct controls that it can be a bit overwhelming. I spent a while setting the camera up to my preferences, and I\'m starting to get a feel for where everything is, but it\'ll be a bit of a learning process. The good news is that all the controls are very accessible and fall to your fingers naturally. I have a feeling when I start remembering to flick the 1/2 switch back to position 1 after changing the ISO, I\'ll start operating this thing very quickly.
Needless to say, the camera is exceptionally well built. It\'s completely solid without a single creak or flex anywhere in the body. It just feels like you\'re holding a solid block of metal (with a comfy rubber grip). The mode dial has a great resistance and the push button lock is a great idea. I don\'t generally lock my dials, but being able to choose whether it\'s locked or not is nice.
AF is predictably fast. I haven\'t had time to extensively test continuous AF, but I did do some limited testing. Indoors with my daughter running full bore at me in dim light with the 25/1.4 yielded basically nothing of use. Of course, this would be hard for any camera. Outdoors, I did test the AF on some passing cyclists and it performed pretty well. I had a few series where the camera didn\'t quite pick up tracking, though that could be just as much my fault as the camera\'s. On this sequence, I took 7 shots, and all 7 are in perfect focus, at near 100mm, f/2.8. The shot below is the final shot in the sequence. While not an ultra challenging test, it\'s the first time I\'ve used a mirrorless camera that could do this.
Image quality at first blush looks the same as the E-M5. Some noise at base ISO, good dynamic range and color. I have to say, I\'m beginning to be spoiled by the output of my Fuji cameras, as with the E-M1 and the GX7, my first thought when viewing base ISO images is \"Wow, these are pretty noisy.\" Of course, they are fine, and will never show noise in a print or on screen at this ISO, but I do notice it more when I\'ve gone through a stretch shooting with my Fuji cams, and since I got the Speed Booster and such, I actually hadn\'t shot with any of my m4/3 stuff since I finished my GX7 review.
Overall, though, my first impression is that I really like this camera. The GX7 I liked a lot too, but it took me about 5 days to really start to dig it. This took about 10 minutes. It\'s wonderfully constructed and gives you so much control at your fingertips. The remote control aspect on WiFi is improved over the E-P5 too, so that\'s a nice surprise....essentially the same level of control as the Panasonic cameras over WiFi now.
Three other quick shots from last night (not a great night for artistic merit from me):
My daughter acting like a doofus (she was making all sorts of strange stares into the camera. Love it.)
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