Olympus E-PL5 beats OM-D hands down! Or?

The internet and the truth, oh well! Sharks swimming in hurricane Sandy´s flood waters at somebody´s backyard. Wow! Olympus E-PL5 having one stop more dynamic range than OM-D. Wow! Olympus E-PL5 having no low-pass filter. Wow! I´m really not speaking here about hurricane damages and some digital cameras in the same context but wondering about the dynamics of the internet. How one post in the internet can cumulate into something big, worldwide and very true. There were sharks swimming in many places, like in flood water among running cars, already during hurricane Irene. So, it is only natural that from now on we see sharks swimming in peculiar places when ever there is a flood.

Blatant faking of reality is of course one thing and honest (miss-)drawing of conclusions is another. Which leads into these two cameras. E-PL5 is the newest in PEN series from Olympus. According to Olympus it has same sensor and same processor and same image quality as their flag ship mirrorless, the OM-D. But, as you know, camera factories simply are not reliable. We have already one test showing that E-PL5 has one stop better dynamic range than OM-D. Also we have now information that E-PL5 has no low-pass filter (while OM-D has). And both facts are circulating the internet as - yes, as facts. 

Olympus (like others) has been developing their anti-moiré algorithms all the time to make ever thinner low-pass filters possible. That´s good for image sharpness. Already OM-D has a relatively thin low-pass filter and the importance of algorithms is easy to see if you convert an OM-D RAW file in Olympus Viewer 2 or Adobe Lightroom 4. Viewer 2 software removes moiré nicely while in Lightroom you need to do manual corrections quite often. Viewer 2 gives also an option to leave anti-moiré off. Also all the other parameters can be set exactly the same. This gives us a great possibility to compare these two cameras which have same sensors but the other is with low-pass filter and the other with none, presumably. The difference should be obvious and it is seen below.

Doing tests is difficult because you have to be sure that what you get is what you were after. That´s why I usually even do not show those vertical lines in my reviews . They are more sensitive to the slightest differencies in camera or sensor angles than anything else. Here I know the slight difference we see in them comes from changing the camera, or maybe the sensors in these two individual camera bodies are not absolutely perfectly aligned when compared with each other. Other than that, the only thing we can see in these two images is that there really is no difference at all. Yes, there are very, very slight differencies but they can come from so many little deviations. What I can say is that there is a similar low-pass filter in BOTH cameras or in neither. The former is true here. Actually it is quite amazing that these two camera bodies, one OM-D and one E-PL5, produce such outstandingly similar results! And that is the only thing which surprised me. Tolerancies in making these cameras must be very small.

Okay we have now busted one myth, unless I faked these test target images, of course ;-)

The other claim was that E-PL5 has a one stop advancement in dynamic range over OM-D. I shot this same test target to see dynamic range over a range of 14 stops. Neither of these cameras do not have such a range, of course. I only wanted to be sure. Again, the results were just alike as above. Every pair of similarly exposed images is just as close to each other as above. There is no difference in dynamic ranges between these two cameras. And that´s it! 

-p- 

Comments

[Don Pope]

Thanks for performing these tests. I suspected as much. It would not make sense for Olympus to put a brand new sensor on the E-PL5 first.

[Yannick]

I think the dynamic range is better discovered when stretching the RAW file in post-processing through blown shadow or highlight recovery stress tests. Both look the same probably because the TruePIC engine rendered it the same too.

[Pekka Potka]

Thanks Don! I was again today in contact with Olympus. The message is that these two cameras have alike sensors and IQ is the same. Olympus has been very eager to advertise all the benefits that have been had even through changes in processing. Like when E-P3 came... Now nothing.
Yannick: That is true, but the rest has to wait for Lightroom supporting E-PL5. Viewer 2 emulates TruePic processing and it is not as such anything more than can be stretched in-camera. But really, there is nothing more to be found compared to OM-D.

All in all, this case is pretty much closed. Both cameras have same toppings over sensor. Like I wrote: there is a similar low-pass filter in BOTH cameras or in neither. My guess is a "relatively" thin filter. Relatively meaning quite thin or weak compared to most ILCs.
-p-

[Me]

Thanks Pekka
Now, for a little "history":

- The whole "is there a low pass filter in the E-PL5 ?" discussion was started on a french Olympus forum (part of the forum of a leading french photography magasine).

- Reason for this discussion being started was a question raised by a user comparing the spec sheets on the french Oly website, in which the EM-5 has a field "Low Pass filter - Yes" (who would put that on a spec sheet anyway ?), while the E-PL5's spec sheet was missing such field.

- A french blogger visiting the forum every now and then (non names :) ) placed a call to Oly France, asking if there is indeed an LP filter on this camera.

- He published the email from Olympus, which was basically an arcane "...we confirm that there is no such device on this device..." :D

- From there, it snowballed on another well known rumors forum, and the info was taken for what people wanted it to be (aaaah, no LP filter on the E-PL5), instead for what it actually was (which is - a generic answer from a generic employee, who probably re-read the spec sheet and found no "LP" field in it.

Not that it matters, but as most of the people participating in the discussion (on that forum) mentioned it - if there was indeed no LP filter at all, anyone this side of the Milky Way would have been officially informed about it, as this tend to still be considered a plus.

Long story short - everything is good news for some bloggers (not you :) ), even bad things :)

Cheers

[micksh]

According to link below Oly 45mm lens has top center resolution af F2.8, by F4.0 it already degrades. You tested at F5.0, not the sharpest lens aperture, this might theoretically obscure differences in AA filters.
http://www.lenstip.com/316.4-Lens_review-Olympus_M.Zuiko_Digital_45_mm_f_1.8_Image_resolution.html

Also I would suggest using RawTherapee for dynamic range tests.

[Pekka Potka]

Hi Me (or maybe I shoud call you You!), and thanks for filling backgrounds!

Having a low-pass filter or not is actually not a good or bad thing for me as such. I have used and owned digital backs with no LP filter since late 1990´s and still do, nothing new there. It is just a feature with it´s own implications.

Here, actually I kind of wished that E-PL5 would have been even sharper than OM-D because of my slide copying needs (of which I told in my previous blog). There having no LP filter would have no negative impacts only better sharpness. I would have bought an E-PL5 just for this usage immediately. I still may because it is just as good as OM-D there and thus free my second OM-D body from that lowly job.

One thing: We must not forget the little E-PM2 in this intriguing plot! ;-))) It is no different from the other two cameras. Either they all have a thin low-pass filter or none of them has.
-p-

[Pekka Potka]

Micksh: You are right, theoretically yes. In practice, it didn´t happen. I shot at all apertures from 1.8 up to 8. There simply is nothing different between these two cameras when looking at this issue. The difference between f/2.8 or f/5 is SO small that it would not make sense to put a SO thin low-pass filter in any camera. Like I said above I have used digital backs with no low-pass filter all my digital age. I think I can see the differences between two cameras. Even with Nikon D800 and D800E it is quite easy. Using Lightroom I have always thought that OM-D has a thin low-pass filter. There always is some moiré. Maybe even it has no low-pass filter after all? That I really can´t say for sure. Anyway it looks different from D800E in Lightroom.

I did not (and will not) do a dynamic range test to get any numbers for E-PL5, I just shot these two bodies head to head and no conversion tweaks in Viewer shows any differences to speak of. I know that Viewer is far from being anything good for this but even it would have shown something if there was anything. I don´t use RawTherapee for my images. I really am only interested in how things would look like in my photography.
-p-