FeDost
Active member
I bought this camera with the 17mm f1.8 as a kit while traveling through different Asian countries, for this trip, I took with me only an old and "dusty" Ricoh GR (who died a few months later).
The first impressions were good, great image stabilization, fast autofocus, Hi Res mode, weather sealing, and compactness made me believe that this camera would be perfect for me but (SPOILER) soon I find out that I was wrong.
The build quality is not bad, wheels are easy to easy to be accidentally moved, dials are made of plastic and up and down plate in magnesium.
The first thing I did was importing some shots (raw) that I took on the way to my hostel. At first sight, the IQ didn't convince me, in Hi Res mode is a bit better but I shoot 99% handheld and I take my little tripod with me only if I know that I will need it. The images weren't sharp as I expected, maybe the Ricoh GR and other Fujis cameras spoiled me so I thought that maybe I just need to get used to it. I decided to care less about getting sharp images but another thing started bothering me: the Dynamic Range in post production.
When I imported the first shots on Lightroom I didn't find any big issues, those shots were taken in good light conditions, the lights and colors handling wasn't great for me, but I tried to convince myself again that this is a different camera and I need time to learn to use it properly and get used to it.
I then started trying to set up the most comfortable configuration for my shooting style but soon I find out that the Olympus menu is quite complicated and doesn't allow me to fully customize the Fn buttons; for example: in aperture priority, I wanted the ability to change ISO on the front wheel and aperture on the back wheel. but that wasn't possible, on the front wheel I only could keep exposure compensation or white balance. Eventually, I ended up with exposure compensation.
There are other buttons that are impossible to customize, like the one on in the right hand side of the lens which is used for depth of field preview, in alternative I could put the ISO settings there but... no.
Talking about ISO, the performances are pretty bad. Is true that this camera have one of the best stabilization on the market but in some situations is just not enough and images taken with ISO above 1600 shows some less in details looking "waxed". Also shooting at slow shutter speed could be good for stills but for moving people or objects is not good, but I guess that depends on what picture you want to make.
Recovering lights on dark images is terrible, once I started moving the selector on Lightroom I seen heavy purple fringing; with the Ricoh GR I could only see something like that in a dark image at 6400 or 12800 ISO. I'm not comparing the two cameras because it wouldn't be fair, I expected the low light performances wouldn't be the same as the GR but 1600 is kinda too low for me, I like shooting in dark conditions.
The last thing which makes me decide to sell this camera was the 4:3 format sensor, I realized that is not my cup of tea, I prefer much more the 3:2 format, I know I could easily set up this format from the camera settings but I like to use the entire size of the sensor, also, by cropping a 16mpx image I would lose more details and doesn't seems a good idea to me.
In conclusion, I think this camera and other similar are just not for me. Don't get me wrong, this is a great camera but for my shooting taste is better if I look somewhere else to enjoy taking pictures.
The first impressions were good, great image stabilization, fast autofocus, Hi Res mode, weather sealing, and compactness made me believe that this camera would be perfect for me but (SPOILER) soon I find out that I was wrong.
The build quality is not bad, wheels are easy to easy to be accidentally moved, dials are made of plastic and up and down plate in magnesium.
The first thing I did was importing some shots (raw) that I took on the way to my hostel. At first sight, the IQ didn't convince me, in Hi Res mode is a bit better but I shoot 99% handheld and I take my little tripod with me only if I know that I will need it. The images weren't sharp as I expected, maybe the Ricoh GR and other Fujis cameras spoiled me so I thought that maybe I just need to get used to it. I decided to care less about getting sharp images but another thing started bothering me: the Dynamic Range in post production.
When I imported the first shots on Lightroom I didn't find any big issues, those shots were taken in good light conditions, the lights and colors handling wasn't great for me, but I tried to convince myself again that this is a different camera and I need time to learn to use it properly and get used to it.
I then started trying to set up the most comfortable configuration for my shooting style but soon I find out that the Olympus menu is quite complicated and doesn't allow me to fully customize the Fn buttons; for example: in aperture priority, I wanted the ability to change ISO on the front wheel and aperture on the back wheel. but that wasn't possible, on the front wheel I only could keep exposure compensation or white balance. Eventually, I ended up with exposure compensation.
There are other buttons that are impossible to customize, like the one on in the right hand side of the lens which is used for depth of field preview, in alternative I could put the ISO settings there but... no.
Talking about ISO, the performances are pretty bad. Is true that this camera have one of the best stabilization on the market but in some situations is just not enough and images taken with ISO above 1600 shows some less in details looking "waxed". Also shooting at slow shutter speed could be good for stills but for moving people or objects is not good, but I guess that depends on what picture you want to make.
Recovering lights on dark images is terrible, once I started moving the selector on Lightroom I seen heavy purple fringing; with the Ricoh GR I could only see something like that in a dark image at 6400 or 12800 ISO. I'm not comparing the two cameras because it wouldn't be fair, I expected the low light performances wouldn't be the same as the GR but 1600 is kinda too low for me, I like shooting in dark conditions.
The last thing which makes me decide to sell this camera was the 4:3 format sensor, I realized that is not my cup of tea, I prefer much more the 3:2 format, I know I could easily set up this format from the camera settings but I like to use the entire size of the sensor, also, by cropping a 16mpx image I would lose more details and doesn't seems a good idea to me.
In conclusion, I think this camera and other similar are just not for me. Don't get me wrong, this is a great camera but for my shooting taste is better if I look somewhere else to enjoy taking pictures.
