Greg Beetham wrote:Yes thanks Henry it’s quite apparent that there is a great advantage in size and weight for sure, I just thought you might have already formed a preliminary opinion about any functionality and/or IQ trade offs, and if the extra lenses are necessary on a trip to offset the smaller format possible IQ disadvantage as compared to the larger format with perhaps just one good universal lens. (I remember some of those high quality Hawaiian 60D images for example). And on the basis of the less time fussing with, securing, and carrying lenses (that most likely don’t get used much) the better, I’m thinking along the lines of carrying extra lenses for the reasons of being able to get a better shot than the universal lens can do occasionally but still end up not getting that ‘better’ shot anyway because of the inconvenience/time lag of having to swap lenses at that moment…maybe.
I would say that I see no disadvantage with regards to IQ compared to my 60D or A700. Actually, it seems better than both. Lenses seem better too and focus is very accurate (advantage of CDAF, I guess). High ISO is very good and dynamic range also is good. It seems that m4/3 sensors have arrived. If you look around at reviews you will see what I mean. If you are interested you can compare raw with up to 4 cameras here:
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/olympusem5/21
I compared the E-M5, A57, NEX 5N, and Nikon D7000 (all 16mp) using that tool. Shooting raw and using the good conversion available in LR 4.1 (great highlight recovery and auto CA correction too) also helps a lot. See the Imagining Resource link below. Down near the bottom in the
Output Quality section there is a table that shows the quality of various print sizes/ISOs for the E-M5, Nikon D7000, Canon 7D, etc. The E-M5 matches those two cameras:
http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/o ... -em5A5.HTM
I have never been overly obsessed about IQ since it just isn't the most important aspect of a QI most of the time. The IQ is so good these days that it is just not much of an issue most of the time. I find the 14-150mm to be quite good. Probably even better than the Sony 18-250mm that I used with the A700.
Functionality is much like what you would expect from an A77 level DSLR. The E-M5 has tons and tons of options to configure and customize. There are so many that it takes time to figure them all out and decide on what you want. Some of them I have tried various settings and I seem to be honing in on how I want to use mine.
Remember though that the E-M5 has an EVF. I am okay with that generally since I appreciate some of the advantages, but there are also real disadvantages to an EVF also.
The biggest issue for me (to be fair, other people have different opinions) are that the ergonomics are compromised in order to look like an even smaller version of a 40 year old film SLR that was the smallest film SLR you could buy (the Pentax MX was about the same size so I am not sure the OM-1 was absolutely the smallest). See the thread on this forum that I linked to earlier to read more.