Anyone have experience with micro 4/3rds format cameras?

here's a comparison between the panasonic and olympus 25mm lenses by robin wong (who works for olympus, so be mindful of that): http://robinwong.blogspot.it/2014/02/olympus-mzuiko-25mm-f18-lens-review.html

his summary (maybe proving an olympus bias on his part):
Here's Steve Huff's verdict on the 25/1.8:
So at the end of the day BOTH of these lenses will deliver the goods. Me, I prefer the Olympus as I am not losing much at all over the Panasonic but I am gaining the small size, the nice price and the overall look that matches my other Olympus primes AS WELL as almost no CA issues. I could live with EITHER lens long-term. It comes down to if you want small size, slightly faster AF, and f 1.8 or if you want larger, faster aperture at 1.4 and slightly slower AF while paying $129 more.
 
Yeah, compactness is the one aspect of the 20/1.7 that I'm really loath to give up. The AF has annoyed me a few times but not enough to make me want to ditch it entirely. If Ricoh made a GR with a lens faster than 2.8 then I'd be willing to put all my compactness eggs in that basket and upgrade to the Olympus 25/1.8. Decisions, decisions.
 
My favorite prime lens in my MFT collection is my 17mm 1.8,even tho its pricy, the IQ, AF and overall quality is great and its a near perfect all around lens for general Street photography, wide enough to capture a lot of background while adequate FL for street portraits
 
... bah, i'm so annoyed right now.
i actually ordered an e-m10 at an austrian shop (for 100? off list price even) but of course, they were trolling and didn't actually have any in stock. now paypal is "looking over" their refund and not releasing my money. :mad: not that it would matter, since the damn thing isn't available anywhere! gah! i thought maybe germany would get the same 7th march release date as the UK, but no...
 
... bah, i'm so annoyed right now.
i actually ordered an e-m10 at an austrian shop (for 100? off list price even) but of course, they were trolling and didn't actually have any in stock. now paypal is "looking over" their refund and not releasing my money. :mad: not that it would matter, since the damn thing isn't available anywhere! gah! i thought maybe germany would get the same 7th march release date as the UK, but no...
Bah, hate it whenever that happens... I have felt the pain of waiting long for something really good, did that two years ago... ;)
 
At least I got the 12-50 lens off ebay today in good nick for a reasonable price (people having their auctions end at 9am on a sunday... lovely). Also my old e-pl1 is also on ebay (set to end tonight) and is already at a higher price than i would've imagined to make.
 
... bah, i'm so annoyed right now.
i actually ordered an e-m10 at an austrian shop (for 100? off list price even) but of course, they were trolling and didn't actually have any in stock. now paypal is "looking over" their refund and not releasing my money. :mad: not that it would matter, since the damn thing isn't available anywhere! gah! i thought maybe germany would get the same 7th march release date as the UK, but no...
I feel you! When I bought my Nikon I transferred more than 2k Euros to three different dealers who all claimed to have the camera "in stock" when they didn't. Fortunately they all sent my money back within a few days. I ended up buying a very young used one privately on eBay.
 
I know this camera is old news by now, but I got myself an E-M5 today, it's crazy how much better in pretty much every ways this thing is compared to my E-PL2.


Things I love:

- This thing is FAST!
- ISO 800 isn't so noisy anymore!
- The two dials
- EVF is nice, feels way more responsive than the VF-2. The fact that it's integrated is cool too.

Things I don't:

- The EVF was higher on the E-PL2 so it felt way more confortable to rest my glasses onto
- The grip definitely isn't as comfy, maybe it's something I'll get used to, or I'll just end up getting the bigger grip for it.
 
paypal responded to my request about keeping my money tied up: apparently with the new SEPA stuff going on (ger/eu people will know) it's possible for me to reverse paypals charges to my account up to 8 working days after it occured. so for that amount of time, they'll keep my money tied up. guess it makes sense, nobody telling me anything about it still sucks, though.
still waiting for shops to finally have e-m10s available... in the meantime i find more and more "cheap" (not as cheap as killpandas though -.-) e-m5s on ebay and keep wondering how much of a difference there is between the two... i keep going back to marcos_eiriks post to confirm that i really do want the e-m10 rather than the e-m5.

EDIT: FINALLY!
finally put an order in and payed it at a german shop this time. it seems they got some stock this afternoon, as around noon the damn thing wasn't available anywhere. payed with paypal (because that got me free shipping, weirdly) and so i hope they will send it out tomorrow. haven't received the 12-50 i got off ebay yet, but in the meantime i have the 20mm pana to play around with. wohoo!
 
Last edited:
yup, i'm starting to feel i'm officially doomed. now, for the first time in my life, DHL has simply LOST my package containing the e-m10. tracking says it's been delivered to a neighbour instead of the packstation (which is not supposed to happen ever). on top of that, said "neighbour" is supposed to be an electronics store 15km from here. and guess what, they have never heard of the package and certainly didn't sign for it.

called DHL to complain and find out where my package is: "oh, i see the same tracking number has been assigned to two different parcels in the last two days, maybe that's a problem. yeah, i see that's not yours that has been delivered, but still, i have no idea where your parcel is! maybe you just have to wait another day or two and just in case, contact the store you bought from, just to be sure."

:wall: :blowup:

in the meantime, i'm amusing myself with DIY solutions for motorized timelapse dollies, because the e-m10 comes with timelapse functionality built in. i'm thinking the most promising solutions to achieve the very low speeds required are either using a spinning threaded bar to drive a nut carrying the dolly or of course.... LEGO! the dolly itself is a whole other thing, probably best to go with rails for wall-racks or something.
 
Last edited:
yup, i'm starting to feel i'm officially doomed. now, for the first time in my life, DHL has simply LOST my package containing the e-m10. tracking says it's been delivered to a neighbour instead of the packstation (which is not supposed to happen ever). on top of that, said "neighbour" is supposed to be an electronics store 15km from here. and guess what, they have never heard of the package and certainly didn't sign for it.

called DHL to complain and find out where my package is: "oh, i see the same tracking number has been assigned to two different parcels in the last two days, maybe that's a problem. yeah, i see that's not yours that has been delivered, but still, i have no idea where your parcel is! maybe you just have to wait another day or two and just in case, contact the store you bought from, just to be sure."

:wall: :blowup:
:cry: ... is all I can say... I can feel your pain...
 
the only slight consolation right now, is that the seller is a very nice and understanding kind of person. after my email describing the situation he told me to tell him this afternoon should the package not reach me today, sounds like he wants to make sure he sends another one out instantly... i only hope he still has some in stock.

edit: update on DHL screwing up. tracking status now reads:
Thu, 13.03.2014 11:09 Uhr -- The shipment has been successfully delivered
Fri, 14.03.2014 06:57 Uhr -- The shipment is on its way to the PACKSTATION

yes, it doesn't make any sense. but as long as it gets here, i'll forgive them...
 
Last edited:
thanks, i will do my very best (both in terms of enjoying and bewaring).
sadly, i'll have to do quite a bit of work over the weekend... i'll still find the time though, i'm sure :) even an old 70s 135mm lens i got off ebay arrived today... and man, is 135mm a lot with the 2.0 crop factor involved.
 
thanks, i will do my very best (both in terms of enjoying and bewaring).
sadly, i'll have to do quite a bit of work over the weekend... i'll still find the time though, i'm sure :) even an old 70s 135mm lens i got off ebay arrived today... and man, is 135mm a lot with the 2.0 crop factor involved.
Ah, I'm sure you'll find some time to enjoy it. Though I guess the most tempting prospect is some fast compact glass such as the 25/1.8 and 45/1.8.

Yes a 135mm does give you a lot of reach on mFT, and not that big...
8543528746_a513fa2cbc_c.jpg

(E-M5 with OM-Zuiko 135mm f2.8)

Bigger:
8420912769_c552c3fd63_c.jpg

(E-M5 with Canon Fd 135mm f2)

Even bigger:
8208721376_8932f57eb4_c.jpg

(E-M5 with Ai-S Nikkor 300mm f2.8)

Very big:
8208276321_bfe42aafbe_c.jpg

(E-M5 with Canon Fd 500mm f4.5L)
 
My used E-M5 was missing the eye-cup, which was one of the reason why I didn't like the position of the EVF, since there was nothing to really stop my eye, my nose just punched on the display all the time.

After looking at the original eye-cup it didn't seem like that would necessarily fix the issue, so I ordered the bigger one (EP-11).



This thing is awesome, I can rest my glasses on it no problem so my nose doesn't hit the display, it isolate external light much better and also makes the whole camera looks more "complete".

I tried it quickly without glasses and it seems even better at blocking external light.

Only issue I can see is that there's a lot of flex to it (since it's mainly rubber and a small plastic locking mechanism), so I'm sure it's not going to take a lot to make it detach. Maybe I'll end up gluing it.


Anyway, strongly recommended.
 
My used E-M5 was missing the eye-cup, which was one of the reason why I didn't like the position of the EVF, since there was nothing to really stop my eye, my nose just punched on the display all the time.

After looking at the original eye-cup it didn't seem like that would necessarily fix the issue, so I ordered the bigger one (EP-11).

This thing is awesome, I can rest my glasses on it no problem so my nose doesn't hit the display, it isolate external light much better and also makes the whole camera looks more "complete".

I tried it quickly without glasses and it seems even better at blocking external light.

Only issue I can see is that there's a lot of flex to it (since it's mainly rubber and a small plastic locking mechanism), so I'm sure it's not going to take a lot to make it detach. Maybe I'll end up gluing it.


Anyway, strongly recommended.
Well, I lost my original E-M5 eyecup (duh....) so I also have the larger one, it is very nice when I use sunglases :)
 
i have to admit, i wouldn't mind a little larger eyecup... sadly, it seems there isn't a bigger one for the e-m10 yet (or amazon doesn't know about it).
another thing i have to admit: i just spent 5 minutes trying to figure out how to assign the EVF/liveview switch to some fn button or have the option in the menu somewhere... i couldn't find the damn button because it's hidden behind say eyecup when you hold the camera normally. had to consult the manual, damn it :wall:
 
Last edited:
Top