Review: Why the Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mk III could be your next camera

Whenever someone’s asked me which camera to buy in the past two years, my answer has been to get the Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark II.

For around S$1,000, the E-M10 Mark II packed a lot into a camera for not that much money. It wasn’t the camera for people who could calculate crop factors in their head, zone focused while shooting, and worried about shutter shock. But it was a good camera for most people who just wanted a small enough, light enough camera that could take good enough pictures, without having to fiddle with things like shutter speeds and ISO settings.

And now, here comes the new E-M10 Mark III. You should know right off the bat that the new version hasn’t changed a lot — the 16MP sensor inside is still the same 16MP sensor as the Mark II’s. 

However, the Mark III still ships with the same features that made the Mark II so compelling, like its small size, beautiful design, a large lens family, and a5-axis optical image stabilization system. Plus, it now shoots 4K video and has a redesigned UI for easier use.

The E-M10 Mark III’s changes makes it easier to get shots done

Think of the E-M10 Mark III has a facelift of the Mark II — both the chassis and the UI get refinements that make them easier to use.

The body has a better grip, for example, and the d-pad gets printed labels. There’s a nice new ‘Main’ button (Olympus actually calls it the Shortcut button) that takes you back to the main menus in shooting scenes, and to the Super Control dashboard in PSAM (Program, Shutter, Aperture, Manual) modes.

A new Advanced Photo (AP) mode, which has a dedicated space on the Mode dial, comes with a menu that lets you easily select shooting modes like Live Composite and Live Time. 

These were features that already existed in the Mark II, but they were scattered in obscure places. To activate Live Composite on the Mark II, for example, you had to go to Manual mode and set the shutter speed to LIVECOMP. On the Mark III, you just go to AP mode and hit a button.

However, the redesign stopped short of a complete overhaul — the original green menu is still confusingly organized, and I couldn’t figure out how to get the Clips feature to compile my videos.

Besides refining the user experience, the biggest spec bumps to the Mark III would be the TruePic VIII processor, which the E-M10 Mark III inherits from the flagship OM-D E-M1 Mark II. AF points have been increased from 81 to 121, and like many mirrorless cameras, the AF points cover most of the frame for greater flexibility. Most DSLR cameras, on the other hand, still have AF points bunched in the center.

The E-M10 Mark III is the second Olympus mirrorless camera to shoot 4K video, with 30/25/24p frame rates, and Full-HD at 60/50/30/25/24p. There’s also a high-speed 120fps option at HD resolution. Nothing fancy like line-in microphone jacks, but again, that’s not what this camera is for. At the same time, I’m glad they included 24p for 4K, a throwback for nostalgic film buffs like me.

For what it’s worth, I’m not a fan of the pancake 14-42mm kit lens, but that’s because I’m old and have never liked electronic zooms. I always forget which direction is to zoom in or out, and I prefer the speed and precision of a traditional lens. However, the lens does collapse into a thin pancake, which makes the entire camera easier to carry around.

For everyday shots, the E-M10 Mark III does just fine

The E-M10 Mark III uses the same 16MP sensor as its predecessor, so there’s not much surprise here. For most everyday situations, like people, landscape and still life, the E-M10 Mark III performs well.

The colors are beautiful, especially if you use the Natural color setting in Program mode. I’d skip the using the i-Enhance color profile in Auto mode, which looks overly saturated to me. The yellow channel does have a tendency to blow, so watch those highlights if you have a lot of hot yellows. Autofocus nails it most of the time for photos; it sometimes mistakes proximity for importance, but you can set the focus point by simply tapping on the screen.

If you don’t pixel peep, you should be satisfied with images shot up to ISO 3,200, and even ISO 6,400 if all you do is share on Facebook and never print your images. The E-M10 Mark III keeps image noise to a minimum, even up to ISO 6,400.

If you want to keep more critical detail, however, I’d suggest shooting at ISO 1,600 and below. The 5-axis OIS will help you keep the shot stable if you need to lengthen the shutter speed. I managed to shoot up to four seconds handheld (!) with a sharp result, on a DSLR I’d be lucky if I managed to get a sharp picture at 1/20th of a second.

The 5-axis OIS also manages to reduce camera shake while shooting video. But the OIS does introduce an odd parallax and sudden jerkiness when panning. Disappointingly, AE doesn’t seem to work in video, exposure settings remain when you transit between bright and dark areas. 

Play

AF also doesn’t recognize faces when shooting video — to be fair, this isn’t a common feature among mirrorless cameras. However, Canon’s mirrorless cameras with Dual Pixel AF can detect faces when shooting video, and I’d expect that to be table stakes for consumer video in the next couple of years.

Since this is a ‘prosumer’ camera with ‘prosumer’ prices, some features are limited. There’s a neat option in Advanced Photo mode to automatically do focus bracketing. This is great for macro photography where the depth of field becomes incredibly shallow and you need more of the subject to be in focus.

Unlike the flagship OM-D E-M1’s Focus Stacking feature, however, the E-M10 Mark III can’t automatically composite these images in-camera for a fully focused shot, you’ll need to use third-party software like Photoshop to complete the job.

Still, it’s incredible that this feature exists. On many other cameras, you still have to manually shift focus in between shots to stack focus later in post. And other features in AP mode work capably, HDR helps to get a balanced image that would normally be too dark or too bright, and Live Composite lets you shoot at low shutter speeds while previewing how the shot looks on the screen (the first image on this page was shot using Live Composite). If you wanted to do a long exposure using a DSLR, you’d have no way of seeing if you nailed or blew the exposure until after the shot was completed.

Is the E-M10 Mark III your next camera?

There are more powerful cameras that produce higher resolution images with more detail and less noise. But those come with a price; and not just to your wallet. They’re often bigger, heavier, and more complex. If you’re willing to pay, carry and learn more, then you should go look at them.

The Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark III isn’t the best-specced camera on the market, but it is one of the better cameras for most people to use. It shoots decent images and videos, in a small and light body, is easy to use, and sells at an affordable price.

And if you want to learn more about driving manual, the E-M10 Mark III can do that too. Shift into PSAM modes and you have every setting at your disposal, with twin control dials to help you take control and a nice electronic viewfinder to shoot with.

Plus, the E-M10 Mark III ships with advanced features like a 5-axis OIS, which is not only useful for getting sharp still photos, it‘s vital for shooting videos that won’t induce vertigo in your viewers. Video resolution goes up to 4K, which is great for future-proofing. However, you should know that video is not the E-M10 Mark III’s strong suit; it doesn’t adapt exposure automatically as the scene shifts from dark to light, and the OIS can introduce odd parallax and jerkiness to some panning shots.

The Micro Four Thirds system, which the E-M10 Mark III is a part of, has a rich library of good, affordable lenses to play with. A lot of people look at the size of camera bodies to make a purchase, but you also have to consider the size of the lenses. No matter what you do, you can’t defy physics — bigger sensors require longer flange back distances, which result in bigger lenses, adding to your overall carry.

The E-M10 Mark III isn’t perfect. Aside from the previous remarks about video shooting, I would have loved to see face detection AF make its way for the first time into Olympus’ video mode. i-Enhance in Auto mode is overly saturated for my tastes. The old lime-green UI really needs an overhaul. But these aren’t deal breakers, not at this price.

While the local retail price hasn’t been announced yet, in the US it has an SRP of US$650 for the body only and US$800 with the M.Zuiko 14–42mm EZ lens. With a straight conversion at approximately S$880 and S$1,084, that doesn’t fall too far from the E-M10 Mark II’s launch price of S$1,148 with the 14-42mm lens.

Next time someone asks me what camera to buy, I’m going to recommend them the Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark III. It’s not the camera for everyone, but it is a good camera for most anyone.

Our articles may contain affiliate links. If you buy through these links, we may earn a small commission.