E-M5 lockup problems

ryan2007 wrote:

zuikowesty wrote:

I have now had several cases of lockup on my E-M5, sometimes resolved by power off/on, other times by removing the battery. Since I have never seen this in 5 years with my E-410, I am a bit worried.

There seems to be two ways to reproduce it:

1. Changing lens with power on. I've never worried about this before, but with my E-M5 it has sometimes caused a black screen required a power cycle to restore function.

2. Plugging in USB cable with power on. If the camera is not in sleep mode, the red SD card icon will appear, but it will not connect to the PC. A power cycle usually fixes this. If the camera is in sleep mode, pulling the battery is usually required.

Page 80 of the E-M5 manual does indicate that the camera is to be powered off when connecting the USB cable, but this is the first Olympus camera I have used that actually seems to require this. All others including the E-PM2 and E-410 will work fine with the camera on, and in all models with a push button power switch, connecting USB will turn the camera on if it is powered off.

Am I the only one to have this issue? Is everyone else doing it by the book, or do I have a flaky E-M5?

I would say you are doing what you really not supposed to ever do. The power should always be off to the camera when attaching or removing a lens. Same for an external flash. Same for inserting or removing the SD card.

I acknowledged this in my post. The documentation does not list a requirement for the power to be off when adding/removing the flash for either the E-M5 or the E-PM2. It does have a caution to turn off the power when changing the SD card, but then also states that it should not be changed if the red write indicator is on, indicating that an accidental insertion/removal with power on should not be catastrophic unless the card is being written to. I note that E-M5 does not have the safety switch on the SD card door that is found on some other Olympus models (like the E-410) where opening the door unmounts the card automatically, so I have been careful to only change SD cards with power off. I also format the card every time I insert it after a download to LR, as a safeguard against filesystem corruption should the card have been removed with the power on in the past. The only card corruption I have had in many years is caused by the camera battery dying during a write operation.

This goes for a $5,000 Nikon D4 body the same as any camera not matter the manufacture.

Do you turn your home computer or laptop whatever it is OFF by pulling the plug out of the wall Every time? That is what you are doing here.

I am a I.T. professional with a background in electrical engineering, and am well aware of how these things work, which is why I am also aware that it is perfectly reasonable to expect USB devices to behave according to the USB standard, which specifies hot plug capability, known as "dynamic insertion and removal". In the case of removing the SD card or USB plug on a storage device, it is recommended that the device be instructed to unmount the filesystem first. In this case, power off is the only means of unmounting the filesystem.

In the case of device insertion, the USB hot plug requirement applies. To ignore this and specify a power off condition is lazy design, especially if the design is sufficiently lazy to allow the possibility of device failure or damage with insertion or removal in a powered on state. However, I have seen this before, mostly with cameras. Canon XL series video cameras are notorious for blowing firewire circuits if the cable is inserted with the power on. Firewire is another hot plug standard that is often poorly implemented in devices.

Next, you said you read the owners manual and it tells you not to do this but want to equate it to a different camera or experience. So if you want to put your hand in the fire and think you will not get burned this time, go for it.

I simply asked what experiences others have had.

No sarcasm is meant, but you run the risk of damaging your camera/lens/flash and it potentially voiding the manufactures warrantee since it explicitly states that in the "Owners Manual" in black and white..

I take responsibilities for my actions; I thought that was pretty clear in my post. I was simply pointing out inconsistencies in behaviour across several Olympus models, and then asking if others has similar experiences with the E-M5. As I have read about other lock-up issues on the E-M5, I wanted to find out if my camera might be affected by other lockout issues that I have not yet encountered.

User manual instruction:

Memory card insertion/removal:

• E-410: access lamp not lit, power off or on
• E-PM2: power off, access lamp not lit
• E-M5: power off, access lamp not lit

USB insertion/removal: power off recommended on all models.

I will avoid having the power on when inserting the USB cable (which I have been doing generally, but not always).

However, this simply makes me dislike the position and design of the power switch on the E-M5 even more! But having just come back in from a snowy morning with a sopping wet E-M5, I definitely like the weather sealing!