Monday, February 4, 2013

Olympus E-PM2 Experience

I have now been shooting with the Olympus E-PM2 for over a month now and can share with you what I think of it.  I will not go into technical details and will concentrate on what is important to photographers.

Red Light London, E-PM2 with Panasonic 20mm F1.7

The E-PM2 is very similar in size to the E-PM1, but it is noticeably worse in build quality.  It does not feel as solid.  For me, it is not a big deal as it is still quite good.  There is an additional Fn button which can be customised.  This is very useful and a real improvement over the E-PM1 with one button that can be customised.  The rear screen is the same 16:9 ratio but it is now a touch screen.  I must say the touch screen is very good and I think it is a real improvement to the usability of the camera.  The touch to focus function is a very useful feature during video recording when you want to change focus point.  The touch shutter function is also useful, as it does not require you to go into the menu to select a new focus point.  There is now a delete button which saves a lot of time if you are deleting a number of photos after a day of shooting.  Overall, the camera is much easier to use than the E-PM1.


London Eye - E-PM2 with Panasonic 20mm F1.7

A feature I find very frustrating on the E-PM1 was the internal audio recording level during video.  The recording level cannot be adjusted and most of the time it works well.  Problem occurs when you’re in a very quiet or loud environment.  When it is very quiet, it struggles to pick up any sound.  On the flip side, when it is very loud, like shooting a live band, the recording level is easily saturated and you end up with distorted sound.  With the E-PM2, the sound recording level can be change to Low, Standard or High.  I’ve yet to fully test this, but the ability to adjust the recording volume is a must after my experience of E-PM1.

London Underground - E-PM2 with Panasonic 20mm F1.7


Another useful feature that is missing from the E-PM1 is an orientation sensor.  After a day of shooting I hate to rotate each photo on the computer.  That short coming is now fixed.  Thank god.

E-PM2 with Panasonic 20mm F1.7

The biggest change is the imaging sensor.  It now shares the senor with the OM-D EM-5, the flagship camera from Olympus right now.  I’ve done some low light tests for noise and sharpness and I can say it performs basically the same as my Canon EOS 650D, maybe a little better at ISO 3200 and just as bad as each other at ISO 6400.  You can see the comparison between the two cameras at an earlier blog HERE.  This is significant as the E-PM1 uses a very old (by digital standard) sensor and noise level is noticeable above ISO 800.  Now I am happy to shoot at up to ISO 1600 knowing there is very little and up to ISO 3200 knowing there will be some noise, but still happy.

E-PM2 with Olympus 45mm F1.8


Some people will rave on about M43 cameras will never outperform FF cameras because of its smaller sensors.  They are right, but I don’t spend my life looking at every photo at 100%.  Ten years ago I was using film SLR and ISO 400 film was the highest I shot with.  Anything higher resulted in very grainy images.  With my Panasonic 20mm F1.7 lens, I have a very portable set up I am happy to carry with me all day and get amazing results without flash.  Since I bought an E-PL1 two years ago, I’ve not carried my Canon SLR gears around with me.  I only use my SLR when I go to photo shoots in a studio environment or when I need fast focus tracking.  The progress of digital technology is still marching on.  In another ten years’ time, I am sure some people will moan about the noise level of M43 cameras at ISO 128,000.  The E-PM2 is the first small camera that I am happy to carry around which has the image quality I am fully happy with.  The E-PM1 was almost there and will now be used as a time lapse camera.

E-PM2 with Panasonic 20mm F1.7

12 comments:

  1. Great review, thanks for sharing.

    Have you noticed any problems with the image stabilization?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I know the issue you are thinking of and I've seen it on my E-PM1. With a month of shooting, I've not seen any problem with the image stabilization with the E-PM2.

      Delete
    2. The image stabilization on my E-PM2 is really, really bad, but it is still a superb camera. Once I realised the harm the IS was doing to sharpness and did a comparison at various speeds, I decided to keep it turned off. I don't have this problem of the IS ruining sharpness with my E-PL2. I can still get sharp results at slow speeds with the E-PM2 so long as I keep IS off.

      Delete
    3. I never experienced any sharpness degradation due the in body IS. It is always on by default.

      Delete
  2. Hi i heard about banding in EPM2 when used with 20mm f1.7 at high ISO or low light...did you encounter any of this banding?I am interested in getting a 20mm for my PM2 too..PM2 Rocks!Yeah

    ReplyDelete
  3. I have not seen evident of it, but then I did not look for it. However, I did a comparison between EPM2 with 20mm f1.7 and Canon EOS 650D, I think the 650D have worse banding at high ISO, but EPM2 images does does have a tendency to have a green tint.

    Have a look and draw your own conclusion: http://yattang.blogspot.de/2012/12/high-iso-noise-olympus-e-pm2-vs-canon.html

    ReplyDelete
  4. And banding with the Panny 20...yes, but only in dark areas and only really at about ISO 6400 and above. It may be possible to induce it at lower ISO by underexposing, but for general use 3200 definitely seems totally safe ie free of banding...on my camera, with my lens. I use the latest camera firmware...not sure if it's helping.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hi, thanks for the interesting blog !
    I am a newbe user of an E-PM2 and I have huge difficulties setting it somehow
    to make time lapse pictures.Because you mention you do this with your older Oly cam , I would like to know how do you do this!
    Thanks in advance

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. See my earlier post. The E-PM2 do not have time lapse function built in. Go to ebay and buy one of these:
      http://yattang.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/olympus-rm-uc1-compatible-remote-control.html

      Delete
    2. Thanx for your reply ! Well here in Germany the cheapest I could find is one for 19 GBP, but I think its worth. My first Olympus had this function built in, and on many occasions pictures taken this way made my friends go crazy.
      I would dare to ask for one more advice : what do you think of old
      soviet/eastern german lenses, which can be used with adaptors? There are such for appr.20-30 GBP with f1,8 or even less ...(I mean primes)

      Delete
    3. I have a couple of old Pentax lenses that I use sometimes, but not very much and only for video. I use the Panasonic 20mm F1.7 and Olympus 45mm F1.8 because I want to auto focus. The older manual focus lenses are surprisingly good, but for photos, I like to auto focus too much. If you don't mind auto focus, then it is a good option. The E-PM2 do not have focus peaking, so focusing can be difficult. The Panasonic GX7 and Olympus EP5 may be better cameras for older lenses.

      Delete
    4. OK, thanks - again a quite precious advice !
      I read about some problems of the Panasonic 20mm F1,7 on Olympus PENs ... but obviously you don't have any ...

      Delete