I’ve taken close to 8,000 photos this year with the Olympus EM-1 since it’s arrival in February. I ordered a few lenses for it which were added to my previous collection of lenses (outlined in this post).
There are a few annoyances discovered after so much intimage use with a camera like this that you rarely pick up in a review. Without a lot of planning or notes, I’m documenting a few here and I believe most of these can be fixed via software updates. In fact, some of these issues were supposedly already fixed but are recurring almost daily.
The biggest annoyance comes with the AF (auto-focus) system. It is an issue with every single M43 lens. Scenario:
- Turn on camera
- Hold shutter half-way down
- …no auto-focus
- Take photo, no preview is shown of the photo (despite having 2 second previews enabled)
- Disable and re-enable AF, still no auto focus and then power cycle camera 3 times and eventually it works.
This issue occurrs once per day and usually I’m getting shots as I see them with no time to spare.
Second is a problem ocurring a few times which is an error on screen that my SD card is “Write Protected”. I usually confirm it’s not and the only fix is to enter the camera’s menu and format the card which of course leads to a deletion of photos so without a laptop present, I’m unable to save the photos already taken. I heard this is due to turning the camera off while wrting photos to the card. The EM-1 will remain on with off switch toggled while writing the SD card so it looks like a serious bug that needs to be resolved. This has only happened 4 times this year.
The Battery grip & using both batteries installed. I have the menu setting confirmed to use both of the batteries that are installed (one in the body and one in the battery grip). However, after a few hours of shooting, my camera reads low battery and turns off. I remove the battery grip and it shows full bars again. Basically, it’s using the grip battery and not the one in the battery. Not a big deal because the grip is mostly for comfort, not for long-life (I’d just carry 2 batteries if I didn’t want the extra grip). It’s just a minor annoyance.
UI Lattency and sluggishness. Boot time varies almost daily and changing settings on the fly rarely feel smooth and reliable. This should have been tweaked quite a bit for a product nearing 18 months old but it’s not and Olympus really needs to step it up and make the interface much faster.
Another note on Auto Focus. Yes, I can select the AF Point that I’d like to focus on or switch to manual focus but you’d assume AF would work fairly well nearly all of the time. Canon and Nikon nail this down very well. The EM-1 rarely focuses on faces and even when doing the classic…point directly at subject to focus then move to the right (for rule of thirds). Most often, it focuses on something not in the center and I have to delay my subject’s smile or pose to try AF a few more times before finally giving up and choosing the focus point via the D-pad. It takes a lot of time and I imagine if this was a sport photography situation, I’d miss a ton of opportunities for shots.
The camera takes fantastic photos and it’s very comfortable. The glass so far is high quality (from Olympus and Panasonic) but it seems that mostly it’s Olympus software that really needs a lot of work. If they can work out these bugs, the camera will be a joy to use. Fortunately, it’s only in high-stress situations that these problems cause an issue. If I’m out with a group taking many photographs and changing settings every minute, it counts quite a bit an failure rate seems to go up exponentially. Either way, it shouldn’t matter what situation I’m in. The camera should just work reliably all of the time. AF issues would make more sense if I was using non-standard lenses but these are Olympus made M43 lenses on an Olympus M43 body…in fact, this is the flagship Olympus M43 body. It should behave like one.
Imagine if Canon’s 1Dx had these issues. It would be catstrophic.