News Olympus OM-D E-M1Mark III hands on PN Editor Will Cheung takes the new camera out and about; here’s his early verdict
HIGH-RES COMPARISON
access to Live Composite, Live Bulb and Live Time from the Bmode setting on the exposuremode dial. There aremanymore changes under the bonnet andwhile the benefit of these is not possible to assess in this quick hands-on they should have considerable practical benefit in the longer term. For example, Olympus’s Super SonicWave Filter, which vibrates at many thousand times a second to keep the sensor clean, has gained a new coating for evenmore effective cleaning and the OM-D E-M1 Mark III has USB charging and the camera is fully usable during charging. This will come in very handy – say when using Starry Sky AF and doing a six-hour Live Composite exposure. I didn’t get the chance to explore the built-inND filter but its potential is clear.
I’ve spent time with the Olympus OM-D E-M5Mark II, the EM-5Mark III and the E-M1Mark II recently, so picking up the OM-D E-M1Mark III I felt immediately at home. Compared with the E-M1 Mark II there are some physical control changes and while these are seemingly minor they aremost welcome. So, now there’s a dedicated ISO button that sits on top of the right hand grip for the thumb andmakes altering ISOwhile the camera is up to the eye easy and there’s an exposure compensation button next to the shutter release. But perhaps the most welcome control is the arrival on the camera back of what Olympus call amulti-selector and what most people call a joystick whichmakes shifting the AF point around the 121 sensor grid intuitive and fast. There’s also direct
Normal full resolution
Handheld high-res shot
Handheld high-res shot works impressively and the camera’s image stabiliser delivers a fine performance.The exposure for both shots here was 1/8sec at f/8 and ISO400with the 12-40mm f/2.8 at the 12mmsetting
5184x3888 pixels of normal files. Using a Lexar 2000X 64GB card, high-res files take around 15secs to write and in that time the camera is locked up. I tried handheld high-res shot mode with the 12-40mm f/2.8 lens shooting with exposures as slow as 1/8sec. The files processed in Olympus Viewer 3 looked lovely and checking out images on screenwith the same subject size showed considerable benefit in terms of crispness and detail rendition. A couple of hours and a few hundred shots on a dismal grey and chilly day is not the ideal situation to pass judgement on a new camera and we’ll have a full test coming up soonwhere you’ll find our verdict. That said, it’s true that if a camera behaves with credit in such poor light, it’s going to really impress when the conditions aremore amenable and on this showing it’s a camera test I am looking forward to. olympus.co.uk
was visible again the face detect system performed its magic. In continuous AF, face detect tracked the subject as theymoved nicely too. Using the touchscreen, you can also select which face you want to focus onwhen you have several people in the frame. For general shooting the AF was very responsive and even handled areas of plain tone in low light well, and the AF joystick was useful when the systemdid occasionally not latch on swiftly. The camera’s 20-megapixel resolution is good enough for most occasions but the high-res shot option has great potential with static subjects. The camera’s enhanced in-body image stabilisation (IBIS) comes into play here. The sensor is moved between each individual exposure and 16 frames are merged to produce a higher resolution file. Handheld high-res shot modes gives 50-megapixel files which open up to 8160x5120pixels compared with the
There aremany features I managed to try and enjoyed. The AF system is very impressive in terms of versatility as well as performance. Having 121 cross-type points covering around 75% of the total image area with several zone options including five/nine or 25 zones, and custom target mode where you select an AF patternwithin the 11x12 grid to suit the subject, is really handy. Face Priority/Eye Priority AF works very well. I was tracking people walking around the roomand the camera’s AF systemwas very sticky, accurately keeping track of people as theymoved around in the frame. When a subject the camera was tracking turned away, the face detect box latched on to something else in the frame, but as soon as a face
IMAGES In the dim light of the Palm House the ISO had to be set to high value but there was no issue with image quality which rates highly. Shot on 60mm f/2.8 macro lens with an exposure of 1/50sec at f/2.8 at ISO 2000
4 Photography News | Issue 74
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