Upgrade to E-P5 or E-M10 mk II or GX80/85 or something else?

AznJunkie wrote:

It’s only an upgrade if you’re needing the extra features that the other cameras offers. If the E-PL6 is lacking feature(s) you need then it would make sense to upgrade to a new camera that has the feature(s). I mainly take photos of my baby (now toddler). I started out with a E-PL6 and I got a major case of GAS and went crazy buying camera bodies and lens. I used the VF-4 on the E-PL6 and really liked it. Then I bought a M10 Mark I since I wanted the EVF to be built-in instead of an add-on. Then I bought a M5 Mark II on Cyber Monday and just recently picked up a Panasonic GX85 for a great price. So in a 1 year time frame, I tried 4 different cameras. Right now I still have the Panasonic GX85 and the Olympus M5 Mark II.

With all those cameras, IMO, the image quality look very similar. I use JPEG out of camera and I don’t use RAW. Most of those pictures get saved onto the PC or ends up on Facebook. What sets each camera a part are the features. So you need to ask yourself do you want or need those features.

The EVF on the Olympus cameras are much better than the one on the GX85(GX80). I can’t use the EVF too long on the GX85 as it will give me a headache. Since you don’t use the EVF too often that shouldn’t be an issue. The body is slightly larger than the E-PL6 but it feel better in the hand (to me).

As IBIS, all of those cameras will be much better than the E-PL6. The GX85 isn’t as good as the M5 Mark II on the long lenses but it great for videos.

As I said earlier what is it that you’re needing/wanting that the E-PL6 can’t fulfill? I’m really like the GX85 right now and I do find myself using the GX85 more than the M5 Mark II for some reason.

I completely recognize that the sensor on E-PL6 is pretty close to as good as you can get in an MFT body. In fact I'd probably be happy with a worse sensor if I hadn't used this one. I'm really not expecting a bump in image quality but a bump in features.

Then again I did already joke to my girlfriend that if I'm buying whatever I'm planning to buy now, I'm probably buying an E-M1mk2 next year. I truly hope it really was a joke and not a self-told prophecy.

The thing is:

- The 5-axis stabilization has been hyped so much that I really want to see if it is as good as it sounds like. Even one more stop over the really basic 2-axis stabilization in my E-PL6 would be quite useful occasionally, but I am expecting two at least, which would be amazing.

- E-PL6 has just one control dial. This has been passable in aperture or shutter priority, but in manual mode when I occasionally play around with remote triggering a flash it's pretty annoying. That said, being able to tweak exposure compensation more easily might be nice for A and S modes too.

- Having mentioned flashes, I use the tiny flash that came with my camera to optically trigger an off camera flash that's bigger than my camera. It's somewhat annoying to fool around with a separate flash for this, though it's still a very minor issue.

- The viewfinder. I rarely use my VF-4 now. I keep wondering if I'd simply use a VF, even an inferior one, more just because it'd be always ready. VF-4 is a nice viewfinder, but it's also a huge extruding piece of plastic on top of a tiny E-PL6. It's not something I like to keep on the camera unless I know I need it. Then again wearing glasses seems to be a real problem for using a viewfinder in the first place. VF-4 feels much better without glasses, but I have fairly strong astigmatism in both of my eyes and that's not something the diopter setting can compensate for.

There are also minor other features I'm excited to try. Focus bracketing sounds great and apparently GX80/85 has focus stacking, which sounds even better. There are some other things like WiFi too, which I've slowly began to yearn for.

I wouldn't even discount video completely. I actually did video a friends wedding once. She did know my lack of skill and the general lack of equipment and I think she had sufficiently low expectation that she was positively surprised. However, I am still annoyed by the results myself. Just 60fps and proper IBIS during video would've made it look much better. The image quality was also adequate at best. I suppose some of the washed out colors might've been fixable in post, but I had even less idea on how to edit video then than I do now.

But, having written all that, I'm pretty sure some of the hunger for features I listed above is simply GAS.