Our friend Valentin Sama from DSLRmagazine (Click here) wrote an interesting report about the E-M5 presentation. He has learned form Olympus that there is a 33% improved dynamic range. And as you see from the picture the motion sensors are placed on top of the viewfinder. This is an ideal position becuase it’s as close as it gets to the sensor. Valentin writes that he would have liked to see a higher resolution viewfinder but Olympus told him that this would have made it impossible to have sharp and no vignetting corners. The Olympus AF is 40% faster than the fastest AF from DSRL cameras.

If you need to see two E-M5 Full Size images Helixcameras posted them here and here.

Thom Hogan analyzed the Olympus sales report at Sansmirror (Click here).

An interesting story: Masato O. (A friend of mine) was at the CP+ show in Yokohama. He said that there were so many people visiting the Olympus booth that he waited 100 minutes to get his hands on the E-M5!!!

Here are the pictures from the new 75mm f/1.8 and 60mm f/2.8 macro lenses on the E-M5 (Click on it to enlarge):

via DC.watch.

Updated Preorder list (with Redcoon Deutschland):
Black E-M5 body at Amazon (Click here), Adorama (Click here), BHphoto (Click here), Warehouse UK (Click here), Redcoon Germany (Click here) and Amazon Japan (Click here).
Silver E-M5 body at Amazon (Click here), Adorama (Click here), BHphoto (Click here), Warehouse UK (Click here), Redcoon Germany (Click here), and Amazon Japan (Click here).
Black E-M5 body with 14-42mm lens at Amazon (Click here), Adorama (Click here), BHphoto (Click here), Redcoon Germany (Click here), and Amazon Japan (Click here).
Black E-M5 body with 12-50mm lens at Amazon (Click here), Adorama (Click here), BHphoto (Click here), Jessops (Click here) and Amazon Japan (Click here).
Silver E-M5 body with 12-50mm lens at Amazon (Click here), Adorama (Click here), BHphoto (Click here), Jessops (Click here) and Amazon Japan (Click here).
FL-600R wireless flash at Amazon (Click here), Adorama (Click here) and BHphoto (Click here).
MMF-3 Four Thirds adapter at Amazon (Click here) and Adorama (Click here).
HLD-6 power battery holder at Amazon (Click here), Adorama (Click here) and Amazon Japan (Click here).

Hurry guys! There was a live Question & Answer session from Olympus on Facbeook (Click here). The next Q&A session will take place next Thursday at 3:00pm ET. Here are some of the most interesting answers from Olympus:

First news: Olympus says the E-M5 doesn’t use the same [shoplink 26836]G3/GX1[/shoplink] sensor. It uses an “entirely new sensor“. But(!) keep in mind that Olympus marketing could have a different interpretation about the meaning of the word “new”. Maybe in their opinion small tweaks are enough to define a sensor as “new” :)

Second news: Again about the sensor: “The sensor is more similar to the sensor from the [shoplink 23568 ebay]PEN P-3[/shoplink] but with an increased refresh rate or readout of the image off of the sensor. Means the black out is virtually non existant and you can shoot at a much faster frame rates.”

Third news: “Olympus has recently stated that they are studying a successor camera to the E-5 and another lens.”

Fourth news: “regarding adding the OM-D to the Pro Service program, we are studying that point now. No official word yet.”

Fifth news: “ISO 100 has been removed as ISO 200 has the same low noise performance, but better sensitivity.”

Sixth news: “Our in-house testing has confirmed that the E-P3 and E-M5 are faster than the V-1 or J-1”

Seventh news: “Currently we are focused on fast primes but it would not surprise me to see some fast zooms down the road.”

That’s it!

—-

For my european colluegues:
[shoplink 29051 ebay]Silver E-PL3 with 14-150mm lens[/shoplink],
[shoplink 29052 ebay]Black E-PL3 with double lens kit[/shoplink],
[shoplink 29053 ebay]Silver E-PL3 with 14-42mm lens[/shoplink],
[shoplink 29054 ebay]Red E-PL3 with 14-150mm lens[/shoplink],
[shoplink 29055 ebay]Silver E-PL3 with double lens kit[/shoplink],
[shoplink 29056 ebay]Silver E-PL3 with 14-42mm lens[/shoplink],
[shoplink 29057 ebay]Silver E-PM1 with 14-42mm lens[/shoplink],
[shoplink 29059 ebay]Silver E-PM1 with 14-150mm lens[/shoplink],
[shoplink 29060 ebay]Silver E-PM1 with 14-42mm lens[/shoplink],
[shoplink 29061 ebay]Black E-PM1 with 14-42mm lens[/shoplink],

Not again! Panaosnic is showing the mockups of the new X lenses…again and over again! DC.watch (Click here) visited the Panasonic booth which doesn’t unveil any new info about the upcoming X lenses.

And also Olympus seem to “learn” from Panasonic and is showing their new lens mockups without o unveil the exact release date and price (via Dc.watch):

Don’t know you guys, but I don’t like that kind of marketing.

Our reader YouDidntDidYou (Thanks!) found some impressive slides from Olympus. It shows how the mirrorless market is growing all over the world. And in Japan the Mirrorless market surpassed the DSLR sales for the very first time! And Micro Four Thirds surpassed Nikon and Canon!!! Yep, that is almost a miracle :)

The first slide on top shows the interchangeable camera market share in Japan. Micro Four Thirds mount cameras are the most sold system in Japan and Olympus forecast shows a strong tendency upwards. And for the first time we can finally see the mirrorless market share of all most important countries in the world:

And this is the company market share in Japan:

Good news for us! But let’s see how the data will be in one year when Canon will have striked back!

Watch:
Amazon ranking in USA (Click here)
Amazon ranking in UK (Click here)
Amazon ranking in Germany (Click here)
Amazon ranking in France (Click here)

Updated Preorder list:
Black E-M5 body at Amazon (Click here), Adorama (Click here) and BHphoto (Click here).
Silver E-M5 body at Amazon (Click here), Adorama (Click here) and BHphoto (Click here).
Black E-M5 body with 14-42mm lens at Amazon (Click here), Adorama (Click here) and BHphoto (Click here).
Black E-M5 body with 12-50mm lens at Amazon (Click here), Adorama (Click here), BHphoto (Click here) and Jessops (Click here).
Silver E-M5 body with 12-50mm lens at Amazon (Click here), Adorama (Click here), BHphoto (Click here) and Jessops (Click here).
FL-600R wireless flash at Amazon (Click here), Adorama (Click here) and BHphoto (Click here).
MMF-3 Four Thirds adapter at Amazon (Click here) and Adorama (Click here)
HLD-6 power battery holder at Amazon (Click here) and Adorama (Click here)

As you recall we had plenty of discussions on 43rumors about the E-M5 sensor. There were many open questions about the manufacturer and supposed Olympus tweaks on the sensor. And now that the camera has been officially announced discussions are still continuing!

Kirk Tuck (Click here) says that the “The folks at Olympus don’t make it a habit to divulge the provenance of the sensors they use.  I guess it’s supposed to be a trade secret.  So I asked a few probing questions.  As you can see from the specs the sensor is 16 megapixels.  I wanted to know if, similar to the Panasonic sensor in the GH2, you could use other aspect ratios such as 16:9 and 3:2 without losing resolution.  The answer I got was “yes.”  All but the 1:1 aspect ratio.  If this is true (and I have no reason not to believe it) this will make me happy.”
But Richard Butler (dpreview) said that Kirk Tuck’s statement: “would directly contradict the conversations we’ve had with Olympus.” (According to them “The camera is built around a 16MP Four Thirds sensor, almost certainly the same one seen in Panasonic’s DMC-G3”).
The japanese Pro Photographer Kimio Tanaka goes even further. He wrote on Twitter that the sensor on the E-M5 is actually not made by Panasonic! His guess is that it is made by Sony.

So nobody is really 100% sure about the sensor but I guess Dpreview is right and the E-M5 indeed uses the G3 sensors. Anyway, what matters is the image quality and I hope some of the big known websites can soon post some well made full size image samples!

More E-M5 news:
Olympus OM-D E-M5 five-axis test at Engadget.
Olympus black E-M5 Micro Four Thirds camera and internals eyes-on (Engadget)
Olympus E-M5 : La prise en main! (OpenPN).
Hands-on at CNET Asia.

Message for readers:
After all the E-M5 buzz I had to rest. Today I have more time to catch up with other news and Panasonic rumors.