Olympus EM-5 Mark III news and rumors

[RAH]

I think the more realistic viewpoint is that the G95 is the E-M5 III that people want, matching its feature set completely (even has Live Composite now, which a reviewer confirmed can save RAW). But the G95 is bigger package, resembling the E-M5 II with the accessory grip.

Yeah, that's what stops me cold. Even though I personally don't care about weather sealing, I am willing to pay for it. But it needs to be E-M5-sized.

 

[Turbofrog]

Yeah, that's what stops me cold. Even though I personally don't care about weather sealing, I am willing to pay for it. But it needs to be E-M5-sized.

My problem is that I know from experience, deep down in my heart of hearts, that there is no single form factor that can make me happy.

My GX7 (with a little hot shoe thumb grip) is actually a wonderfully sized little kit - able to fit in a purse with the 20mm/1.7 for low-light social photography, and the major leverage I get from the grip means that holding big lenses up to ~700g or so is just fine for more adventurous shooting.

...but I live in Canada, and so frustrating though 5 months of winter can be, it is also an absolutely gorgeous time to take photos if you're prepared for it. But any camera that is GX7 or E-M5 sized simply can't accommodate shooting with gloved hands. The grip is too cramped, the buttons are too small, and the direct controls are quite fiddly. This is where the DSLR-style cameras like the G9 (and hopefully the G95, too) - or even the E-M1X - excel and make shooting a much less frustrating, far more pleasant experience.

And unfortunately, it's not just a matter about adding an auxiliary hand grip. That doesn't fix any of the other haptic and control problems, it just makes the camera feel a bit more secure in the hand while you're mashing 3 buttons at once with a gloved thumb.

Perhaps something GX7-like (hopefully with an integral rear thumb grip though, so I can actually use a flash if I want to) with a very spare, Leica-like interface (few buttons and big blank area for your hand) and a super pared-down control set would work.

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[Mike Wingate]

I feel like you've been dropping a lot of vague doom and gloom predictions about Olympus failing in a lot of different threads, Mike. Any reason in particular?

We're all hearing the same news, I'm pretty sure, and that's not the conclusion that most of us have come to. We all want them to get on with releasing an E-M5 III, but in executive interviews they've been fairly explicit that will happen at some point sooner or later.

Not sure why they'd spend a year of time and millions of dollars installing a new factory in Vietnam if they were planning on shutting down their camera business. Seems like poor business, but maybe that's just me.

33 pages of rumours, want, rants and needs. Same with the Panasonic revelations from a few days ago, not much, still no price for the PL10-25, even though Olympus are selling their 12-200 .

 

[MichailK]

Talking about weather sealing, the incompatibilities between Pany-Oly I read , do sound really frustrating

 

[Turbofrog]

Talking about weather sealing, the incompatibilities between Pany-Oly I read , do sound really frustrating

Have any of those incompatibilities been borne out in practice, though? We can theorize about gasket diameters and mount ring screws, but has anyone actually had a Panasonic lens fail on an Olympus body, or vice versa? Or at any rate higher than on matched lens-body sets?

 

[MichailK]

I am very interested in this aspect - I want my next camera body to be weather sealed in order to get some proper weather sealed superzoom a few months later. It seems that Oly has better options for my wallet and this means no G95, which is too big as well. Now, this 8-18 Pany looks nice but would it seal properly on the E-M5iii? Pany and Oly hurt the system with such missed details between them.

 

[Photon]

My problem is that I know from experience, deep down in my heart of hearts, that there is no single form factor that can make me happy.

My GX7 (with a little hot shoe thumb grip) is actually a wonderfully sized little kit - able to fit in a purse with the 20mm/1.7 for low-light social photography, and the major leverage I get from the grip means that holding big lenses up to ~700g or so is just fine for more adventurous shooting.

...but I live in Canada, and so frustrating though 5 months of winter can be, it is also an absolutely gorgeous time to take photos if you're prepared for it. But any camera that is GX7 or E-M5 sized simply can't accommodate shooting with gloved hands. The grip is too cramped, the buttons are too small, and the direct controls are quite fiddly. This is where the DSLR-style cameras like the G9 (and hopefully the G95, too) - or even the E-M1X - excel and make shooting a much less frustrating, far more pleasant experience.

And unfortunately, it's not just a matter about adding an auxiliary hand grip. That doesn't fix any of the other haptic and control problems, it just makes the camera feel a bit more secure in the hand while you're mashing 3 buttons at once with a gloved thumb.

Perhaps something GX7-like (hopefully with an integral rear thumb grip though, so I can actually use a flash if I want to) with a very spare, Leica-like interface (few buttons and big blank area for your hand) and a super pared-down control set would work.

View attachment 734345

Sounds like a good reason to own many cameras.

 

[Sam0912]

I am very interested in this aspect - I want my next camera body to be weather sealed in order to get some proper weather sealed superzoom a few months later. It seems that Oly has better options for my wallet and this means no G95, which is too big as well. Now, this 8-18 Pany looks nice but would it seal properly on the E-M5iii? Pany and Oly hurt the system with such missed details between them.

I’ve never had any issues with my EM5 and Panasonic sealed lenses (12-35 and 35-100 2.8’s), although I always take “weather sealing” as a suggestion rather than a certainty

 

[SojiOkita]

And it has to have a larger grip.

There are plenty of other models with a larger grip... why making one more?
I hope that some day in m43 cameras generation N+1 won't be bigger in any way that the generation N. I really don't understand the point of bigger cameras.
A small one + an additional grip seems the best solution to me, as I'll use it 95% of the time without the additional grip.

They need to update the E-M5, but I hope they won't change its size or its ability to be customize (I much prefer complicated menus to simple menus with restricted functionnality as they did on the E-M10).

 

[JonSnih]

I hope that some day in m43 cameras generation N+1 won't be bigger in any way that the generation N. I really don't understand the point of bigger cameras.
A small one + an additional grip seems the best solution to me, as I'll use it 95% of the time without the additional grip.

It looks like Oly&Panny follow the smartphone industry where bigger is considered to be better or marketed as better/more convenient ("Because ppl dont call anymore, right? and only spend time on social media and web-surfing."; thats what marketing heads claim so it must be true). The very first smartphone generation was so practical in terms of size and handling. And now a mini/lite/compact versions are basically the same size as the biggest flagships were 5 years ago. Really funny.

 

[betamax]

I like the E-M5.2 form factor. The only problem with it is that battery life is short and I hate removing the grip when out and about to change battery. And the grip covers the battery slot. I'd like a bigger battery though.. somehow.. I'm thinking with clever design you could pop out the battery cover to accomodate a longer battery when using a grip. Olympus are you listening?

 

[SojiOkita]

It looks like Oly&Panny follow the smartphone industry where bigger is considered to be better or marketed as better/more convenient

It's not better or worse it's different
I totally understand that people want (or need) big camera bodies, but even in m43 there are already some (and good ones... G9 or E-M1 mkII, or even the G90).

 

[SojiOkita]

I like the E-M5.2 form factor. The only problem with it is that battery life is short and I hate removing the grip when out and about to change battery. And the grip covers the battery slot. I'd like a bigger battery though.. somehow..

That's something I was really surprised with my E-M10. The battery is quite good. Already got 800-900 photos from 1 battery, most of the times it's around 600. Not bad.

 

[Michael Meissner]

I like the E-M5.2 form factor. The only problem with it is that battery life is short and I hate removing the grip when out and about to change battery. And the grip covers the battery slot. I'd like a bigger battery though.. somehow.. I'm thinking with clever design you could pop out the battery cover to accomodate a longer battery when using a grip. Olympus are you listening?

Well Olympus did that with its E-* DSLRs such as the HLD-4 for the E-3/E-30/E-5, and there were pluses and minuses with the grip. I kind of prefer the more modern way they do it with the E-m1/E-m5 cameras.

The problem with the HLD-4 and similar designs is you have to remove the battery door and the battery from the camera. You have to put the battery door in the slot on the grip to hold the battery door. And then when you store the grip off of the camera, it takes a lot of space to store the part that replaces the in camera battery. The E-m5 grip has a similar problem, but the part that sticks up isn't as wide, and you can always leave the portrait grip part of the grip on the camera and take off the battery.

Another fault of the HLD-4 was that it tried to read power from both batteries at the same time. When it came out with the E-3 there were users that would go to great length to make sure they had batteries with the exact same power such as buying batteries in groups of two, hoping they were from the same manufacturing batch, using a pair of BCS-1 chargers, and using separate BLM-1 batteries if they ever wanted to use the E-3 without the grip.

The HLD-4 was nice in that you can change the batteries in the back, rather than on the side, which is useful if you have the camera in a flash bracket or video cage. Or in my case, in the steampunk box of the setup shown by my icon photo which has an E-5 camera + HLD-4 + 14-54mm mark I. I can change batteries by sliding up the back panel. On the newer versions of the box with the E-m5 mark I inside, I have to put a hole on the side to change the battery.

Going back further, there was the HLD-1 grip for the E-1. It had a part that replaced the battery in the camera, and it used a separate battery for the grip (BLL-1). Now, the BLL-1 had tons of power. The problem was nothing else ever used the BLL-1 battery, so when Olympus moved to other cameras, it stopped making BLL-1's. For awhile, you could get a clone BLL-1, but eventually those clone makers also stopped making the battery.

I like the design of the HLD-6/7/8 in that it keeps the battery in the camera. I can instantly unscrew the grip and the camera will work immediately (though it is useful to move the rubber part protecting the contact pins if you are going to need weather sealing). You can also set the option in the cameras so that it uses the battery in the grip first, and when the battery in the grip changes to the in-camera battery, and the PBH icon goes off, you can change the battery in the grip. While it may not be recommended, I have changed the battery in the grip while the camera was still being powered by the body battery. In particular, I do some video taping of shows with my G85, and in the last show I did, it was a 1.5 hour show, and I hadn't fully charged the grip battery the night before. Towards the end of the show, the G85 indicated that it had switched batteries, and I switched the grip battery while still recording the show.

It is problematical that Olympus only put the external power port on the HLD-6/7/8 grip (and not on the camera body), they used a special power plug that is only used for the AC-01/AC-03 A/C adapters (which are rather expensive), and now the adapters are not in production. However you can fashion up an external power connection for the E-m1 mark I and E-m5 mark I/II cameras either using an A/C adapter and harvesting the plug, or making one connecting the two contact points. You can buy the clone of the AC-01 A/C adapter for the E-1/E-300/E-3/E-5/E-30 (the AC-03 for the HLD-6/7/8 uses the same plug, the AC-05 for the HLD-9 uses a standard 5.5m x 2.1mm plug, so you don't need the AC-05):

• PS-AC1 AC-1 AC Adapter for Olympus SLR E-1 E-3 EVOLT E-30 E-300 Digital Camera | eBay

You cut the cable, and harvest it for the part that plugs into the HLD grip. You connect the wires to a power source that provides 9 volts and at least one amp of power, and you can externally power the camera (and if you unplug the cable, you still have the 2 batteries in camera + grip).

Alternatively, you can replace the battery in the camera or the grip with a dummy BLN-1 battery and connect it to an external 9 volt/1 amp power source. On the body, you can remove the battery door, but I don't think the battery door on the grip is removable. Obviously the camera won't be as sealed against weather if you use this method:

• Dc Coupler Ps-bln1 Bln-1 Bln1 Dummy Battery For Olympus Digital Cameras Om-d E-m5 Ii 2 E-m1 Pen E-p5 - Buy Ps-bln1,Bln1 Dmmy Battery,Bln1 Dc Coupler Product on Alibaba.com

Tether tools makes a BLN-1 dummy battery, but while it is more expensive than the cheap clone above, I was disappointed that the wires are so thin, and after a few uses the rubber part protecting the wires has started to come off, that I don't recommend using their dummy battery. Tether tools does have a nice setup (other than the dummy battery) where the dummy battery connects to another battery that provides some power, and in turn you connect the battery to 5v power sources, which can charge the battery and act as a UPS.

I don't think I have pictures of the setup. I should make some.

Unfortunately, Olympus made a mistake (IMHO) with the E-m1x in integrating the grip and two batteries. Unlike the E-m1/E-m5 models where you can change the battery in the grip while using the battery in the camera, you have to turn off the camera to change the batteries.

Of the Olympus cameras I have powered with dummy batteries (Stylus-1, E-m10 mark II, E-m5 mark I, and E-m1 mark I), all of them will work with 9 volts, and they don't seem to care about dummy batteries that provide the right signature. The Panasonic cameras (LX10, FZ300, G85) seem to require a fully decoded dummy battery if the power is 8.4 volts or less (8.4 volts is the maximum charge a normal 2 cell li-on battery produces when it is fully charged). If the power is 9 volts, the camera assumes it is being powered externally, and doesn't check for a fully decoded battery (it also turns off the power meter). I have not used any voltage above 9 volts. I imagine there is a cutoff point where the camera may be damaged.

The future however is to power cameras externally with a USB-C port that can power the camera and charge the battery (possibly not doing both at the same time). The E-m1x, G9, SL-1/SL-1R, etc. can all be powered with a USB-C cable.

 

[Sam0912]

Well Olympus did that with its E-* DSLRs such as the HLD-4 for the E-3/E-30/E-5, and there were pluses and minuses with the grip. I kind of prefer the more modern way they do it with the E-m1/E-m5 cameras.

The problem with the HLD-4 and similar designs is you have to remove the battery door and the battery from the camera. You have to put the battery door in the slot on the grip to hold the battery door. And then when you store the grip off of the camera, it takes a lot of space to store the part that replaces the in camera battery. The E-m5 grip has a similar problem, but the part that sticks up isn't as wide, and you can always leave the portrait grip part of the grip on the camera and take off the battery.

Another fault of the HLD-4 was that it tried to read power from both batteries at the same time. When it came out with the E-3 there were users that would go to great length to make sure they had batteries with the exact same power such as buying batteries in groups of two, hoping they were from the same manufacturing batch, using a pair of BCS-1 chargers, and using separate BLM-1 batteries if they ever wanted to use the E-3 without the grip.

The HLD-4 was nice in that you can change the batteries in the back, rather than on the side, which is useful if you have the camera in a flash bracket or video cage. Or in my case, in the steampunk box of the setup shown by my icon photo which has an E-5 camera + HLD-4 + 14-54mm mark I. I can change batteries by sliding up the back panel. On the newer versions of the box with the E-m5 mark I inside, I have to put a hole on the side to change the battery.

Going back further, there was the HLD-1 grip for the E-1. It had a part that replaced the battery in the camera, and it used a separate battery for the grip (BLL-1). Now, the BLL-1 had tons of power. The problem was nothing else ever used the BLL-1 battery, so when Olympus moved to other cameras, it stopped making BLL-1's. For awhile, you could get a clone BLL-1, but eventually those clone makers also stopped making the battery.

I like the design of the HLD-6/7/8 in that it keeps the battery in the camera. I can instantly unscrew the grip and the camera will work immediately (though it is useful to move the rubber part protecting the contact pins if you are going to need weather sealing). You can also set the option in the cameras so that it uses the battery in the grip first, and when the battery in the grip changes to the in-camera battery, and the PBH icon goes off, you can change the battery in the grip. While it may not be recommended, I have changed the battery in the grip while the camera was still being powered by the body battery. In particular, I do some video taping of shows with my G85, and in the last show I did, it was a 1.5 hour show, and I hadn't fully charged the grip battery the night before. Towards the end of the show, the G85 indicated that it had switched batteries, and I switched the grip battery while still recording the show.

It is problematical that Olympus only put the external power port on the HLD-6/7/8 grip (and not on the camera body), they used a special power plug that is only used for the AC-01/AC-03 A/C adapters (which are rather expensive), and now the adapters are not in production. However you can fashion up an external power connection for the E-m1 mark I and E-m5 mark I/II cameras either using an A/C adapter and harvesting the plug, or making one connecting the two contact points. You can buy the clone of the AC-01 A/C adapter for the E-1/E-300/E-3/E-5/E-30 (the AC-03 for the HLD-6/7/8 uses the same plug, the AC-05 for the HLD-9 uses a standard 5.5m x 2.1mm plug, so you don't need the AC-05):

• PS-AC1 AC-1 AC Adapter for Olympus SLR E-1 E-3 EVOLT E-30 E-300 Digital Camera | eBay

You cut the cable, and harvest it for the part that plugs into the HLD grip. You connect the wires to a power source that provides 9 volts and at least one amp of power, and you can externally power the camera (and if you unplug the cable, you still have the 2 batteries in camera + grip).

Alternatively, you can replace the battery in the camera or the grip with a dummy BLN-1 battery and connect it to an external 9 volt/1 amp power source. On the body, you can remove the battery door, but I don't think the battery door on the grip is removable. Obviously the camera won't be as sealed against weather if you use this method:

• Dc Coupler Ps-bln1 Bln-1 Bln1 Dummy Battery For Olympus Digital Cameras Om-d E-m5 Ii 2 E-m1 Pen E-p5 - Buy Ps-bln1,Bln1 Dmmy Battery,Bln1 Dc Coupler Product on Alibaba.com

Tether tools makes a BLN-1 dummy battery, but while it is more expensive than the cheap clone above, I was disappointed that the wires are so thin, and after a few uses the rubber part protecting the wires has started to come off, that I don't recommend using their dummy battery. Tether tools does have a nice setup (other than the dummy battery) where the dummy battery connects to another battery that provides some power, and in turn you connect the battery to 5v power sources, which can charge the battery and act as a UPS.

I don't think I have pictures of the setup. I should make some.

Unfortunately, Olympus made a mistake (IMHO) with the E-m1x in integrating the grip and two batteries. Unlike the E-m1/E-m5 models where you can change the battery in the grip while using the battery in the camera, you have to turn off the camera to change the batteries.

Of the Olympus cameras I have powered with dummy batteries (Stylus-1, E-m10 mark II, E-m5 mark I, and E-m1 mark I), all of them will work with 9 volts, and they don't seem to care about dummy batteries that provide the right signature. The Panasonic cameras (LX10, FZ300, G85) seem to require a fully decoded dummy battery if the power is 8.4 volts or less (8.4 volts is the maximum charge a normal 2 cell li-on battery produces when it is fully charged). If the power is 9 volts, the camera assumes it is being powered externally, and doesn't check for a fully decoded battery (it also turns off the power meter). I have not used any voltage above 9 volts. I imagine there is a cutoff point where the camera may be damaged.

The future however is to power cameras externally with a USB-C port that can power the camera and charge the battery (possibly not doing both at the same time). The E-m1x, G9, SL-1/SL-1R, etc. can all be powered with a USB-C cable.

You know your grips! I may be in the minority (especially considering they’ve stopped), but I actually like the booster grips Fuji used in the XT1/2 and battery wise I think the 3. They allow 3 batteries to be used (the biggest plus in my opinion) but I actually think the boost function was pretty cool. Well, sort off. I don’t think basic functionality should rely on a grip, but maybe produce a grip that allows 2 batteries/1 extra power battery, and maybe add an additional processor for extra AF functions or unique features - imagine when the Panasonic G10 is announced, Panasonic bring out a grip for the G90 that allows 6k photo and high res, increases the buffer and AF speed. With new models being released less often, a modular approach might be a good way to upgrade? You could upgrade without having to learn a new camera, still use the same batteries and accessories, but get more functionality and features. New camera versions could just be released when significant progress was made in some way (new sensor tech or whatever).

 

[Michael Meissner]

You know your grips! I may be in the minority (especially considering they’ve stopped), but I actually like the booster grips Fuji used in the XT1/2 and battery wise I think the 3. They allow 3 batteries to be used (the biggest plus in my opinion) but I actually think the boost function was pretty cool.

On the other hand, I think I recall Kirk Tuck complaining that the batteries on the Fuji were rather small, and that he needed the grip and all 3 batteries to equal the performance of the GH5 batteries.

The E-1 had the reputation that focusing speed up when you used the grip.

Well, sort off. I don’t think basic functionality should rely on a grip, but maybe produce a grip that allows 2 batteries/1 extra power battery, and maybe add an additional processor for extra AF functions or unique features - imagine when the Panasonic G10 is announced, Panasonic bring out a grip for the G90 that allows 6k photo and high res, increases the buffer and AF speed. With new models being released less often, a modular approach might be a good way to upgrade? You could upgrade without having to learn a new camera, still use the same batteries and accessories, but get more functionality and features. New camera versions could just be released when significant progress was made in some way (new sensor tech or whatever).

Since I generally hate grips, I agree that all a grip should do is extend the power, not speed things up. While I do hate grips for normal use, I do use them when I need to use the extra power and/or shooting all day with the 50-200mm lens or the FL-900R flash, where the grip adds to the balance.

The extra processor would be problematical, particularly given the length between the normal CPU and the external CPU. The one place I could see it function well if they had a grip that combined extra power, a SSD disk drive, and an external video recorder that could compress 10/12 bit video in real time.

 

[Sam0912]

On the other hand, I think I recall Kirk Tuck complaining that the batteries on the Fuji were rather small, and that he needed the grip and all 3 batteries to equal the performance of the GH5 batteries.

The E-1 had the reputation that focusing speed up when you used the grip.



Since I generally hate grips, I agree that all a grip should do is extend the power, not speed things up. While I do hate grips for normal use, I do use them when I need to use the extra power and/or shooting all day with the 50-200mm lens or the FL-900R flash, where the grip adds to the balance.

The extra processor would be problematical, particularly given the length between the normal CPU and the external CPU. The one place I could see it function well if they had a grip that combined extra power, a SSD disk drive, and an external video recorder that could compress 10/12 bit video in real time.

I’m certainly not a camera designer, or as knowledgeable or experienced as yourself, and have no way of making my suggestions plausible...I only think “perfect world” ideas! Regardless, I think some new thinking may be required in the coming years to keep the lines of the EM5, and possibly Olympus/m43 on the menu. That’s not a doom and gloom statement, it’s more a “we have a fantastic system, I’d love to see it offer more and more unique value over all the others” kind of statement. I’m sure the mkiii will be fairly predictable, but the mkii certainly changed the playing field with its feature set, I’d love to see the mkiii do the same, however it does it

 

[Sammyboy]

- " "............ imagine when the Panasonic G10 is announced, Panasonic bring out a grip .........

.....the G10 was introduced in 2010, it was a turd and died the following year ......

 

[Bidkev]

I like the E-M5.2 form factor. The only problem with it is that battery life is short and I hate removing the grip when out and about to change battery. And the grip covers the battery slot. I'd like a bigger battery though.. somehow.. I'm thinking with clever design you could pop out the battery cover to accomodate a longer battery when using a grip. Olympus are you listening?

Probably not, but the Chinese are. My Chinese grip does not cover the battery slot and doesn't have to be removed to insert new battery. OTOH they cocked up with the half case as that covers the port. I have the grip on the body carrying the panny 100-400 for birding and the half case on the body I use for the street

 

[Michael Meissner]

Probably not, but the Chinese are. My Chinese grip does not cover the battery slot and doesn't have to be removed to insert new battery. OTOH they cocked up with the half case as that covers the port. I have the grip on the body carrying the panny 100-400 for birding and the half case on the body I use for the street

I suspect people are talking about two different things. If you mean a simple grip that just makes the camera bigger, such as the ECG-1 for the E-m10 mark I, then yes, many of the newer designed grips don't block the battery slot.

However, if you are talking about a grip that adds a second battery such as the HLD-6 for the E-m5 mark 1, then most if not all of the grips I've seen block the battery door in the body, so if you want to change the battery in the body, you have to take off the grip first. You don't have to take off the grip to change the battery in the battery grip.