Olympus System OM1 Second Look

We've played around with the new Olympus Systems OM1 for about a month and are having great fun shooting with the cameras in several wildlife parks around Sydney. It's also been fun exploring some of the many features that this camera has (many are new to us coming from a Canon DSLR background) all the while trying to decide which are useful and which are not so. It's going to be a while before we get our heads round everything because there's so much new stuff packed into such a tiny form factor.  

Drive Modes

My ten year old Canon EOS 5D MkIII has three drive modes: Single, Continuous Low and Continuous High, the latter being six frames per second (fps). 

In comparison, the OM1 has eight drive modes: single shot plus a range of sequential drive modes with speeds of 20, 50 and even 120fps, thanks to its electronic shutter and (effective) new onboard processor. 120fps - that's 20 times faster than the 5D MkIII.

Three things have come to mind while using such drive modes:

• Choosing the fastest setting sounds like fun but it also means you can run out of memory card space quickly.
• Secondly, though recording such an avalanche of images might just get you the 'perfect moment', it also means a considerable amount of time spent shuffling through the day's shoot. First time I tried shooting at 120fps I ended up with 3000+ images in less than half a day. That's a lot of post processing. However, if you are an avid bird, wildlife or sports action photographer, this mode will help you capture moments that you'd never see with the naked eye.
• Lastly, as you might not want, or indeed need, to shoot so quickly, it was good to discover that drive modes can be set to lower frame rates. Most Olympus ambassadors I have read tend to recommend saving the your 'best' features (i.e. Drive/White Balance/ISO/Exposure Mode.) and saving them into one of the four custom settings available on the camera's Mode Dial (i.e. C1, C2, C3 and C4), that way you can recall your favourite settings immediately as a custom preset - something I have yet to explore.

One disadvantage of using the super fast 120fps drive mode is the time required to sort through the gigabytes of files that can be generated in a few seconds.

General Handling

You can't beat the obvious weight savings this camera offers compared to a full frame DSLR. Though the OM1 is one of the larger Olympus bodies, its diminutive form factor and ergonomic design make it a pleasure to hold and use.

In wanting to capture wildlife, I bought what turns out to be the second heaviest Zuiko lens - the M.Zuiko 300mm f4 lens which weighs around 1200g. Even so, I was delighted to discover that carrying the lens for a day is no hardship - I used to carry a 5D MkIII body + EF300mm f2.8 lens all day (Weighing 3.5kg, that was really beginning to be a drag).

Comparison between a Canon EOS5D MkIII, Olympus Systems OM1 and the diminutive OMD-EM10.

As this is still a big lens I decided to buy the Olympus HLD-10 Power Battery Grip which holds a single battery, but more to the point, it makes it significantly easier to hold any big, heavy lens steady horizontally or vertically. Expensive at $500+, but it does make handling easier. Using any other lens is a lightweight luxury.

Sensor Noise (+ how to deal with it)
One big fear when shifting to the 4/3 system was that the smaller sensor would produce excessive noise in all but the most best lighting conditions. In previous (4/3) experiences I'd noted a lot of noise when the ISO was pushed above 800, noise that, on the Canon 5D MkIII, would be invisible - the clear advantage of a full frame sensor and its larger pixels. 

Happily I discovered that much has changed in terms of sensor technology. In researching this camera I read a lot of opinion about the camera's newly developed 20M Stacked BSI Live MOS sensor and its new TruePic X engine, a processor/sensor combination designed, according to Olympus, to extract a far greater level of quality than previous iterations.

All camera companies tend to say a similar thing - several reviewers even described the new sensor as 'ground breaking'. Not sure if that's quite the right term but certainly, from these unashamedly non-scientific tests, my results were, for me, very satisfying.

Here's a comparison between the Canon 5D MkIIII + 50mm f1.8 lens at left, and the OM1 + 14-40mm f2.8 PRO lens (set to 25mm) at ISO 1600. The Canon exhibits little or no discernible noise - but noise is noticeable in the OM1 example. (Note my setup was nothing special: Daylight, on a table, Aperture mode, AWB, f11, tripod and 2 second self-timer. I used a bit of Levels in Photoshop Elements just to even out the brightness differences between the two cameras - I know that if I'd have illuminated the setup better I'd have had less noise, but I thought a real world setup was better).

The left hand frame is straight out of the camera, the right hand frame has been processed using DXO Photolab 5 using only its PRIME denoising technology, producing a significant reduction in visible noise.

Canon vs. OM1, at ISO 3200. The Canon file at left remains pretty clean while noise is clearly visible in the shadow areas in the OM1 RAW file. 

Here's the same OM1 frame, at left (IS0 3200) and the DXO improved version on the right. All I have added to the image is DXO's default denoise filter - this produces an exceptionally clean result.

Both camera files get a bit noisy/rough at ISO 6400 - although I thought that the contrast and sharpness in the OM1 files was slightly better (not surprisingly the Canon's in-camera image processing is getting a bit long in the tooth).

Here's the 'fixed' version, at right, looking significantly better for being processed using DXO Photolab 5. (DXO also markets a product called PureRAW2 - all this does is clean up noise in the raw file, using the same process that's in Photolab, then it outputs the result as a DNG file ready for editing in whatever your fave software might be). 

ISO 12,800 - this was the highest ISO comparison I tried. Again, I think the OM1 produced a slightly clearer looking result straight out of the camera than the Canon version possibly due to far more up to date in-camera processing. Comparing a 10-year old DSLR with a brand new 4/3 camera is hardly fair, but it is interesting.

The DXO processed version (right) is a superb result when compared with the gritty original (ISO12,800). Critics might argue that there's a loss of definition in the software processed result - I'd agree, but it's so small, especially compared to the rough original, as to be insignificant.

Superlatives aside,  I find that this is an exceptional quality sensor producing visible noise only at higher levels than past experiences had shown. That's the march of technology of course, and to be fair, since buying a Canon 5D MkIII, I'd spent very little time looking at (noise) developments among competitors - I was very happy with the 5D at the time, and that was that.

I read on one of the many blogs on the subject that the new sensor produced two stops of improvement in terms of noise - which I take to mean an image shot at ISO 3200 looks as though it was shot using ISO 800, and so on. In practice the ISO characteristics of the OM1 are pretty good - although, if you look at the non-scientific examples I have posted here, the 5D still produces less noise in its files, as you'd expect from such a large sensor.

I'm aware that despite the new tech, the OM1 is still noisier than a larger size sensor so decided to experiment with different levels of noise reduction software (note: all examples here were shot with both camera's noise reduction filters turned off). Photoshop Elements Camera RAW utility works OK, but lacks fine control, as does Luminar Neo, but the best noise removal results were from Topaz Denoise and DXO Photolab 5 - as you can see in these examples above, the DXO results were impressive. Below area couple of interesting examples of even higher noise reduction.

I have no idea if the files produced by the new sensor are easier to process with noise reduction software, or if it's just in the software, but as you can see in this ISO 25,600 example, DXO Photolab 5 cleans up an otherwise disastrously noisy file to produce an image that looks great - and is almost noise free. Yes, it does look a little 'processed' but so what, it's a 100% usable file.

For the sake of balance, here's that same ISO 25,600 file processed using Topaz Denoise - also producing an amazingly-clear result. I think that this software is on a par with the DXO software, maybe it's even slightly better - it's hard to tell just from a few test shots. Either way, sophisticated software such as this can not only transform any noisy picture, it also gives a smaller sensor file the 'look' of a camera with much larger pixels.

Lens thoughts

One of the oft-asked questions about lenses is 'are they sharp?' We have to ask that awkward question because you only have to read a few lens reviews to appreciate that some lenses are brilliantly sharp while others, usually inexpensive zooms, can be soft at specific focal lengths and apertures. The reason some lenses outperform others usually comes down to design and to money. Quality lenses - ones that are sharp though the whole focal range and at all or most aperture settings, are expensive because, to achieve such quality, they employ complex design, and have to use expensive glass. 

Are Olympus PRO lenses sharp? Silly question really. So far I have used four: the M.Zuiko 300mm f4 PRO, the M.Zuiko 14-40mm f2.8 II PRO, the M.Zuiko 40-150mm f2.8 PRO and the M.Zuiko 14-100mm f4 PRO lenses. 

As far as my experience goes, all produce exceptionally sharp results (when used correctly of course), they present little or no chromatic aberration, minimal vignetting, and a whole load of great handling. As I said, these are just hands-on comments, there's nothing scientific about my research.

• Even though PRO lenses are, for the most part, heavier and bulkier than their standard lens counterparts, they are a dream to use. With the exception of my 300mm prime lens and the 40-150mm zoom lens, most PRO lenses are very well balanced, even if they are a bit on the heavy side when compared with non-PRO equivalents. 
• I also like the lens hoods - this sounds trivial but both long lens hoods are stored on the lens so, to engage the hood, you simply twist the locking ring and pull the hood out to extend it, or push it backwards/inward to store it. Lens hoods for my full frame telephoto lenses are big, don't pack snugly around the end of the lens and inevitably have to be packed separately, which is very annoying.
• Other lens hoods (for the 12-40mm and the 12-100mm lenses are just well made and bayonet onto the lens perfectly. This may changes once wear and tear sets in but at the moment, they are a dream to use.
• Manual focus clutch. Another neat feature about these lenses is the ease at which you can switch from AF to manual focussing simply by pushing or pulling the focus ring to engage AF or MF. It's a really nice design feature of PRO lenses.

More to come...