E-M5 Owner - Comments, Critique, Reviews, and what-nots :-)

[gongong]

There's a Taiwan user reported a similar case, his em5 died after exposed in a light shower. link

5D2, a33, D50, 400D - all survived. EM-5 which is splash proof died. So ironic. I bet all those owners would had laugh their ass off.

The TW owner say Oly TW told him that water went in from the bottom, the part where it is supposed to be in contact with the HLD6.

When i got my set, i also feel that rubber part is a little flimsy.how can contact points be so easily accessible. one small accident rubbing, one corner of the ru bber piece could easily come off and allow water to seep it. that is worse than no protection to me.

but i thot oly engineers might have thought of this and is good to go. but now, i think my intuition was right that this part can be problematic.
Perhaps its Oly way to get owners to buy the HLD6 so then it can provide a better splash proofing.

seriously, i bought the EM5 with 12-50 largely because it was splash proof. now, i am worried if it can even survive SongKran2013 or the kids waterpark in zoo, etc....

 

[dannyfoxy]

5D2, a33, D50, 400D - all survived. EM-5 which is splash proof died. So ironic. I bet all those owners would had laugh their ass off.

The TW owner say Oly TW told him that water went in from the bottom, the part where it is supposed to be in contact with the HLD6.

When i got my set, i also feel that rubber part is a little flimsy.how can contact points be so easily accessible. one small accident rubbing, one corner of the ru bber piece could easily come off and allow water to seep it. that is worse than no protection to me.

but i thot oly engineers might have thought of this and is good to go. but now, i think my intuition was right that this part can be problematic.
Perhaps its Oly way to get owners to buy the HLD6 so then it can provide a better splash proofing.

seriously, i bought the EM5 with 12-50 largely because it was splash proof. now, i am worried if it can even survive SongKran2013 or the kids waterpark in zoo, etc....

you sell at 1/2 price, I buy form you

 

[NazgulKing]

Personal opinion on the AF: It seems that the algorithm can recognise faces enough, though I had a few missed focuses. One thing though, the algorithm doesn't work too well with faces on the side. Seems that it cannot recognise the side profile most of time.

The irritating part is that the bloody touch functionality LCD screen cannot be shut off permanently. I am still searching for a way to do it. Because of the touch screen, the focus spot keeps varying.

EDIT: Found it. In the labyrinth of menu options in the menu system.

 

[ijnek]

i'm pretty sure u can touch the icon on the left side of the screen to toggle the touch-screen function...

 

[Oly5050]

Personal opinion on the AF: It seems that the algorithm can recognise faces enough, though I had a few missed focuses. One thing though, the algorithm doesn't work too well with faces on the side. Seems that it cannot recognise the side profile most of time.

The irritating part is that the bloody touch functionality LCD screen cannot be shut off permanently. I am still searching for a way to do it. Because of the touch screen, the focus spot keeps varying.

EDIT: Found it. In the labyrinth of menu options in the menu system.

There is an icon on the bottom left side of the touchscreen which allows to toggle between af/shutter, af position, and off.

 

[Oly5050]

5D2, a33, D50, 400D - all survived. EM-5 which is splash proof died. So ironic. I bet all those owners would had laugh their ass off.

The TW owner say Oly TW told him that water went in from the bottom, the part where it is supposed to be in contact with the HLD6.

When i got my set, i also feel that rubber part is a little flimsy.how can contact points be so easily accessible. one small accident rubbing, one corner of the ru bber piece could easily come off and allow water to seep it. that is worse than no protection to me.

but i thot oly engineers might have thought of this and is good to go. but now, i think my intuition was right that this part can be problematic.
Perhaps its Oly way to get owners to buy the HLD6 so then it can provide a better splash proofing.

seriously, i bought the EM5 with 12-50 largely because it was splash proof. now, i am worried if it can even survive SongKran2013 or the kids waterpark in zoo, etc....

Actually the EM5 is not meant to be exposed to water upside down. Look at its IPS rating. It has been discussed before. Its only rated to resist water from the top down. So if u hold camera upright and its raining its ok. But if the camera is upside down, it may not be ok. When they poured water during demo, it was with the camera in upright position. In any case, i thk the contacts at the bottom of the camera covered by the rubber piece is indeed weatherproof thats why it is designed like that. If it was not ot would a socket versus a flat design. The flap is not meant to seal.

Anyway, there is no seal between the battery grip and the base of the camera. Water can still get in the interface if u direct water on it from the side. If top down it shd be protected.

 

[irvinl]

do a video of yourself splashing it with water... (like how digitalrev do testing for weatherseal cameras?) and shoot again?
i'm sure if you've evidence, its kinda shame shame for them not to stand by the 1 year warranty... esp for the price tag we paid?

but i'm said 3/4 of us didn't buy for the weathersealed function right

 

[NazgulKing]

There is an icon on the bottom left side of the touchscreen which allows to toggle between af/shutter, af position, and off.

The problem is that when you use the viewfinder, there's a good chance your face toggles it or moves the AF point.

 

[st3v4nt]

The problem is that when you use the viewfinder, there's a good chance your face toggles it or moves the AF point.

I think you mention the old problem with EP-3 which the LCD still on if you use the EVF so the EP3 may locked-up or change the settings. It's different with OM-D AFAIK and try. If you put your eye to the EVF (even if you wave the hand in front of EVF) the LCD is turn off instantly. So there's no way you change the touch focus in LCD with your nose or cheek...

 

[Oly5050]

I think you mention the old problem with EP-3 which the LCD still on if you use the EVF so the EP3 may locked-up or change the settings. It's different with OM-D AFAIK and try. If you put your eye to the EVF (even if you wave the hand in front of EVF) the LCD is turn off instantly. So there's no way you change the touch focus in LCD with your nose or cheek...

Absolutely.

 

[eow]

I have a black set.

After the camera failed to turn on. I did a very thorough check of all the seals. The HDMI port and what nots were fine. There was a ring of water surrounding the ports but quite far away, probably the area that the rubber was protecting the ports. The battery cover flap however has a non-porous foam of sorts that I believe is starting to get thoroughly soaked although there was still no water heading into the battery compartment. Same for the SD card slot. Foam holding very well, especially under pressure when the door is closed shut. My guess is that water could have entered from either the dials (mode dial on the left and the twin control dials on the right) or through the flash hotshot / accessory port. I don't remember much seals there (flash hot shoe cover and accessory port cover wasn't particularly shaped to keep water out, check out your own covers when convenient to see), which is kind of ironic since everywhere else is sealed pretty well and the top is where you expect rain to enter. The lens mount area has a ring of water too, but it is from the outside of the rubber ring which seals the 12-50 to the mount. So mostly water was kept out anywhere there was rubber seals.

I will update you all once I have more information from Olympus about their observations inside the camera. Meanwhile avoid water where possible, and if for whatever reason you cannot avoid water splashing on the camera, give most attention to the accessory port below the hot shoe if possible.

machaim u taking it for a swim, it only a shower, of all the cameras i had went thru rain, only the stupid d700 gave up, my dainty gf1 and a200 hold up well

 

[Nerd]

Had a nice long chat with Edwin Chan, their senior manager @ Customer Care Center. We chatted about possible scenarios where water can enter, how the body was tested to be weather sealed, so on and so forth. Also gave some feedback to further improve the camera. He agreed to reduce the cost to just labour cost for my case, and will be sending the parts back to headquarters to further examine cause of water ingression.

In short, from what I can remember, camera is rated weather resistant to approximately 1mm of rainfall per minute for 1 minute from the top (no splashing from sides or bottom please...). and a rest period of 1 minute before being subjected to the same thing again. Even their waterproof cases are only rated for 45 minutes under their specified depth

There is a high chance water went in from the SD card slot side. Apparently enough water pooled inside the camera to leave quite a bit of whitish markings on the inner case. Needless to say all of the internal electronics are toast. The PCB board is heavily populated with parts. The sensor in it's entire IS array weighs well over 4 times what the PCB weighs, possibly about 1.5 times of what the battery weighs. I'm pretty sure it probably accounts for 1/3 the weight of the camera. Yeah, it's kind of weird looking at the guts all spilled out like that.

Conclusion, if you have to expose your camera to rain, try to make sure it doesn't splash in from the sides or worse, bottom. Obviously make sure a weather sealed lens is used. Weather sealed means won't die immediately, doesn't mean can play (shoot) in the rain till the sun comes out. If you want to do that, get a waterproof case.

 

[cannedpineapples]

Had a nice long chat with Edwin Chan, their senior manager @ Customer Care Center. We chatted about possible scenarios where water can enter, how the body was tested to be weather sealed, so on and so forth. Also gave some feedback to further improve the camera. He agreed to reduce the cost to just labour cost for my case, and will be sending the parts back to headquarters to further examine cause of water ingression.

In short, from what I can remember, camera is rated weather resistant to approximately 1mm of rainfall per minute for 1 minute from the top (no splashing from sides or bottom please...). and a rest period of 1 minute before being subjected to the same thing again. Even their waterproof cases are only rated for 45 minutes under their specified depth

There is a high chance water went in from the SD card slot side. Apparently enough water pooled inside the camera to leave quite a bit of whitish markings on the inner case. Needless to say all of the internal electronics are toast. The PCB board is heavily populated with parts. The sensor in it's entire IS array weighs well over 4 times what the PCB weighs, possibly about 1.5 times of what the battery weighs. I'm pretty sure it probably accounts for 1/3 the weight of the camera. Yeah, it's kind of weird looking at the guts all spilled out like that.

Conclusion, if you have to expose your camera to rain, try to make sure it doesn't splash in from the sides or worse, bottom. Obviously make sure a weather sealed lens is used. Weather sealed means won't die immediately, doesn't mean can play (shoot) in the rain till the sun comes out. If you want to do that, get a waterproof case.

So if the wind starts blowing so the rain is hitting at an angle, you should run for your (camera's) life?

 

[silencer13]

Nice to see that at least Olympus gave a good resolution to the problem.
I hope the labour charges weren't too expensive?

I must count myself lucky that mine is still ok..... I really hecked care when in japan, at the back of my mind I told myself it's a weather-sealed camera, so might as well get the most out of it. Lucky my camera's still alive. *quickly goes and double-checks*

 

[cannedpineapples]

I think Oly should clarify their policy. If you ask me, weather-sealed = any sort of water damage should be covered. That's the whole point. If we still have to go through this 'it was your fault' crap, why don't I just buy a non-weather sealed camera and just keep it out of the rain, just like it seems I now have to do with the OMD anyway?

Ridiculous.

 

[pinholecam]

Had a nice long chat with Edwin Chan, their senior manager @ Customer Care Center. We chatted about possible scenarios where water can enter, how the body was tested to be weather sealed, so on and so forth. Also gave some feedback to further improve the camera. He agreed to reduce the cost to just labour cost for my case, and will be sending the parts back to headquarters to further examine cause of water ingression.

In short, from what I can remember, camera is rated weather resistant to approximately 1mm of rainfall per minute for 1 minute from the top (no splashing from sides or bottom please...). and a rest period of 1 minute before being subjected to the same thing again. Even their waterproof cases are only rated for 45 minutes under their specified depth

There is a high chance water went in from the SD card slot side. Apparently enough water pooled inside the camera to leave quite a bit of whitish markings on the inner case. Needless to say all of the internal electronics are toast. The PCB board is heavily populated with parts. The sensor in it's entire IS array weighs well over 4 times what the PCB weighs, possibly about 1.5 times of what the battery weighs. I'm pretty sure it probably accounts for 1/3 the weight of the camera. Yeah, it's kind of weird looking at the guts all spilled out like that.

Conclusion, if you have to expose your camera to rain, try to make sure it doesn't splash in from the sides or worse, bottom. Obviously make sure a weather sealed lens is used. Weather sealed means won't die immediately, doesn't mean can play (shoot) in the rain till the sun comes out. If you want to do that, get a waterproof case.

Nice to hear that you got a decent resolution to your problem. (though I'm be 'niao' and expect the whole repair to be free )
Still, a 'right thing' for Oly SGP to do to waive off so much of the repair cost.

For me the carry away msg is just to be careful with the OMD when it comes to the weather sealing.
Sometimes, the sealing on the cameras can be fine, but we can screw everything up just because we forgot to close the USB/HDMI ports or SD card slot properly.

 

[esoeij]

Oly isn't exactly rolling in the dough right now, still have to deal with the aftermath of the financial scandal. In fact I think they just announced job cuts. So every Oly office out there will be conscious of their bottomline when they report their numbers back to HQ...maybe that's why they can't be as generous with the charges as they might like.

 

[cannedpineapples]

Oly isn't exactly rolling in the dough right now, still have to deal with the aftermath of the financial scandal. In fact I think they just announced job cuts. So every Oly office out there will be conscious of their bottomline when they report their numbers back to HQ...maybe that's why they can't be as generous with the charges as they might like.

If that's the case, then maybe the OSC should clear some of the decisions they're making with their marketing department before they act. The cost of one single billboard at Orchard MRT can probably pay the repair charges for all potential 'weather-sealing' related problems for the entire year.

Why pay so much for marketing then create a public relations disaster that turns off the same group you're trying to win over with this camera- the enthusiasts?

 

[theITguy]

This mean we need to be careful on how we use it.

Looks like we are paying more than what we are getting. If they come out with a version without weatherseal and much cheaper, than we are screwed. Haha

 

[cannedpineapples]

This mean we need to be careful on how we use it.

Looks like we are paying more than what we are getting. If they come out with a version without weatherseal and much cheaper, than we are screwed. Haha

Sounds like the EP5 with new sensor..