Om-D vs GH3 for stills image quality, which is better?

Hi,

I owned a silver EM-5. Took it on a trip to Iceland. Got terrific photos but had real difficulties with the handling. . . which I have reported before, small buttons, difficult (or impossible) to use with gloves, wheels that move too easily so that I had to shut off camera when placing in bag, etc, all things well documented in this forum. Always used it with the horizontal (non battery compartment grip) and generally the Pan 12-35 2,8 so weight size about same as GH3. As a long time Oly 4/3 E1/E3/E5 and Pan L1 user never really had problems with menu, finder, etc.

Bought the GH3 and shortly thereafter sold the OM-D. Absolutely loved handling of the GH3, buttons more easily pressed, wheels, less likely to move, thought I had bought a mini E5. (I actually had more problems with the GH3 menu than EM-5) and initially thought still IQ (I shoot very little video) was equal to that of the EM5 but. . .

Over time, I began to notice much more frequent highlight overexposure as on some of my earlier E series cameras and was not able to fix it as easily. I am sure some of this might have been fixable. I did miss IBIS on lenses like the 60 & 75 but the ergonomics for me were outstanding and hope that Oly uses similar controls on an OMD pro version.

Anyway I ended up buying a black EM-5 on a sale for about $800 and found again perfect expsures, better DR right out of the camera and virtually no highlight burnout. I noticed that unconsciously I had started using my OMD for all of my photos (with that system) and not using the GH3 in spite of the fact I preferred the handling, Both cameras I used with the same Lumix 12-35. I sold the GH3.

Perhaps had I shot more video, I would arrive at a different conclusion, but for me (and YMMV) I got better results for stills, more easily with the EM5 in spite of what I have described as its very poor handling. If these 2 cameras utilize the same sensor (which from my experience I now doubt), they have vastly different processing engines.

Don't get me wrong, both cameras are terrific and clearly rival the best from the APC crowd, but to answer your specific question, I preferred the output from the EM5. Maybe I had a lemon, maybe I need more experience with the GH3, but in spite of the handling issues, my brain appeared to prefer the stills output on the EM5

just my $0.02

Ed