Welcome to a Digital Camera Battery specialist of the Olympus Digital Camera Battery
The Olympus OM-D series of compact system cameras is distinct from the company's PEN series of cameras. Both series are based on the Micro Four Thirds interchangeable lens standard, but the new OM-D series with batteries such as Olympus Li-10B Battery, Olympus Li-12B Battery, Olympus Li-20B Battery, Olympus Li-30B Battery, Olympus Li-40B Battery, Olympus Li-42B Battery, Olympus Li-50B Battery, Olympus Stylus 9000 Battery, Olympus Li-60B Battery, Olympus FE-370 Battery, Olympus Li-70B Battery, Olympus FE-5040 Battery is designed to appeal more towards serious photographers, while the PEN is geared more towards consumers and enthusiasts. As such, the OM-D comes with a few extra features, including a built-in electronic viewfinder (rather than an add-on-style EVF) and it has a tougher, weather-resistant exterior, the type of exterior you would expect on a worthy digital SLR. Importantly though, the OM-D capable of capturing images with very high clarity, and it doesn't forego many of the features that have made the PEN series so fun to use over the years. In fact, the OM-D is just as fun to use as the PEN cameras.
What's present in the Olympus OM-D E-M5 is a 16-megapixel Live MOS sensor, which sits behind a mount that can accept any Micro Four Thirds lenses — and there are lots out here, not just from Olympus, but also Panasonic. It's quite a compact camera for what it is — which is essentially a digital SLR-style camera without a space-consuming mirror box — and the design is very angular and, dare we say it, bold. It's reminiscent of an old-style film camera, and that's the point: it's bears the same OM series name as Olympus' film cameras from the 1980s, and you could say that it borrows some design cues from the likes of the OM-3 and OM-4 cameras with their all-black exteriors. You can see these old cameras on the Olympus Web site's History of Cameras.
In terms of layout, the camera can feel a little cramped at times. This is mostly due to the size and layout of the buttons, such as the playback and function buttons near the top-rear of the camera's body, and the arrow keys, which feel too angular and are not very comfortable to press. The electronic viewfinder can be a little uncomfortable to use, too, if the flash is positioned in the hot-shoe — it sometimes feels like you can't get your eye close enough to the finder. Once again, it's something you get used to after a few days of shooting with this camera.
A 3in OLED screen on the rear of the camera can be used to frame images as well, and it does a commendable job of displaying a scene crisply, even in very bright conditions. However, you'll still want to use the EVF when shooting out in the sunlight. Both views show the same information on the screen (you can change settings while you look through the EVF) and the quality of the EVF overall is very good for framing shots and looking at fine details when manually focusing. The OLED screen folds out from the bottom of the camera and can be angled up or down to allow you to take photos from close to the ground or high above your head. It can't flip all the way up, which means self-portraits aren't that easy to accomplish.
We did notice something annoying though: because the EVF has a sensor that blanks the screen when it detects that your eye is close to it, the screen sometimes switches off if you're angling it in such a way that the sensor thinks you are using. It was sometimes difficult to shoot from the hip unless we held the camera away from our body so that the sensor didn't think that it was being covered. It was also sometimes triggered when we used the touchscreen shutter; hovering our hands over the screen would trigger the sensor.
Indeed, there is a touch component to the OLED screen that allows you to enable the tap-to-shoot shutter and you can also touch any part of the screen that you want to focus on, too. The touchscreen can't be used efficiently for making changes to the settings though. For that, you'll still want to use the arrow keys on the back of the camera. These arrow keys can also be used to change the focus point on the screen very easily. An on-screen menu with all settings can be brought up by pressing the Info button and the arrow and OK keys can be used to make changes quite easily from this menu — it's similar to the Q Menu on Canon digital SLRs. There is also a quick side menu from which you can change things such as ISO and white balance. These are all in addition to the main menu of the camera.
It can be quite a daunting camera to use because of all the features it harbours and we think it will take a good week or two before you can be completely comfortable in knowing where all the settings reside and how to access them. However, while you can change all the exposure and colour settings you want — there is even a function button that's programmed to let you play with the curve for shadows and highlights — the auto mode, scene modes and art modes that have made PEN cameras so fun to use are also present in the OM-D E-M5. You can simply choose to shoot in any of those modes and let the camera decide on the exposure and take the creative control from you. One feature we particularly like is the art mode bracketing, which sees the camera apply all of its art and colour filters to a single shot. It can be great for those scenes when you know you want to use a couple of filters — the camera simply applies all 18 of them instead and saves you the trouble of having to re-take your shot to apply the next filter.