February 4, 2014

Olympus E-M5 Firmware Ver 2.0, ISO Low Tests - Part I

Urban trees

Olympus recently released a firmware update to the Olympus E-M5 which includes two revisions:
  1. Small AF target was added to the AF target settings.
  2. ISO Low (100 equivalent) was expanded on the low sensitivity side.
Here is a link to the Olympus Japan website that shows the history of firmware updates up to Ver 2.0. In this blog post I will be showing images comparing the native ISO of the E-M5 (ISO 200) vs the new ISO Low (ISO 100 equivalent) of the latest firmware Ver 2.0.

In my tests it appears that some details are lost using ISO Low specially in highlights, that is in comparison to ISO 200. I'll let the images below speak for themselves. Please click the images below to see bigger versions, they are hosted on flickr.

NOTE: The main images were all taken using ISO 200.

Example 1:
E-M5 Firmware v2.0 ISO Low vs ISO 200 comparison
Example1 - SOOC at 100%
ISO Low vs ISO 200 side by side at 100%  (SOOC)
Example 2:
E-M5 Firmware v2.0 ISO Low vs ISO 200 comparison
Example2 - SOOC at 100%
ISO Low vs ISO 200 side by side at 100%  (SOOC)
Example 3:
E-M5 Firmware v2.0 ISO Low vs ISO 200 comparison
Example3 - SOOC at 100%
ISO Low vs ISO 200 side by side at 100%  (SOOC)
Example 4:
E-M5 Firmware v2.0 ISO Low vs ISO 200 comparison
Example4 - SOOC at 100%
ISO Low vs ISO 200 side by side at 100%  (SOOC)
In Part II I will be showing long exposure examples and an overall conclusion on this new feature.

All images in this post were taken using the Olympus OM-D E-M5 and the M. Zuiko 45mm f/1.8.

--EP3.

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