Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mark II Review

Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mark II Review – Image Quality

Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mark II Sample Image Gallery

Colour and White Balance

While the sensor is ostensibly the same as the Mark I, on the E-M5 Mark II the processor has been updated to Olympus’s TruePic VII processor.

This new processor brings with it several image quality improvements including automatic removal of lens colour fringing.

This new processor also helps with JPEG processing, with colours featuring well saturated and vibrant tones that stay on the realistic side of the range.

The model’s auto white balance, meanwhile, does show a slight tendency to err towards the warm side of the scale, although this is to the benefit rather than the detriment of most images.

Exposure and Dynamic Range

As you would expect for a camera of this quality, the E-M5 Mark II delivers even exposures in a range of lighting conditions.

In terms of dynamic range, while it might not quite match the levels seen in equivalent APS-C DSLRs it does offer a good range of exposure between the highlights and shadows in an image.

Resolution

In the conventional 16MP shooting setting, compared to the 40MP ‘High Res Shot’ setting, the Mark II delivers a high resolution. In fact, it’s safe to say that it’s about as high as one could expect from a 16MP sensor at ISO 100 and although it does drop off gradually through the ISO range it is generally respectable.

Noise

As you might expect, at the lowest standard ISO 200 setting the E-M5 Mark II produces clean images, and this trend continues up to ISO 800.

When you head higher up the ISO range fine detail does begin to suffer, and at ISO 3200 almost all fine detail has been blurred away thanks to noise reduction control. That being said colours are largely unaltered and as such the images are still generally acceptable.