OM-1 Mark II premature first review

[DanK]

Since weight reduction has been a fairly common theme here, I thought it might be of some interest for me to share my first impressions of the OM-1 Mark II. This is a long post, so skip it if this topic isn’t interesting.

To start, the difference in weight has been striking. Even though the body + walk-around combination is the smallest weight reduction—about 1/3—it’s a very noticeable difference. I’ve spent hours walking with the camera and barely notice the weight.

For people like me with big hands, the smaller body is a little harder to use, but the ergonomic design is very good, so the difference isn’t huge.

The OM-1 has the reputation of having the most sophisticated computational options of any serious camera, and it certainly has features that my R6 doesn’t. I mentioned some in a previous post, e.g., ersatz ND and GND filters. It has a complex array of long exposure options in addition to the usual bulb and timed bulb options. Live bulb shows the emerging image as you hold the shutter open, refreshing at an interval you select. Live time does the same thing except that it stays operative after you trip the shutter until you trip it a second time. Live composite only adds pixels that are brighter, e.g., for star trails and taillight trails. (Figuring out those three took me a while.) It has both in-camera focus stacking, where it does the compositing itself, and focus bracketing, where it just leaves the stack of raw files. It has two interesting spot metering modes. One protects highlights: you meter off the brightest area, and it sets the exposure so that area isn’t blow out. The other does the same thing for shadows. It will create more detailed images by pixel shifting: 50 MP hand-held and 80 MPX on a tripod (only useful, of course, if your subject isn’t moving at all.) It will do double exposures (or more, but in steps) and HDR (which I will never use, since I blend exposures in post). And more.

The older Olympus cameras had a reputation of having difficult menus (I have never looked), but the menu system in the OM-1 is superb. It has a lot of resemblance to the menus in the newer Canons. It’s hierarchical, very logically organized, and well-labeled. It has the option of creating up to 5 pages of custom menus, and I have created 3, but the menus are so logical that I sometimes go back to the original pages.

The lenses vary in weight and size, but some are so small and light that they seem a bit like toys. Yesterday I walked through a botanical garden with my walk-around lens on and wanted to take a macro lens, so I took my 60 mm (100 mm equivalent) f/2.8, which is very highly rated. It’s 82 mm (3.25 inches) long and weighs only 185 g (6.5 oz). I just threw it in a zippered jacket pocket.

Image quality clearly deteriorates more quickly with increased ISO than on my FF cameras, but I knew that.

I don’t yet have enough experience to know whether it’s any good for night photography, although I hope it will be OK for what I do, which is long exposures with low ISOs. I did notice that when set to auto, long-exposure noise reduction (black frame noise reduction in Nikon-speak) turns on at much shorter exposures than on my R6, which rarely needs it. But time will tell.

I tried in-camera focus stacking, and I’ll post an image below. It works, with two caveats. One is that there are limits to how much motion it can compensate for, and at my age, my hands aren’t that steady, and I sometimes exceed that. The camera just sits there for a bit and then gives an orange warning that stacking failed. The other is that in-camera stacking will occasionally produce halos. You can see a few in the image below. I expected that. It probably uses a depth-map algorithm, and these are prone to halos. I would normally stack in software, so that’s not a concern for me.

One drawback is that it’s fairly pricey. Another, which is zero consequence for me, is that its video capabilities are second-rate.

So my bottom line so far is that while it has some drawbacks, it seems to do what I wanted: it gives me all the control I had with my FF camera but with far less weight.

[AntonioCorreia]

Dan, what an excellent premature review you’ve shared, it really was a pleasure to read! I must admit, when this camera was launched, or perhaps it was during a later update (I can’t quite remember), I had a sense that the menus were rather complex. Nevertheless, I never truly realised the depth of its capabilities. Now, with the details you’ve mentioned, I can understand much better the wealth and variety of commands this equipment offers.

I found it really fascinating to discover so many features many of them completely passed me by at the time. It’s inspiring to have such a comprehensive view of the camera’s potential, even knowing that, for now, purchasing something like this isn’t really on my agenda. Still, I must confess that trying one out would be quite something; my curiosity is truly piqued, especially as I already have lenses for it!

I also completely agree that the structure of access to the installed software and the ease of navigation in the system are crucial factors in making the use of equipment like this truly comfortable and intuitive. These are details that make all the difference to the user experience, particularly when dealing with such an advanced device.

Lastly, I have to highlight the quality of the images you’ve shared. They are truly beautiful and perfectly showcase what this equipment can do. They serve as a splendid sample of its capabilities and leave us wanting to explore even more.

Cheers !

[Chataignier]

Interesting to hear your first experiences Dan.

It seems to me that there are two topics here :

1) how the camera compares to others
2) how you feel about the inherent strengths and weaknesses of 4/3 compared to the FF you used before.

I get the impression that you really like the camera. Great.

How about the second part ? You have intentioned noise at higher ISO, more news on that front would be interesting. How about macro - in theory it should be better than a FF - is it ? What about shallow dof for portraits ?

I look forward to hearing more about your experiences.

[Manfred M]

An interesting review and the one new piece of information is that Olympus had fixed its menu system. The other comments are what I would have expected. The one issue I remember from my Panasonic mFT days is that the smaller camera's number of buttons was a bit problematic (fewer buttons and smaller buttons meant more digging into menus for basic operating settings)

I'm happy to see that you like your new system. Are you going to switch 100% away from Canon or are you going to keep the full-frame for your still life / flower work?

[DanK]

Manfred,

For the moment, I'm keeping my R6 II and three lenses. I got rid of my least used FF lenses.

The OM-1 has two control dials, comparable to my old 5 D III and IV but one fewer than my R6 II. However, it actually has a few more control buttons and levers than the R6. The one thing I found awkward at first is that the selection of the AF target is not on the menus as at all, although it is on the LCD control interface. You change it by holding the joystick in and rotating either dial. Simple enough, but it was quite frustrating when I forgot this on my first or second trial and couldn't find it on the menus.

I just tried the computational ND handheld, and it works like a charm. I used an ND 8 in shooting a waterfall, and it worked perfectly. The base exposure was base ISO, 1/45, and f/2.8, so dark enough that I could have done the same thing with a single shot at f/8 and 1/6 (within the range that the superb IS can handle at that focal length), but I wanted to test out the feature. I used it repeatedly, and it worked every time.

Dan

[DanK]

Interesting to hear your first experiences Dan.

It seems to me that there are two topics here :

1) how the camera compares to others
2) how you feel about the inherent strengths and weaknesses of 4/3 compared to the FF you used before.

I get the impression that you really like the camera. Great.

How about the second part ? You have intentioned noise at higher ISO, more news on that front would be interesting. How about macro - in theory it should be better than a FF - is it ? What about shallow dof for portraits ?

I look forward to hearing more about your experiences.

Sorry, with the malfunctioning of the site, I missed your post.

The camera is a delight to use. the controls and menus are very intuitive, and the ergonomics are excellent. In this respect, it's a lot like the R6, very easy to use and comfortable.

For bug macros, I think this is the best camera available, given the high pixel density, the greater DOF at any given aperture, and the focus bracketing function. that's one reason I splurged on it.

Re higher ISOs: I've only done a little informal exploration of this, but even the MFT fanboys admit that it's a disadvantage of the format.

Re DOF: I don't do studio portraits and almost never shoot candid portraits with a wider aperture than f/4.0 with a FF, so greater DOF isn't a problem for me.

The acid test will be prints, particularly larger prints.

Dan