OM-D EM-1 Low Light Performance

Those of you who follow me know that I recently jumped from full frame DSLR to the Micro 4/3 camp with on Olympus OM-D EM-1. I often photograph performing arts, plays, pub gigs, concerts, etc. Some of my mates had been using their Oly stuff in these circumstances so I wasn't too concerned about the low light performance without having tried it for myself but it was on my mind.

Last night I was invited to shoot at The Bendigo Hotel in Collingwood. The invite was a little unusual, in that I was invited by a person from Europe to photograph the punk rock band GBH for them. It all worked out and I was "on the list" - very important when you want access.

Low light shooting of fast action like a band requires a strong performance from the camera. You need to set your expectations however, you're going to be battling with very low light - cameras need a lot of light, bands hate it. It's very rare outside the stadium concerts to actually have sufficient let alone a lot of light on a stage. This means high ISO, lots of noise, very low depth of field and a continuing struggle to keep the shutter fast enough to stop the action. You can of course use the slow shutter to capture movement in the still image. You will be shooting on manual and you will probably be massively underexposing your images. Nearly all of the images on the night I tested out the Oly features were three stops down from where they needed to be. This means you are over driving the shit out of the sensor and expecting miracles!

Focus

I knew this venue was small and the lighting really shitty - great atmosphere for the band, but bloody awful for photography. I also hate people who use flash during performances so never do. I also don't like being hit in the face by focus assist beams so turn that off as well. This means the camera and lens must play the game and either do the job or go onto manual focus.

For this gig, I chose the 7-14 f/2.8 and the 12-40 f/2.8. These are both impressive bits of glass. First up the 7-14. This managed focus wonderfully at 7mm but struggled anywhere else in the dark. That's ok because I wanted it for atmosphere shots like the stage and mosh pit and 7mm is perfect for that. Given this thing is really aimed at the landscape and architecture photographer making it do double duty at a gig widens its usability. It's wider than an 8mm fish but maintains wonderfully straight lines with the great glass design and the correction information built into the ORF (Olympus Raw File) format allowing Lightroom to correct the distortion.

GBH performing right up close and personal with the mosh. Shot with the Oly 7-14 at 7mm was a great way to get between the tiny gap between speakers and band at side of stage and still capture the intense thundering bouncing mood of the mosh.

GBH had most of the lights turned off or down so were incredibly difficult to shoot but the 7mm came on strong with capturing focus on the singer and maintaining an incredible depth of field given this was shot at f/2.8. An ISO of 8000 meant quite a bit of noise but I still only managed 1/40th of a second which was three stops underexposed. The shot is still cleanable and perfectly usable and captures the moment.

I also made use of the 12-40 at 12mm quite a lot during the night which could capture a more intimate scene of band and mosh than the 7-14 could. At 14mm the 7-14 would struggle to focus so I leant heavily on the 12-40 which managed focus right through its range really well.

Charter 77 singing "Ray Martin you're a f*ckwit" to an absolutely packed mosh.

Conclusion - the camera is more than up to the job of focussing in the dark venue. I was using a single focus point picked for most advantage for the shot I was going for at the time. There was certainly plenty of focus hunting going on and occasionally I would flip into manual focus with the wonderful pull ring on these lenses and either shoot on manual or give it a nudge in the right direction then flip back to auto to let it finish the job. After all without my glasses I'm fairly dependent on the camera getting it right and there was no way I was putting my glasses on in there, they would have lasted 30 seconds. Every now and then the facial recognition would fire up and change the focus point which was fine by me - I'm a believer in trusting the technology.

Low Light - High Noise

Generally in the dark environment, you simply expect a lot of noise and you expect yo use a lot of tricks in the post processing arsenal to get rid of it or mask it by adding film like features to the images. 

Cleaning up the noise yields a softer than desirable result. Those crisp sharp concert images you see are either from big shows with tens of thousands of watts of light or they're flash imagery if there from a concert at all. The most celebrated concert shots are studio recreations!

The following shot is a crop of about 1/3 of the full frame of the image so it really shows the noise. This is SOOC (straight out of camera) and clearly shows the artefacts of shooting in low light at high iso and forcing the sensor to achieve things it simply wasn't designed to achieve by shooting three stops underexposed. You simply can't expect strong detail from the image - or can you? This image is shot at ISO 8000 and is a truly horrible exposure.

Charter 77's lead singer engages with a single fan from the pit

I've processed this image pretty hard, generally harder than I normally would. I increased the exposure a full stop which blew out the lights so I reduced the highlights by half a stop, changed the clipping levels for the blacks and added a bit of clarity and vibrance then slightly reduced the saturation overall. Now onto the noise processing, I used luminance and contrast noise reduction heavily followed by colour noise reduction again quite heavily. This yields a less noisy brighter image.

Often these really noisy images lend themselves well to black and white rather than retaining the colour. In this case I'm going to just floor the blacks in the conversion because I want to get rid of all the extraneous detail. This will also eliminate much of the noise.

Final result - the mono image with strong contrast, noisy and soft but acceptable

After the processing, you're left with a strong image that isn't going to pass any sharpness lover's test of photography (who are those guys anyway) but it yields an image that captures the great moment that was happening on stage. There is one more thing to do in this image however, get rid of that pesky photographer in the background - it's ok, I'm sure I'm in his images too.

In this final image I got rid of the photographer and a few other bright bits that were distracting. I left the bright L shape because it helps direct attention to the fan's face as he gazes up at the person on stage.

Conclusion - what I asked this camera to do on this night was almost offensive, and to be honest it did a much better job than the 5dii could have. What we have at the end is a photo that isn't going to win a competition, but really, who gives a shit about them anyway, what we've got is a strong photo that the performer is going to like and clearly shows a moment of the evening. Given that these two know each other and have for a long time it's likely to be a good memory keeper.

A final word, I am literally stunned just how low I was able to drive the shutter speed and have the camera simply deal with it. The 5 point IS (image stabilisation) in this thing works stunningly well with these high quality lenses. I was able to single hand hold the camera and in cases like this one shove it between the heads of two people to frame and snap the shot thanks to the bright image on the back of the camera.

I'm going to enjoy working with this beast. If I can manage shots I'm happy with from the fast moving music world photographing plays where I have some control over added lighting and can freeze the actors for a longish exposure on a tripod is going to be a walk in the park.

From Full Frame to Micro Four Thirds – the first weeks… Downsizing from the Canon 5dii to the Olympus OM-D EM-1

Over the last few years I have been procrastinating. I’ve been a Canon shooter since the late 80’s  when I was shooting Canon film SLR in school. I’ve still got a trusty F1 that I acquired last year. It was natural that when Canon digital became available I went there, first the 300d, then the 40d and finally the 5dii. All were good machines for their time with great build quality and reasonable feature set for the money. The trouble is, that’s where it stopped. Nothing has really changed at Canon since the 5dii. Sure they doubled the resolution with the Mk iii but at the expense of sharpness and quality and the noise, oh the noise! Really put me off. Canon like many corporate giants simply don’t listen to their users. Do you think you could ever email someone at Canon and get a response (unless you’re famous then they’ll beat a path to your door). It was time I left the steam era and moved forward.

Recently I looked at the Sony A7r series, they're pretty decent but Sony are crying out for lens diversity and those they do have are very expensive. The Sony can drive the EF lenses I had through an adaptor about half as well as the native EF could. That's not a step up. I did nearly jump when the A7rii came out because it combined the best of two of the a7 series into one great machine that would have
met my needs but still, all that money and poor lens performance. No was the answer.

Over the years I’ve dallied with other smaller format cameras such as the Sony Mavica and Cybershot. Both good point and shoot for their time. A few years ago along came the OM-D EM-5. The functionality that had been packed into that tiny form factor was simply amazing. A lot of my friends took them up, most left their big heavy gear behind. I did play with the EM-5 and quite liked it, but it wasn’t quite for me. Then came the EM-1, now that was a bit of a beast. Resolution not far off the 5dii but with so many more features built in – simple things like wifi sharing, inbuilt bracketing for focus for example. I took an EM-1 out for a play on an Olympus experience photowalk and quite enjoyed the experience for the half an hour I had it.

Image: Olympus.com.au

On the Sunday before Australia Day there was an Olympus sale at DigiDIRECT in Melbourne, that was the final clincher, the EM-1 and the magic M. Zuiko Digital ED 12-40mm f/2.8 lens for just $1466. That was simply too amazing a deal to pass up for Aussie stock. The first my partner knew about it was a phone picture of the camera with the caption "It looks lonely all by itself in the bag". The timing was perfect, not only was I becoming jaded of my street photography because the shutter of the 5dii sounded like two bricks being banged together ruining many candid moments but becoming older I was also feeling the pain of carrying that heavy gear with me everywhere. The 5dii has been steadily dropping in price since the 5diii came out and the once $5000 beast was now sub $1000 second hand.

I've now had the EM-1 for just on two weeks and what a difference, I've jumped right back into street photography with a machine that’s very near to silent – even more so when only using the electronic shutter.

Let’s talk about the good things because there are a lot of them. I really am impressed with this machine and so glad that I made the decision - no buyers remorse here.

Operation - everything has been quite intuitive from the default controls (and there IS a button for everything) to the super menu the experience of moving camera families has been pleasant. I've had my disruptive moments trying to figure things out but only once have I reached for the manual.

Macro from a portrait zoom - what?? Yes, macro from a portrait zoom. The 12-40 is a cross between a nice landscape lens and a nice portrait lens. Pretty much just right for both, but macro? It focuses very close and comes off as a good macro player.

Autofocus - simply amazing, quick, easy to manage, easy to direct even on difficult subjects. I have when using the full scene focus had some interesting choices by the camera but once onto focussing on the points I wanted it's been awesome. Another nice feature in this area is face detection, when I'm shooting the family I want to spend most of my time with them without a camera on my face so the fact that the body finds faces and adjusts the depth of field to get them all - awesome. Lazy I know, but a great feature for most consumers.

The autofocus was quick enough to catch this Noisy Minor an Australian native bird and the glass came up with a lovely depth of field and the sensor delivered the beautiful colour.






Weight – what can I say, the EM-1 and 12-40 are so light in the hand that I can carry it around all day on only a wrist strip. Lately I’d been using a Black Rapid shoulder strap with the 5dii and still found it painful after a full day of walking. Not any more. Joy.

Build quality & style – just amazing – a nice heft without being heavy, awesome metal feel, style and looks. The machine looks and feels robust without gaining any ugly in the process. The ugly stick was kept in the drawer when this one was designed.

Instant on from hard off or sleep – this one is always important for me because shooting street sometimes you’ve got to be really quick, there’s usually no time to wait while the beast pokes the monkey that runs in the cage in the backside to get moving.

Tilting screen – this has been a wake-up call for me, while shooting the Pride parade in St Kilda on the weekend I was able to compose actual portraits on the fly while the parade flowed past by holding the camera above the people and actually composing not just shooting blindly as I had to with the 5dii. I still go back to the view finder all the time, a habit I’m trying to break myself of, but while we’re here, what a view finder it is. Simply the best all digital view finder I’ve ever encountered.
Splash and dust proof – I shoot quite a bit by the sea, especially when on my Great Ocean Road project. This was a must have for me in the replacement as it had saved me a number of times with the big beast.

The portrait at left captures the casual colourfulness of the LGBTI+ Pride parade in St Kilda. I really enjoy the moment here. This is SOOC (straight out of camera) with a slight crop to eliminate someone who stuck their head in at the last moment.

Dynamic Range - this is easily as good as the 5dii although in some respects better. Something I've not seen any reviewers pick up on is that while the DR is very similar to the big boys, if the image is particularly dark it will favour shadows, if it is particularly bright it will favour highlights. This effectively uses the sensors DR in the right way - by giving you the most detail in the biggest area of the image.

I've played with this shot a bit, but the source data had to be there to begin with for me to do the post.

Wifi via OI.Share on the phone or tablet with the 5dii I had to hack a wireless router to control it using DSLR Controller on my tablet. Great for those challenging things like time lapse or fireworks. Well, that's all built in to the body but I can control the camera when I want to and quickly dump to socials or news providers via OI.Share right there on the spot. Great!

Image Stabilisation – this in body stabilisation is stunning, hand holding down to 1/10th of a second produced a sharp portrait, hand holding down to 1 second produced a usable but not entirely sharp night scene. Amazing. I really look forward to shooting the next play with the combination of the tilting screen and this strong stabilisation, I suspect the woes of the dark play room won’t be half the issue they’ve been with the big beast.

Features – more than you can poke a stick at, in this two weeks I have been deliberately sticking with the standard aperture priority while I learnt the machine and the lens.
The ability of this little lens to close focus is astounding, you almost don’t need a macro lens (don’t tell the other half that – I’m picking up a macro lens on Sunday!).

There is one negative and that is battery life. This is the same for all mirrorless cameras as they have to drive the screen and keep the sensor running for the viewfinder. There does seem to be room in that body for more battery but hey, they’re not all that expensive (about half the price of the Canon) not to mention they’re very light so having a few extras in the bag is no big deal. It would be nice if the battery came with a plastic protective cap and some kind of charge indicator on board.

Conclusion... for now
Overall this camera has reinvigorated my shooting and a some people have commented they can see something new in my shots, that something new is my arm doesn't hurt and I'm having fun again. Truly having fun.

Two parades in two weeks and plenty of play time in between.

Oh and on top of that I emailed Olympus and they replied. Awesome.