Photography News Issue 64

Camera test 62

Photography News | Issue 64 | photographynews.co.uk

Verdict

Performance: IBIS system

The E-M1X’s five-axis IBIS system features a new gyro and uses the dual processors to give an even better stabilisation performance. The claim is there’s a 7.5EV benefit to using the 12-100mm f/4 lens at 100mm. This is the

35mm equivalent of 200mm, so if we generously assume 1/250sec is the minimum handheld shutter speed, then a 7.5EV benefit is 0.7secs, i.e. between 1/2sec and 1sec. Handholding to get sharp shots at such shutter speeds with

the 35mm equivalent of 200mm would be impressive, so I did some indoor and outdoor testing. It has to be said that the IBIS system does a great job. Based on my little test, Olympus’s 7.5EVclaimis justified,

but of course, as always, there are many variables when it comes to handholding. My test shots were done after a full day’s shooting and a lunch with wine. I still got great results at silly slow shutter speeds. That’s impressive.

Features 23/25 No new sensor, but great features like Handheld High Res Shot Handling 24/25 Suited my hands and handling 23/25 Excellent with exposures, AF more than competent, lovely results Value for money 21/25 stocks should be in the shops, so we’ll have a better idea of how this latest Olympus will be received by the person who matters most: the customer. But there’s no denying it’s a very capable camera with massive potential. needs very well Performance There is much to admire, enjoy and exploit in the Olympus OM-D E-M1X. I was rather taken with the Handheld High Res Shot mode. It’s not a mode to use all the time – it wouldn’t suit most subjects, anyway – but in the right situation and when a big file is needed, it works remarkably well. It still needs to be used with care, but when it worked, it worked very well indeed. There’s plenty more good stuff. The potential benefits of the 121-zone AF system are clear, the continuous shooting capacity is impressive and the vertical grip is great in use. And there’s the issue of mobility. The camera is not compact by any means, but look at the lens system. The 300mm f/4 (600mm equivalent in the 35mm format) is a pure delight, so there are plenty of advantages when it comes to lugging a long lens E-M1X outfit around. As for price, the E-M1X body is £2799 , which is competitive in the world of pro, deep-bodied cameras, but then you can buy the E-M1 Mark II with the HLD-9 grip for £1648 – over £1000 less. Of course, they offer different things, but it is a comparison some people will inevitably make. By the time you read this,

Above This was a 1.3secs at f/4.5 handheld -exposure, ISO 200 with the 12-100mm f/4 at 100mm, so the 35mm equivalent of 200mm. The enlargement of the sign shows the effectiveness of the camera’s revamped IBIS system

Above The E-M1Xwas fitted with the 12-100mmat 44mm, and the exposure was 1sec at f/5. It was calm, as you can tell from the spiderweb. Even viewed at 100%on screen, the strands are crisply recorded – remarkable. Shots taken at 2secs at f/7.1 were almost as good

but I would have thought pro shooters would prefer something more controllable and predictable and stick with single or a small zone – or use their own pattern produced with the Target Mode option. AF was generally responsive, quick and sensitive in low light. It struggled a little on high-frequency subjects. It was more twitchy on bird feathers, for example, but most systems would probably struggle.

In better light with subjects with more contrast, AF was impressively slick and accurate, locking in with very few issues. I tried various modes, but stuck mostly with single point or small zone – and those modes delivered time after time. In-body image stabilisers (IBIS) help you get sharp stills and video, so are very much a good thing. See Performance: IBIS system (above) for more on the E-M1X’s shake-

defeating skills. A really handy benefit of IBIS is the ability to capture even more from a suitable scene. Olympus’ High Res Shot mode – seen on the E-M1 Mark II and E-M5 Mark II – merges eight separate exposures into one for a high megapixel file. Between each exposure, the sensor is moved by a pixel or half a pixel, so you get much more data from a Bayer sensor, with its two green, one red and one blue pixel array. The E-M1X has High Res Shot (HRS) mode with two options: Tripod HRS and Handheld HRS modes. With Tripod HRS mode, the camera takes eight sequential shots with its electronic silent shutter. In low light, this means the exposure sequence can be several seconds. In this mode, Raws are 10,369x7776 pixels (80 megapixels) and JPEGs 8160x6120 pixels (50 megapixels). This compares with normal Raw/ JPEG shooting, where the file size is 5184x3888 pixels, ie 20 megapixels. You are limited to a top ISO of 1600 and the smallest aperture is f/8. And, of course, you need a stable camera and scene that is static. Handheld HRS mode gives Raws and JPEGs of 8160x6120 pixels (50 megapixels), so still much larger than usual. In this mode, up to 16 separate exposures are taken, with the IBIS gyro and camera’s dual processors correcting for anycamera movement between each shot. Then the images are merged. The camera locks up during the merging process. It takes about 12- 15 seconds for Handheld HRS, a few seconds longer than Tripod HRS. Because the slightest camera or subject movement of even a pixel will ruin a Tripod HRS image, there is a selectable time delay between pressing the shutter button and the beginning of the exposure. This ensures the camera has fully settled down by the time the exposure sequence begins. In Handheld HRS, IBIS detects shake and merges stabilised images, so you can have the shutter release

Performance: Focus stacking

You get a lot of camera for your money – but £2799 is a lot of money Overall

91/100

The E-M1X is a great way for Olympus to kick off its centenary Pros Build quality, handling, IBIS, High Res Shot mode, customisible AF patterns, produces sharp, correctly exposed images reliably Cons Big for an MFT camera, fixed grip won’t suit everyone, same resolution sensor as E-M1 Mark II

Focus bracketing and focus stacking (with compatible lenses) are available on the E-M1 Mark II and E-M5 Mark II. With stacking, eight exposures are shot and merged. On the E-M1X, you can choose between three to 15 separate exposures to produce the merged JPEG file. If you have Raw and JPEG image quality set, you have individual images saved in both formats so you can focus

exposure of 0.4secs at f/4. The 15 shot option was chosen, with a focusing differential of 5. This was my first focus stack with this camera, so I picked 5 on the simple premise that it was in the middle of the range. I started by focusing on the lid of the top box about 30cm from the camera and framed up with the subject well inside the frame outline in the viewfinder.

You can see from the finished stacked image that it is bigger in the frame compared to the starting images. I pressed the shutter button and let the camera do its thing. Looking at the JPEGs afterwards, I noticed the first shot was sharp on the lid, then the camera focused even closer before racking out towards infinity. The final stacked result looked spot on.

behaving as normal – or perhaps with a brief time delay – before the camera starts shooting. You can see the IBIS system working when you take Handheld HRS shots. For flash shooting, a time delay can also be set between each exposure to allow for flash recycling. I tried Tripod High Res Shot mode to assess the benefits and also tried with Handheld HRS to check out the practical issues. See the accompanying panel and images to see how the OM-D E-M1X’s HRS performed.

merge in software in post-production. In this example, a 12-100mm f/4 lens at 70mmwas used with an