video by Fotomundus.

About time! Thanks to the french website OpenPN (Click here to read the google translation). They found that the sharpness is very good even when shooting at full f/0.95 aperture. The only major issue at that aperture is the high Chromatic Aberration. The bokeh is wonderful (says the reviewer).

My personal judgment after seeing the image sample is that the Lens is damn good already at f/0.95. Of course it’s not perfect but if you seek for perfection at that extreme aperture than you have to spend over 10.000 Euro/Dollars for the [shoplink 29763 ebay]Leica Noctilux[/shoplink]!

Europenas can preorer the lens at [shoplink 29368 ebay]Digitalhandel (Click here)[/shoplink], [shoplink 29367 ebay]Bayern Fotoversand (Click here)[/shoplink] and Fotomundus (Click here).

It’s time to make a real JPEG and RAW comparison! Dpreview (Click here) just posted the E-M5 studio test. Take time to compare all ISO settings with other cameras. I leave the judgments to you :)

UPDATE: And here is a full review from the polish website Fotopolis (Click here for the translation).

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E-M5 preorders (Click on the names of the stores to see the product page):
Black E-M5 body at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, J&R, Warehouse UK, Digitalrev and Amazon Japan.
Silver E-M5 body at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, J&R, Warehouse UK, and Amazon Japan.
Black E-M5 body with 14-42mm lens at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto , Digitalrev and J&R.
Black E-M5 body with 12-50mm lens at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, J&R, Jessops, Amazon UK, Amazon Deutschland , Digitalrev and Amazon Japan.
Silver E-M5 body with 12-50mm lens at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, J&R, Jessops, Amazon UK, Amazon Deutschland and Amazon Japan.

At least according to B&H (Click here) we are exactly one month away from the first Olympus E-M5 shipment. But seeing that the E-M5 still remains within the top list at Amazon (pre-)order rankings (Click here to see it) I doubt you will get the camera on that day :(

Anyway today we have a very interesting new review:
The German testers from Digitalkamera DIWA lab (Click here for the translation) tested the Olympus E-M5 with the new 12-50mm lens.
They first tested the lens and they were satisfied with the results with the only major issue being the high Chromatic Aberration at the wide end.
And now let’s talk about their E-M5 Labortest. First they discovered that the real sensitivity starts with ISO 120 (when the camera is set at ISO 200) and ends with ISO 14.200 (with the Olympus setting being at 25.600). This means that the E-M5 has a 2/3 stops difference from the official Olympus ISO value. The signal to noise ratio corresponds to a decent 40db at low 200 ISO (120 real ISO). It goes down to 35db at 1600 ISO. At high ISO the luminance noise is strong while Olympus handles the chrome noise much better. Digitalkamera says that up to 1600 the performance is good and from that point upwards the image quality visible decreases. Same thing happens for the dynamic range which up to ISO 1.600 reaches 11 stops (very good result). At ISO 3.200 it goes down to 10 stops, at ISO 12.800 it has 9 stops and at ISO 25.600 8 stops only. The sever German reviewer is positively impressed by the results that are better than the ones reached by the [shoplink 29758 ebay]Samsung NX200[/shoplink] which uses a larger APS-C result.
To see the full graphs and test you have to pay a couple of Euros :(

More E-M5 bits: Olympus E-M5 video at Quesabesde (Click here). A finish hands-on at Sulanto (Click here). Another full German review at Chip (Click here).
Olympus 12-50mm test: Photographyblog (Click here) posted the full Olympus lens review: “Photographers who require maximum sharpness and resolution will of course be better served by one – or more – of the excellent, fast, sharp Micro Four Thirds primes; but the Olympus 12-50mm f3.5-6.3 is hard to beat on versatility and price-performance ratio.” Lenstip (Click here) also posted a full review of the lens.

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E-M5 preorders (Click on the names of the stores to see the product page):
Black E-M5 body at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, J&R, Warehouse UK, Digitalrev and Amazon Japan.
Silver E-M5 body at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, J&R, Warehouse UK, and Amazon Japan.
Black E-M5 body with 14-42mm lens at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto , Digitalrev and J&R.
Black E-M5 body with 12-50mm lens at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, J&R, Jessops, Amazon UK, Amazon Deutschland , Digitalrev and Amazon Japan.
Silver E-M5 body with 12-50mm lens at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, J&R, Jessops, Amazon UK, Amazon Deutschland and Amazon Japan.

Click on image to enlarge

KTF-Turbo posted many new image samples of the SOnnetar 25mm f/1.1 Micro Four Thirds lens: http://blogs.yahoo.co.jp/ktf_turbo/28265046.html. As you can see the image quality drmatically increases at f/1.4 aperture. F71.1 has a creamy effect and may be used for emrgency (or creative) reaosns only. I think it’s an impressive performance for such a tiny lens.

Reminder: The designer of the lens is designer Mr. Miyazaki. He is the creator of the well known [shoplink 29386 ebay]Leica Triplet lenses (here on eBay)[/shoplink] and already made a Sonnetar lens for [shoplink 29387 ebay]Pentax Q mount which costs $650 on eBay (Click here)[/shoplink]

Robin Wong (Click here) finalized his long and very discussed Olympus E-M5 review. No matter how much you like Robin work, you should give him a nice credit for doing a job that none of the big websites has done! In short what he liked about the E-M5 is the image quality,  the 5 axis IS and the handling. But he also listed some smaller issues. Interestingly the viewfinder gets foggy when shooting in rainy conditions, 3D tracking misses a lot of focus points and the electronic viewfinder still is not on par with the “real light” experience of the optical viewfinder.

Meantime Damian MCGilliCuddy had to return the [shoplink 29074]Olympus E-M5[/shoplink] to Olympus but he now keeps shooting some nude portraits with the [shoplink 18844]Olympus E-PL2[/shoplink] (Click here to see his pictures here). Those are nice shots taken with the supertiny [shoplink 14798]17mm f/2.8[/shoplink] and the super good and cheap priced [shoplink 23577]45mm f/1.8[/shoplink] lens. Amazing what you can do with these two little cheap lenses!

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E-M5 preorders (Click on the names of the stores to see the product page):
Black E-M5 body at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, J&R, Warehouse UK, Redcoon Germany and Amazon Japan.
Silver E-M5 body at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, J&R, Warehouse UK, Redcoon Germany, and Amazon Japan.
Black E-M5 body with 14-42mm lens at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto and J&R.
Black E-M5 body with 12-50mm lens at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, J&R, Jessops, Redcoon Deutschland, Amazon UK, Amazon Deutschland and Amazon Japan.
Silver E-M5 body with 12-50mm lens at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, J&R, Jessops, Amazon UK, Amazon Deutschland and Amazon Japan.

Comparison at 1.600 ISO

Canon first attempt to fight against the mirrorless world is represented by the fixed lens Canon G1X camera ($800 at Amazon).The camera uses a Four Thirds ratio sensor that is just a tiny bit bigger than our Panasonic/Olympus Four Thirds sensors. Being used to compare our m43 image quality with the larger APS-C sensor I thought it might be interesting to see how the image quality of the two almost equal sized sensor would be (18.7 x 14mm vs. 17.3 x 13mm)

DCfever (Click here) compared the JPEG quality of the Canon with the one of the [shoplink 26836]Panasonic GX1[/shoplink]. Please notice that Panasonic has an average JPEG engine while Canon is known to be much better. A RAW image comparison would probably show a more “real” sensor performance. The JPEG comparison show a slight advantage of the Canon at Low ISO while at High ISO the difference is less pronounced. I think you want see any difference when looking on real printed images.

The Canon G1X is a very strange concept I can’t fell in love with. It will be much more interesting to see if Canon will launch their new interchangeable lens mirrorless system with exactly the same sensor size of the G1X! …P.S.: Don’t even think Canon would join the m43 system, that’s impossible…or not? :)