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Re: E-M5mII (formerly Re: New camera body...)

Subject: Re: E-M5mII (formerly Re: New camera body...)
From: Moose <olymoose@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 28 Mar 2016 22:56:39 -0700
Cc: David Dyer-Bennet <dd-b@xxxxxxxx>, Moose <olymoose@xxxxxxxxx>
On 3/17/2016 8:27 PM, Ctein wrote:
Dear Mike,

I am CCing Moose and DDB in on this conversation, because Moose and I have been discussing this camera and its performance and looking at comparison photographs (and it's his fault I just bought one).

I appreciate being copied, and accept the blame. :-)

And . . .

As mentioned, I don't like the physical changes to the camera body-- it's too bulgy and angular for my rather delicate and  thinly-padded fingers. It's gonna hurt holding that camera for long periods of time. I'll put up with it.

Different bodies, hands, fingers . . . I HATED the on/off switch on the original. I'm comfy with the Mark II body.

One of my semi-irrational reasons for not buying the camera -- having all the controls rearranged between the Mark I and II -- turns out to be unfounded. I can reconfigure the controls so that they are pretty close match to what I have on the Mark I. Better, actually, since I have more buttons to play with. That isn't going to bother me at all it turns out.
I'm still figuring some of it outŠ like what to do with (and how to program) the flippy switch below and to the right of the viewfinder.

It's in the Buttons and Dials section, and has 6 options, plus OFF. See below.

It's nice that there is a dedicated button for HDR. Which you may recall I jumped through some major programming hoops to implement on the Mark I. And, happily, it's naturally assigned to a button that doesn't exist on the Mark I, so it won't get me confused. The built-in HDR works very well, even with long night exposures  (up to 10-15 seconds, anyway). My only complaint about it is that I can't customize the interval; in my opinion, a two stop gap is usually too large, And I don't really need +/- 4 to 6 stops.  I wish I could tune it to my preferences. Maybe in a future firmware update.

As previously mentioned, the image stabilization is amazingly good.  Consistently handholdable with the 45 mm lens down to between 1/5 and 1/10 of a second.  I set the first curtain release at a 0.2 second delay, which isn't really noticeable to me, and it works really nicely in combination with the IS.

This is where things get tricky/confusing for me. Oly µ4/3 bodies from the E-P1 have included an Anti-Shock setting in the Menus, to wait briefly after the first curtain closes before reopening it to start the exposure. 1/8 sec. got rid of most shutter shock. By 0.2 sec., I assume you mean the 1/4 sec. setting. Sensible and understandable, and makes a huge difference in tele and macro. But, by 1/4 sec. the bird is out of the frame. I don't do a lot of that sort of shooting, but enough that I don't like much delay.

Oly first introduced an electronic first curtain in the E-M10, then in the E-M1 via firmware update. The E-M5 II manual says "To prevent camera shake caused by the small vibrations that occur during shutter operations, shooting is performed using an electronic front-curtain shutter."  In the camera Menu, however, it says that is AS mode, EFC is only used at 1/320 sec. and below. That's fine, as that's the highest speed at which I found shock blurring on the E-M5, but somewhat contradictory.

Then Silent mode "is performed using electronic shutters for both the front and rear curtains so that the miniscule camera shaking caused by shutter movements can be reduced," In their test of the new 300/4, IR publishes some test shots that show Silent Mode to be slightly, but significantly, superior to AS Mode  @ 1/80 & 1/125 sec. in reducing body movement induced blur.  After one pays for the 300/4, Silent Mode is obviously needed to get all the resolution one paid for.

First, I wonder if you have checked whether the 1/4 sec. delay you are using makes any difference on the Mark II. With EFC, I don't see how it would make a difference. If it's a setting you've carried over from prior bodies, you may be able to change to zero sec. delay, which just enables EFC.

Second, both because you are using the camera and mention you may review it, is the weird interaction between A exposure Mode and Silent shutter Mode. When I got my first E-M5 II, I cheerily did what all the above suggests, set it to Silent with zero delay. The problem of rolling shutter geometric distortion of fast moving objects is just not an issue with my subjects. Then I found myself getting some way too long exposures of tele shots. (The updide of this was discovering that the IBIS is WAY better, really amazing, at focal lengths and shutter speeds I would otherwise never have tried.)

What I discovered is that the exposure algorithm for adjusting Auto ISO in A Mode was way off and way different from the Mark I. In bright and dim light, they were about the same, but in the in between area, wildly different. It would hold the ISO down until shutter speed got very low. For example, a shot that would be 1/120 @ ISO 1600 on the Mark I would be 1/20 @ ISO 200 on the Mark II. After an exchange with a helpful tech at Oly support, I knew no more, except that it was all news to them - and they couldn't duplicate it. Sometime later, for whatever reason, I switched to Anti-Shock Mode - and the problem was gone.

I let Oly support know about this. was thanked and was told a fix might or might not show up in a firmware update, but certainly not if it was due to the hardware. The latest big update has not changed it. Soooo . . . For someone like me, a dyed in the wool A mode shooter and long tele lover, it's a problem. (The Panny 100-400 arrives Wednesday. We put back our SoCal wildflower trip a day to wait for it.)

I've been using AS mode, but with an even longer lens coming, I'd really like to use Silent Mode. It appears I may be experimenting with S and M modes  (oops, make the M and S Modes). First, though - AND Here's where the Lever setting comes in - With the Lever in Mode 2, the rear wheel becomes a direct ISO dial. So I can set the aperture I want and adjust ISO with my thumb to get a usable shutter speed.

Since I never do video, I assigned the video button to a customized Hi Resolution mode. You knew I was going to get to that. Moose and I have been comparing photos and discussing it at some length. The new firmware speeds things up-- all the exposes are taken within less than half a second (and Moose said, I think, that there is a firmware in the works that will cut it down to 1/60 of a second,

Oly said early on that this was in the works, but not, I think, as a firmware update. I'm guessing different hardware, faster reading sensor?

Assuming short enough exposure times, of course). The processing time is only 9 seconds. That is not excessively long to wait.

Something that Moose and I found out-- color rendition with bizarre light sources, like Christmas LEDs, is LOTS better in HiRes mode. Normally, Bayer array cameras go somewhat crazy with the narrow spectrum LEDs, especially the blue-violet ones, which exhibit a weird tone inversion-- they end up with dark blue halos around them files rather than in the rendered light blue glows. The HiRes  mode doesn't do that. It has a few weirdnesses, but they're much smaller and less annoying.

One thing that turned out not to be true-- there's no difference in the captured exposure range between normal and HiRes  mode: it's exactly the same. Not sure, Moose, why it looked different in your quick and dirty photos, but that was clearly an anomaly. My careful control tests show that.

Really what I expected.

There is one really big difference, though, which is that the HiRes are essentially noise free. Not that the E-M5 is all that noisy at ISO 200Š except to the fetishistsŠ  It's already very, very good. In HiRes mode,  even that miniscule amount of noise is entirely gone; the tonality is absolutely smooth with no hint of variation from pixel to pixel.  It's amazing. And it extends all the way down to the shadows, which never get grainy.  If you feel the need to open up the shadows, they stay nice and creamy. It is very, very much a large-format look, almost a large-format contact print look.

At the highest ISO allowed for HiRes, ISO 1600, the noise level is the same as what you'd see in a normal exposure at ISO 200.

Yes, that part is awesome.

Okay, but what about resolution?! You know what, it's not a big deal! By which I mean that in a full frame 17 x 22" print from my P 800 printer, I can just barely see any sharpness difference between normal and HiRes loads.  I really have to put my nose up to the print to distinguish the two. Oh yes, I can easily see a big sharpness and resolution difference on the screen at 100%/200% enlargements. But in a decent sized print? Nuh uh.

Both normal and HiRes photographs benefit from some deconvolution sharpening, but it works much better on the HiRes photos.  Edge acutance jumps considerably without getting crunchy or, well, "edgy." It just looks naturally sharper.

Yup, yup.

The effect is a little cruftier on a normal photograph.  It doesn't terribly bother me, but it's the kind of thing that gives Oren Grad fits. Well, I think he'd really like the look of the HiRes  prints, and I suspect for him there'd be a huge visual difference between normal and HiRes in 17 x 22" size, because the HiRes edge detail just rolls off smoothly, like large-format film with a decent lens. For us mere mortals, though, it's a subtle thing.

Go to a bigger print, 24 x 32", (or crop significantly) and you can clearly see the difference between the formats in print sharpness and resolution. But, short version? The real import of this mode is not the extra resolution, but the creation of a large-format freedom from noise and natural-looking smoothness to edges and tonal transitions.

And there's the fun of real life, vs. advertising and expectations. The "BIG thing" is the rez, but what really matter more, for most uses, are color accuracy and noise.

There are two other things that interest me about it. First, we have lots of lenses that considerably out resolve the sensors.

Second, the whole vast number of serious digital shooters have calibrated their idea of the detail a sensor can render based on the limitations of Bayer array sensors. (Except, of course for Ctein, Foveon shooters and other paragons.) Downsample an HR image file to the size of the sensor, and it resolves a great deal more detail at the pixel level than the otherwise identical shot taken a moment before or after in normal rez mode.

Moose
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