EM5 needs a FW update!

Sorry for the title, but I need to get some attention, as it seems many people around here are not concerned with what concerns me.

To make a long story short, when the OMD is used with some Panasonic lenses (all of my lenses are Panasonic), aka the 14 2.5, 25 1.4 and 20 1.7 (and probably many others), it behaves oddly once the camera decides to enter the "flicker reduction mode".

In normal circumstances, when the camera is showing the live view picture, the lens is wide open. In this case, the camera and the lens behave perfectly fine. Focus is quick, there is no noticeable delay when depressing the shutter button (besides autofocus times of course), and there is no "light pumping" on the screen.

But in some circumstances, like when shooting under incandescent light, the camera wants to reduce flicker, and hence it closes the aperture so that it can use a shutter speed that is in phase with the flicker. Great idea! Flicker is reduced (I didn't care the least), but now the aperture is closing and opening as the camera is pointed at different subjects.(please not you can force the camera to enter this mode by pointing the camera at something very bright ant then very dark consecutively. Generally, after a couple of seconds, you can hear the aperture closing down).

It also happens in bright daylight, but not because of an excess of light, but more so because of light changes. Once it enters this "mode", things get really annoying:

- First, with some lenses, you can hear a distinct "rattlesnake" (well known) sound coming from the lens aperture. It's very noticeable on the 14 2.5 and the 25 1.4. For a mirrorless camera that is supposed to be discrete, that's a big problem, imo. The focus might be silent, the shutter might be quiet, but the aperture blades make a very, very annoying sound. People around get distracted very easily.

-Second, as the aperture is somewhat closed, when you try to autofocus, the camera opens the aperture (wide open) to make the focus adjustments. At this moment, the LCD suffers some kind of "light pumping", but it is not due to the aperture change (because if you use the preview function to check DOF, you don't see the same happening). I think we can blame the framerate "boost" to ensure faster autofocus. Strangely, it's not really noticeable when the camera does live view wide open, but it's very visible once it stops the lens down.

- And third, as a result, the lens has to run through the cycle "closed, open to focus, close to selected value", which takes quite a while with some lenses. You can definitely feel the difference. My video shows the problem. And while I consider the shutter delay perfectly adequate when the camera works "normally", it becomes annoyingly slow once it "rattlesnakes", making me miss the decisive moment.

I know, Olympus says the problem comes from Panasonic lenses, but that's too easy.

Indeed, once the camera begins to behave like this, you can just get back to the "normal" by shutting down the camera. And after that, it works perfectly for a while, until the camera decides to enter this "mode" again. So I guess it's not necessary at all. At least not when shooting in bright sunlight (I understand it might be useful to reduce flicker).

Also, I used the EPM2 for a couple of days, and noticed the same behaviour, but there was an option in the menu to shut off the "flicker reduction" feature. And doing so, the camera just kept doing live view wide open, perfectly.

So the solution is only a small FW update away. Please, Olympus, please sort this out, as it is one thing that is really driving me nuts, as someone who switched from a DSLR to µ 4/3. I really love the OMD, but this bug (because to me it is a bug!) could really push me back to the good old DSLR.

And to fellow µ4/3 users, I would like you to share your experience with your own camera/lens combination. Does it bother you, did you notice the issue?

Thanks!

Link to the video:

This was shot with the OMD and the 14 2.5. Oh and you can also notice a camera freeze at shut down. Noticed some of these also. Yeah anyway...
http://imageshack.us/clip/my-videos/198/31qwdfygduuzyhzywdieib.mp4/