Andrew Reid

Suppose you've got a TV show with 350 million worldwide viewers. It's sold around the world for £50m. One of the most watched BBC shows in the world. Do you decide to protect the content, sorting out disagreements behind closed doors or do you cave into a vocal minority and the press, taking it completely off air, before launching a month-long investigation? Read the full article

​Those portrait shots are the best case scenario and they just about pass muster for YouTube. You will notice a massive distance on wider shots with a focal point that isn't bang in front of the lens.

It's £1099 compared to 1099 euros. Exchange rate is 1.36 euros to the pound. Edit - ah my mistake it's actually £899 in the UK.

​That's pretty optimistic. I don't see the 7D II and 5D III leading the sales charts at the moment. The 7D Mark II body in the US market is only 17th on the Amazon rank for DSLRs, placed 249 in the overall Camera and Photo sales rank, well outside the top 100. The 5D Mark III is number 5 in the DSLR ranks but there are 3 cheap Nikons ahead of it. The D750 isn't far behind at 7. This chart excludes all the mirrorless stuff. Look at that rank and you will see Sony in places 1 to 7. Stuff like the A6000 and A7 Mk II is selling very well. Even better in Europe and Asia where mirrorless has caught on. Canon USA won't even release a new mirrorless camera in the states. They are too scared or cannibalising their DSLR sales.

​How do you explain the Samsung NX1 then? APS-C, 28MP and yet does 4K with full pixel readout. Barely gets warm. It's cheap. The processors for 4K are already even in smartphones.

  ​Interesting spot, however a fixed lens 1" camcorder doesn't sound much like a GH4 competitor to me.

This is probably the most revealing interview I can remember with a Canon exec. Barney Britton and Rishi Sanyal at DPR have asked not just tough questions, but the right questions! Canon imply a small GH4-like 4K camera is "under consideration" and they want to satisfy demand from the news media industry. Read the full article - http://www.eoshd.com/2015/03/canon-exploring-4k-gh4-competitor/

​It might have some advantages. - Finer noise grain - Less banding (this can be caused by scaling) - Less rolling shutter And 1.68x crop is tiny over 1.6x crop Canon APS-C standard, nobody complains about 1.6x vs 1.5x APS-C standards do they? I think the difference will be smaller than imagined.

​I will be showing this with my full review, of course. The first article is just that, a first impressions. It's obvious to me, by shooting the E-M1 and E-M5 II side by side though which has the better quality 1080p. The difference is pretty big. That's because the E-M5 II seems to carry over the same or similar old Sony sensor from the E-M5, whilst the E-M1 uses the Panasonic GH4's sensor with the addition of phase detect AF sensels, allegedly.

​And this method is totally useless.

​Nice post

Yep but probably not for another couple of weeks as busy with other stuff. Love the NX1 internally so much, it doesn't really need the Shogun!

But be careful with the EF Smart Speed Booster, mine doesn't fit, hits the faux-prism at the top of the mount for the EVF.

Sure if the new stabilisation system is THAT much better than the E-M1 then I will keep it and try to put it to some good creative uses. Early days yet, I'm just so disgusted that Olympus have squandered their stabilisation YET AGAIN on a sub-par image. It's getting less easy to let them off the hook because in 2015 it should be judged against the NX1 and GH4, from which point on it starts to look incredibly dated. Think of it as an old E-M5 with heftier crop factor, then add whatever benefit the new stabilisation might give you over other forms of stabilisation before laying down precious cash for this camera. It carries a high risk of disappointment. Also more advice is to use Speed Booster and a soft lens wide open to reduce the aliasing and crop. That helps. Various shooting styles especially close-ups help. Avoiding infinity focus and wide angles or scenes which require hefty dynamic range. Careful grading also helps. At least the codec is better this time out.

Absolutely superb Ed. Love the cinematography, the mood, the idea, the sound, the writing, it's all spot on. Two lines in particular, the one about your dog knowing something "we're still trying to figure out" and the closing lines about New York - utter magic. Will stay with me for a long time because it's exactly how I feel about Berlin at the moment.

The crop in movie mode is enormous on the E-M5 II, larger crop than E-M5 originally and it no longer reduces when you switch off IS. Looks like 2.7x crop so Nikon 1 size sensor effective for movies on the E-M5 II. Oh dear.

What does it do with a card in the slot? No output at all?​ Olympus seem to be clueless. Motor companies don't put cars out with duff radios, I'm not sure why Olympus feels duff HDMI and broken timecode are suitable for a final retail shelf unit.

To test resolution shoot at infinity with a wide angle lens, something like a landscape from far away. Sorry but close-ups of towels tell us nothing.

Nothing else just floats there in mid-air like the Olympus stabilisation, it's a dolly track in the sky. Which makes it all the more disturbing that they can't see a market for it, or rather, that they continue to pay lip service to the market for it. The Timecode implementation is absolutely useless by the way. Almost like a marketing check box has been ticked rather than a feature! You can't change exposure during a shot, controls lock up. The Panasonic G6 showed that great 1080p can be done for very very low prices in this market. The E-M5 shows that no matter how many great engineers do magical things there will always be an equal and opposite imbecile force to waste that effort.

Re-watched John's footage again on the E-M5 II and he made it look a lot better than it is. I can scarcely believe it's the same camera. It's like the V1.0 retail firmware has taken it back a peg, to segment it from the E-M1.

​Yes I saw that comment from Olympus. They are right and they're wrong. Pana, Sony, Samsung do need to generate 4K content for their TVs. However my question to Olympus is do you see the potential in great 1080p? BECAUSE YOU HAVEN'T EVEN DONE THAT YET!

There's virtually no point in an APS-C DSLR any more. No unique selling point. Full frame is now affordable. The DX and EF-S lenses are nothing unique or worth holding onto. At least Micro Four Thirds has a unique value proposition in that it is small, mirrorless, sometimes 4K. What D7100 owner would be tempted by this upgrade? Doubtful.

Great stills camera though! Unless you have full frame, for same price. Oh, we do.

It's a joke alright. Unbelievable that they let it out of the door with so much moire, aliasing, softness. The crop is massive in video mode too, more than E-M1 or GH4. I'll have more to say in the full review, but right now I am disappointed in Olympus. Like I said they clearly listened, timecode of all things! It's a bit like being in a restaurant and your dish arrives with no sauce, so you send it back and they return it with the sauce but no chicken! They are counting on us upgrading to a 4K E-M1 Mark II obviously but I am giving them a very clearly message. NO MORE OLYMPUS FOR ME! I don't care how good the stabilisation is. They are done.

With the Olympus E-M5 Mark II we've been seduced. 40MP stills - oooh! High bitrate 24p - Ahh! The E-M5 II is a great camera. Let's see how they've ruined it. Read the blog post here