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Saturday I stopped at our local Mike's Camera to do a bit of research on a number of cameras I was interested in, 2 Sony's and the E-M1. I'll be honest, I'd pretty much had my mind made up on a Sony A7r but was having a rough time with the body cost + the added lens I knew I needed. The other two Sony's I was looking at seemed to be better choices for me considering the other gear I had that could cover the bases with lens adapters and old Canon glass I had. I'd also been looking at the E-M1 because of the feature set, excellent glass, and the overall price to get into the body and lens I was considering. Too be honest though I wasn't giving it much thought despite the reviews I'd been reading, and I'd not been able to find any available anywhere on the Net but Mike's had one in the back room that a salesman had set aside for his own purchase ... I looked at the Sony cameras and then asked to see the Oly. Well, he brought out the box and opened it to reveal the goodies inside and then handed me the foam covered body of the E-M1. My first inclination was to tear through the foam packaging like a kid on Christmas but remembering that if I didn't like it, it had to go back inside the packaging so I made nice and opened it gently. I opened it and told the sales guy to hand me a lens and battery and lets see what it could do. Needless to say I loved it! Reminded me of my film cameras in weight; not too much, not to little, it was just right in my hand. When the sales guy saw the smile spread across my face he started laying out the expensive glass for me to put on it without telling me the costs until I started asking. I cussed him up one side and down the other for cruel and unusual treatment but proceeded to take out my cell phones calculator app and started to bang on some numbers to see some "what if's" and they were mighty fine! Finally walked out with the E-M1 and a Panasonic Lumix Telephoto 14-140mm/1:3.5-5.6 HD with Power OIS (optical image stabilization). Have to admit that the E-M1 surprised me with it's sophistication. I wanted an enthusiasts camera and this baby was it in spades! I have never seen a camera with the level of complexity, programability, and feature set that this camera has and I did my homework before buying, trust me! The Panasonic Lumix glass was the coup de gras: crisp, clear, fast to focus, fast to acquire, quiet operation, did I miss anything? Don't think so ... The set up on this baby when I got home required the download of the manual (the provided manual was only the first 1/3 of the complete manual). Spent the next couple hours studying the manual and going through the camera's set-up which was pretty much painless but I'll be honest with you, if you're the type that won't take the time to read the manual or expects a Nikon camera kind of intuitive setup experience then you may want to rethink purchasing this camera. Part of the fun of any new camera is making it yours and it's obvious the Olympus folks really took this to heart because this baby is really sophisticated and complex in it's set up to really make this YOUR camera in it's feature set and operation! And when you're done IT FREAKIN' ROCKS!!!! It has so many features I've never seen before on another camera that you'd be selling yourself short by NOT taking the time to go through the manual, page by page, line by line! Trust me it's worth it, lol. I'll call this the end of my first part of my review since the weather has been really foul so I'll need to pick a few nice days to take some deservedly nice shots for my next part of this incredible cameras review.
Tim
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