Nikon D7000 or Olympus OM-D E-M5?

Hey there,

After all the readings, I was going to order my Nikon D7000 and the Ikelite housing for it. I currently own a DS160 and 161 strobe as I was going to upgrade from my canon G9....

I know that the OM-D is not a DSLR, but from the readings that I did, it looks like the OM-D is not a bad camera at all and very similar to the D7000. If I consider the setup price, they both are about the same for the camera, lenses and housing (Nauticam for OMD).

If I'd go for the OMD, I would have sell my Ikelite strobes and buy 2 Z240, giving me a lighter setup.

Just wondering what your thoughts the quality of the D7000 over the OMD.

Cheers and thanks for all the great help.

Ben

I'd say that empirically the D7000 pips out the OM-D but I got the OM-D w/ Nauticam housing because I wasn't invested in Nikon or Canon (Minolta / Sony) and I liked the compactness of the OM-D for travel combined with the relatively low cost of housings and ports. And I also shoot video. Between the insurance on my scratched video port and selling off my Sony / Minolta gear and compact underwater camera gear I'm pretty much even with the port for the kit 12-50mm lens and a single YS-D1 strobe with the Nauticam tray and arm.

http://www.dxomark.c.../(brand2)/Nikon

Also, what is the depth rating for the Ikelite and how deep do you plan to dive with it? Does the Ikelite give you as much control over the camera as the Nauticam? I don't know the answer, but these are the questions I would ask given my old Ikelite was rated to 40m (though it worked better than me at 70m).

Thx a lot for that. From what I have read, and my current G9 housing, ikelite gives you control over all the buttons. Depth wise, Ikelite can go to 60m, so not really concerned about that part.

Thanks a lot for your thought though.

Cheers

i'd take a look at the classified and ebay for ports etc for ikelite, you can get some real good deals. I've had some cracking buys from people on wetpixel, which could bring your overall d7000 price down quite a bit. If you choose that route that is.

Thx for that, not very much on ebay for the D7000 at the moment that are willing to ship to Hong Kong.

I'm actually more interested in people's opinion on the OMD vs the D7000 quality wise....

I think the image quality is fairly similar. I own both cameras. Although my D7000 is coming to the end of its life, according to Nikon.

Both are good for wide angle and macro. The D7000 optical viewfinder is superior to the OM-D's electronic viewfinder. But the OM-D's screen is much easier to use than liveview shooting on the D7000.

The D7000 has the edge for small, moving subjects (like little fish), but the OM-D has faster frame rate for action.

Fisheye wide angle they are pretty equivalent, although with the OM-D you have a fixed fisheye, rather than the 10-17mm. That said the Panasonic 8mm is a better quality lens than the 10-17mm. There are many wide angle (non-fisheye) lenses available for both - although I have not tried enough of these with a decent dome port set up on the OM-D to be able to comment fully on how they compare.

The OM-D housings are not as nice as the D7000 housings. Making the camera slower to use/adjust underwater. But then they are much, much lighter and smaller and also cheaper.

OM-D (via its housings) is primarily only compatible with fibre optic synched strobes.

Alex

I think the image quality is fairly similar. I own both cameras. Although my D7000 is coming to the end of its life, according to Nikon.

 

Both are good for wide angle and macro. The D7000 optical viewfinder is superior to the OM-D's electronic viewfinder. But the OM-D's screen is much easier to use than liveview shooting on the D7000.

 

The D7000 has the edge for small, moving subjects (like little fish), but the OM-D has faster frame rate for action.

 

Fisheye wide angle they are pretty equivalent, although with the OM-D you have a fixed fisheye, rather than the 10-17mm. That said the Panasonic 8mm is a better quality lens than the 10-17mm. There are many wide angle (non-fisheye) lenses available for both - although I have not tried enough of these with a decent dome port set up on the OM-D to be able to comment fully on how they compare.

 

The OM-D housings are not as nice as the D7000 housings. Making the camera slower to use/adjust underwater. But then they are much, much lighter and smaller and also cheaper.

 

OM-D (via its housings) is primarily only compatible with fibre optic synched strobes.

 

Alex

Thanks so much for your reply Alex, I was actually going to PM you.

So from my understanding, you have a slight preference for the OMD over the D7000, correct?

If I take the OMD good lenses would be

• the 60mm macro f2.8 and
  
• the Panasonic 8mm or the Olympus 8mm f3.5 for WA ? I will most likely go for the Nauticam housing, what port to do you recommend for that lens then (Cant afford ZEN port though )
  

I will have to sell my two DS's and buy the Z240....

Thanks a lot again

One thing that I will miss is the AF-ON on the thumb, which the NA-D7000 does very nicely. If someone has a way of programming the OMD to do the same, please let me know....

No problem reassigning all the buttons on the OM-D...

Custom Menu -> A. AF/MF -> AF Mode -> Still Picture -> C-AF

Custom Menu -> A. AF/MF -> Full-time AF -> Off

Custom Menu -> A. AF/MF -> AEL/AFL -> C-AF -> mode3

Custom Menu -> B. Button/Dial -> Button Function -> O Function (REC) -> AEL/AFL

After this, the camera will not focus when you press the shutter button, only while you hold the REC button, which is the thumb lever on the Nauticam housing. [if you'd rather not have the camera focus continuously while holding down the REC button, replace C-AF with S-AF above and pressing the REC button will simply focus once.] If you want to record video, just change the Mode dial to Video...

And for good measure, might as well turn the AF light off since it can't do anything in the housing:

Custom Menu -> A. AF/MF -> AF Illuminat. -> Off

I have a D90 (basically the previous generation of the D7000) and an OM-D E-M5. I find that, when running out the door, I tend to grab the OM-D. The Nikon has slightly better dynamic range, slightly faster focusing, and I'm more used to the Nikon shortcuts to adjust settings. My impression is that lenses of the same quality are cheaper for the Nikon, but smaller and more portable for the Olympus (for example looking at good-but-not-great fast normal primes, the Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 is US$200, while the Panasonic 20mm f/1.7 is US$300), but it's really hard to compare lenses of similar quality. The OM-D is smaller and easier to carry around for those times when I'm not photographing, and that single fact outweighs the minor performance advantages of the Nikon. The one area where the OM-D significantly outperforms Nikon is with the image stabilization, but that's not much of an issue underwater.

An added advantage is that, with either the 60mm macro or the 8mm Zuiko fisheye and MMF-3 adapter, the OM-D is splashproof so a minor housing leak won't be an issue. I don't know if there's another splashproof fisheye lens for the MFT mount, I own the four-thirds 8mm so I just use it with an adapter.

In the end, I'd get the OM-D. It's more fun, and image quality is similar. My only advice is to get it without the 12-50 kit zoom. I find that lens to be awful, even compared to other kit zooms. I never thought contrast would be an issue with a modern lens, but the 12-50 has such poor contrast that images often appear to be blurry.

To add to the above discussion about AF-ON, you can assign a button (Fn1 or Fn2 for instance) to turn on Magnify. Magnify is useful because a single button tap doesn't magnify at all, it shows its own single autofocus point, and you can make that autofocus point small (tap the Magnify button again to actually magnify the image, then turn the dial to 14x, tap a third time to get back to the full image with the small autofocus point, you only ever have to do this once). You can move the small autofocus point around using the arrow keys. The Magnify autofocus point's position is independent from the main autofocus point(s), so you can position them in different places (if that's useful). To get out of Magnify (back to your main autofocus point(s)), hold the Magnify button down for more than 1/2 second.

I strongly recommend having a button assigned to Magnify, hunting can be reduced and focus accuracy (or rather, being about to accurately choose the point of focus) improves considerably.

Also you can replace C-AF with S-AF in the instructions above to make pressing the lever focus just a single time rather than focus continuously while it's held down.

Great info Coroander.

Yes, many thanks for that. I’m taking mine to Mexico after DEMA so have a nice long flight to play with the settings

I really like the 12-50mm - the only issue I have with it is that there can be a bit of uncorrected distortion (on land at least) at 12mm. If I'm unhappy with the 43mm macro on the 12-50mm I will need to decide whether to get the Flat port 65 for the 60mm Olympus macro or just use the port for the 12-50mm. The total cost would work out about the same time if using diopters but the diopter M77 - M67 adapter takes up less space than a port. Still haven't got mine wet yet so haven't optimized the functions for underwater or figured out how to reassign the buttons for that matter (though I use SAF when in M/S/P on land anyway).

With the OMD you could go with the Panasonic 7-14mm for wide-angle (roughly equivalent to 10-20mm with the D7000) but the lens is rectilinear rather than fisheye. The Samyang / Rokinon fish-eye 7.5 is a cheap and high quality alternative to the Panasonic fisheye but with the caveat that exposure and focus is manual.

I think Nikon compared to Olympus could be a better investment in terms that you could probably get more when you decide to sell in the future. I could also guess the same for the lenses you would get with it. Not 100% sure, but just my 5 cents.

Only time will tell - I think mirror-less is the way of the future (particularly if you're talking about cropped frame cameras) and Olympus / Panasonic / Sony are leading the pack with Canon and Nikon well-behind as they focus on their strengths in SLR. As with SLR, bodies will improve but you'll be able to utilize what are some very good lenses and, with the Olys, the stabilization is in the body so image stabilization improvements in lenses is less of an issue.