Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark IV

I'm going overseas so I bought the Olympus E-M10 Mark IV. I've already owned a range of film and digital cameras over the decades and I have a good understanding how cameras have progressed . My main camera is a Sony A7III with a whopping 40-something MP sensor (although some would consider this low resolution considering there are now 60 MP and 100 MP cameras out there). To be honest, the Sony is far superior to the Olympus in many ways but so is the weight. I hate lugging the Sony and its various lenses around with me. In the end, the Sony distracted me so much from photography during my last overseas trip that I started leaving it in the hotel and used my mobile phone.

The E-M10 is plastic, light weight, has a good lens and features that make photography fun again. Especially for street photography or long walks on dirt tracks, the Olympus just fits in my pocket. No need to carry a camera bag around and no need for shoulder pain. I'm done with being a pack mule!

Image quality isn't the only difference between Sony and Olympus, however, image quality or the number of pixels wasn't the deciding factor in buying the Olympus. So, first the most debated issue of 20 MP vs 40 MP. 20 MP is "sufficient". I took some of the best photos of my life on a 14 MP Nikon. The Olympus 20 MP isn't noticeably better in terms of megapixels compared to my 11 year-old 14 MP Nikon camera. But the images overall look better on the Olympus (i.e. more crisp) due to internal processing of jpgs. However, when zooming into the images (because of the digital tele converter software), the pixels become noticeable. However, all the image degrading features in the Olympus can be turned off. There are pros and cons regarding internal processing of images that I won't be getting into because the various internal software gimmicks built into this phone are complex. However, straight out of the box, the images are wholesome, good and nice to look at. There are settings that you need to change to get even more out of your E-M10. If you look up Robin Wong on YouTube, he has good tips on setting up your Olympus. Only after changing some settings did the E-M10 reveal how good it is. Although more megapixels produce better images in theory, in reality, the tone, colours and other factors affect whether an image is good or not - not the megapixel count.

If you look at the image of the red car, I processed the RAW file and cropped it when zooming in. The results are great. A 20 MP sensor can produce great results, even when zooming in at the extreme. Also, the red is the lushest red I've ever seen. The colours are just warm, wholesome, almost hypnotising...and no, I don't work for Olympus!

Moving away from 20 vs 40 MP sensors debate, the second thing to note is the dodgy positioning of the on-off switch. It's on the left side of the camera body and it is difficult to turn on. Big fail here. Also, some of the other buttons and dials can be turned accidentally because this is a small camera. That's the price you pay for having a small camera. I'm not knocking Olympus but the on-off switch is pretty bad. The on-off button on the Olympus PEN-5 is much better.

The third odd thing about the E-M10 is the lens cap. It is so small and thin, it is hard to remove and easy to lose. I don't get it. Put a string on it! After removing the lens cap the other day on the footpath, it slipped out of my hand and rolled toward a drain. Lucky it stopped before it vanished.

The fourth issue is the graininess of the images at high ISO. Images above ISO 6400 border on useless. That's where my Sony 40 MP camera laughs at the E-M10 but, then again, the Sony cost three times as much. Obviously, cameras with larger sensors have less "noise" at higher ISO.

The fifth thing is the plastic body. Do I care? Hmmm, not really. But for over $1,000 I was expecting aluminum or a light alloy at least. The question here is: since my iPhone takes really nice images (but without the fancy features of the E-M10), there's little justification to buy an E-M10. Sony A7-II already has a 24 MP sensor and is technically better at the same price. However, I refer back to my opening arguments that I bought the E-M10 for the look of the images and the lower weight.

That about sums up the bad. Now to the good: Keeping in mind that this is only a 20 MP camera, the images are not meant to be zoomed-in and cropped. They are good right out of the camera if photographed at low ISO and framed correctly. The jpgs are generally very good and you can apply in-camera processing to make the images excellent right out of the box. While RAW images can't be edited in the camera, they are higher quality and generally require post processing in a software program like DarkTable, RawTherapee or OM Workspace anyway. The RAW images are very good. I've also taken awesome images on my 40 MP Sony but they had to be processed in editing software to bring out the best colours (E.G. red) while the Olympus sensor and processing already makes the images look softer in some ways but punchier in others, more like analogue film. There's a general desire among photographers to get the 'filmic' look. Similar to the Fuji and older Nikons, the Olympus achieves that.

I don't like Sony's menu. In contrast, Olympus has an easier menu but it shines when pressing the Super Control Panel button. You can access all important settings through this feature on the touch screen or via the toggle button at the back.

The M-Zuiko 14-42mm lens is pretty good and better than Sony's average zoom kit lenses.

The camera is fun to take on photo sprees and to just tuck away in the glove box and grab it when needed. I haven't had any battery issues and overall the camera is sturdy, albeit being plastic. The only real downside is the price. Although I negotiated it down to $1,021, in my view, $899 (including lens) should be the most. Otherwise, get an iPhone. But, I wanted this particular camera - not a Fuji, not a Panasonic and not Canon. I wanted a particular look in my images and the E-M10 gives it to me.

If the price and on-off button were fixed, I would have given it 5 stars.

It's a 20.3MP, Micro Four Thirds System, (small photo frame,) standard UHD 4K video recording capabilities, fast 8.7 fps continuous shooting rate and wide ISO 200-25600 sensitivity. With no technical skills, I use the simple auto settings. Conveniently, very small and lightweight, it's the only camera in it's price, quality and capability range, that has 5-axis image stabilization1 (needed because I have a hand tremor) I was happily surprised to find how fast it can focus on small birds or insects and the battery has a long life because the telephoto lens is a quick manual twist out and push back. The flip-down, LCD monitor has a clear image, and the high-definition electronic viewfinder is super handy too. I don't blog or tik tok, so don't use for the smartphone app for sharing images from the camera and I haven't looked at the content - learning photography techniques. As an iNaturalist amateur, the 40-150mm lens isn't really long or wide enough for me and the standard kit 14-42mm lens doesn't get nearly close enough for macro but I'll compromise, accepting the cons, for the price and doing lots of cropping. (Buying extra lenses, more suited to my needs, would push the final price of this camera into that of the larger more professional models which I was trying to avoid in the 1st place.)