I have had a brief play with the Live Time feature of the E-M5 (see here), enough to convince me that it would be more fun with a very dark filter to allow long exposures. The B&W 10 stop ND was in stock in B&H, so it was soon on the way to Thailand.

It arrived today, so I stuck it on the 25mm Summilux and took a couple of photos; neither of which were a particularly good example of long exposure photography; but they did demonstrate just how effective a 10 stop filter can be, even in bright afternoon sunlight.

Have an E-M5 and planning an upgrade to the E-M1? We know the IQ is a better, the AF faster and the EVF is a major improvement; but what improvements are there in ergonomics and controls. Read on to find out.

With both cameras on the table in front of you there is little immediately obvious difference between them.

With the add-on grip for the E-M5, they look even more alike.

In progress

My collection of cameras and lenses are listed on the right. Click on an item to learn more about it

[progress percentage=“23.65” filledcolor="#dd3333" unfilledcolor="#c9c9c9"]Current progress[/progress]

In September I went to Japan for a week. I took my E-M5 with the Panasonic 7-14mm, Panasonic Leica 25mm, Olympus 45mm and Olympus 75mm. Took a load of photos; but there was a lot of lens changes involved. If only I had one zoom to rule them all….

Then came the E-M1 and the 12-40mm. Could this lens provide an alternative to lens swapping?

The first things I noticed about the lens was that it was larger than my existing walk-about lens, the Panasonic 25mm:

My previous macro experiences came courtesy of a Canon 100mm macro lens bolted to a succession of Canon bodies. I am sure things have improved nowadays, but at the time I struggled with focusing via the rear screen (the camera always seemed to end up in a position where my eye and the viewfinder could not get together, and the rear screen facilities were somewhat inadequate), and the camera/lens combo seemed rather unwieldy when being negotiated through assorted shrubbery in search of beasties. Eventually I sold the lens to another foreign resident in Thailand who went on to capture some spectacular images; so it must just have been me that struggled.

I live in Thailand and I enjoy taking photographs of people. The good news is that Thai people, in general, like to be photographed. The bad news is that, as soon as they see a camera pointed at them, they strike a pose; which is not what I want to capture.

The other bad news is that I live in the city of Pattaya, rightly famous the world over for its sex industry. There are prostitutes everywhere and I would love to photograph them; but unlike other Thais they don’t like to be photographed; and neither do their pimps who tend to be of a violent nature and have guns. We all know who the winner would be in a gun/camera face-off.

The final nail in the coffin of my aspirations to people photography is the fact I am not the most forthcoming of chaps, so would much rather take photos without having to get involved with social interaction; especially with prostitutes, what would my wife say?

My walk-around lens is the Summilux 25mm, and very nice it is too. Find yourself obliging subjects, such as this Cosplay participant, and it will do a good job:

I have been using micro-four thirds camera for more than three years, first with the Panasonic GF1 and then with the GX1. The E-M5 is my first Olympus and it has been with me for only a couple of weeks.

The world doesn’t really need another E-M5 review; but I am going to write one anyway, with comparisons with my GX1 along the way. Is the E-M5 that much better than the GX1, and if so, how?

Read on to find out.

Body and grip

The E-M5 is like a movie star, much smaller in person than you expected. You imagine from the shape that it must be DSLR size, but it isn’t.

It’s a fact of modern life that anything you buy with an LCD screen has to be immediately covered with a screen protector. Buy a new iPhone, which Mr. Ive and his bunch of designers have sweated blood over for months to ensure that the display is optimal, and the first thing you do is cover it in plastic crap to protect the original surface.

In deference to Mr. Ive, I refused to do this my original iPhone 3GS, reckoning that his glass screen would be scratch-proof and I would enjoy an uninterrupted view of Angry Birds whist others stared squint-eyed through their plastic enshrouded sub-optimum phones. My feeling of superiority lasted about a month, by which time the first scratches appeared, and by the time I sold the phone it appeared to have spent its life in a holster made of barbed wire. Since then I have slapped on the plastic at the point of purhase.

We all know that there are some excellent lenses available for MFT. Lurking beneath the stellar performers at the top of the tree are some adequate kit lenses, and there are no lenses that could really be described as bad; except one.

Say hello to the Olympus 15mm body cap lens:

One of the many joys of Micro Four Thirds cameras is their small size. But achieving this requires the camera manufacturers to provide small batteries which provide a limited number of shots; which means you will probably need to carry at least one spare.

The E-M1 and the E-M5 use the same battery (BLN-1) and I currently have three of them; one in the camera and the other two rattling around in my camera bag looking for opportunities to short against each other. If you also have spare batteries and would like to have an alternative to just chucking them in your camera bag, then there is this: