The Olympus EM5 Mark III is a great do-it-all camera that is fairly quick, video capable and packed with a ton of features.
10 fps mechanical shutter with up to 30fps electronic shutter with 4k 24fps video.
No 10-bit video and there still is a 30-minute record limit but the camera does offer a competitive bitrate of 237 Mbps with 4:2:2 8-bit out capabilities.
On the stabilization front, the camera is capable of up to 6.5 stops of stabilization when paired with supported lenses.
Olympus EM5 Mark III Key Features
-20.4MP Live MOS Micro Four Thirds Sensor
-TruePic VIII Image Processor
-10fps Mechanical Shutter
-2.36m-Dot 0.67x-Magnification OLED EVF
-3.0″ 1.04m-Dot Vari-Angle Touchscreen
-Single UHS-II Memory Card Slots
-121-Point All Cross-Type Phase-Detection AF
-5.5 Stop 5-Axis Sensor-Shift Image Stabilization 6.5 With Lenses
-High Res Shot Mode 50MP JPG 80MP RAW
Video Specs
4:2:2 8-Bit
DCI 4K (4096 x 2160) up to 24.00p
Up to 29 Minutes
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Olympus EM5 Mark III – BHphoto
My Thoughts On The Olympus EM5 Mark III
I haven’t had my hands on this camera yet, but I have always loved these Olympus cameras and I think the EM5 is in the sweet spot for price to performance.
If you love the compact system, Olympus is my personal favorite but if you don’t need as small of a camera, I personally feel APS-C is in a better position for photographers. So I would recommend going APS-C with a Fujifilm system or even the Sony over something like this unless you already have micro four thirds gear or plan on building a system around it.
It’s possible that in the future, computational photographer and video could allow micro four thirds to bridge the gap in performance with the larger sensor cameras, especially with video where bokeh isn’t as important. But we’re not there yet.
Another thing, if you want IBIS, it can get a little expensive with APS-C. The only IBIS camera from Fujifilm that is not more expensive than this camera is the X-H1 which is a much larger camera and does suffer from weak battery performance. From Sony you have the A6500 again, poor battery performance but the size is very comparable to the Olympus system.
If you have a little more money to spend, check out the Fujifilm X-T4 or the Sony A6600 although the A6600 still only uses UHS-I cards and the Sony cameras are still stuck with that 100Mbps video.
The micro four thirds mount is very versatile and the lenses are cross camera compatible, so there are some huge advantages of going with a micro four thirds cameras especially for videographers.
If you’re just an average Joe, you might like the image quality and low light performance of the APS-C system a little more now that they have caught up in features like IBIS and video.
In the past, micro four thirds cameras were always generation ahead of what APS-C and full frame cameras were doing because of what they can do with those smaller sensors, but it seems Olympus and Panasonic have been lagging behind lately. Now that their sensors have so much resolution, it taxes the processors in the same way as an APS-C or Full Frame sensors do. You should still be able to see faster sensor readout speeds, but again, it looks like Olympus isn’t really offering any advantage here.
Size is still the biggest advantage to the system overall, plus the cameras are just cool and very fun. You can’t really get a camera as complete as the Olympus EM5 Mark III at this price.
