Olympus news

[Joery Truyen]

Thanks for your early experiences Rick. I'll wait till more people make reliable statements about battery life. I suspect those individuals claiming very optimistic values do a lot of burst shooting.

[Adam Kilpatrick]

I've put my order in for it! There goes my gear budget for the next two years, but I got a pretty good price, including the 14-42mm kit lens which I will sell off.

Only downside is that the Australian suppliers have been told something like 3-4 more weeks until it arrives to them, so I'll probably have to wait at least a month!

I have my 20mm pany 1.7, and have bought a Pentax 50mm 1.4 Super-Multi-Coated Takumar off ebay in mint condition to run as a MF portrait lens.

I'm spewing that DxO don't plan to have support for the OM-D with the 20mm any time soon. I was hoping to start shooting raw and running it, automated through DxO. Oh well, I'll probably just get Lightroom on student price and PT Lens instead. At least with PT Lens I can email them shots with the Super Takumar lens and they can make a profile for it.

Anyone have further thoughts on weather sealing with non weather sealed lenses like the 20mm pany? Is it possible at all to retrofit sealing at the mount end? Just a slim o-ring? I have a neoprene lens coat designed for my Nikon 50mm 1.8D that fits around the 20mm Pany well, maybe I'll just use that, jammed up against the body, to ward off most of the dust and water. Looking at pictures of the o-rings on most sealed lenses, they don't look like anything special, and the m43 mount on the 20mm with my old E-P1 is pretty well machined and tight, I couldn't imagine much getting through that and into the body anyway. I always use a filter on the front (UV, though I'll get a clear for night), and have ordered some cheap hoods, and I can tape over the manual focus ring to seal that better and tape the outside join onto the hood. Will make it look really dodgy and tacky too which will help in India. Can't imagine much will get through if I don't submerge it.

Thoughts?

[Rick Dreher]

Hi Adam,

No known way to retro waterproofness into the lens, as it's a carefully engineered gasket recessed into the mount flange, not just an o-ring.

Regrettably, there's a whopping one weatherproof µ4/3 lens, with one on the way (the Oly macro).

Hope you get yours soon!

Rick

[Rick Dreher]

Resurrecting this thread to add some E-M5 field experience. Spent a week in the Sierra with the camera, three lenses (12-50, 40-150, 20/1.7) and three batteries (OEM+two aftermarket). It rained five of seven days and I carried the camera and sole weatherproof lens (12-50) in a chest pack attached to my backpack straps. It takes a scant few seconds to retrieve the camera, so is pretty easy to shoot on the go (I need a trekking pole valet, however).

With three cells I was able to shoot all I wanted. It's hard to estimate what that actually means in practice–I have about a thousand still images and a couple dozen video clips of varying lengths and also deleted quite a few images during the week. I'll guess one could budget eleven or twelve-hundred shots out of these three cells (which are relatively small and light). My 32GB card was about half full–got to love cheap and large storage cards you never need to change in the field!

The camera is a pleasure to use and perfectly fills the gulf separating dslrs and advanced compacts. Tellingly, the EVF is better than the best dslr OVF as evening light fades, so far have they advanced in the last year. I've been wanting something like this camera for years, just didn't know it until I saw one.

Two sunburned thumbs up!

Cheers,

Rick

[Franco Darioli]

Rick
When you can , give us a report on those aftermarket batteries…
(compared to the original one)
Franco

[Rick Dreher]

Hi Franco,

These are Wasabi brand from Amazon, a little over US$30 for two and a charger (evidently the OEM and aftermarket chargers are somehow different). By comparison, the non-existent OEM battery is US$60.

I literally received, charged and packed the new cells in time to leave, so can't consider them even "formed" yet. My experience is a cell needs to be charged and discharged a few times to reach its capacity. These function normally with the battery indicator working, indicating they're chipped. The first flagged after about 300 frames plus some video, the second…I didn't note frames, just that it needed changing day five.

At this early point I'm willing to allow the OEM has more capacity, but will keep watching to see if the aftermarkets gain more with time. For the price I'm perfectly content already.

Cheers,

Rick

[Franco Darioli]

OK, thanks.
As you know there are many aftermaket batteries that are just rubbish.
BTW, the shortage of the OEM type indicates that the camera is selling well, because there is always a fairly large initial order for them (in this case from Olympus to the OEM, probably Sanyo) so if you can't find them now it means that a lot were sold pretty fast at the start.
Franco

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