JuanVillarreal
Well-known member
- Messages
- 173
- Reaction score
- 130
A little more than a year ago, I decided to have a second camera.
I have had for many years SLRs and then DSLRs, and back in 2008 or so I had bought a compact digital camera as my second camera (first a Sony P73, then a Nikon P50) and the results were so disappointing that I did not even carry them with me most of the time.
For a second camera, given the bad experience with compacts, I decided I needed something much better. I looked for the least expensive one that seemed to be a "real" camera, and found I could have the E-M10 II for some US$700 with two lenses (14-42mm and 40-150mm), that had an OVF and could be set to manual.
When I received the camera, I was amazed that it could not only be set to manual, but had dual dials to make the manual settings (and partially manual, like Aperture priority) with ease and speed. This makes it a much better camera for me than the D5100 I had at some time.
I have not tested its focusing on moving objects, and never intend to, as it is not my main camera and reviews have indicated it is a weak spot for the E-M10.
In use, I feel it like a good alternative to my D610, and got good results on a trip where I did not want to change lenses, so I used it with the 14-42mm, and left a 150-600mm on the D610. It was daylight, and to my eye the results were just as good on both.
On another occasion I was shooting a concert, and found myself using ISO 3200 to 6400 and a 50mm f1.4 on the E-M10, so, while i took it along as a backup, it would have been useless.
While low light capability is mostly a result of the size of the sensor and the aperture of the lenses, something I do see as a design limitation is that I have not been able to set the flash manually. For fill-in flash I would like to be able to set the flash manually to change the ratio of available to flash light and could not find the way. I can, of course set the speed and aperture so that the flash sees more or less light and automatically adjust, but I like the manual setting much more.
Something that is not in the camera itself but is still quite important is the software. Viewer 3 is, for me a real drawback. It uses the idea of a personal photo library. If you want to see a photo, you have to import it to the one library. This works well if you have a small number of photos, but once you have enough to want them to be in different media, it just does not work anymore. Also, it is a quite primitive program, with very few features. I used a free program to edit my raw files, RawTherapee, that works much better.
All my comments are just as valid for the OMD E-M10 mark III.
Overall, I am very impressed. The limitations compared to the big camera are all much less than I expected.
I have had for many years SLRs and then DSLRs, and back in 2008 or so I had bought a compact digital camera as my second camera (first a Sony P73, then a Nikon P50) and the results were so disappointing that I did not even carry them with me most of the time.
For a second camera, given the bad experience with compacts, I decided I needed something much better. I looked for the least expensive one that seemed to be a "real" camera, and found I could have the E-M10 II for some US$700 with two lenses (14-42mm and 40-150mm), that had an OVF and could be set to manual.
When I received the camera, I was amazed that it could not only be set to manual, but had dual dials to make the manual settings (and partially manual, like Aperture priority) with ease and speed. This makes it a much better camera for me than the D5100 I had at some time.
I have not tested its focusing on moving objects, and never intend to, as it is not my main camera and reviews have indicated it is a weak spot for the E-M10.
In use, I feel it like a good alternative to my D610, and got good results on a trip where I did not want to change lenses, so I used it with the 14-42mm, and left a 150-600mm on the D610. It was daylight, and to my eye the results were just as good on both.
On another occasion I was shooting a concert, and found myself using ISO 3200 to 6400 and a 50mm f1.4 on the E-M10, so, while i took it along as a backup, it would have been useless.
While low light capability is mostly a result of the size of the sensor and the aperture of the lenses, something I do see as a design limitation is that I have not been able to set the flash manually. For fill-in flash I would like to be able to set the flash manually to change the ratio of available to flash light and could not find the way. I can, of course set the speed and aperture so that the flash sees more or less light and automatically adjust, but I like the manual setting much more.
Something that is not in the camera itself but is still quite important is the software. Viewer 3 is, for me a real drawback. It uses the idea of a personal photo library. If you want to see a photo, you have to import it to the one library. This works well if you have a small number of photos, but once you have enough to want them to be in different media, it just does not work anymore. Also, it is a quite primitive program, with very few features. I used a free program to edit my raw files, RawTherapee, that works much better.
All my comments are just as valid for the OMD E-M10 mark III.
Overall, I am very impressed. The limitations compared to the big camera are all much less than I expected.
