sgreszcz

Thats a really useful review.  The moire is a dissapointment.  If they downscalled from the full 16 by 9 still it would at least make sense.  But to actually crop but not crop to 1:1 even though its so close, well that must be intentional crippling.   The image stabilisation doesn't seem quite good enough to compensate for the micro jitters from the rolling shutter either.  No flat profiles.  Weirdly he says early on in the review that he will have a video showing the flatest settings, but it is nowere to be found.  Looks like it's not a GH4 in your pocket after all.

 

Here is the "flat settings" video: 

 

Unfortunately, it is looking like this is not the camera for me if the video is crippled in this way.  I was looking to move away from some of my Olympus bodies, but for £799 I think there are too many compromises here - especially if you include no touch/tilt screen or tilt EVF.

 

I'm going to wait to see what the Panasonic Gx7 or Olympus OMD-EM5 replacements give us.

I am assuming Panasonic is not going to give us the LX-100 as a "world" camera and will have PAL and NTSC flavours?  This sucks if I want to buy the camera in the US or Canada, or if I buy the PAL version (live in the UK) and shoot video when visiting family in North America I will struggle with the 25 fps under artificial lights?

 

Is this also true for the GH4?

 

Overall, I'm not too sure that this is a problem as when I adjust my shutter speed between 1/50 or 1/60 (depending on country) on my Olympus cameras (which only give 30 fps) I don't get noticeable flicker.

Thank you for this early review Andrew!  I think this is going to replace one of my Olympus E-P5 and O12-40 zoom for carry-everywhere video.

There seems to be no CineLikeD on it, but it is not the final firmware

Hi Andrew, could you comment on how the EVF performs as well?

Looking forward I your review.

-small
-Great OSS zoom with wide end f1.7 (like prime lens)
-evf
-fantastic manual controls

For me it's complete, perfect camera. I'll buy it as soon as possible in my country.

 

Really close for me to replace my Olympus E-P5, due to poor Olympus video codecs (and no firmware upgrades on the horizon, I think).

 

Too bad there is no tilt/touch LCD and the fixed EVF seems to have less quality that the GX7 (similar in quality to GH2) according to this blog: http://admiringlight.com/blog/hands-panasonic-lx100-gm5-voigtlander-10-5mm-f0-95/

 

Maybe a lot of this can be overcome by the peaking functionality.  I've never used it with video as it isn't supported in the Olympus cameras.  

 

The GM5's bulit-in EVF is even lower resolution, unfortunately.  I love the Olympus tilt EVF VF-4, too bad the video output is so crap.

Looks like no built-in ND.  Does this thing have screw-in filter threads, and if so, what diameter?

This is from Olympus' official youtube channel related to the E-P5 getting higher frame rates in 720p.  Don't know if it is for real or not, as it was published in July and I haven't seen it yet.

 

The video examples shown in the clip were shot on the E-P5?  I'm not so sure as mine get blocky when shooting wide depth of field with lots of detail or movement.

 

http://youtu.be/cVZABJ-lzeA

There is a discussion on Flickr about Olympus (specifically E-M1) video:  https://www.flickr.com/groups/getolympus/discuss/72157644800709078/

 

An Olympus rep has responded and since it is a public forum maybe it will get some more visibility if people post their input and feedback?

Is the video output of the EM-1 that much better than the EM-5?  I have the latter and get a lot of blocky video when things start moving (leaves on trees, etc.)  Otherwise, the image is quite nice and the IBIS makes it easy to shoot stable video without any other gear.

Still I think it's kind of misleading. I've read many times over how people actually mean to say that f/2.8 on Micro Four Thirds is equivalent to full frame f/5.6 in light gathering terms, which is absolutely wrong. I say do not feed those "arguments".

I agree full frame has an advantage on how good the noise performance is in higher ISOs but that's an entire different matter that even has to do more with each particular camera or sensor rather that full frame as a whole and that isn't clear in the article.

 

Here is a good blog post that talks about this: http://admiringlight.com/blog/full-frame-equivalence-and-why-it-doesnt-matter/

Andrew, thank you for posting this and I also enjoyed the tram movie too.

 

I bought the OMD EM-5 primarily for stills although I've started messing around with shooting video (mostly of my 3 year old and family events).  I only shoot handheld, and can really appreciate what the IBIS can do.  

 

I love the camera for photography and sometimes the video output comes out looking fantastic however both the 1080p and 720p H.264 crumbles into a blocky mess when there is a lot of movement (for instance leaves on trees moving in the background).  I've also tried using the 720p MJPEG settings and while it doesn't get blocky, the output looks more fuzzy or grainy (for lack of a better word).  

 

There are a few other things missing from the camera when in video mode: focus peaking, true 24p/60p, touch screen focusing (works with stills).  The live histogram is quite handy, though, and the EVF isn't bad for manual focus while giving you a third point of stabilisation.  Hopefully Olympus gets a couple of video engineers in return after trading their IBIS technology with Sony.

 

Would you mind sharing some of your OMD EM-5 camera settings and any other experiences that could help with getting better video output? What picture setting do you use and do you turn down sharpness, saturation, contrast and then colour grade in post?