A nifty little camera

BudMe wrote:

I got this back in 2015 with the original 14-42mm F 3.5-5.6 EZ lens. Unfortunately, the kit lens didn't last long but was able to get both the 12-50mm and the 40-150mm ED lens on time. I still use this camera and honestly, it's great. Even though it does not have high-end specs it has the specs I need as I do photography as my main hobby.

I have and still use the EPL5 which is, essentially, the same camera.

What made a huge improvement for me was the Panasonic 12-32. The lens OIS is far superior to the camera's IBIS.

Allan

Allan Brown wrote:

BudMe wrote:

I got this back in 2015 with the original 14-42mm F 3.5-5.6 EZ lens. Unfortunately, the kit lens didn't last long but was able to get both the 12-50mm and the 40-150mm ED lens on time. I still use this camera and honestly, it's great. Even though it does not have high-end specs it has the specs I need as I do photography as my main hobby.

I have and still use the EPL5 which is, essentially, the same camera.

What made a huge improvement for me was the Panasonic 12-32. The lens OIS is far superior to the camera's IBIS.

Allan

Yes, I had great fun with the almost exactly the same as E-PL6, the E-PL5.

Downsides were the IBIS and the chance of shutter shock.

The IBIS did provide me with 3 stops of stabilisation at any focal length but I chose to use Panasonic 14-45mm and 45-150mm so could abandon the IBIS and use their OIS which gave the same 3 stops but without the very disturbing coffee grinder noises of the IBIS if I attempted any long exposures (up to 2 seconds).

Only rarely happened but occasional shutter shock did spoil or at a minimum soften some images.

In my case in Australia in 2014/2015 the E-P5 dropped in price below that of the E-PL5 so bought a pair of them, updated the firmware, employed the zero second anti-shock and the great 5 axis IBIS and suddenly I was getting more reliable results.

Not that the E-PL5/6 is a bad camera, its 16MP sensor delivers nicely, when all things go right. Just those occasional shock and IBIS issues were the slight spoilers. Still a good camera to use (with care).

My notes in my Timeline page for the E-PL6 say "Minor update to E-PL5 model, initially sold only in Japan. Some new firmware features." so obviously I thought at the time the differences were too minor to mention. I think that it had added the level feature(?).

Olympus USA long has confusing data for the E-PL6 and were saying it has 3 axis IBIS when it always only ever had the old 2 axis IBIS.

Coming back to my E-PL5 after using the E-P5 is an odd experience to deal with the 16:9 screen (I never use my VF-2 any more on either camera). So For the E-PL5 I set the jpeg to 16:9 ratio so my live view is better to look at than it is at 4:3 scrunched up on the screen. As I always now shoot raw+jpeg then the full 4:3 is retrieved from the raw file to make better choices as to cropping or aspect ratio.

That review button being on the top left of the E-PL5/6 always takes me a while to get used to after any other camera.

While using the E-PL5 I did buy the 12-40/2.8 and that made a world of difference for me after the Olympus or Panasonic kit lenses. But as mentioned, the sensible idea now would be to put my tiny Panasonic 12-32mm on the E-PL5 and have a bulkier than a compact camera but way better than a compact camera to carry at times I need light-weight.

Always interested in your words on the Olympus bodies.  I just would like to note that the propensity to shift button positions on updated models - especially in the same series - is about as useful as shifting deck chairs on the Titanic.

Most of Panasonic's RF-Style bodies have seemingly tried to regularise the placement of their buttons and wheels which has been helpful when using different bodies in the dark and using finger memory feel.

They seem to have messed about with the playback button which I tend to use more because I never allow auto-playback. The GX7-GX85-GX9 wandered from its GX7 position (reversed with its next door neighbour) - but maybe now standardised.

I can see a some-sort of effort to try and make the button and wheel interface familiar across the different bodies - which is good.  But not necessarily to continue with the mashup of the top plate when trying to fit in a mechanical EV dial on the exceptionally intuitive control structure of the previous models.

Falls into the category if it works well then don't fool around with it.