Well, Olympus send me emails saying that I can test their equipment and there is a dealer 5 miles away that offers the service. So why not?
Background - I'm a Nikon Full Frame user, with some good lenses. Which are astonishingly sharp, but also quite heavy. The low light capability of the D750 is outstanding - ISO 5000 is not bad at all. Also, I like Full Frame because the lenses do what they did when I started photography in 35mm. If I pick up a 50mm lens, it does what I expect. I used to use Olympus - an OM1 and I've had a XZ-1 compact for about 6 years now.
I like the look of the OMD series and wanted to see what it can do.
Initial thoughts:
- It is compact and very easy in the hand.
- Heavier than it looks (but the lower spec 5 and 10 models might be lighter)
- It takes a while to turn on compared with the D750, so I missed a few shots
- The general shot quality is very good, as is the auto focus and the metering
- The viewfinder is a bit slow compared with optical. In general use probably not a problem, but I like to do gig photography and also cover conferences. a virtually instant response to capture the - performer's eyes actually open is important!
- Definitely would be a more manageable kit both in terms of size and weight
- Low light performance is good, on a par with my D7100 crop sensor, rather than the outstanding D750
- The stabilisation is amazing. I have several shots at half a second handheld, that are pin sharp.
- There is a 50M pixel shot option that moves the sensor around to more than double the pixel count - this also is astounding.
- The touch screen is very good
- Shots per second also astonishing.
- Accuracy of the focussing generally spot on
So, so far, I like it but it wouldn't replace the work horse. It is too much in the middle between the D750 and a compact camera. And waaaay too pricey. If I had a lot of money and didn't need the FF and low light performance, it would be a no brainer.
So, as I can borrow other equipment, my next loan will be a Pen - the one with the same sensor as this camera.