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For reasons verging on mild madness (!), I bought a lightly-used EM5.3 over the weekend. The plan was to look at it as an alternative to the Pen-F that I have. The Pen's lovely in so many ways, but it's showing its age with menu structures, lack of raw transfer over WiFi to the mobile app (OI.Share), lack of buttons (esp one for back-button AF), poor CAF, and being overall just a little slow (esp on e-shutter for EV bracketing where ghosting on foliage becomes an issue). And of course, it's not weather sealed which rules it out as an ideal backup to my main EM1.3. I read the various reviews of the EM5.3 and most ended up saying that it's a mini EM1.2, which sounds really good and just what I need. Having previously had the original EM5 and the EM5.2, both of which I absolutely loved, I thought it would be a good choice. But, whilst it does have many of the key tech features of the EM1.2 (AF, fast sensor readout), I can't help feeling that Olympus botched a number of key areas with the camera that collectively frustrate the life out of me.
- The polycarbonate-only construction means it doesn't have the "quality" feel that all other Olympus cameras have - even going back to the lowly E-PL5 which got me into the system. I know that the plastic materials used make for a lighter camera and they are probably quite robust, but it just feels cheap. Totally psychological I know, but there it is!
- The battery is the older BLS-50 from the smaller Pens. It just doesn't hack it in my view. Mount an IS-equipped lens like the 12-100 and the battery gets sucked dry way too quickly. Worse, Olympus decided not to provide a battery grip so it's a case of having to swap batteries more than needed. On top of all that, despite being launched after the EM1.2 with its chipped battery that provides a reliable indication of remaining capacity, the old BLS-50 gives zero info regarding its charge state, so we're left with the crude voltage measure in the camera which usually results in wildly inaccurate readings of the level. Whatever were Oly thinking to launch a camera in late 2019 with such an old battery?
- C-modes. What a mess! They've removed the old "MySets", which work really well (even on the lowly EM10 cameras), and replaced it with a single "C" setting on the dial plus two further C settings that can only be accessed by diving into the menus. They can't be assigned to unused dial positions (such as iAuto, ART etc) like MySets. Worse, if you're foolish enough to have the dial not on "C", selecting a C mode from the menu will completely overwrite whatever settings you previously had with no way to go back. I use C modes a lot and on both the EM1.3 and Pen-F have all four programmed and wish I had more. Compared to every other Olympus camera I've used, the implementation on the EM5.3 is just awful. You can't even save the C settings using OM Workplace. It's a massive step back from the EM5.2. I keep thinking to myself - they paid a programmer to remove MySets and create this rubbish!
- EVF eye-detection. Unlike the Pen-F, EM1.3, EM1.2 etc etc, the EM5.3 doesn't disable the eye detection when the screen is folded out. This means that if you're using the camera at the waist and looking at the screen, it'll frequently switch to the EVF if your body gets too close to the camera. Whatever were Oly thinking of when they did this?
- The EVF has a lower magnification than its predecessor. It's OLED not LCD which I guess helps wearers of polarised sunglasses, but it's got a smaller magnification. It is at least a little better than the Pen-F in this regard but compared to its predecessor it's a backward step. Again, I ask myself "why?".
Maybe these things won't bother some people, but in my view it's indicative of excessive price-point engineering and even to "crippleware" thinking - deliberately removing useful features (like MySets) to maintain a gap to the higher-priced model in the range. The polycarbonate build is an interesting one. The logical part of my brain can see the sense, but the feel in the hand doesn't quite measure up to the "premium" feel of the two previous EM5 models. This in my view diminishes the brand. This is still a £1000 camera at retail price.
If all this sounds rather negative, I guess I should add that there are some positives! Compared to the Pen-F, it's got much better tech - faster sensor readout speed, much better AF, improved menu structure, raw transfer over WiFi, better overall handling, useful features like ProCap and focus stacking, it's weather sealed, it's slightly lighter, the EVF magnification is slightly higher, IBIS is rated slightly higher, it's got more buttons (including a back-button for AF), has in-camera charging, and it even has a focus mode lever which makes switching between SAF and CAF much easier.
I guess the question I need to ask is whether I can get over the negatives. I certainly can't see me letting the Pen-F go, but maybe I can work around these issues and grow to love it...
- The polycarbonate-only construction means it doesn't have the "quality" feel that all other Olympus cameras have - even going back to the lowly E-PL5 which got me into the system. I know that the plastic materials used make for a lighter camera and they are probably quite robust, but it just feels cheap. Totally psychological I know, but there it is!
- The battery is the older BLS-50 from the smaller Pens. It just doesn't hack it in my view. Mount an IS-equipped lens like the 12-100 and the battery gets sucked dry way too quickly. Worse, Olympus decided not to provide a battery grip so it's a case of having to swap batteries more than needed. On top of all that, despite being launched after the EM1.2 with its chipped battery that provides a reliable indication of remaining capacity, the old BLS-50 gives zero info regarding its charge state, so we're left with the crude voltage measure in the camera which usually results in wildly inaccurate readings of the level. Whatever were Oly thinking to launch a camera in late 2019 with such an old battery?
- C-modes. What a mess! They've removed the old "MySets", which work really well (even on the lowly EM10 cameras), and replaced it with a single "C" setting on the dial plus two further C settings that can only be accessed by diving into the menus. They can't be assigned to unused dial positions (such as iAuto, ART etc) like MySets. Worse, if you're foolish enough to have the dial not on "C", selecting a C mode from the menu will completely overwrite whatever settings you previously had with no way to go back. I use C modes a lot and on both the EM1.3 and Pen-F have all four programmed and wish I had more. Compared to every other Olympus camera I've used, the implementation on the EM5.3 is just awful. You can't even save the C settings using OM Workplace. It's a massive step back from the EM5.2. I keep thinking to myself - they paid a programmer to remove MySets and create this rubbish!
- EVF eye-detection. Unlike the Pen-F, EM1.3, EM1.2 etc etc, the EM5.3 doesn't disable the eye detection when the screen is folded out. This means that if you're using the camera at the waist and looking at the screen, it'll frequently switch to the EVF if your body gets too close to the camera. Whatever were Oly thinking of when they did this?
- The EVF has a lower magnification than its predecessor. It's OLED not LCD which I guess helps wearers of polarised sunglasses, but it's got a smaller magnification. It is at least a little better than the Pen-F in this regard but compared to its predecessor it's a backward step. Again, I ask myself "why?".
Maybe these things won't bother some people, but in my view it's indicative of excessive price-point engineering and even to "crippleware" thinking - deliberately removing useful features (like MySets) to maintain a gap to the higher-priced model in the range. The polycarbonate build is an interesting one. The logical part of my brain can see the sense, but the feel in the hand doesn't quite measure up to the "premium" feel of the two previous EM5 models. This in my view diminishes the brand. This is still a £1000 camera at retail price.
If all this sounds rather negative, I guess I should add that there are some positives! Compared to the Pen-F, it's got much better tech - faster sensor readout speed, much better AF, improved menu structure, raw transfer over WiFi, better overall handling, useful features like ProCap and focus stacking, it's weather sealed, it's slightly lighter, the EVF magnification is slightly higher, IBIS is rated slightly higher, it's got more buttons (including a back-button for AF), has in-camera charging, and it even has a focus mode lever which makes switching between SAF and CAF much easier.
I guess the question I need to ask is whether I can get over the negatives. I certainly can't see me letting the Pen-F go, but maybe I can work around these issues and grow to love it...
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