One of the major news at Photokina will not be a new camera or some kind of exciting new lens. It will be…firmware upgrades!
Trusted sources reported the Olympus E-M1 will get a massive firmware update which will also enable full 4K video recording! And they also said the Panasonic GH4 will get a many new features and improvements.
Both firmware will be released within the next couple of weeks!
10 Responses
If true, oly really cares about its customers. It’s like Fuji, adding new features to older cameras via fw. Really a nice thing to do, many others should learn from this example.
For instance, my Samsung nx300 does not even get the evf pro feature via fw, which is something easily doable, since it’s present in nx30, which has the same hw.
haha you may have a little bit too high regard for corporate mentality.. If its true its purely a business decision, they havent got anything to release on time for photokina and they know theres hot stuff coming so they want to take some consumer $s away from competition and convince them to buy their old cameras..
I certainly wont complain if its true though!
Lots of vendors issue firmware updates for discontinued cameras: Nikon has, Ricoh has.
In this case, the EM-1 is not even a discontinued camera, but a current model.
As far as really caring for its customers, Fuji is walking the line of issuing models before their time and then issuing updates to bring them up to a level they should have been at launch- pretty sure customers never said please release a model with problematic auto focus, problematic sensor processing for most popular raw processors, a weatherproof camera but no weatherproof lenses, and then show you love us by finally bringing them up to parity later.
Its true what you say about Fuji. But remember, one reason why Fuji fixes things via firmwares because their cameras needed to be corrected many of the times. remember the xpro1 and x100. great cameras with quirks.
sony choosing to make new cameras instead, which is even a worse direction to go.
I will really appreciate if EM1 gets this update. Because it is not a brand new camera, but it is still a forerunning camera for its build quality, features, lenses, design and image quality for m4/3 sensor.
As Fuji customer I completely disagree. Fuji firmware upgrade are mostly about adding new functions.The things you list do not make much sense: for example, few cameras have weather proof lenses, and we already have one (probably the best zoom in its category) and I have no problem with processing RAW. Our XT1 is very good, and produces stunning pictures straight out of camera. Of course, it has limitations, but all cameras have. I normally shoot with a friend who has a EM1, and his camera has plenty of limitations too …. for example, IQ, handling and weight are much better on the XT1, auto focus is in general faster on EM1. After trying a few camera including much revered DSLRs, I would still buy the XT1 by a mile. The cycle of firmware release is good, and Fuji tends to keep the old models on par with the new.
I agree, probably no aps-c (or smaller sensor) camera is better than x-t1 today. I’d only want more MP for more cropping.
ronin, you always make comments making up crazy fictitious nonsense all the time.
oh wow.
I was a little angry when the scrolling ring on my EM1 broke (as I heard as many other owners’) and was thinking about going back to SONY with A7s (even though 4K is pain to get it with)
Now I guess i will send my oly to repair and get the firmware update. I personally think EM1 is a better machinery overall anyway. Will keep me happy another 6 months.
Has anyone experienced any issue with their Olympus OMD-EM1 sensor giving up for no apparent reason?
I loved my Olympus OMD-EM1 until the sensor failed inexplicably after less than 5 months and Olympus won’t fix it under warrantee. It worked fine one day. A few days later I took it out of my camera bag and the battery was fine, I could shoot video and had an image on the LCD and EVF but the clicking the shutter locked up the viewfinder at every shutter speed until the camera was switched off and on again. Video was written to card but not stills.
After a polite conversation with an Olympus tech and his supervisor that had me do a reset, they concluded that “it sounds like a dead sensor.”
The camera has never been bumped or dropped but was purchased directly from GetOlympus.com USA as a refurb, and therefore, carries only 3 month coverage.
This is not a very happy first Olympus interaction for me.
I owned Canon cameras for 25 years and never had one repair. Customer service like this is unlikely to keep me with Olympus beyond the next 2 years, much less a repeat buyer for 25. I hope I’m an isolated case.
Short sighted, Oly!
Does this mean we will have control over frame rates on the E-M1?