Olympus OM-D E-M10

Late last month, a colleague asked my advice. A friend of his wasn’t sure whether she should get an Olympus OM-D E-M5 (first version), or the E-M10 which I also have (they are at about the same price right now).

“Tough decision”, I said, and told him about the differences. But now, thinking of it after owning the E-M10 for about 5 months (it was a birthday present), I think that this is my favourite of all the Olympus cameras I have, or had. Which are/were:

– Olympus E-520 DSLR (since late 2009)
– Olympus E-PL1 (given to Zuleikha)
– Olympus OM-2N (film camera, some 40+ years old)
– Olympus E-PL5, and, the latest,
– Olympus OM-D E-M10

I thought I’d best write a short summary about this latest camera I’ve got. Not a review – you can read lots of them elsewhere – but just my reasoning why I like it that much.

But first, let me show you the camera as it’s on my desk right now (with the Panasonic Lumix 14mm/2.5 “pancake” wide angle lens attached):

This is the very first picture I took with, not of the camera. It shows my birthday card, hand-made by Zuleikha:

Here’s a tight portrait I took of Zuleikha, using my Four Thirds 50mm/2 macro lens:

This little camera has quite a few tricks in its sleeves. It has for instance a “live composite” mode, which is ideal for fireworks or for star trails:

With using this mode, the camera will take one base exposure, and then several other ones where it only adds additional or moved lights. I think the photo above took some 45-50 minutes and was made from about 90 exposures, which the camera composes to one raw and one jpg afterwards. Easy trails without fumbling around with 90+ layers in your favourite photo editing software. And I’m not sure if the E-M5 could do this already.

The sensors of the cameras since the E-M5 and E-PL5 generations are the same, with the exception of the E-M1 which adds phase detection autofocus onto its sensor (which is said to be from Panasonic again; these here are from Sony). So it’s the same 16MP (Micro) Four Thirds sensor, with about the same colours as my E-PL5 has:

Speaking about the sensor: a (Micro) Four Thirds sensor is about half the size (quarter of the area) of 24x36mm film. It measures 13.3x17mm, and has a diagonal of about 21mm, again, half of that of what 135-type film had. So it has a so-called “crop factor” of 2, which means that a 25mm lens on the digital OM-D is like using a 50mm lens on the film OM-2N. And that makes them tiny, both the cameras and the lenses. The OM-2N was one of the smallest film cameras, and the E-M10 is about the same size:

To give you an idea of its size, here’s a self portrait I took in one of the company lifts:

So what can it do? This for instance:

I started a series of black & white portraits lately, and absolutely love the performance of both the camera and also the tiny 45mm/1.8 lens even when used wide open like here.

Could it be better? Well not for the price I guess. At the time I’ve got mine, the price for the camera body was about 600€, or 100€ more with the typical kit lens (I had one of these already, so I didn’t need it). And both the E-M10 and the slightly older E-M5 (first version) bodies are now at or even under 500€.

If you shoot sports events or anything fast moving, and you need a good and fast continous autofocus with perfect tracking, then there might be better cameras around for that. However, if you want small and light, with absolute precise autofocus for bright prime (single focal length) lenses like I do – well I couldn’t think of a better camera for the money.

Another point: the batteries of the smaller E-PL “Pen”-type cameras and this E-M10 are compatible. The E-P series and the “bigger” OM-Ds (E-M5 and E-M1) have slightly bigger batteries. So if you own one of these cameras already, that might be an additional factor to consider.

So I hope this could help my colleague and his friend (or relative), and I also hope this explains why I like that camera that much. It’s affordable, tiny, and still delivers top-class results – what else could one ask for?

Thanks for reading.