I ran into an annoying lockup issue with the OMD on a trip, using third party batteries (KAPAXEN brand). I was using the 12-50mm kit lens and have not had any other issues with the camera until then. Firmware 1.1 on both camera and 12-50 lens.

It was a low light condition in a museum stairway with some moderately strong sunlight coming into the windows. After taking a photo of the stairway with people in it, I waited some seconds for people to walk by. I then noticed the auto focus failed to engage for my next shot of the exactly same spot with the same settings. Most of the buttons had became inoperable. As far as I could tell only the fn1 and the shutter buttons were working, half-press not included. The EVF/LCD button worked but the touch screen had switched itself to the locked mode (showing the locked icon) and did not respond to the unlock touch. I couldn't get into the menu either. It stayed in this mode after on/off power cycle and I had to take the battery out to fix it. I did more testing after I got back to the hotel. It happened again with another battery, and it was in a much lower low light condition.

What I found was that after replacing/re-seating the battery, if there is no sensor cleaning icon showing at the first second or two of the power up, it is in this weird locked mode. To get out of it, take out the battery, wait 10 seconds or so and put the battery back in. The 3rd party batteries were in half-full and full condition when I triggered the lockups so it was probably not a low-battery related issue.

UNFORTUNATELY, I did not have a chance to try with the Olympus battery under the same condition when the lockups happened, since my Olympus battery ran dry long ago in this multi-day trip and I could only use the third party batteries and charger afterwards. I did not bring the bulkier Olympus charger...

So I am not sure if this is a strange lockup that can be triggered in certain conditions, or if this is 3rd party battery related issue. Regardless, after resetting the battery the OMD came back to normal and overall I took several hundred shots with these batteries.

I read a few lockup issues with some Panasonic lenses but not so much with the kit lens. Have you heard anyone running into this lockup mode?

I ran into that again for some reason, when I do not put the camera in use for a few minutes, it seems to go to sleep. I have the grip, so I turned off the camera and took the battery that I have out of the grip and replaced it after a few seconds. I turned the camera back on and then it woke up and was ready to shoot again.

By the way, the camera was active in between shots and never went into the sleep mode.

Also I should mention, the problem did not go away when I re-seated/replaced the battery in a normal pace. Only after waiting for several additional seconds the camera fully "forgot" whatever condition made it confused. I guess this is just some capacitors taking time discharging.

Mine has locked up in a similar way but using the OEM battery. It has only happened twice so I can't say what led up to it, shooting one minute, locked the next. But all I needed to do was switch off and on again to get everything back to normal. If I go on my experience with the Leica M9 locking up once or twice it was shown by Leica to be an incompatablity with writing to the card, and they eventually issued a list of reliable cards.

Steve

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