Introduction
Quite a lot had been already written in the internet by April 2023 about the OM System’s OM-1 camera when I published this post. I wrote down here some notes comparing the OM-1 to the E-M1 Mk II and highlighting some use cases and things that one needs to remember when using some of the special features of the camera. I have later updated this post as I have used additional features and improvements were implemented in firmware updates. Although these note were originally intended for myself, I have added some explanations and published in the hope that other users may find them useful. I haven’t used the OM-1 Mk II camera, but much of what I have written below should also apply to the new model. Here I focus on photography while the biggest performance improvements in the Mk II update seem to be related to video.
Among the things frequently mentioned in the internet, especially in reviews written in haste, is a lack of improvement in image quality between old and new image sensors (e.g., OM system OM-1 vs OM-5 – The 10 Main Differences). This is one example of where my own experience differs drastically from the quick and dirty tests used by some blog writers. There are exceptions to such statements, of course, the most notable I have come across being the thorough and very informative videos at the The Narrowband Channel with the video OM1 Sensor, Everything You Need to Know being most relevant to the current post. For tips on using the OM-1, the videos at the channel ThomasEisl.Photography are easy to follow, well researched and consistent with my own experience.
The viewfinder
The higher resolution EVF of the OM-1 helps with manual focusing. However, the higher refresh rate of its EVF is what surprised me most: it makes tracking birds in flight so much easier compared to the E-M1 Mk II. Here I mean it makes a lot easier to keep the flying bird framed and also anticipating changes in flight path.
The improved easy of manual focusing is of course hugely useful when using adapted manual lenses.
The new viewfinder makes also much easier to visually assess depth of field.
The sensor
A frequent question related to the sensor is: Do OM-1 .ORF raw files converted using default settings have a wider dynamic range? My impression is that they do not, and there is no much reason for camera designers to alter this. A more interesting question is if the ORF files from the OM-1 can withstand a wider range of adjustment when they are edited. This is currently only a subjective impression, but I see little change from the E-M1 Mk II in how much recovery is possible in the shades, but I see an improvement in the highlights. Of course whether the extra “room” is in highlights or shadows depends on how one sets the exposure.
Most of the features I describe below depend on the highly improved image sensor, mainly as a result of the fast read-out (7.2 ms). There is still more to this new sensor: it is a back-side illuminated (BSI) sensor. This has not only implications for the sensitivity to light, and, thus image noise, but also for its optical properties. According to a video in The Narrowband Channel this makes a huge difference with vignetting, decreasing it markedly for wide angle objectives. MFT objectives contain firmware stored in writeable memory and other electronics. The memory is used to store firmware containg information describing the objective and required corrections, information that MFT cameras can retrieve and use. This allows MFT cameras to compensate for the vignetting, while, of course, adapted non-MFT/FT lenses lack such information.
FT and MFT objectives have been designed from the ground up to work well with front-side illuminated sensors by limiting the angle of incidence of the light onto the sensor. The angle of incidence of light has a much smaller effect on film than on sensors as light inpings directly on the thin layer of film emulsion. In contrast, sensors have a filter stack which can be millimetres thick, and consequently behave optically differently than film. A BSI sensor is optically more similar to film than earlier sensors, so I would expect adapted (wide angle) lenses designed for film cameras to benefit the most in this respect.
I intend to test more carefully how much the BSI sensor improves the performance of adapted objectives with respect to vignetting and possibly also in relation to colour fringing. A quick test with the Zuiko 100mm f:2.8 film camera objective, showed it to perform very well, but this very nice objective, also frequently performed well with the E-M1 and E-M1 Mk II cameras.
Image noise and high resolution modes
Image noise is difficult to objectively quantify in ways that are relevant to its “pictorial effect” or human observers’ reaction to it. Furthermore, the noise as seen in the final rendition of a photograph depends heavily on noise reduction during image processing. How effectively a noise reduction algorithm is depends on the characteristics of the noise and of the subject matter depicted by the image. I use mostly Capture One and occasionally OM Workspace. My impressions below, are based on my experience with Capture One 23.
It is important to distinguish random noise (or thermal noise that affects each pixel at random in both time and space) and patterns like banding that affect pixels systematically in space and/or time. Noise in film is mostly random occasionally affected by some clustering, while electronic sensors tend to suffer from unevenly distributed noise, either the result of spatially uneven sensor temperature or systematic variation among pixels, due to inherent light sensitivity or differences in the wiring within the sensor of pixels at different locations in the array or differences in the analogue to digital conversion circuitry of different pixels.
I think different features of image noise annoy different people differently. I find specially disturbing any recognizable pattern in the noise. In this respect the OM-1 performs much much better than the E-M1 (Mk I) or E-M1 Mk II. As a result, the upper ISO limits I am happy to use with the two cameras are 800 to 8000, respectively. This makes Auto ISO my most frequent setting in the OM-1, speciallly for bird photography. while I almost never used it in the E-M1 Mk II. In practice these limits allow significant cropping of images and printing to A3 based on my own standards. These self-imposed limits are without use of any AI-based noise reduction in post-processing, with which even higher ISO would become usable in some cases.
That noise is spatially uniform and mostly random in the OM-1 not only makes it less disturbing in the image but also easier to remove without removing features from the depicted object. In Capture One this means that one can use much higher settings for clarity and structure without creating visible artefacts such as banding. It also means that any procedure that averages multiple readings from each pixel will decrease noise very effectively. High resolution 80MP, 50MP and 25MP images using sensor shift are noiseless or nearly noiseless even at very high ISO settings (e.g., ISO 16000), as the merging of 8 frames cancels most of the random noise. An alternative approach that is also very effective is to take multiple photographs using the same exposure settings and do an HDR merge of them in Capture One, as Capture One will in this case align and average the images. (Of course, averaging is also possible with other software.)
An intriguing predictable consequence of noise being predominantly random, is that it should affect short exposures the most. This could explain some of the contrasting assessments of the OM-1 sensor and is something worthwhile testing as it could be taken advantage of in everyday use of the camera.
Live ND in the OM-1 is based on image averaging, so it can also reduce noise. The usable shutter speeds are, however, limited. I need to test how effective Live ND Shooting is at cancelling out noise in camera.
It is of note that the high resolution mode by sensor shift is usable with any lens, even old manual lenses attached through purely mechanical adapters. Even 50MP handheld images are possible as focal length can be very precisely entered and saved allowing very effective image stabilization. The Live ND Shooting mode can also be used with any lens, including adapted ones.
Digitizing film negatives and positive transparencies using the 80 MPix high resolution mode works extremely well.
Stabilization in the OM-1 is extremely effective, but still we need to consider the time it takes to acquire the eight images merged into a single high resolution image. Say taking 8 images each at 1/80 s add up 1/10 s plus a small overhead. Such a composite succeeds consistently every time. However, with moving subjects the composite image shows the moving subject as eight ghosts. The outcome is different to that of a single long exposure. It is important to remember, that for moving subjects the “movement freezing” time is no longer the shutter speed but the shutter speed added up over all frames. A safe rule of thumb is to use a shutter speed 10 times faster than what would use for a single exposure. If part of the subject or subjects move with respect other parts during the combined exposure time, merging does not fail but the merged image shows ghosts. This ghosting, even if unnatural, can be used intentionally to show movement.
The high resolution modes improve performance in two respects: 1) decreased noise and improved colour rendition and 2) increased resolution. Decreased noise and improved colour rendition do not depend on the resolution of the image projected by the lens onto the sensor, and, thus, are achieved with most lenses and at any aperture settings. Increased resolution requires a good enough lens and taking into account the effect of light diffraction at small diaphragm apertures. The higher the sensor resolution and lens maximum resolution the earlier the diffraction limit is reached when closing the diaphragm. Best 80MP results are thus usually obtained at or near f/5.6.
When using simple macro lenses that are focused by displacing all optical groups together, focusing at close-up or macro distances decreases the effective aperture compared to the nominal aperture by an extent predictable from the focusing distance. In this case one needs to consider the effective aperture and use larger nominal apertures of f/3.5 or f/2.8 for macro and close-up photographs than at infinity to avoid resolution being limited by diffraction. With modern macro objectives with internal focusing mechanisms based on the displacement of only one or a couple of optical groups, predicting when a lens will be diffraction limited is more challenging, and testing is seems like the easiest way to characterize lens performance. In my experience, smaller nominal apertures (larger f-numbers) do not necessarily compromise resolution through diffraction. The M.Zuiko 90mm f/3.5 macro seems to be an extreme case in this respect, yielding high resolution images at macro focusing distances at f/8.0 or f/10.0.
I have written a more detailed web page about focus-bracketing with the OM-1 camera that includes results from some tests.
Flicker in illumination
Flicker scan mode
The flicker scan mode is available only when using the elctronic shutter, which support shutter speeds as fast as 1/32000 s (or \(31.25\,\mathrm{\mu s}\)). When this mode is enabled two things change: 1) the selectable shutter speed values change, and 2) the Live View displays banding as it will show in photographs.
The flicker scan mode adjusts the shutter speed to multiples of the frequency of the flicker of the illumination.
So the first obvious change is that the set of shutter speeds available to choose from in S mode are unusual, such as 1/688.1 s. So sencond difference is that While walking through these values one sees in the camera display or viewfinder the banding as it will appear if a photograph is taken with the current settings. Some of the available shutter speeds fully avoid banding and some other shutter speeds result in weak banding. None of the shutter speeds offered results in very strong banding.
This approach, even if not fully automatic, is very effective. It is in fact a very good choice for a camera aimed at advanced users, because it can be ocassionally more important to use a fast enough shutter speed even at the price of faint banding than completely supressing banding.
The faster sensor readout in the OM-1 compared to earlier Olympus EM-1 cameras results in fewer and wider bands for the same PWM frequency used for dimming. See the page PWM dimming and digital photography at this site for examples.
Anti-Flicker shooting mode
The anti-Flicker shooting is available only when using the mechanical shutter. According to its description, one of its consequences is that it can introduce an increased lag in the response to the shutter release. The mechanical shutter in the OM-1 supports a maximum shutter speed of 1/8000 s (or \(125\,\mathrm{\mu s}\)).
The anti-Flicker shooting mode synchronizes the release of the shutter to the timing of the flicker in the illumination.
Focusing in challenging situations
Birds’ focus tracking works most of the time well. The AI systems locates the area of the frame where the bird is, but focusing itself does not seem to rely on AI, it seems to just focuses on whatever high contrast object is in this area. Sometimes, this is a branch in front of a bird that has a small size relative to the whole frame. In such cases it helps to manually pre-focus on the bird as the camera will lock onto the nearest in-focus area. Either I have learnt to deal with this situation or the newer firmware does a better job.
While using subject recognition in a crowded situation, such as a bird with twigs in front, with subject recognition engaged, while pressing the shutter half way down, manual focus until the object to be recognized is partly in focus. After this the recognition algorithm usually finds even small birds as long as the occluding stuff remains out of focus. This works because if manual focus is enabled during automatic focusing (a setting in the AF menu), manual focus works not only as a follow up to single focus but also allows manual adjustment of focus during continuous focus with tracking with AI subject detection.
When there are many birds in the same image and they move so that recognition fails on the current target, a different bird can become the new target, I think, even with tracking enabled. This rarely happens with birds in flight, but occasionally with birds on the ground and at small size in the frame.
Setting a small focus area does not limit the tracking of birds in the whole frame but it limits where the target is initially locked to: this is extremely useful when one wants to focus on a specific bird in a flock in flight or on the ground. (I am not sure, but this may be firmware version dependent.)
To quickly change the size of the focusing area without taking the eye from the viewfinder, press down the joystick and turn the front wheel.
To move the focus area use the joystick or the cursor pad.
If you have a button assigned to switching on-off the subject recognition, if you keep it pressed or do a long-press, you can change the subject type with the front wheel.
Focus tracking, obviously is not only useful for moving subjects. I usually find it faster to use re-framing after focusing than moving the focusing area with the joystick. For close-up focusing subject tracking can compensate for camera movement towards or away from the subject, even intentional for adjusting framing or magnification.
Autofocus in pouring rain to my amazement works. The E-M1 Mk II struggled with auto focus in heavy rain, even for steady subjects (I think the original E-M1 handled this better than the Mk II). The OM-1 seems to be minimally disturbed. Tracking birds in flight with the 300 mm F:4.0 objective (600 mm eq.) in heavy rain works reasonably well with about 1 in 3 or 4 frames with tack sharp focus on the eye.
Using the smallest focus area available makes it possible to focus on extremely small features in a subject. Using this approach with long focal lengths or for macro requires some practice but it allows one to focus, for example, with the camera handheld, on the head of an ant or on a distant bird.
Subject recognition is not equally effective with all bird species. As it seems to rely rather heavily on focusing on the eyes, recognition is a bit less effective in species with black eyes in a black head or with other mimetic colouring that reduces the contrast between the eye and the head.
Focus bracketing
With faster sequential shooting capability, focus bracketing is a lot faster in the OM-1 than in the E-M1 Mk II. With the camera on a tripod or copy stand it works perfectly with both slow and fast shutter speeds.
The camera behaves differently in the case of focus bracketing and focus stacking. With focus bracketing each frame is taken with the focus shifted away from the camera, starting from the initial focus point, set either automatically or manually. In contrast, when using in-camera focus staking the first frame is taken at the initial focus position, then the focus point displaced towards the camera for the equivalent of a few focusig steps, and subsequent images taken by shifting the focus point away from the camera. This means that the optimum starting focus point is different. With focus bracketing it is best to focus a bit too near to start with, while with focus stacking autofocus tends to work fine if focusing is done at or very near the front of the subject. Another difference between the two modes is that in the case of in-camera focus stacking the maximum number of frames is limited by the size of the camera memory buffer to 15. (This limit is higher in the new OM-1 Mk II as it has a larger memory buffer.)
In practice, both modes work well and allow off-camera focus stacking as in both cases all individual photographs are saved to the memory card. In-camera focus stacking works extremely well, but off camera it is possible select part of a too deep stack and repeat the merging.
With static subjects focus stacking works very well with the OM-1, even handheld. With fast moving subjects focus stacking is nearly impossible with any normal approach using any camera. With slow moving subjects using a fast shutter speed, the total exposure time can be short enough to allow a not very deep stack. The speed with which a stack can be acquired is one of the very strong advantages of in-camera automated focus bracketing with a fast readout sensor as in the OM-1. As focus stacks are assembled by merging, some reduction in noise and enhanced dynamic range takes place making the use high ISO on image quality less of a problem than with single images.
Handheld in-camera focus stacking does work very effectively, especially with the current firmware 1.7. Possible settings are 50 MP and 25 MP. Although the increase in effective resolution is not in itself as large as one would expect by the pixel resolution, focus stacking makes it possible to use wider apertures avoiding resolution loss caused by diffraction. In addition, the merging of images tends to result in cleaner images. In-camera focus stacking has the advantage of providing within seconds feedback on whether alignment succeeded or not.
With Helicon Focus (only when shooting handheld at high magnification) alignment may occasionally fail for deep stacks taken with the OM-1 camera handheld. In situations like this a macro lens with image stabilization as the new 90 mm f/3.5 performs better than the 60 mm 1:2.8 macro. If the movement of the camera is significant, even if alignment succeeds there may be parts of a subject that are occluded in some images. This can show up as out-of-focus regions near the edge of objects.
I have written a more detailed web page about focus-bracketing with the OM-1 camera.
Stabilization in the OM-1 is extremely effective, but still we need to consider the time it takes to acquire all the images in a stack. Say taking 80 images each at 1/10 s add up 8 s plus a small overhead. Even such a stack can succeed most of the time for static subjects because images are aligned before merging. However, for moving subject the “movement freezing” time is no longer the shutter speed but the shutter speed added up over all frames. If part of the subject or subjects move with respect other parts during the combined exposure time, merging will either completely fail or result in ghosts in the combined image.
Focus bracketing does not limit the range of shutter speeds (60 s to 1/32000 s) or diaphragm appertures that can be used. However, enabling focus bracketing disables all sequential shooting modes as well as bracketing of other settings.
Stabilization has improved once again, but it is now so effective for lenses like the 300 mm F:4.0 that shutter speed is most of the time constrained by subject movement. The same seems true for the 90 mm F:3.5 Macro, even at magnifications close to one. Thus, synchronized lens and sensor based image stabilization combined with very fast focus tracking make handheld macro photography in ambient natural light possible.
The same applies to subjects like trees shaking in the wind that will obviously not be rendered without movement as different parts of the tree will not move together. Similarly if there is no steady reference with high-contrast edges at different angles stabilization of camera movement is less effective, than for example with a building or book case in the frame, but still very useful. In the best case, exposures lasting several seconds can yield tack-sharp photographs with the OM-1 camera handhed.
There are limitations imposed by the nature of subjects, but overall it is the strongest feature of the system: I regularly take photographs handheld with a 300 mm + 2x teleconverter, or 1200 mm-equivalent focal length, even birds in flight. Still, the limiting factor for shutter speed is subject movement, not camera movement.
Good stabilization also helps a lot in tele-macro photography, for example of insects. One interesting aspect is that subject tracking works to some extent with un-supported subject types, like insects. Hopefully, in the future we will get insect recognition and tracking as a new option. Meanwhile, bird tracking mode works effectively for some (many?) insects. Subject recognition and tracking could be also useful for “static” subjects like flowers, shaking in the wind. Of course, tracking is also available wihtout subject recognition, and does work effectively if one carefully targets the subject with a small focus area enabled.
Only some MFT lenses support in-camera focus stacking, and this difference depends on the specific lens. All MFT autofocus lenses support focus bracketing, and thus can be used for off-camera focus stacking. I list below those MFT auto-focus lenses I have tested.
Lenses that support in-camera focus stacking: M.Zuiko 8-25 mm 1:4 Pro, M.Zuiko 30 mm 1:3.5 Macro, M.Zuiko 60 mm 1:2.8 Macro, M.Zuiko 90 mm 1:3.5 Macro Pro, M.Zuiko 40-140 mm 1:2.8 Pro, M.Zuiko 300 mm 1:4 Pro.
Lenses that do not support in-camera focus stacking: M.Zuiko 17 mm 1:1.8, Sigma 19 mm 1:2.8 DN, M.Zuiko 25 mm 1:1.2 Pro, M.Zuiko 25 mm 1:1.8, Sigma 30 mm 1:1.4 DC DN, Sigma 30 mm 1:2.8 DN, M.Zuiko 45 mm 1:1.8, Sigma 60 mm 1:2.8 DN,
Exposure and ISO bracketing
Exposure bracketing is implemented as shutter speed bracketing, aperture bracketing, or their combined bracketing depending on the mode in use: S, A, P or M. The rather small, exposure bracketing steps available through this menu entry are suitable for fine tuning the exposure. ISO bracketing is also available with fewer and still small steps. ISO and exposure bracketing can be used simultaneously, so that all combinations are used.
In camera HDR1 and HDR2 modes can be used with shutter speeds in the range 4 s to 1/32000 s. However, the exposure bracketing settings in the HDR menu, allow the use of all shutter speeds. The exposure bracketing steps in this menu are large, 2 and 3 EV, and useful for photographs expected to be merged into a composite with high dynamic range (HDR).
Sequential shooting
Fast sequential shooting is much more useful than what I had expected. At least, when photographing birds it is true that one ends with a heavy photo culling task, but one gets regularly one image out of many where the position of the bird and the light reflection on its eyes are “perfect”, which, at least for me has been almost impossible to achieve more than by accident with earlier cameras.
The OM-1 has multiple sequential modes, both using the electromechanical shutter and the electronic shutter. There is also pre-filling of the memory buffer on half press of the shutter release. The high speed sequential modes are not compatible with the use of low shutter speeds, as one could expect. However, taking all four sequential modes together, they cover the range from 1 fps to 120 fps with many intermediate frame rates to choose from.
| Shutter mode | Minimum | Maximum | Sequence rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Single | 60 s | 1/8000 s | |
| Silent single | 60 s | 1/32000 s | |
| Sequential | 60 s | 1/8000 s | 1 to 10 fps |
| Silent sequential | 60 s | 1/32000 s | 5/10/15/20 fps |
| SH1 | 1/15 s | 1/32000 s | 60/100/120 fps |
| SH2 | 1/320 / 1/640 s | 1/32000 s | 25/50 fps |
| ProCap | 1/10 s | 1/32000 s | 5/10/15/20 fps |
| ProCap SH1 | 1/15 s | 1/32000 s | 60/100/120 fps |
| ProCap SH2 | 1/320 s / 1/640 s | 1/32000 s | 25/50 fps |
Which of the “Shutter modes” in the table above are enabled with different lenses varies. M.Zuiko Pro and M.Zuiko lenses seem to support them all. Sigma MFT lenses seem not to support ProCap mode but do support SH1, SH1 ProCap, SH2 and SH2 ProCap, while adapted fully manual lenses do not support the SH2 and SH2 ProCap modes but do support ProCap, SH1 and SH1 ProCap modes.
Capture One HDR merge mode can be used to average a series of equally exposed images as a way of decreasing image noise effectively. Using the OM-1 sequential shooting mode with its excellent image stabilization one can get a series of frames within a fraction of a second. Even birds standing on the ground or sitting on a perch, frequently remain immobile long enough to get four, five or even 6 frames good for HDR merge within 1/5 s. Capture One aligns the images so a small framing error between images does not cause problems.
Related to sequential modes are sequences of images with bracketing, where in a sequence the value of one setting varies systematically among photographs. With bracketed exposure, Capture One seems to use to some extent, possibly weighted, averaging. This reduces image noise. I rarely use in-camera HDR (high dynamic range) merging, mostly because Capture One provides more flexibility in the processing after the merge, but in-camera HDR-merge does also work well.
A similar effect on noise can be achieved using the hand-held high resolution mode as the merging of multiple images not only increases the resolution but also reduces noise. Depending on the shutter speed, Live ND can be also used to reduce noise by image averaging/merging.
Already with earlier Olympus mirrorless cameras I noticed that many birds do notice the sound of the shutter, so using an electronic shutter for bird photography is not only advantageous because of the high speed sequential shooting, but also because of being silent. Thus, that the new sensor allows faster sensor readout that reduces artefacts is a significant advantage compared to earlier E-M1 cameras.
Bulb, Live Time and Live Comp
The Bulb setting for shutter speed has been available already in cameras with mechanical shutters for a very very long time. The Bulb setting keeps the shutter open as long as the shutter release is kept pressed. To avoid movement one would use a flexible release “cord”, either a cable mechanical cable release or a pneumatic release based a tube and a rubber bulb that pushed air. Hence the name still in use.
Some mechanical camera shutters and the earliest electronically controlled shutters had a Time setting that only differed in that one had to push the shutter release once to open the shutter and a second time to close it.
So, what is different in the OM-1 and some earlier cameras from Olympus is the “Live View” in these modes. The EVF or more conveniently the rear screen, or if the camera is tethered a phone, tablet or computer screen can show a live view of the image as it builds up, which removes the usually difficult guessing of the exposure time to use. This feature opens the door also to other approaches, such as light painting seeing live the effect.
The Live Comp mode is unique in that it involves merging of images in a special manner: the shadows are taken from the base exposure and only highlights from later exposures override the base exposure, on a pixel by pixel basis. This ensures that shadows remain dark in spite of the composing of the highlights. This is an effective way photographing trails of car lights and star trails.
Of these modes, I have used more extensively the Live Time for UV-induced autofluorescence of plants and lichens. I normally use a UV-A flashlight that does not illuminate the whole area framed in the photograph and I need to light-paint the image. This also allows to selectively illuminate different parts of the scene that is being photographed. Fluorescence is weak, so exposure times from 30 s to a few minutes are common and done with the camera on a tripod. This mode can be also useful with moderately long exposures for which it is difficult to estimate in advance the exposure length needed. I tend to use this mode controlling the camera with my iPhone, checking how it builds up through the phone screen.
Live ND
The Live ND simulates a very long exposure by merging multiple shorter exposures, achieving computationally an effect that mimics long exposures that would normally require the use of a neutral density (ND between 1EV and 6EV) optical filter. Although this is a computational mode based on merging multiple images, the shutter speed setting describes the combined exposure length equivalent to the shutter speed being simulated.
The range of shutter speeds supported is from 60 s to a value that depends on the strength of the effect (ND 2: 1/60, ND 4: 1/30, ND 8: 1/15, ND 16: 1/8 s, ND 32: 1/4, ND 64: 1/2).
Combining computational modes
The computational modes cannot be freely combined. Some of the computational modes impose limitations on the range of shutter speeds available, similarly as sequential shooting does. I did not find a clear description of these so I filled in the missing bits not told in the manual by experimenting with my OM-1 camera with firmware 1.7.
The sensor-shift high resolution modes can be combined with interval shooting and starry-sky focus mode. They cannot be combined with bracketing, which could have been very useful. The sensor-shift modes can be used with all shutter speeds.
The Live ND can be combined with Starry sky focusing mode, but not with High Resolution sensor-shift modes, which makes sense as both make use of the memory buffer. The lack support of bracketing with Live ND and High Resolution modes is most likely also because bracketing is implemented to be as fast as possible, thus also using the memory buffer.
Multiple exposure mode can be combined with Starry Sky focus.
Bulb settings for the shutter disable bracketing, except for ISO bracketing. This is a bit surprising, and I have difficulty imagining why this is the only bracketing mode supported.
Tethering and communication
Tethering through USB works reliably even with relatively long cables, it does not require USB-C port or anything faster than USB 3.0 on the host computer, even when using bracketing or the 80 MPix high resolution mode and transferring the raw files in real time to a PC. Charging/powering simultaneously with tethering does require a USB-C port with power delivery (PD) capable of supplying 9V at a minimum of 3 A.
Tethering through WiFi to a LAN connected PC. I haven’t yet used this mode.
Remote control through Bluetooth/Wifi with a tablet or phone as well as the app remain similar to that with E-M1 cameras. Or rather, the improved features of the current App version also work with earlier camera models. (Bluetooth 5.0 seems to provide a very power-efficient connection, both on the phone and on the camera side.) There are two modes: remote control and live-view. Both work extremely well. The remote control mode uses red on the screen, and the brightness can be dimmed from within the App. This is ideal for working in very low levels of light, like night-time photography or astrophotography, as it avoids the contraction of the eye’s pupil. With live view mode, one can use the phone or tablet as one would use the rear screen of the camera, even with touch for selection of focus points or shutter trigger. One can also control a good number of camera settings. For immediate on-line publication of photographs to the internet it is possible to automatically download the images to the phone or tablet as they are acquired.
Geotagging in camera is done using the same App as for remote control. I use geotagging when photographing outdoors with the OM-1 camera, almost always in real-time. In-camera geotagging using a GPS log recorded on the phone while not connected also works smoothly.
I find it extremely convenient that all what needs to be done once camera and phone have been paired once, is to enable GPS logging in the phone App. The phone and camera connect automatically when the camera is switched on within range. Connection is established within a few seconds and photographs are then geotagged in real-time in the camera. With an iPhone 12, connection is reliable and neither the iPhone battery nor the camera battery discharge noticeably faster than with geotagging disabled. The status of the connection is shown by a small icon in the EVF.
The phone App records the GPS track always when enabled irrespective of whether real-time geotagging in camera is enabled or the Bluetooth connection to the camera active. Thus, if the connection fails, the GPS information is not lost. Geotagging the photographs after they have been taken by uploading the log file from the phone to the camera works very well and only requires to send the log to the camera. The memory cards can be removed from the camera and then put back to do the geotagging at the end of a long shooting session if needed.
Touch screen
The touch screen when enabled can be used to directly select the focus point and trigger the shutter. This feature can be enabled and disabled quickly by touching an icon on the screen. As the rear screen is automatically disabled when the EVF is shaded, there is no need to explicitly disable before using the EVF.
I have used this mode from time to time, specially when taking macro photographs, or close to the ground. In those situations when one can easily see the rear screen this works nicely and fast.
I haven’t tried this yet, but I learnt from an on-line video that the touch screen can be very handy for waist-level shooting in street photography.
Many smart phones have a similar user interface, and this feature is not new to the OM-1. This is also possible with earlier EM-D camera models from Olympus. With the current version of the OI share App, when in Live View mode, this way of selecting the focus area and triggering the shutter also work through the phone screen.
Battery life
For photographing birds I have been using almost exclusively the Pro-Cap Sh2 mode. That is using the electronic shutter and the filling of the memory buffer with images while focusing. Sequential shooting with exposure adjustment, focus tracking and AI-based subject recognition at 25 frames per second, and image stabilization. Under this conditions I get about 7000 to 8000 photographs from a fully charge battery, filling in the process a 128 GB and a 64 GB card. This is an improvement compared to the E-M1 Mk II in spite of the OM-1 having a much more powerful data processor.
Using the mechanical shutter and taking a single photograph at a time, the battery discharges faster when measured as number of photographs. I haven’t tested battery life for video.
The photo editing software Capture One has built-in profiles for many cameras and lenses. These profiles are not those from camera or lens manufacturers but instead independently developed. One aim is to deliver the same colour rendition irrespective of camera brand and model. As discussed above, the use of a BSI (back-side illuminated) sensor could modify some of the necessary corrections for a given lens. The problem discussed below could be the result of this.
With modern MFT objectives with the OM-1 camera I have seen a surprising problem in Capture One 23: colour fringing correction based on lens profiles built into the program miss-correct colour fringing! The default correction makes fringing much worse than without any correction. However, Capture One does apply a good correction only when analysing the images, rather than by using the default correction from the profile. This problem affects at least some M.Zuiko objectives such as the 60 mm f/2.8 macro. I have not yet checked this systematically with other objectives I have access to.
Concluding remarks
The most striking result of the many improvements is that the OM-1 makes it possible to take photographs of excellent technical quality under conditions that earlier MFT or FF cameras could not. In addition, it makes it possible to take photographs with a lot more freedom as the image stabilization is so effective and the different computational modes cater for various special situations. With a much better EVF and even better ergonomics that the already excellent ergonomics of the E-M1 series cameras. The OM-1 is a camera I have bonded to very quickly.
Learning how to effectively use the many features and settings of the OM-1 takes time and practice, but all in all the increase in the number of “hits” per session has been in my experience incredibly large. The user interface plays also a key role as adjusting settings on-the-go without taking the eye away from the EVF works very well. After more than a two years and several firmware updates I am still learning new tricks that the OM-1 is capable of, but by now most of the settings for the types of photographs I routinely take have become automatic for me. I still have things to explore, as the features of the OM-1 camera facilitate many new to me uses and approaches.
I do not think the OM-1 is a camera for occasional use, it is a very powerful piece of equipment offering many possibilities. It is a camera that can adapt to many situations and types of photography, not by some magical automation, but instead by empowering the photographer to control how the camera behaves. This is true not only in relation to functioning, but also with respect to the user interface.
For most users, only a subset of the many available features will be frequently used. Each user can select what features he/she finds useful and collect them into the “My” menu. Furthermore, storing settings in the C1, C2, C3 and C4 user modes, allows users to quickly switch between groups of settings suitable for different types of photography. It is also possible to switch to one of these modes and back by pressing a user-programmed button. For example, I use the L-Fn button on the lenses to quickly switch to mode C1, which I have programmed with settings tailored to photographing birds in flight. A caveat is that the response of the L-Fn was sluggish with OM-1 firmware 1.5 and 1.6, and possibly older ones. However, with the current firmware 1.7 the sluggishness seems to have been fixed.
The OM-1 camera works well with many different objectives including with adapted objectives such as the Zuiko lenses from the original OM film cameras from the 1970’s to 1990’s and old Nikon AI lenses. However, it excels with the newer M.Zuiko PRO objectives with built-in image stabilization that works in synchronization to in-body stabilization and very fast and nearly silent autofocus. Many of the Pro M.Zuiko lenses are capable of resolutions of 100 MPix or higher on a 4/3” sensor and thus match well the requirements of the sensor-shift high resolution modes, including the 80 MP one.