Thoughts of a first-time mFT user - Panasonic GX7

[RustBeltRaw]

I've also made the compact jump recently, and while I was extremely tempted by the open-platform approach m4/3 offers, I didn't find anything which matched my budget and slightly schizoid personal preferences. Some of the higher-end Olympus cameras were extremely tempting. Test-driving a mate's OM-D E-M1 left me really impressed, but I couldn't justify the cost of that thing, and I actively didn't want to add a ton of lenses, since the whole point of a compact camera (for me) was to run light, supplementing my DSLRs and letting me keep a camera on my person at all times.

The X100 was my primary candidate (budget constraints kept me away from the X-Pro1 and X100S). One showed up at a local camera store, I got a tip from a mate that it was there, and I bought it for $550. It was in the store for 4 hours after the original owner dropped it off. They're popular, so I had to move fast. Added a thumb rest and two more batteries

Many of its ergonomic foibles and "personality" are well-documented, so I won't flog that horse. Suffice it to say that a few days of cursing got it to reasonably-intuitive territory, the high-ISO performance trumps my DSLRs, and yes, you can get away with JPEGs most of the time. All features that make it a fine supplemental camera. Not sure something with a fixed 35mm f/2.0 could ever be a primary/only camera, except for shooters in fairly narrow genres. However, it's been a great bit of kit, and I'm starting to love the little sucker.

There are a few things that I think most reviews overlooked, or simply didn't convey accurately. First, the firmware revision makes a significant difference. Fuji added big features like peaking and a DoF scale (manual focus mode only) in later revisions, and mine was two revs old when I picked it up.

The battery life is short, but to my mind, a greater problem is a fairly uninformative battery meter. It seems to spend about 80% of its time displaying full, then drops rapidly to zero. Which would probably be fine if the battery life was better. Would love to have a vertical/battery grip for this thing, but the market appears to have decided against that.

Speaking of grips, the camera's is quite poor. It likes to slip from your hand, and manipulating any controls feels precarious. Aftermarket thumb grips help.

The EVF is considerably more useful than many say, and than I expected. It provides accurate DoF information (unlike the offset OVF) and in-finder peaking, though the display resolution is a little too low. Peaking appears rather chunky in the viewfinder, big enough to slightly obscure the details you're trying to home in on.

The slow manual focus ring is a problem, but the speed ramps nicely. You have extremely fine control at close ranges, and much coarser, but still sufficient control, at long ranges. It's focus-by-wire, and the direction is reversible, so a focus ring speed multiplier would be a nice touch for future firmware revisions (if any).

Overall, my needs remain better-met by DSLRs, but the X100 filled a gap in my systems, and after one gets to know it, is a very capable little beastie.

[HenkB]

I preceded you into m4/3 territory by the better part of year (OM-D E-M5). I used the camera intensively for a month last August (the length of the used warranty) and found myself acceptably proficient by the end of that time and continued to use the camera pretty much to the exclusion of my Nikon gear (D600, D90) right up until glove weather at which point, unwilling as I am to freeze my fingers, the camera became unusable as anything but a P&S. Back to big-button land.

My main reactions to the m4/3 system resemble yours: for my money, sports & action photography are easier with an OVF and currently available larger sensors offer better high-iso results. With the EVF one is forced to do a lot more predictive shooting. One can improve at this but it never gets as certain as through an OVF. Still, I do a fair bit of low-light photography that offers an opportunity to capture split-second scenes (think of a singer in a not terribly well-lit church looking up from the music for an instant - that's my target). The OM-D has one immense advantage - it's virtually silent - no mirror - it's very discreet. I have shot the OM-D at 3200 without encountering too many difficulties in post - it helps if the file can be downsampled by a factor of 2 or 3. In this wise, my OM-D seems essentially equivalent to my D90, almost certainly less than a stop difference.

Where we part company is the suggestion that m4/3 is not 'mature'. For me, many of the ways in which it departs from what one can achieve with a full-frame sensor (e.g., DoF, weight) are not defects but differences to learn to exploit (just as with every other tool I own). Others (high-iso. for example) are specialty concerns that do not bother me 95% of the time and with which I will cope if I must - all the time giving thanks I am not forced to shoot my D70 (1600 tops, 800 last usable). Still others (I'm looking at you, EVF) are combined game losers and winners. Sports? No. Macro? Absolutely! Manual-focus? There is simply no better way.

Which brings me to Oly IBIS - seriously, it is the bee's knees. I don't own any IS m4/3 lenses but any and every lens I choose to mount can be stabilized. That includes my legacy OM lenses manufactured well before image stabilization was perfected. That includes all my Nikon lenses, VR or not. The system works very well, even brilliantly. Especially it makes hand-held, electronically zoomed-in, long focal length manual focussing very accurate.

In a nutshell, I can make the camera work for me. There are situations where the m4/3 camera will certainly make me lose shots just as there are situations where the DSLR will be the net loser. YMMV

[Manfred M]

Also the 2.8 zooms and Panasonic 7-14. The primes especially are sharp wide open so that helps a little with DoF by not having to stop down so far. Manfred, if you're worried about fast AF then you may want to look at other alternatives to the Panasonic 20mm 1.7. It's an impressive tiny lens that gets me very sharp results but the AF is lacking in comparison to most other m43 lenses, especially indoors and low light. Unfortunately, Panasonic didn't improve AF with the newer version.

Thanks for your thoughts on the lens. The Panny lens looks interesting due to its size and speed, but it is hardly an inexpensive lens; I assume that one of the design tradeoffs for the small size was likely the lower performance focusing motor. I’ve read some rather unflattering reviews of the Olympus variant, but there are other alternatives out there.

+As far as the EVF, the best would be the one in the E-M1 (same as the Olympus VF-4) which offers similar magnification to the Canon 1DX. I wish I could just switch out the EVF in my Olympus E-M5 with the VF-4. I don't think turning off the LCD is going to save much battery because from what I understand the EVF drains it as well.

I’m not sure about the comments on the external EVF – as the camera already has one. Most of the comments I’ve ready about the Olympus snap on viewfinders have been negative; high price and poor material choices.

I would expect the EVF to use less battery power than the external LCD; the larger screen needs is larger and needs to overpower ambient light, whereas the EVF is relatively small and has a lower level of illumination; both of which tend to mean less power draw – longer battery life. On the other hand, buying a couple of spare batteries is an easy way of dealing with short life.

[Manfred M]

Where we part company is the suggestion that m4/3 is not 'mature'.

My comments about not being mature refer solely to the EVF technology.

It is pretty decent for stationary objects; but can't keep up when things are moving, so one is shooting "predictively".

[thequacksoflife]

+1

Also the 2.8 zooms and Panasonic 7-14. The primes especially are sharp wide open so that helps a little with DoF by not having to stop down so far. Manfred, if you're worried about fast AF then you may want to look at other alternatives to the Panasonic 20mm 1.7. It's an impressive tiny lens that gets me very sharp results but the AF is lacking in comparison to most other m43 lenses, especially indoors and low light. Unfortunately, Panasonic didn't improve AF with the newer version.

the 12-35 is a very nice lens as is the 7-14.

agree about the 20f1.7 its autofocus is pedestrian compared to the newer lenses. Rather amusingly when the MK1 was launched it was considered fast. how things change!

As far as the EVF, the best would be the one in the E-M1 (same as the Olympus VF-4) which offers similar magnification to the Canon 1DX. I wish I could just switch out the EVF in my Olympus E-M5 with the VF-4. I don't think turning off the LCD is going to save much battery because from what I understand the EVF drains it as well.

I looked through an EM1 the other day and it is way better than any EVF I've ever used. I'm told the GH4 EVF is improved on the GH3 but below the EM1.

Everyone here was expecting it to come in a somewhere around the price of the GH3, so the actual selling price; around $1900 Cdn + taxes basically means almost double the cost of the GX7, for what is likely similar image performance.

The GH4 is approx the same price as the GH3 when launched (at least it is in the UK). I understand your point on similar image performance. I will be interested to see how the GH4 autofocuses with Panasonic's new DFD technology.

As Kathy says the prime lenses are really nice. If you were wandering around a city the 14-140 and a combo of Oly 17/Pan 20 and Oly 45 might be all you need for a holiday. My travel bag has the 7-14, 14-140, 12-35, 20 and 25 amazingly light easily fits in my carry on bag with a small laptop. Handy in the UK with Easyjet and RyanAir who are a bit mean with luggage.

[ajohnw]

The comments about DOF are interesting in some ways. Few people actually really use shallow depth of field. I see totally obliterated background and too much blur in many as that in itself can be distracting especially if there is mixed colour there. Best results may well be without a lens fully open and in the F4 to even F8 regions.

Couple of problems with say FF and fast apertures - not enough DOF for what they want to shoot and often having to accept that the lens wont be as good that wide open. They do come on song quicker though. M 4/3 seem to be well behaved on primes in that respect, some zooms too - so far and on what I have looked at.

There is a converse aspect that frankly I feel is more useful - the ability to shoot with a lens wider open because m 4/3 does have a greater depth of field. That can be worth a couple of EV's worth of ISO. Muddies comparisons even further. However while for wide open the lens performance may be good it wont be as good as when it's shut some what. Also while 0.9 might be a great idea performance wise it's not a patch on the Leica Panasonic m 4/3 prime.

Also be warned that famous name older stuff may not match current m 4/3 either. Those lenses didn't need the same performance levels.

Seeing comments about the high pixel count viewfinder the major advantage of that is a bigger view. People might well see the dots if the image of the low count one was projected into the eye at the same size. More pixels also means that lower mags can be used for manual focusing as well. Some cameras however have the pixels but don't provide the larger view. In some ways I feel this area is a bit of Scotch mist. If they could get up to 1/3 or more of the sensor pixel count that might really be something. But bear in mind I do have a thing about viewfinders as I do manually focus at times. Many don't.

John
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[ajohnw]

My comments about not being mature refer solely to the EVF technology.

It is pretty decent for stationary objects; but can't keep up when things are moving, so one is shooting "predictively".

That is something I have read about but never ever experienced even on a Pen. Actually there is a demo of this sort of thing on Youtube showing the effect on the rear screen - oh so slight but why didn't the person posting it wonder about what the IS was doing when bouncing the camera about. Actually they were happy about it but none the less - a touch silly.

More myths. I suppose people must be able to see TV's flickering at frame rates and video cameras lag the scene when panning. Actually the effect of one lens manufacturers in lens IS can have a rather curious effect when panning.

John
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[Manfred M]

I've also made the compact jump recently, and while I was extremely tempted by the open-platform approach m4/3 offers, I didn't find anything which matched my budget and slightly schizoid personal preferences.

Once again, it seems we went through a similar thought process; especially the budget part (already owning two decent mFT lenses in my case) and the slightly schizoid preferences (driven in part by the planned use - some street and travel (backpack) photography).

[ajohnw]

I'm curious about what the schizoid aspects are?

John
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[Sponge]

Thanks for your thoughts on the lens. The Panny lens looks interesting due to its size and speed, but it is hardly an inexpensive lens; I assume that one of the design tradeoffs for the small size was likely the lower performance focusing motor. I’ve read some rather unflattering reviews of the Olympus variant, but there are other alternatives out there.

As you've noticed m43 gear comes with a higher price than might be expected. I've bought almost all my gear second hand, even a second kit lens (so I could give one to my wife with my E-PL2 when I upgraded to the E-M5). The Panny 20mm 1.7 I bought used for 225€ here in Spain which was a good deal (it was the kit lens for a while so good used deals weren't hard to come by) and the quality that it gives has kept me from looking at the many other options in the 14-25mm range (though the slow AF can be frustrating). On mu-43.com users post good deals they find and that's saved me quite a bit on both the new lenses I bought. Most of the deals are from US stores but some are from Canada. Here's one that was posted yesterday for the Oly 60mm 2.8 macro lens for $349 but if you scroll down the thread you'll see they have some other competitive prices on other m43 lenses. Maybe you can get one of your local stores to price match.

I’m not sure about the comments on the external EVF – as the camera already has one. Most of the comments I’ve ready about the Olympus snap on viewfinders have been negative; high price and poor material choices.

I would expect the EVF to use less battery power than the external LCD; the larger screen needs is larger and needs to overpower ambient light, whereas the EVF is relatively small and has a lower level of illumination; both of which tend to mean less power draw – longer battery life. On the other hand, buying a couple of spare batteries is an easy way of dealing with short life.

This was just something I had heard but I haven't done a comparison. I did a quick google search and came across this from wikipedia:

'An EVF has high power consumption, usually comparable to the main LCD screen'

but I'm not sure if it's based on older EVF tech. Also on cameralabs.com review of the Sony Nex 7 they mention this:

'The NEX-7 uses the same NP-FW50 infolithium battery as the NEX-5N. Battery life is quoted as 335 shots under CIPA conditions and my experience suggests that's about right using the LCD and EVF in roughly equal proportions. The EVF consumes more power than the LCD screen so if you rely on it exclusively that figure will probably drop to around 300 shots'.

I don't take either quote as fact so I'm not sure.

[Manfred M]

As you've noticed m43 gear comes with a higher price than might be expected. I've bought almost all my gear second hand, even a second kit lens (so I could give one to my wife with my E-PL2 when I upgraded to the E-M5). The Panny 20mm 1.7 I bought used for 225€ here in Spain which was a good deal (it was the kit lens for a while so good used deals weren't hard to come by) and the quality that it gives has kept me from looking at the many other options in the 14-25mm range (though the slow AF can be frustrating). On mu-43.com users post good deals they find and that's saved me quite a bit on both the new lenses I bought. Most of the deals are from US stores but some are from Canada. Here's one that was posted yesterday for the Oly 60mm 2.8 macro lens for $349 but if you scroll down the thread you'll see they have some other competitive prices on other m43 lenses. Maybe you can get one of your local stores to price match. .

I’ve bought a lot of used lenses in the past, generally from reputable dealers. The classical metal housings would show dings when an item was dropped or banged hard enough to do damage. The plastic bodies of modern lenses can absorb quite a shock, enough to cause hidden damage, without showing any outwardly signs of this having happened, so I’ve been very careful about used equipment. I tend to like to inspect it before buying it.

Generally, the savings at the local stores for a used item have not been attractive enough versus the price premium for something new.

This was just something I had heard but I haven't done a comparison. I did a quick google search and came across this from wikipedia:

'An EVF has high power consumption, usually comparable to the main LCD screen'

but I'm not sure if it's based on older EVF tech. Also on cameralabs.com review of the Sony Nex 7 they mention this:

'The NEX-7 uses the same NP-FW50 infolithium battery as the NEX-5N. Battery life is quoted as 335 shots under CIPA conditions and my experience suggests that's about right using the LCD and EVF in roughly equal proportions. The EVF consumes more power than the LCD screen so if you rely on it exclusively that figure will probably drop to around 300 shots'.

I don't take either quote as fact so I'm not sure.

It is possible, but I find a lot of photo sites do a lot of guess work and speculation for what they post as fact. As I understand (at least at a fairly basic level) the technology used, I find some of the statements hard to swallow. Unfortunately, opening up a unit and measuring the current draw is non-trivial and is a great way to void one’s warranty. I definitely can feel the LCD warming up when it is on for a long time, and the amount of heat emitted is a good indicator of power draw. I haven’t noticed any around the EVT housing, so I suspect it draws a lot less power. That’s about as scientific I’ve gotten. I’ll think about doing something a tad more sophisticated if I get really bored on a rainy day.

[ajohnw]

If the camera has an eye sensor on the viewfinder they switch on and off rather quickly so battery drain depends on use.

John
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[RustBeltRaw]

I'm curious about what the schizoid aspects are?

-High-ISO performance was more important to me than outright quality.
-I wanted a system with good primes, which is my preferred shooting style, even though a zoom might be a better match for an everyday camera.
-I wanted to pick only one prime between 27 and 35mm equivalent, and only one camera, in order to keep my overall gear load down.
-Very high battery life (failed on that one).
-Something I could run off AAs in a pinch (also failed).
-Less than $800 for both camera and lens.
-Available in black (also failed, came close with gaffing tape, an X-Acto, and patience).
-Wanted (almost needed) an optical viewfinder.
-Wanted very good AF performance (sort of failed. AF single is pretty good, manual also pretty good, AF continuous is nearly useless).
-Didn't care about ergonomics (I will happily deal with crappy ergo in the name of good images).

Thus, X100. Didn't tick all the boxes, but for $550, I am quite happy.

[ajohnw]

It's an interesting camera Lex. Black cameras have an interesting history. In days of film they took the castings and simply painted them black and that soon wore of in places so most went for silver also helped avoid buying well used pro gear as most of them had to have black as it was stated as being for Pro's. Some cute ones bought silver though to keep their resale value up.

My route was a bit bizarre. I had been mostly using Sony compacts for some time and Canon before that. Processing jpg's all of the time isn't much fun and I reckon the problems have increased as the pixel counts went up.

I noticed m 4/3 was about and looked at the E-PL1 on Dpreview. A good place to look. They actually go out and use the camera. Any real faults are usually mentioned and the rest can be gleaned from the write ups. There tests give a fair idea of the rest but on noise for instance it can only be a rough comparison. They had some interesting things to say about it so bought a used one on Ebay, just over 1000 shots and a message from the lady who sold it that she hoped I grew to love it. It came with the 40-150mm and I bought a used mk1 42-42mm to go with it. As it arrived it was in continuous auto focus which on a that pen meant the end of the lens was jumping about all of the time - deselected and never used in anger.

Joined the Flickr E-PL1 group. Interesting place and an indication of how things have changed. Panasonic lenses in some cases were a cheap option. Couldn't argue with that even though some were most definitely inferior as people freely admitted.

The E-PL1 was fine in normal daylight situations but a bit of a pain to control. My wife bought me an E-P3, Eurowide guarantee so on the cheaper side of usual UK prices. The camera came as a bit of a shock. Never needed to try continuous AF but everything else was ok. I wanted something much better than a compact and easy to carry around. No chance of using a pocket for that any more with these though.

The E-M5 came out while this was going on - my comments based on experiences was there was no way I was going to buy one at that price. I was considering upgrading my D300 but as the E-P3 worked rather well eg would even focus in our dim living room without an assist lamp decided to risk a brand new E-M5. I already new that the lenses I had were fine for full res views even the mk1 14-42mm. I bought it with the 12-50mm. The E-M5 is another big step up in all sorts of ways so not looked back. Only reservation is no viewfinder but a lot of that is a personal thing and what I try to do with manual lenses on the camera. Compared with the D7000 which has good low light focusing it's marginally worse focusing into dark corners. If the AF assist light is allowed to come on I'd say it's better / nothing in it / slightly worse. That sounds silly I know but is how it is. A viewfinder would allow me a fair chance of an accurate focus if I could see it. Continuous is usable with the limitation I mentioned.

APS was still in my mind so as I could conceivably use nikon lenses on the E-M5 I bought a D7000, that one because they were being sold off also a grey import to keep the price down. Trouble is that as I look at lens specs for it I then come to the conclusion that things aren't that clear about them really offering anything extra over the E-M5. If that's the case a FF upgrade would make a lot more sense but to be honest I would have to wonder how much I would use it.

My problem for several months now is should I upgrade to an E-M1. Not at the original price but those have drifted down now. I recently found that it seems to use a Panasonic sensor. To be honest having been severely bitten by a Panasonic compact I probably wouldn't have touched a Pen if I had known there was one in it. The sensor was CRAP. The extended telephoto some sort of really bad joke. Not cheap either. I have to wonder about that aspect even though I really liked the degree of dark end capture on the 12mp Pen's. It's amazing. I want to try some of the same shots with the E-M5 but no suitable weather so far. Then comes what have they done. If the phase kicks the lens focus in the right direction that would be well worth having but then how much light does it need. Is ISO better or worse. An extra button over the E-M5 would be useful as would reprogramming the mode dial as all I use is P and manual but in no way essential.

My income is restricted now I'm retired but I do have some I can leave aside each month. So to avoid buying an E-M1 which would take a while I'm looking at 4/3 lenses on an adapter. 18-180mm looks nvg for me. 50-200mm F2.8 and a converter looks ok but more use needed. I can't use the SWD versions on the E-M5 so have to stick with the ones that make a noise which really does help on cost. These lenses are way more heavier so really they are take out for specific use. I also bought the base model 4/3 camera. The E-620 for a very modest cost. It allows me to check the 4/3 lenses on the correct camera. Later if I really do insist on a viewfiner i might buy a used E-5. Depends on how the E-620 works out. An E-5 will come with about 6,000 clicks. Odd that they all seem to be similar in that respect.. The E-620 came with 221 clicks and really is a well thought out camera. I reckon if they spoiled it's lines by adding a decent size view finder and upgraded the electronics it might sell like hot cakes - glass reinforced body and all. Arty type product designers will always make cameras look like they feel they should so a bigger viewfinder on a camera like that is unlikely. Weight wise though the kit might be heavier than more recent APS. Depends on lenses. A F2.8 50-200mm has to be a bit heavy.

John
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[HenkB]

My comments about not being mature refer solely to the EVF technology.

It is pretty decent for stationary objects; but can't keep up when things are moving, so one is shooting "predictively".

Then we agree in part. I expect that the lag will never entirely disappear, especially in high iso conditions. I would be happy with a halving which is what I suspect is all that is possible without enlarging the cameras and quickening the rate of battery draw-down. EVFs will always be EVFs. As difficult as they make some photographic situations they ease others at least as much. Long may they live.

[ajohnw]

Then we agree in part. I expect that the lag will never entirely disappear, especially in high iso conditions. I would be happy with a halving which is what I suspect is all that is possible without enlarging the cameras and quickening the rate of battery draw-down. EVFs will always be EVFs. As difficult as they make some photographic situations they ease others at least as much. Long may they live.

Tell me something have you personally seen it? I have after a fashion due to IS if not in panning mode- 0n lens only IS.

John
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[Manfred M]

Then we agree in part. I expect that the lag will never entirely disappear, especially in high iso conditions. I would be happy with a halving which is what I suspect is all that is possible without enlarging the cameras and quickening the rate of battery draw-down. EVFs will always be EVFs. As difficult as they make some photographic situations they ease others at least as much. Long may they live.

I suspect there are a number of factors at play here and in theory once the refresh rate exceeds the response time of our eye / brain interface, the EVF would appear to be flicker free. This of course means a faster refresh rate, which would require more processing power and the inherent additional power draw by the camera. I would assume that the engineering teams involved tried to find the best balance between quality and power use.

In order to create the image that we see in the EVF, the CMOS sensor has to be polled (CCD sensors did not have this limitation), which takes time. The jpeg has be created and then displayed on the EVF. I expect that higher resolution EVF will inherently have a slower refresh rate than lower resolution ones.

I know that in burst mode (jpeg only with electronic shutter), the GX7 can shoot at a rate of 40 image/sec, but live view is disabled and the EVF cannot keep up (the manual does mention this and I can confirm this is the case through my own tests). The tearing is certainly more noticeable than in normal operation. I have not noticed any difference in this issue at low or high ISO settings (again inherently this makes sense as the amplification at sensor level occurs in circuitry built into each individual photo sensor).

[HenkB]

Tell me something have you personally seen it? I have after a fashion due to IS if not in panning mode- 0n lens only IS.
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If by "it" you mean the tearing/smearing of the image, yes, in a quick pan across high-contrast scenes and also in high-iso shots of relatively slow motion. I also am aware of the refresh rate when manually focussing at long focal length - with or without IS engaged. The image jumps hither and yon. It doesn't slide gracefully.

If by "it" you mean lag till exposure and ensuing lost shots then, emphatically, Yes! Here I suspect that, aside from polling and processing of the sensor data, there are a few more micro-seconds introduced by the OM-D needing to deploy its mechanical shutter.

Do I care? I would if I felt that the designers had not exercised due diligence in their efforts. Aware as I am that bringing any product to market is equivalent to betting the company, I am certainly not in a position to come to such a conclusion. So, functionally, I simply say, "How very interesting!" and go about the business of using the camera as well as I can.

[ajohnw]

If by "it" you mean the tearing/smearing of the image, yes, in a quick pan across high-contrast scenes and also in high-iso shots of relatively slow motion. I also am aware of the refresh rate when manually focussing at long focal length - with or without IS engaged. The image jumps hither and yon. It doesn't slide gracefully.

If by "it" you mean lag till exposure and ensuing lost shots then, emphatically, Yes! Here I suspect that, aside from polling and processing of the sensor data, there are a few more micro-seconds introduced by the OM-D needing to deploy its mechanical shutter.

Do I care? I would if I felt that the designers had not exercised due diligence in their efforts. Aware as I am that bringing any product to market is equivalent to betting the company, I am certainly not in a position to come to such a conclusion. So, functionally, I simply say, "How very interesting!" and go about the business of using the camera as well as I can.

I asked as I haven't seen any signs of it on Pens used normally. I should qualify what I mean by that - using continuous exposure on an E-PL1 the view was lost all together. It put me off even trying that on an E-P3. I have panned the E-M5 as fast as I can following on from another conversation while using continuous exposure at 9fps. I wasn't aware of the exposure being taken. That doesn't surprise me as sensors where I can get at actual figures have very very high read rates. What I have found ties in with this quote taken from dpreview

The E-M5 features one of the better electronic viewfinders on the market - it's an 800 x 600 pixel (1.44M dot) LCD that gives a good level of detail. It can't quite compete with the 2.4M dot OLED displays in Sony's recent NEX-7 and high-end SLTs, but it's still a good resolution with a fast refresh rate and none of the rainbow 'tearing' that can be visible in the field-sequential viewfinders used in Panasonic's Micro Four Thirds cameras.

What I have not found or even looked for is this quote from the same source

There's a high-speed viewfinder mode (Custom Menu section J, option 5), that doubles the rate of the viewfinder refresh to 120Hz. The result is lower resolution and faster battery drain than the Normal mode, but with a smoother and more frequent update, for if you're trying to shoot very fast-moving subjects. We rarely found the need for this 'Frame Rate: High' mode but it's useful to have the option if your shooting requires it.

The other comment from them I noticed might apply to people who wear glasses but again I haven't had a problem even in very bright sunlight - Turkey for instance.

As with all electronic viewfinders, even at its brightest setting, it can't match the ambient light levels on a bright day (a problem that optical viewfinders don't suffer from), which makes stray light from around the edges of your eye much more distracting. The shallow eye-cup of the E-M5 makes this worse (Olympus has developed a deeper on, called the EP-11, but we've not seen it yet) but glasses wearers are likely to find they have to cup one hand around the finder on bright days.

Part of my problem when I see comments on this area is the human eyes up date rate, I also think about TV's especially pre digital and also low frame rate video.

Their quotes on the E-M1 are a little different. They do go out and use the cameras. Sometimes omissions from one camera to another are significant and people are likely to notice things that they just mention.

he E-M1 uses the same, 2.36M-dot high-res LCD that we saw in the VF-4 accessory finder for the E-P5, and it's very good indeed (it's apparently the Epson panel we've also seen in Fujifilm's X100S). As with the VF-4, it's large and detailed, with a smooth refresh rate that only slows down in pretty low light. It offers essentially the same size view as the optical viewfinder of a full frame SLR, which is impressive in such a small body. This means it's also usefully larger than the E-5's viewfinder.

The E-M1 gains an feature called 'EVF Auto Luminance' which brightens and darkens the backlight of the EVF in response to the brightness of the scene. The effect is clearly visible, particularly in low light; the E-M1's EVF becomes visibly less bright than the E-M5's when compared side-by-side, for example, and a closer match to the ambient brightness. Olympus believes this helps make the experience of using the finder more comfortable and OVF-like, as your eye doesn't have to adjust to a brighter finder. Since only around one user in 50 will find out how to disengage it, you may find you're getting its benefits it without realizing.

The use of ISO is interesting. I tried some flash shots today to get a feel for what the camera does. The viewfinder didn't show a -3+ stop view as it would have been mostly pitch black. It boosted ISO briefly to focus and that didn't extend focus time at all. Mentioned as there may be all sorts of things buried in the software that only come out under certain circumstances. For me tearing, slow updates haven't occurred even panning a wall 6ft away as fast as I can move the camera continuous shooting or not. If it decided to switch to 120hz type views flashed at 60hz or what ever I'm sure I wouldn't notice. The human eye can only do so much. I have seen IS do some odd things though.

Don't get me wrong about asking you about this but there are odd people on the web that will comment on something they have read or assume having never even had their hands on the camera let alone used it. Well you have so I'm at a loss to explain. Makes me feel like pricing up tickets for the British Grand Prix but forking out n hundred quid and sitting in jams for hours tends to put me off. Unfortunately the RAC rally doesn't pass by here anymore but having done that I am pretty sure an E-M5 would cope even with 100mph cars feet rather than miles away - not that they let anybody that close any more. Seriously I don't understand why you are having a problem In lens IS might just explain it.

John
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[HenkB]

Seriously I don't understand why you are having a problem In lens IS might just explain it.
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I have no m4/3 lenses that have in-lens IS. That is why I chose the EM-5.

You asked if I have seen "it". The tearing is something I have seen but seldom and it has virtually no impact on usage or keeper rates. It is, for me, a non-issue.

The EVF lag is another thing entirely. I shoot both the EM-5 and Nikon DSLRs and in certain identical situations my keeper rates plummet with the EM-5. This is entirely a timing issue akin to attempting to play a racquet sport with a 1/2 lb weight attached to the racquet. As I mentioned in a previous post, one can learn to predict somewhat better (and I am making the attempt with modest success) but there is a limit.