THE X FACTOR
While Olympus’ OM-D flagship, the E-M1X, is primarily targeted at sports photographers, and anybody else who needs lots of speed and a killer autofocus system, it also has many features with much wider appeal. Additionally, for a Micro Four Thirds format mirrorless camera, the E-M1X is a big beast – although obviously substantially more compact than its full-frame rivals – so that’s likely to deter buyers as well.
The good news is that now you can have most of the clever features that were introduced with the E-M1X in a much smaller and lighter package, the E-M1 Mark III. It’s the sort of size that photographers who like the portability benefits of the M43 format will expect, and there’s also a new, compact PRO series 12-45mm standard zoom to go with it (equivalent to 24-90mm). There’s the classic-looking OMderived styling that’s been such a hit, but on the inside the feature set steps up to a level that makes the E-M1 III arguably the most potent compact mirrorless camera there is.
Before taking a look at what’s been inherited from the E-M1X, we’d better tell what you don’t get and that’s the AI-based Intelligent Subject Detection AF modes. These use object recognition to ensure much more reliable tracking and are very much sports camera orientated – in other words, it’s a pretty specialised capability – as well as clearly being one of the E-M1X’s key selling points versus the ‘standard’ E-M1.
The more interesting of the E-M1X’s goodies now also available with the E-M1 III is ‘Live ND’, which is essentially a set of builtin neutral density filters. It works by capturing multiple exposures with the number of frames varying according to the Live ND setting – ranging from ND2 to ND32. The number of captured frames represent an exposure reduction of between one and five stops, with a progressively greater number of short exposures being captured to create the motion blur that would be the result of using a conventional neutral density filter on the lens. The real benefit is when shooting in bright conditions where you can have the of a longer exposure time while still using low ISO settings and wider apertures. The in-body image stabilisation operates automatically during Live ND capture so each frame is guaranteed to be sharp. Importantly, the E-M1 III gains the E-M1X’s upgraded IBIS, extending the amount of correction for camera shake to a very useful 7 stops, and up to 7.5 stops with what Olympus is now calling “Sync IS” lenses – currently the M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-100mm f/4.0 IS PRO zoom and ED 300mm f/4.0 IS PRO prime telephoto. What this means is that handheld shooting is now possible with shutter speeds of
