A first walk out with an E-P5. Some photos and thoughts

tinternaut wrote:

When Olympus launched this camera, their asking price was absurd.

Hi Jason, Excellent review and terrific photos. I love reviews with photos. A year ago it was the E-P5 that I was on the point to buy when Sony announced A7, and at time for the same price I went for full-frame. Today decent used E-P5s can be bought on ebay for 500 euros, a much more reasonable price. This comment of mine is the second part of a series started with http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/54273372

I bought the E-P5 body only, and this weekend I've been using it with the 45mm f1.8 (my favourite lens that really shouldn't be my favourite lens, because I'm generally a wide person)

My legacy Olympus PEN F 38mm/f1.8 is just a little wider. The 38mm worked quite fine with the movie tele-converter (MTC) function, which along with IBIS are the main reason I am evaluating E-P5 after one year I first had it in my hands.

Once you have touched and used a Made in Japan, pure metal and glass PEN F lens, all other metalized plastic lens look terribly cheesy.

My other lens for the E-P5 is the shockingly great Olympus PEN F 150mm/f4. These are the only two PEN F lenses that are really reasonably priced: the others are unreasonably expensive, but hold their price like gold.

The PEN F 150mm is a perfect match to the E-P5.

cheap and nasty feeling battery door . Other than this, holding the E-P5 mostly feels like you're holding a quality camera.

After I read your review, I had a look at the door, and you are totally right. Unbelievable, that a reputable camera maker uses such an inferior part in a premium price camera. I agree the body feels like a quality camera. I have the Fujifilm X-A1, too, and it holds quite well against the E-P5, though.

The E-P5 is even smaller than the smallest Fujifilm X ILC, the X-A1. The great feature of the legacy PEN F lenses is that they are really small and can be used on both m43 as well as APS-C mirrorless cameras.

The EVF of the E-P5 is removable.

my initial impression of this camera's IBIS?

I am terribly impressed with the video IBIS implementation: I think just these two features, video IBIS and movie tele-converter, make the 500-euro price reasonable.

http://youtu.be/3IgIb8MCWRQ

http://youtu.be/xhQhjjKpP-M

These two videos are purely technology experiments. I can see a huge potential in these functions. Am I going to buy an E-P5? Definitely not before Christmas. I am a 100% manual focus shooter, and since I used the brilliant focus peaking (FP) implementation in A7, I'd love to have decent FP in my cameras. Unfortunately, the FP in E-P5 is not very impressive: the EVF/LCD slows down to a near unusable level for (even slowly) moving targets. For a number of static subject the FP in E-P5 is very useful, though. FP does not work in movie mode either, and not in magnified view in still image modes. I wonder, if Olympus is going to add better FP in its forthcoming models.

Have you, Jason, tried the V4 EVF? I found it terrific, nearly as excellent as the EVF on the A7. What I loved is that the EVF is tilting upwards, a brilliant feature for videographers.

A terrific mini video-rig: IBIS, tilting touch screen, tilting high quality EVF, 1080/30p, small form factor, magnified view, movie tele-converter, focus peaking (not in movie mode, though)

A number of reviewers were not happy with the video quality, but I am not that picky: I am actually very happy with the 1080/30p video image quality of the E-P5, even the tele-converter mode delivered useful footage.

This shot was taken from a fast moving train with a legacy manual focus 150mm lens.

All the best and have fun, Miki