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? :)

Continuous shooting test (via DSLRcamera).

Four Thirds User (Click here) tested the fps speed of the E-M5. The good news is that the E-M5 actually shoots 10fps instead of the indicated 9fps on all four tested cards: “Olympus also told us that IS would slow the shooting rate down, which it clearly didn’t. Curiously, two of the higher-specification cards, the Lexar Pro and Kingston XX Ultimate, although they shot 12 frames in the sequence, the last frame took twice as long to register as the previous one, so we excluded it, only counting the 11.”
This has to be a marketing trick from Olympus to get positive feedback from reviews ;) Thanks FourThirdsUser for sharing that interesting test!

Some more E-M5 bits:
The latest Robin Wong E-M5 review created a lot of buzz and Robin clarified a couple of things on his blog (Click here). P.S: Personal message for Robin: You are doing a great job! Don’t care too much about negative or non sense critics! It’s the price you pay for the popularity ;)
Gabrielle Motola contacted me yesterday because you bad 43rumors readers made crash her website :) She now managed to restore it! Seriously speaking, she was happy you visited the blog ;)
One more fashion image taken with the E-M5 at Damian Mcgillicuddy (Click here). No nude pic that time ;)

E-M5 preorders:
Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, J&R, Jessops, Amazon UK, Amazon Deutschland and Amazon Japan.

Of course this is a pretty unfair comparison. We are comparing apple with oranges. Both cameras are different priced, have different specs, and different strengths. The [shoplink 29074]Olympus E-M5[/shoplink] is cheaper, has a faster AF, weather sealed body. The X PRO 1 has a super image quality and a very innovative hybrid viewfinder. But ultimately isn’t it interesting to see how great the image quality difference is? :)

Our reader Gabrielle Motola sent me the link (Click here) to a short test made with both cameras. Gabrielle explicitly says that is not a regular and scientific test. Her impression is that “this test clearly showed me is that both cameras are capable of providing an outstanding image. The choice of purchase comes down to preference and operational flow.”

Here are the images:
E-M5: Full Size and 100% crop.
X PRO 1: Full Size and 100% crop.

X PRO 1 lens test:
A great lens test has been published by Valentin Sama. read more at MirrorlessRumors.com

Price difference:
The E-M5 costs $700 or 500 Euro less than the X PRO 1:
E-M5 at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, J&R, Jessops, Amazon UK, Amazon Deutschland and Amazon Japan.
Fuji X PRO 1 at Amazon, Adorama, Bhphoto, Epxansys US, Expansys Canada, Jessops UK, Expansys UK, Amazon Japan and eBay Japan.