Olympus E-5 Review: Extreme Low Light Shooting at Aquaria, KLCC

Side Note:

1) The loaned Olympus E-5 is an initial production unit.

2) This is a user-experience based review.

3) General camera parameters: Picture Mode - Natural, Noise Filter - LOW, Sharpness - 0, Contrast - 0, Saturation - 0.

4) Minor post processing performed on the photographs besides resizing. Only slight exposure compensation and a little cropping for better overall presentation. The photographs are almost straight out of camera JPEG.

First of all, I have to say a big THANK YOU to forumers from all around the world !! Hello you beautiful people from DPreview, FourThirds User, FourThirds Photos, E-System Talk UK and 43rumors.com (and also so many dozens more forums in all languages, website links and blog links). I am overwhelmed with such massive response, and certainly this is very encouraging for me. You guys made my review works and photography walk with the E-5, no matter how brief it was, very worthwhile and fulfilling !

I have noticed a lot of positive remarks on my style of reviewing the Olympus E-5. Thank you all so much for understanding why I chose to break the norm of fixed mundane redundant technicalities based reviews. I believe you all trust DPreview and many other photography review sites, so lets just leave the number games to them to deal with more efficiently, and definitely, more accurately. My user-experience oriented review style was probably not a very popular option, but skipping the technical part means I can concentrate on photography. If you guys do not know this yet, Olympus E-System is ALL about PHOTOGRAPHY. So, this is what I love to do best, to make photographs happen !!

ISO640

50mm F2 macro, ISO 640, 1/400 sec, F/2

100% crop 800x600 pixels from the previous photograph.

I have been doing my part in tracing the response on the discussions everywhere related to this E-5 review I have done here. I am sorry I am not able to trace all the feedback, since it has become increasingly impossible to keep track over such huge development everywhere. Most of the reviews I have noticed so far are very positive, I appreciate very kind words on my photography works, though I must remind you all that I am NOT a professional photographer. I am merely just a photography-enthusiast. On the other hand, there are some remarks, or requests, which I shall address as follows:

1) Video recording.

Yes I have done one. Check out at the end of this entry.

2) Photo size is too small.

I am sorry for resizing the photographs down to 800 pixels width only, since anything bigger will slow my blog down significantly. Nonetheless, I shall provide several more 100% crops for your pixel-peeping pleasure.

3) High ISO performance

This is the main thing I am addressing in this particular blog entry.

4) Noise Filter tests at different settings.

I know many of you are curious to see how different noise filter applied can have impacts on the overall noise to detail ratio output. I am sorry I will not do such comparison here, because if I do so I might end up with many repetitive shots, which will be redundant and come to a 100 images per blog entry. That is insane !! Lets leave this comparison tests to our beloved DPreview folks, shall we? I am sure you will trust their results more than mine.

5) Contradiction of not wanting to do comparisons, but making claims that image quality on E-5 has been improved.

I have been an E-System user for years now, and I have encountered almost all Olympus DSLR camera bodies. After reviewing the E-5, without even comparing directly, or making side by side studies, I can, without any doubt come to a very general conclusion that the image quality has indeed been drastically improved. Any constant E-System user will surely notice the great difference in the JPEG files. Improved by how much, again, the number games, I shall leave them out from this review.

ISO1600

50mm F2 macro, ISO 1600, 1/40 sec, F/2

100% crop 800x600 pixels from the previous photograph.

ISO4000

50mm F2 macro, ISO 4000, 1/100 sec, F/2

100% crop 800x600 pixels from the previous photograph.

ISO6400

11-22mm, ISO 6400, 1/40 sec, F/3.5

100% crop 800x600 pixels from the previous photograph.

I know there are probably a dozen more demands out there, I apologize in advance for not being able to fulfill everyone’s requests. I did whatever I can, in my power, within three days only with the Olympus E-5 to make this review happen. There was obviously a lot of real shooting time involved (which was the main agenda for me). I beg your understanding.

Alright, lets dive in to today’s main agenda, Olympus E-5 on extreme low light shooting conditions.

I brought the Olympus E-5 to Aquaria at Kuala Lumpur Convention Center (KLCC), and went in with an aim of shooting with extremely high ISO settings. If you have visited any aquarium or underwater related fish/water animal shows, you will understand how impossibly dim the lighting is inside. This was the perfect setup to test the ISO performance on user-review oriented purposes. I will not tell you how many stops the ISO noise performance has improved, or whether the high ISO settings are usable or not. Instead, I just did my best to utilize the Olympus E-5 the best I can in such incredibly challenging shooting condition, and share my photographs with you beautiful people. I shall let you all decide and judge yourself, how good, or bad the high ISO performance is on Olympus E-5.

ISO2000

11-22mm, ISO2000, 1/40sec, F/2.8

ISO3200

11-22mm, ISO3200, 1/40sec, F/2.8

ISO6400

11-22mm, ISO6400, 1/60sec, F/2.8

Why is it so difficult shooting in Aquaria, KLCC?

1) No flash use allowed.

I always tell my friends that, to counter low light shooting condition, I use flash, so that negates the need to bump up the high ISO settings. However, to protect the fish and water creatures which could be injured by flash from the camera, flash photography is prohibited. No flash means, no choice but to use extremely high ISO settings.

2) Constantly in-motion subjects.

No, the sharks and stingrays do not stay still. They moved constantly, and they moved pretty FAST.

3) Focusing through scratched glass, and reflective water.

As if the extreme low light condition is already not a challenge enough, add the scratched glass and not exactly 100% clear water into the equation just made the whole process even more difficult to nail the focus right.

I brought the Olympus E-5 with Olympus 11-22mm F2.8-3.5mm lens mounted on it. Sometimes, I switched to 50mm F2 macro to obtain a few close up shots.

What I intend to share with all of you based on this particular review session, are as follows:

1) Autofocus performance in extreme low light condition with non-SWD lenses.

2) High ISO noise handling on the E-5, based on a user’s experience

3) A sample of HD Video taken with E-5, Olympus’ first DSLR with video capability !!

Autofocus performance in extreme low light condition with non-SWD lenses.

We all know how fast, and how amazingly accurate Olympus SWD lenses are. Too many praises have been sung for them, and let the professional reviews do even more justification for that fact. For my review, I chose to shoot with 11-22mm F2.8-3.5 as my primary lens in this session. Why 11-22mm? It is a super wide-angle lens, and I really appreciate the extra width it provided to cover that extra bit of edge into the frame. The F2.8 on the wide end allowed more light to be captured, which enabled faster shutter speed. 11-22mm is not a SWD lens, but the autofocus performance has been very responsive and reliable, although to a lesser degree in comparison to SWD lenses. Oh, and it is my current favourite lens. I just cannot say no to a chance of using it on Olympus E-5.

ISO6400

11-22mm, ISO6400, 1/80sec, F/2.8

ISO6400

11-22mm, ISO6400, 1/60sec, F/2.8

ISO3200

11-22mm, ISO3200, 1/40sec, F/2.8

I find that focusing with 11-22mm generally did not pose any issues at all. I can lock focus most of the time. It did not hesitate much to focus, even under very, very dark condition. Under such extreme low light condition, I do think the speed is indeed more than usable, although I cannot say it is fast. However, accuracy is an entirely different issue.

I was presented with quite a difficult focusing situation. On top of the super dark condition of the glass tunnel, the thick glass itself was not exactly crystal clear. The lens sometimes would focus on the glass first, and you have to repress the shutter button half way again to get the lens to focus further away from the glass, which it did most of the time. This can get very annoying, especially when you place the lens too near to the glass. Secondly, when there was a strong backlit situation, the 11-22mm started to hunt. There were a few cases that the lens gave up focusing completely, but that was because of very strong backlit against almost total dark subject I focused on. Those issues can be considered very minor, and only happened very rarely. Generally, being able to lock focus on constantly moving fish at relatively high speed on 80-90% of my shots, I am more than happy with the autofocus performance. I do not expect the Autofocus to be perfect, under such cruelly demanding condition. Nonetheless, it did deliver me very, very useable photographs in the end, which matters the most.

I have also used the 50mm F2 macro inside the glass tunnel. Oh my, now this 50mm, being optimized for macro, ALWAYS focused on the glass instead of the subject. I know I can do manual focus, but what is the point of doing that since I want to tell you guys how the Autofocus performs, right? I must be honest here, the 50mm was almost non-usable for moving subjects, under such horrible lighting condition, being placed behind the thick, scratched glass. However, if you have noticed my first three shots posted above (all taken with 50mm f2), for non-moving subjects, it still can have high chance of success hit rates. Static subjects, which were not inside water, although under very dim lighting condition, were focused on well with 50mm. As you can examine the photographs, there was completely no miss-focusing issue at all. I know I have mentioned on how much improvement the focus of 50mm is on the E-5 in my previous entry. Now, I can tell you that it is VERY usable for non-moving subjects under low light. If shooting at ISO6400, F2.8, shutter speed 1/40 seconds was not low light enough for you, I do not know what is!!

ISO4000

11-22mm, ISO4000, 1/100sec, F/2.8

ISO4000

11-22mm, ISO4000, 1/60sec, F/2.8

ISO4000

11-22mm, ISO4000, 1/80sec, F/2.8

High ISO handling on the E-5, based on a user’s experience

This is a very subjective issue, and has become very sensitive to many photography communities in the world. ISO noise examinations have been seen as the top priority in determining the overall rating of the camera. While I cannot deny the importance of good high ISO performance, I do however, find it ridiculous to mark a camera down just because it cannot perform as good as other cameras, purely based on high ISO results alone. Nonetheless, everyone is entitled to their own opinion and thoughts, and have their say in this matter.

I am not going to elaborate much to stay on the safe side. I know, one wrong sentence, and I will be grilled alive by the forumers over and over again all over the world. What I can tell you is that, there is a noticeable improvement. At ISO3200, the noise level was evident, but still the details are well maintained. Overall sharpness was very good too, but of course that was due to the presence of luminance noise all over. One good news is how the JPEG engine handles the chroma noise. Up to ISO3200, I almost did not detect (yet again, some people have super magnifying eyes that can spot pixels 6 feet away from the computer screen) any chroma noise. Even at ISO6400, the majority of the noise is luminance, and I do not mind much luminance noise, which was of course, again my preference.

Many of you would be glad to hear that at ISO1600 and below, even at such dim condition, the image appeared to be quite smooth.

ISO3200

11-22mm, ISO3200, 1/80sec, F/2.8

ISO3200

11-22mm, ISO4000, 1/100sec, F/2.8

ISO3200

11-22mm, ISO3200, 1/60sec, F/2.8

Do bear in mind that I apply noise filter setting to LOW in all the images. If you are a detail-worshipper, then feel free to scrutinize photographs at DPreview website which was taken all with noise filter off in their preview section of Olympus E-5. I believe the noise filter should be at least set to LOW or STANDARD, to balance noise and details captured in the images. If you do not need to zoom in 100% view of your photograph, or if you do not do excessive cropping work, then applying filter to obtain better noise controlled images would be a wise option, if you shoot JPEG primarily.

If you ask me, I am actually quite impressed with the ISO performance. I am eager to wait and see what the official DPreview review on E-5 would have to say in this matter. I think all of you are waiting impatiently too.

A sample of HD Video taken with E-5, Olympus’ first DSLR with video capability !!

As requested by a few readers, and forumers, here is a HD video taken at 720p. It is 40 seconds long.

The original file was 2 minutes long, at 509MB. I cannot upload the full size due to my internet connection limitations (blame lousy Malaysia broadband services), so I have cut down the video to 40 seconds with Windows Movie Maker and published it as a 720 HD video. I uploaded to YouTube, and I suspect a lot of compression has been done over the original file, through Windows Movie Maker and also the YouTube for size/quality optimization.

Here is the video.

I set the focus onto the diver’s range, and started to shoot the video. Some time in the middle of the shooting, I refocused to capture the nearer water creatures. The focusing on the 11-22 was silent and fast. It only took about less than a second to accurately find the intended focusing spot.

I am not a videographer, and I am completely dumb when it comes to video shooting. Please forgive me if the video posted above does not meet your expectations, or answer your questions. I thought of skipping this video part in the first place, but it would feel like as if something is missing if I did not record a sample video. After all, this E-5 is Olympus’ first ever DSLR with video recording, so that itself must not be left out.

ISO3200

11-22mm, ISO3200, 1/100sec, F/2.8

ISO4000

11-22mm, ISO4000, 1/40sec, F/2.8

Alright guys, that is all for this part of my review on low light shooting conditions. I can anticipate very active discussions brewing all over the world, especially on the focusing and high ISO noise performance. May I remind all of you that, for more accurate and representative results, please wait for official reviews from trusted photography websites. I am just merely sharing my opinions and thoughts, which you may not agree with, and I am fine with that. But please do not turn it into a full scale war out there in the forums !!

I have one more review to sum up, and conclude my series of user-experience sharing here on this blog. In that coming blog entry, I shall be focusing on making images that I love.

Thank you all again for your support. Do leave me an email if you have questions, or in the comment box below. Due to overwhelming response, it might take me a while to reply to your comments, or email. I thank you for your understanding.