Soon It Will Be Time To Make The Call
I really will miss the images making capabilities of the Em5 mk1 cameras when they are all used up. This may be soon (of the 4 I have, two are showing intermittent faults, one has a missing a strap lug and all have “done enough” to be retired), but even with two new cameras in the kit, they offer something I cannot define, and will lament when it is gone.
The front one is missing a strap lug which resulted in a 3 foot fall, the back one has a “twitchy” sensor that bands when I know not what, conditions are met and the 4th, not pictured jumps in and out of mode in the (unused) “Art” setting, but they all still do the job (usually) and I still love the results.
I also really like the surety and gentleness of the shutter.
I know the stabilisers in the newer cameras are better, but with practice, I have been able to pull off some surprising results with the EM5’s due to smooth operation and a solid feel.
With a few Lightroom tweaks, the files can look like any other cameras or even film. The Canon colour I grew to like is basically a +20 blue channel saturation fix in calibration, some added whites/reduced highlights and boosted shadows/darkened blacks. The images are however more “real”, sharper more immediate, and crunchier than the files I got from Canon, and often with ridiculously small, mid range primes, not monster “L” glass.
For a while Fuji also gave me something to ponder, but the simple, no gimmick Olympus files won again and at the time, the Olympus cameras and their RAW files were considerably nicer to use.
I did buy a well used EM5 from a work colleague (the one with the odd mode dial flicker), but at a reasonable price, so if it gives me a few thousand good files, it will make the pack go longer overall.
This is the first time since owning a Canon Fin years ago, that I am dreading the demise of a picture taking friend. Most other digital SLR’s or mirrorless cameras have been moved on well before this point.
From a job mostly shot at ISO 3200 with 40-150 f2.8.
An odd phenomenon I have noticed when processing the EM5 files is their ability to effectively clean up noise. The EM1 and Pen F (less so) have “regular” noise, like other cameras. This noise tends to smear, reducing sharpness a little. The EM5’s have black speck noise that cleans up with very little resolution loss.
They have their limits, but when used within their reality envelope, they produce beautiful, honest files.
No call to be made yet, but soon I guess.