My E-M5 has to go, which alternatives?

Timur Born said:

Timur Born wrote:

"It does not achieve what I need and it does not help me (enough) to overcome shortcomings of my photographic skills."

Here we come to the last but most important part of why I may have to part with the E-M5, and maybe even M43. Everything else was just "if I don't walk around with it regularly then I don't make full use of the M43 advantages while having to live with its disadvantages". But I am ultimately not able to achieve the results that I need. Much of this is down to lack of photographic skills and takes time to learn, but there are technological hurdles presented by the E-M5 which I am not longer willing to workaround. The E-M5 is a fantastic camera, with very good sensor and performance and lots of helpful options. But most of my problems have to do with contrast-detection auto-focus and the need for fast apertures with indoor shooting (home).

Why do I need fast apertures? We have bad lighting in most of our rooms, so for any picture where I cannot or want not use flash - or want enough ambient light - I need a fast lens. Why do I need a fast lens for that? I am takings photographs of kids, they don't sit still. And when they do sit still it only happens until they notice me pointing a camera at them. So I need fast shutter times to stop down movement. And since at one point I reach the limit of ISO where images get too noisy/smeared up the way to stop down action in bad light is to use faster lenses.

I am no s*cker for shallow depth of field and mostly enjoy well composed pictures with good DOF more than shallow ones. Thing is: we have a colorful and rather messy home, especially in those rooms where my kids are mostly hanging around. So shallow depth of field combined with a focal length that magnifies the background into obscurity is a way of working around our home's shortcoming. Feel free to offer us a bigger home or clean up the mess the kids leave behind at every waking minute, but shallow depth of field in combination with meeting other people's expectations of what makes a pleasing portrait seems to be the more manageable option.

So we have kids crawling and running close to the ground in bad light with shallow depth of field. Any professional photographer would struggle with these circumstances, so what do I expect?! I expect, or rather hope for, better means to focus on small spots/eyes, better means to focus on moving targets and higher reliability of the already present methods offered by the camera.

To begin with, I expected Olympus to copy & paste their firmware code from the E-P5 that would allow to regularly use the smallest (x14) focus point on the E-M5 without having to use the Magnify button. Often this smallest AF frame is essential to focusing on eyes, hopefully even the iris and not just the eyebrows above. It may just be a single button press, but there are some unpleasant consequences. Magnify view shows less information, there are no levels, no histogram and no blinkies. And it also turns off whenever you start playback, go to the menu, want to change flash or drive settings. The latter of which now always needs several button clicks and thus makes operation awkward (notice how often I use this word here?). It would have been so easy for Olympus to implement this little already half-present function into its flagship camera - and get rid of the already *acknowledged* bugs along the way - that it became clear that they hold it back for the pure reason of saving money and making people buy the next model even for such minor improvements.

Then there is the main issue we currently face with all M43 cameras until the E-M1 hopefully resolves it with hybrid PD AF focus points. Continuous AF (AF-C) is on the border of useless for any close targets (shallower DOF). Its inner workings are so that it signals "in focus" and allows to expose while it's still hunting back and forth in such a big range that you need luck to get the correct focal plane. After focus confirmation (beep and green dot) it takes up a whooping 3 seconds until the hunting stops, but only if you manage to keep any motion out of the focus frame (including camera shake).

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Timur Born said:

Yesterday I tested a NEX-6 in AF-C and it was worlds better. I could focus in between my close hand and the far away background quickly and without any noticeable back and forth hunting. Bravo! This only was a short test, so I don't know how the NEX' AF-C works in practice, but the thing is that the E-M5's rather unsubtle hunting is always present and spoils shots.

The possible workaround are to always use burst mode or hammer on the shutter button hoping to get a good shot. I wasn't very successful with either of these and frankly don't want to sort through dozens of images every time I take casual shots of my kids, just to find the one that is in focus. So either M43 needs better means to track nearby moving targets or I need a camera with hopefully better working PD AF. Keep in mind that this is my very special usage case that is somewhat demanding for any camera and photographer. By the way, the manual warns that focusing may fail if there are no vertical lines on your subject. So there is no such thing as "cross-type" AF on the E-M5 it seems, which may or may not be a problem with certain targets or portrait/landscape orientations.

Last but not least there are the reliability issues of the helpful features already offered by the E-M5. Theoretically AF-S should be fast enough to get it right in many cases. Unfortunately focusing on the E-M5 considerably slows down in sometimes even light shadows due to the way it slows down to 30 fps in order to maintain EC preview in Live View and a brighter image in dark shadows. Unfortunately indoors it doesn't take much to make Live View and thus focusing slow down to 30 fps, and if you are using a shallow DOF combined with a small AF frame on top of that it can all be too slow to work in practice. One possible workaround is to use "Fast" frame-rates for Live View. This will keep the camera from slowing down and often makes it focus faster in even in shadow areas that "Normal" is able to capture brighter. Drawbacks of this are a far less pleasant Live View due to downsizing filters (likely bilinear) being turned off and a rather dark screen/EVF image with only limited preview capabilities in darker environments.

Don't even think about suggesting Face Detection. It's a nice feature, but lacking serious power and reliability to make regular use of it. FD on the Fujifilm X10 was more reliable than on the E-M5, giving *far* less false detections of things that don't even closely resemble faces and even being able to detect faces from the side. The E-M5 struggles a lot on detecting faces when eyebrows are hidden, part of the mouth is blocked or the subject is seen too much from the side. Eye detection more often than not focuses on the protruding eyebrows and even far worse, when no eyes are detected the E-M5 had a high tendency to focus on the protruding tip of the nose (center of face box I guess). And once you pair this all with fast lenses (shallow DOF) you absolutely have to prefocus to get a useful result out of this combination. Of course the kids already came half a meter closer in all that time it took to get the shot.

The last sentence brings me back to what I wrote before: "When they do sit still it only happens until they notice me pointing a camera at them". Turns out that the relatively silent shutter on the E-M5 is still too loud to not make everyone in the room turn their heads towards me (including my wife). Seems like I either need some electronic shutter or silent shutter mode or need to use smaller sensor cameras with much more silent shutters more often. And when M43 is still too loud to make everyone notice that they are being photographed then another advantage of the system goes down the drain. Albeit I have to admit that the very loud clicking front wheel of Canon DSLRs really spoils it a lot earlier before you even hit the shutter.

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3DrJ said:

3DrJ wrote:

Every alternative has its merits and deficiencies. It all depends on knowing what one wants to have, and can live without.

Jules.

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Silvernitrate said:

Silvernitrate wrote:

Silvernitrate said:

3DrJ wrote:

Every alternative has its merits and deficiencies. It all depends on knowing what one wants to have, and can live without.

Jules.

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Timur Born said:

Timur Born wrote:

"It's too small, it's unergonomic"

Keep in mind that these are "subjective" impressions specific to my own size (1.90m guy with relatively large palms) and not too svelte fingers.

Now that I established that in practice I mostly use the E-M5 for indoor shots with and without bounce flash I also realized that "small size" doesn't matter. It's still nice to be able to put all my camera system in my backpack along with a 17" notebook, tablet and clothes to change. But most of the time I take up the camera, go to the next room and take pics of my kids.

If you ever took up the E-M5 with FL-600R attached with one hand you will immediately notice that something is wrong. It literally nearly breaks your wrist if you try to do that via the E-M5's normal grip, because of the top-heavy lever and uneven distribution of weight over a rather small volume body. Weight distribution for the right hand might become better with the external grip attached, but there still are other issues.

Trying to grab/hold the camera by the Olympus 45/1.8 is made difficult by its small size, even with the step-up (to 52 mm) shade attached. Even the relatively large (long) 12-50 cannot comfortably rest in my left hand's palm, because of it's still smallish size, but especially because the relatively rectangular front left edge of the E-M5 pushes into the left hand's palm.

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Timur Born said:

I regularly find the weight on my left hand distributed solely on the finger that need to grab the small lens, said edge that pushes into my palm and one finger that I bow to below the body for better balance. The latter is especially necessary with the heavy flash on top, because else I have to grab the camera with my left hand really tight and find my wrist going into an awkward and finally hurtful angle. Again the external grip may help a bit, but it still won't provide more area to hold on to (or rest "more" of the thumb) on the back of the camera.

With other cameras I checked lately I noticed that the NEX-6 feels immediately comfortable to hold with the right hand with its well formed and especially rubberized grip area. NEX cameras suffer from the large lens being cramped on the smallish body, though, with little room for the fingers between grip and lens. Any smaller NEX than the 6/7 feels awkward for me and once a more heavy lens and flash is attached it likely all falls down again. Still the grip part of the NEX 6 really works and I will come back to that camera further on.

What I noticed with any DSLR kind of camera is that their "fatter" lenses are much more comfortable to hold with my whole left hand. I can rest the lens in my palm, I can use the zoom ring with more than just two fingertips and I can firmly grab on to the lens to carry the body. The latter just works with the combination of E-M5 + 12-50, though better done without flash attached. Of course it's all a lot more bulky and heavy and in the past I didn't like too pronounced grips with the way I hold cameras. After further tries I found, though, that with enough rubberized area on the back and good enough form of the front grip I don't necessarily have to put my wrist at an uncomfortable angle.

Especially when shooting from the hip - my kids are less than half my size - I am not sure yet which kind of size/lens/grip system is the most comfortable to use. With the E-M5 I usually let the camera rest on my left hand palm and keep the right hand free to use the shutter or touchscreen. Again the left edge of the E-M5's body is less than perfect for this kind of hold, the weight lever to the right side becomes uncomfortable by time and there simply isn't enough room for the right hand to grab on to while operating the camera. Trying to use the right hand solely is nearly out of the question, at least not without fear to see the camera fall down.

And even when using the E-M5 with just the (not front-heavy) 45/1.8 and no flash attached there remains the issue of all the buttons and wheels being quite cramped together for my hand-size. I would take a smaller screen in exchange for more control room anytime! It's a well thought out compromise that fits the M43 philosophy well (except for the screen size vs. button space, which is marketing). But more and more I tend to agree that M43 is more about "whole system" size than just smallish cameras. Even with a bigger body like the GH-3 you still have a smaller and lightweight system, and you still can choose to use a small M43 camera beside the large one. Other systems do not offer this flexibility.

So if I want to stay within M43 I might have to take a look at larger cameras to combine with the smallish lenses. The upcoming E-M1 also gets bigger and especially offers more room for controls, but its left hand edge is still the same. We will see how it competes once it's out.

Unfortunately there are still some more subjective drawbacks on my list.

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Timur Born said:

Timur Born wrote:

"It's too big"

While the X10 was already quite stressing the notion of "pocketable" I still took it with me out of the house far more often I find myself taking the E-M5 along. Especially during the cold months I could squeeze the X10 into a big jacket pocket where the E-M5 struggles mostly because of its hump and depending on the choice of lens. Long story short: I don't take the E-M5 with me often enough on family trips and family photos were the main reason to get into "more than iPhone" photography in the first place. This is not really a fault of the E-M5 or M43 system as they already offer one of the best size-quality ratio, but it's a problem in practice.

In the end I fear that anything bigger than an iPhone won't make it to most family trips, because with two kids we already have to carry enough and any delicate (and somewhat expensive) camera system is out of place. I once tried to carry the E-M5 around my neck with a strap and then banged my son on the head when I bowed down to him. No harm done, but still not good. So I just went and took a look at what the market has to offer in between trouser pocket small and good enough quality sensor+lens.

Albeit it would be used mostly outside in daylight, it will sometimes tack (flash) snapshots inside (when visiting other homes or any indoor kids attractions). Sensor size should ideally not be much smaller than 1/1.7" and there should be enough zoom range to catch the kids playing in the sandbox or sitting in some carnival ride, RAW processing preferred. The likes of Panasonic LX7 and Olympus XZ and anything going towards the size of my old X10 are still too big to take them along in light summer clothing without second thought.

The lens results of the Sony RX100 found here on DPR and some other sites don't find me enamoured considering its price, focal range and especially size. I know it's tiny for what it offers, but it's thicker than my wallet. The price of the MK1 has come down to 500 EUR, but it's still quite a lot for what you don't get and mainly justified by the use of its superiorly large sensor. The RX100 MK2 is listed at 750 EUR, which I feel is far too much for my usage case.

The Canon S110 is down to 230 EUR, which is a very tempting price for the smallest 1/1.7" sensor camera that even goes as wide as 24 mm (equivalent). The touchscreen is an extra that may or may not be useful. I found that I use it less than I thought, because in practice it has several drawbacks. The S120 promises faster AF times - important with moving kids - and WIFI remote control, but it's listed at the very same 500 EUR as the RX100 MK1 and double the price of the S110. Definitively too expensive in comparison.

Then comes the Panasonic LF1, a 1/1.7" sensor camera as small as the S110, sensor quality likely close to what the LX7 offers (but 12 mp), built in EVF (!) for bright sunny days and indoor use where you don't want to disturb other people with bright screens (any stage play etc), WIFI remote control, really nice control layout and zoom range up to 200 mm (equivalent). What's not to like? Well, the lack of a touchscreen is not necessarily a disadvantage, the EVF is basic (with strange color cast), but usable when needed, face detection seems to work only within limits and processing seems slow. But with the lowest available price being 375 EUR it really is a big expensive for a second take-everywhere (and maybe get broken) body when the S110 is so much cheaper.

You may wonder why I even list "WIFI" as an option to consider?! Especially in the absence of a swivel or at least tilt screen it can offer genuine practical use for remote controlling the camera whenever you need an awkward angle. This happens often when you try to take shots of kids sitting at table that face walls, try to take selfis of yourself with kids or try to take pics of kids playing close to the ground. Hold the small camera in one hand and the smartphone in the other. May be too awkward and slow in practice, but it's an option. I can also imagine holding up the LF1 switched to EVF while standing in a concert crowd and remote controlling from my phone down below. But again that's not exactly every day use.

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Rens said:

Rens wrote:

After initially dismissing this post as just another silly obsessive sounding off, I find myself sympathising with the OP, at least to some extent.

After getting the EM-5 with the idea it would go in my jacket pocket, I too am re-thinking to some extent.

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Ulric said:

Ulric wrote:

Nah, just put them in the fridge for a while to slow them down like macro photographers do with insects.

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