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Upgrade from Olympus E-P3?

Started May 20, 2015 | Questions thread
haslo
haslo Regular Member • Posts: 411
Re: Upgrade from Olympus E-P3?
1

I used to own the E-P3. I upgraded to the E-M5 when it came out, and later got the E-M1.

With the E-P3, I had auto ISO set to cap at 1250. Noise was unacceptable to me beyond that point - I wasn't able to remove it after that without serious degradation in image quality.

When I switched to the E-M5, that ISO cap went up to 2500. To me, the E-M5 had about a stop better low light performance than the E-P3. With the E-M1, the cap went up further and I now shoot auto ISO capped at 3200. Here are a few shots with the E-M1 at ISO 3200:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/glodjib/16701065056/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/glodjib/17142725660/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/glodjib/17196919978/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/glodjib/17384724995/

Apart from the image quality, there's also the controls. The E-P3 essentially has one and a half control wheel (only counting the one to the right of the display for half because it's so fiddly) for quickly changing settings. The E-P5, E-M10 and other newer models all have two real wheels, and the E-P5, E-M5ii and E-M1 also have the 2x2 control scheme that makes changing ISO (and white balance for JPEG shooters) a breeze. The E-M1 also has CDAF pixels that make continuous AF more accurate.

So all in all - yes, newer models (including in particular the rather similar-looking E-P5) are a substantial upgrade over the E-P3. The huge step up was the E-M5 with its new sensor (then way above the curve in terms of image quality per sensor area), upgrades since then are slightly more incremental.

 haslo's gear list:haslo's gear list
Olympus E-M1 Olympus E-M5 II Panasonic Lumix G Fisheye 8mm F3.5 Olympus M.Zuiko Digital 45mm F1.8 Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 12mm 1:2 +8 more
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