Silhouettes

While you usually want to get good exposure on most subjects throughout the frame, there are times when a silhouette can add dramatic impact to an image. For our purposes, a silhouette is an almost graphic form within the scene that shows no detail. It can be recognizable or abstract, but it should play a part in the scene that makes it a strong visual element.

While you should generally avoid making images that have you pointing the camera at the sun, a silhouette is created by doing just that. The difference is that the silhouetted form should block the direct rays of the sun, yet your exposure reading should be made off the background, not the foreground silhouetted subject. If the light in the background is bright enough and you avoid the foreground in your exposure reading, you can be assured that the foreground will become silhouetted. This is best accomplished using a spot metering pattern.

 The sky was hazy and the sun was near the horizon and I spotted this lighthouse that served as a great sun blocker and potential silhouette. I moved around until the structure blocked the sun and made a reading from the brightest area in the background.

Settings: With a 210mm lens: at ISO 200, f/22 at 1/500 second. Spot exposure reading made and locked off the bright background.

Olympus OM-D E-M5 II Lab Test, Review and Comments

The Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mark II has some remarkable and enhanced features, including a new version of the Olympus 5-axis image stabilization system, which worked extremely well during our tests. Olympus specifies the benefit of this stabilizer as 5 EV stops. During our tests we took images with the 12-40mm f/2.8 zoom lens set at 50mm (equivalent: 25mm setting on the lens) and were able to record blur-free images with 1/6 second instead of 1/50 second, the equivalent of 5 EV stops.

The new AF system is based on contrast metering and offers a lot of AF modes. Besides the standard single and continuous AF modes it allows for “AF tracking” and a “Single AF + MF” mode, which can be used to focus manually even if the AF system is activated. For manual focusing, the camera offers focus peaking and a magnifier function. In combination with the excellent electronic viewfinder (2.36 million RGB dots) manual focusing is easy and comfortable. Nevertheless, we recommend using the camera in AF mode because it is very fast and reliable, even under bad lighting conditions and in low contrast scenes.

The E-M5 Mark II doesn't have an integrated flash system, but is supplied with a small compact flash which is mounted on its accessory shoe. The interfaces are located on the left hand side of the camera and covered by plastic cap.

The camera offers all standard exposure modes, scene modes and additional digital effects (like “pinhole”, “dramatic tone” or “soft focus”). Exposure modes and the ART or SCN programs are activated with the large mode dial on top of the camera. The dial has a locking button to help avoid changing setups by mistake.

Next to the mode dial the photographer will find a large adjusting lever which is used as on/off switch. Two parameter dials on the right hand side on the top allow for fast setup of all parameters like aperture or shutter speed settings. The front dial encircles the shutter release button.

The camera offers four function buttons. The user can define the desired function in the setup menu. By default, the button FN2 offers a kind of gradation curve setting on the LCD to enhance or flatten contrast in the image.

The small adjust lever on the back (marked with “1” and “2”) will change the function of the setup dials on the top. In position 1 they will change aperture and shutter speed (in P mode +/ EV correction); in position 2 they will change ISO speed settings and white balance. This function assignment can an also be modified in the menu.

Numerous setup dials and user defined function buttons allow a fast and intuitive handling of the camera, even if the photographer wants to set up many parameters manually. The two setup dials on the right can be easily reached with the forefinger and the thumb of the right hand.

The camera offers a special “pixel shift” mode to increase image resolution up to 40 MP. This technique is known from medium format cameras like the Hasselblad H5D-200c MS and some older compact cameras like the Ricoh RDC-7 or JVC GC-X1. The built-in image stabilizer with a moving sensor allows the user to shoot 8 images which are then shifted by half a pixel each (two images to the right, left, up- and downwards). The 8 images are combined to form a 40 MP image.

Comments on Image Quality

Color: The color reproduction is very good. The Olympus tends to a slightly cooler image reproduction, yet the brighter nuances are located perfectly in the center of the result chart (neutral gray). While other Olympus cameras usually tend to create a somewhat lower color saturation, the E-M5 Mark II created slightly oversaturated results.

The skin tone reproduction is excellent. This applies in our test shots of the color test pattern as well as the portrait shot. Differentiation of colors is also very good.

Sharpness:

The camera performed very well in our resolution tests. The test chart was reproduced with 3335 of 3456 lines per picture height, which is an excellent result. High sharpness and crisp detail reproduction are partially a result of an intense sharpness filtering of the JPEGs. We noted an overshot effect of 20.4 percent, which is a little high and caused a clipping warning. Nevertheless, the reproduction of hard contrast lines and fine details is still natural looking. In addition to the shot in standard mode, we also shot the ISO 12233 chart in pixel shift mode and created images with a resolution of 40 MP. In this mode the Olympus reproduced the chart with 4632 of 5472 lines per picture height. This isn't as good as the resolution result of the standard test without “pixel shift” but still an impressive result for an MFT camera.

The new Olympus offers a 3-inch LCD with 1,037,000 RGB dots. The electronic viewfinder offers 2.36 million RGB dots and is very helpful for manual focusing.

 Noise:

The camera offers ISO speed settings between 200 and 25,600. The “LOW” mode is the equivalent to ISO 100 setting and wasn't tested because of its “optional” status. In ISO 200 to 3200 modes the camera offered very smooth and clean images. The luminance noise factor stays below 1.0 percent and is invisible up to ISO 1600. Color noise is reduced by an intelligent filtering algorithm. Only at ISO 12,800 did we note clearly noticeable color noise structures and anti-noise-filter effects; at ISO 25,600 the color noise effects are really annoying.

The dynamic range results are very good in the lower ISO speed settings. The camera reproduced the Stouffer 4110 chart with a maximum of 11.6 f-stops (and 11.1 in ISO 400 mode), but in higher ISO speed settings the dynamic range results drop significantly (below 8 f-stops at 12,800 and 25,600).

The fully articulated swivel mechanism allows the user to flip the LCD up- and downwards and even to the front of the camera.

Pro:

retro style system camera

compact, high-grade body

excellent image stabilizer

very good image quality (high resolution, very good color reproduction)

Wi-Fi

a lot of individual settings and special image modes (live bulb mode; digital effects and more)

very fast AF system (even though it uses only contrast metering)

extended video capabilities

Con:

slim body may be too small for large hands (Olympus offers an additional battery grip and an optional hand grip which can help

menu structure sometimes a bit too complicated

Notes on Video

The 5 axis stabilizer is very helpful in video mode. Based on sensor shift technology it can be used with every lens system – even if you are using third party lenses mounted on an MFT adapter. The stabilization results are excellent and can be compared with results of other good optical stabilization system cameras, such as in videos taken with Panasonic's GH4 with its O.I.S. system.

The camera offers manual exposure settings for video recording. The additional video shutter release button can be activated at any time (and in any photo mode), but for manual exposure settings for videos the photographer has to activate the movie mode with the mode dial and choose the desired exposure mode (P, S, A and M for video) in the setup menu. ISO speed settings in video mode are limited to 6400.

There are additional professional features. The camera allows the user to set up the sound level manually and can use different time code styles. This offers a more comfortable way of synchronizing video files in editing software when a scene is recorded with several cameras simultaneously.

Overall, the Olympus E-M5 Mark II did a good job in video mode. The resolution result is on an average level for video recording system cameras, but still good. The colors look fine, but sometimes you may notice a color shift while recording. The changes of the white balance (WB Auto) aren't as smooth as in recordings with other cameras and can create a little “color jump” when the camera tries to change its setting while recording a single scene.

The color result of the test pattern series of images is very good. The camera showed a neutral color reproduction with a little tendency into bluish and cooler colors. Color saturation is very good: only the blue nuances are a little exaggerated.

The results of the dynamic range tests are similar to the photographic results. The camera achieved a very high result in videos up to ISO 1600 (10.7 f-stops) and than drops to about 9 f-stops in the ISO 3200/6400 settings. Noise results are very good. Color noise is noticeable in videos taken with ISO 3200 and 6400.

The lab test and comments were produced by the TIPA affiliated testing lab (Betternet). I serve as a member of the Technical Image Press Association's Technical Committee.

For full specs and other information visit http://www.getolympus.com/us/en/digitalcameras/omd/e-m5-mark-ii.html