Olympus OM-D E-M5

On average, people update their smartphones at least every 2 years. I purchased my Olympus E-P1 when it was first introduced nearly 3 years ago. (See old blog post here.) So I figured it was time to update my camera to the latest and greatest, the Olympus OM-D E-M5, which is still mostly unavailable in most countries due to high demand. This Monday, I went to a specialist camera store well-known to camera geeks in Hong Kong, called Man Shing (萬成), in Mongkok and picked up my silver E-M5 (black was not available) body-only (no lens).

Then I decided I might as well grab the Panasonic f/1.4 25mm Leica Summilux lens as well. (I already have the Panasonic 20mm f/1.7 pancake, so it could be argued that this was a fairly redundant purchase.)

Many accessories are still not yet available: for example, I couldn't find a spare battery or the optional grip even at such a specialist store as Man Shing (website: here). Still, ended up spending a bit more than I'd expected.

Here is the EM-5 with the Panny Leica mounted. In my opinion, the EM-5 is not as pretty as the E-P1 but being a 2012 model, it has many important advances over 3 year old technology.

The camera is so extensively customizable, it'd take me a week to effectively learn the control layout and optimize all the programmable settings.

Fortunately, a leading website dpreview.com has put together a 3 page guide to getting the most out of the E-M5, see here. 30 minutes later and a quick charge of the battery, I was ready to get my first shots.

The E-M5 is supposed to be vastly superior to the E-P1 in many different ways, but probably the most prominent are control of noise level for available light shooting and speed of autofocus (supposed to be the world's fastest as of 2012).

So, here are two images taken just after dark with the Panny Leica wide open at f/1.4. Nothing special in terms of composition, that'll have to wait for another day.