Into the woods: a video overview of the Olympus OM-D E-M5 II

I'm far too much of a both-wheels-on-the-ground XC rider for that. And an out-of-practise one, too.

Richard,

I am only responding because you are a professional writer:

practice - noun
practise - verb

I remember the difference because it is just like licence and license, advice and advise. I used to think that 's' was to 'do' and 'c' was 'attempt to get better at', however the definitions are just the same as with those similar words.

I am only informing of the current popular/dictionary definition (which is ever-evolving), as it is the current populous with whom you are communicating.

However, language is the only true democracy, and your writing is of far greater influence than mine, so feel free to vote with your keyboard! Personally, I think there would be a lot of sense in having 's' for 'do' and 'c' for 'attempt to get better at', as context and verb endings generally make it pretty clear whether the word is a noun or a verb!

(Info only - no reply necessary. Please take this in the spirit given, that of helping others as others have helped me.)

"i am only responding because you are a professional writer" - you seem to think that comments bear the same scrutiny as articles. do you use a proofreader whenever you write a comment?

everyone understands that writing comments is more spontaneous and doesn't follow correctness as rigidly as published reviews.

(info only, no reply necessary. please take this in the spirit given)

Thank you. I appreciate your opinion almost as much as I do concrete tests.

Someone should talk to Olympus though. Just look what is spread all over their marketing materials and spec page for the E-M5 MK II.

http://www.getolympus.com/us/en/digitalcameras/omd/e-m5-mark-ii.html

“FULLY PROOFED AND PORTABLE SYSTEM. A durable rugged magnesium alloy construction body won’t let you down in harshest of environments or during the toughest assignments.”

Those statements above are misleading at best. They “imply” water proofing while they actually only indicate mild weather resistance. They took a lot of liberties in their marketing campaign for what they call “weather sealed”.

I don’t doubt that the EM5 MK II can handle harsh environments. However, I do doubt that they will cover any warranty repairs on it if it does break in a “Harsh environment”. That is dishonest in my opinion. Still didn’t stop me from picking up the E-M5 MK II today though.

Thought I was close!

I designed and built a lot of trails out at Duthie Hill, so I know the vegetation right away when I see it on videos. Only thing I didn't see were perfect berms at every corner, which left me wondering.

Great job on the video BTW!

I am pretty sure Richard could pull off the hipster look.

All it would take is for him to grow out that beard Victorian style, and add a scarf. And some sort of hat. Then, he's got it.

Do not underestimate Richard!

I should add that though I haven't used FF DSLRs I was used to the optical viewfinder in my Olympus OM film cameras before switching to digital about ten years ago, and they were bigger than any FF DSLR produced today.

Although that sequence shows me using the lens without a lenscap, I was actually using one (filming me taking my bag off, unclipping the camera, taking it out and removing the lens cap without dropping it took too long and was boring to watch, so we simplified it).

We took two E-M5 IIs.

What camera was the interview portion shot with? It looked really good except for the obvious moire and aliasing.

I misconstrued the statement that "everything except this shot of me talking to you now was shot with the camera handheld" to mean that you used a different camera for those shots.

Was the entire video shot using an Olympus E-M5 MK II and just a couple of scenes were shot using a tripod? I am actually even more impressed then. I can probably deal with the aliasing and moire. I really liked how the interview portion looked.

I hadn't thought about that ambiguity. The entire video was shot using the E-M5 II. The sections of me speaking to camera were shot using a tripod, as were the close-ups of the camera, but the whole video was shot with the M5 II.

A very interesting illustration of expectation bias :-) That's no criticism to you personally, mpgxsvcd, it is well known that the human mind cannot be trusted - something far too few people acknowledge about themselves...

No offense taken. I made a hypothesis and it was wrong. I can live with that. The nice thing is that Richard steps in right away and clarifies exactly what was used.

Thank you dpreview for being so willing to communicate with us in these comments. It really helps us a lot.

As Richard pointed out, we shot the entire video using the E-M5 II. Some of those handheld shots were taken at 150mm (300mm equivalent). The IBIS is pretty impressive.

Try not to make too many judgements from viewing it on YouTube. YouTube adds a lot of compression (which is especially bad in scenes with motion) and looks much worse than the original, so I recommend downloading the file directly if you want to look with a critical eye.

Maybe I'll have Richard do that test next time.

Er...

So, most of the footage was taken on a tripod then?

The ones with handhelds are mostly with the camera moving or panning. IS then can be a problem, actually. I do not really see any evidence that IBIS helps with video from what is posted here. I am not saying that it does not - just that I do not see it. A good demo would be to turn off the IBIS and repeat some clip.

@J A C S - I see your point, but there are a fair number of static hand-held shots in there - all of which would have been unusable, had they been hand-held (at 1080, even the steadiest hand tends to result in disconcerting wobbliness).

That opening shot was handheld at 150mm (300mm equivalent). Additionally, since I wanted to give the IBIS system a workout, I was holding the camera out in front of me and using the rear LCD to shoot. Considering the focal length and weight of the camera/lens combination the stabilization is fairly impressive.

Your point about panning is a good one. The IBIS can be fooled by rapid panning so it's something to be aware of.

4k down-rezzed to HD usually still looks better than native HD, particularly on the Panasonic GH4. Many of us shoot it for precisely this reason. It also gives you more latitude in editing for cropping video.

"why insist on a feature that is pretty much useless for most people today?"
Hardly useless. For example, you can grab 8MP frames for stills. As noted by GaryJP, 4K also is much better for editing since increased resolution allows for additional zooming, cropping, etc.
Just because you see no use for something doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Who shoots videos with the intention of NOT viewing them 5 years later? Shoot now, throw away tomorrow? The still images of my first digital camera, a 1.3Mpixel Powershot A50, doesn't even fill a standard computer screen or HDTV these days without upscaling, but I still may go back to relive the memories from the trips we made together. But I do miss the clarity and image quality from my current cameras when viewing these images. So why wouldn't we want our memories of today to be saved in 4K mode for the future?

I shot the video while Richard wheeled around the woods on his bike. I don't remember who had the idea to do a mountain biking video, but it wasn't hard to convince Richard to do it once the idea was on the table...

@joe6pack - to add more detail to what Scott correctly points out: this is an overview of the camera's features, it's not a full review because we've not spent enough time with the camera to be able to make a full assessment, yet.

Our full review will, as always, be positive and critical wherever appropriate.