Some context: how I shoot, what I shoot
Some preliminary remarks are necessary: I am talking about my experience simply because it’s the closest one I have, but this means it is very limited. Everyone has their own way of shooting, therefore everyone encounters different limits and strengths in the same equipment. But so be it.
I have had the camera since May 2024, and I now use it for all my work. After a few weeks of study and recreational use to familiarize myself with the new features, it quickly became my primary camera, replacing the Em1.III and Em1.II, which have been downgraded to second and third cameras respectively. So far, I have accumulated just over 60,000 shots with the new OM1, half of which with the electronic shutter. I have used it in heavy and prolonged rain, fog, and smoke; I have not yet used it in the cold, and I am still tweaking settings and deepening my understanding of the camera: this is the practical account of my experience over these months.
Therefore, consider this article as work in progress: by comparing it with the experiences of others, I will add more information or reflections over time. If you have comments, objections, or questions, leave them below or on social media!

For personal bike rides, I prefer to use the Em1.III, partly to preserve the new flagship, and partly for two features that make it superior to the EM1.II: first, the memory of the focus point between horizontal and vertical, which is always very useful to me; second, the handheld high-res, which is useful in (rare) cases. If it weren’t for these two possibilities, I would use the older and more expendable EM1.II.
I skipped the Om1 mark I, taking advantage of the very low prices at which the Em1.III was available at its launch. Later on, the rather lukewarm enthusiasm that emerged from long-term reviews did not make me regret this choice: apart from bird photography, it did not seem to be much different from the last generation of the EM1.
Now let’s take a closer look to the OM1 markII.

Overall feel, ergonomics, and build quality
- Improved menu compared to the traditional Olympus
- Excellent construction and overall feel
- Considerably faster to turn on (a gamechanger in some occasions!)
- Dials and buttons: extensive customization, as usual
- One-handed use: slightly better, slightly worse
Costruzione e feeling generale
Coming from the Em1 series, I mostly felt “at home.” The main update was the menu, completely revised and significantly more intuitive than the whimsical Olympus menus. The mymenu function (already present on the Em1.III) is invaluable, and the explanations of individual items (INFO button) help clarify what is needed. Everything is where you expect it to be, from SD card management to computational functions. In short, nothing to complain about from this point of view. A step forward to Em1.
The build quality feels excellent. The camera feels like a tank, in line with the EM1 series, which was already robust and well-sealed. As we know, the OM1 introduced IP53 certification, and the mark II keeps it. Recently, I have been exposed to more water than usual, but in general, weather resistance is a crucial parameter to me: rain, mud, and snow are not so exceptional; honest truth, they’re an important part of the fun. The rubber dials are very pleasant; I haven’t tested the first series Om1, which apparently had some problems from this point of view. About this, the position of the front dial is slightly different: the habits acquired with the Em1 series need to be adjusted, but it’s just a matter of time before they come back.
The shutter feels great; it has a nice feedback. The camera has a slight lag, and I haven’t noticed any improvements compared to the old flagships; but it’s nothing serious, you just need to know the camera a little to adjust accordingly. I use the “normal” refresh setting to preserve the battery, and from now on I’ll do some tests with the “high” mode to see if it improves.
Speaking of speed, it’s nice to see that the camers starts significantly faster. With the EM1, I often missed a shot because of the few seconds needed to turn it on, especially when turning it on immediately after turning it off – a very common situation: you think the action is over, but a second later the cyclist in pursuit appears. With the OM1.II, this problem is almost non-existent.
Customization
Speaking of customization, here too there is continuity and improvement compared to the old series. Almost all buttons are almost completely customizable, and I highly recommend doing it even if it takes several attempts and a lot of time.
Additionally, the new AF-ON button adds an interesting customization option. I’m still testing it because it’s very sensitive, and I often activate it by mistake, ending up with inappropriate settings for the shot; but I’m sure I’ll find its utility. It could be useful, for example, to recall one of the C modes even more quickly.
At the moment, besides the AEL lever to turn on and off, I have set the AEL button to activate/deactivate face recognition. I’m practicing using the ISO button (top right), although I prefer changing ISO with the front button next to the lens, because I maintain a firmer grip and can still use my thumb to move the AF point. Old habits from the EM1.
Overall, customization is more complete and in-depth compared to the EM1, and I suspect there are some changes compared to the OM1 as well. The most appreciated feature, aside from the buttons, is the complete customization of the AF grids; we’ll get back to this later.
One-handed Use: Better and Worse
One-handed use has slightly improved, but also slightly worsened: on the one hand, the menu button is now on the right, making it more easily reachable without using the left hand. It’s a very negligible improvement, given that the menu is used to recall advanced fuctions and ones that are used only every now and then. Generally, all important parameters are already set with custom buttons.
On the other hand, and this is more important, the power lever (AEL button) is the same as the OM1.I. This means it’s much smaller than the EM1 series. Without gloves, it’s a bit more uncomfortable to find with the thumb, while with gloves (like the Shimano ones I use in winter) it’s practically unusable. Too bad.

AF Compared to Em1: Decisive Step Forward
- Single-point CAF: faster and more precise
- Face recognition sufficiently effective
- Complete grid customization
- AF limiter
- Visibility of the cursors: such a pity!

Faster and More Precise Single-point CAF
The first thing to mention is the focus speed. With the Em1.III, the responsiveness with single-point continuous focus was already excellent. Here it has further improved. But more importantly, precision has improved: quite often with the EM1 (II and III), there were hunting problems: be it in burst or single shoot, occasionally the camera would lose focus, setting it to infinity or the minimum, and then it had to start over for the next shot; this also happened in relatively easy conditions, with high contrast and lateral-moving subjects. This limitation was particularly evident with subjects coming towards/away from you: in these cases, the rate of out-of-focus photos increased significantly. With the OM1.II, this problem seems completely gone. Very simple. The AF works excellently.
In some situations, to further prevent the issue, it can be useful to activate the AF limiter, setting approximate distances: this is what I did in a hitball job, since the training was in a gym. By setting a very generous maximum distance of 40m, I ensured that the camera didn’t waste time trying to focus on who knows what outside the gym. In other situations, it can also be useful to set a minimum limit. On some lenses, this function is so useful that a dedicated button is assigned to it: it’s definitely useful to have it digitally.
Face Recognition: effective and reliable enough
The outcome improves even more by activating subject tracking with face recognition. I set it with zone-AF priority (if I understood correctly, the algorithm looks for faces with priority in the chosen AF area). As seen from the galleries below, despite obstacles like barbed wire, hanging rings, smoke, and rain, the AF is accurate with subjects at 10-15 meters, often even more. From my experience so far, it’s very reliable: it hasn’t happened that the dial caught the subject but the shot was out of focus. In some bursts of ten shots, it happened that one was out of focus, but it’s 1 in 100 cases, absolutely nothing problematic.

Some examples down here; on the first day I was at the barbed wire, a great opportunity to test the effectiveness of the AF. Tall grass, several wires – not easy to lock everyone’s face, even at relatively close distance. These are shot with 40-150 f2.8 at 10-40ft, and these are JPGs straight OOC. Sometimes it has failed, but on a whole day shooting, the wrong shots are a handful.
AF Reliability
For the night shift, I used the same combination of camera and lens in a different context: the Multirig obstacle, where athletes must cross a metal structure hanging on ropes and rings. Here too, with diminishing light, there were several challenges: not only the tapes, bars, and hanging rings, which hid faces and bodies; but above all the continuous swinging of the athletes, who sway to grab the next grip. In short, it’s not easy. Yet the camera works very fine, with some slight imperfections in a bunch of photos.
Recently, I was able to try a Canon R6II with a colleague’s 70-200 2.8 for an hour in a similar situation; generally speaking, this seemed superior to the OM, although it was a limited test; but the latter is still excellent and more than adequate for work. The photos should be clear on this point.
On Saturday and Sunday, I spent the days at the finish line. I used a combination of 3 cameras: two on tripods, with the 7-14 and with the 12-40 respectively (then replaced with the 17mm when it was too wet to work – but that’s another story); Handheld, I used the OM1 mark II with 40-150 f2.8. In this situation, there were several challenges: the smoke hides people, rain further troubling the game; also, people ran towards me, a kind of movement that AF doesn’t like too much.
However, here too, everything went very well.
A similar situation took place at the Granfondo New York in Villard de Lans (where a friend of mine had fun taking panoramas with an old 500mm catadioptric lens): one of the spots was on a downhill straight road, and the bikes were passing by at around 30 to 50 km/h at a distance of about 5 meters. Reactivity was crucial, and facial recognition helped me out. Due to the helmet and glasses, it always activated very late, at a close range; but it allowed me to take a few more good shots without tiring myself out, compared to the classic use of a single point.
Even during the Spartan Race, facial recognition was very helpful for giving me a bit of a break, as I shot for about 10 hours on Saturday and just as long on Sunday. And again, it was very effective.
Another pleasant note is the complete customization of the grid and focus areas/steps: I much prefer speed over precision, meaning that I don’t care about having 1000 focus points. I would need lots of clicks to move from one side to the other. Instead, I tend to use a slightly reduced grid; in custom mode for panning, I use it at the very minimum, with 4 columns and 3 rows of focus points. The colors are also quite customizable… except for one circumstance: we’ll talk about that right away.
Visibility of the AF cursor: that’s a pity!
Is there something wrong with the AF? Yes, although to be honest, it’s not about the AF itself, but the screen in general. To be precise, this is the only real flaw I find with the camera at the moment: the visibility of the focus square on the LCD screen is really poor. I often find myself shooting in bright light conditions, and just as often with a green background of grass or woods. When it’s green (while moving it) or white (when re-focusing by half-pressing the shutter), the focus area becomes very small and often it’s hard to see. I regularly have to move it just to figure out where it is. It would be useful to be able to change the color or find another workaround to make it stand out in these situations where it perfectly blends with the background, perhaps a blinking or something similar. I’m not sure why I didn’t have this problem with the EM1, but the fact is, it’s happening now.
Storytelling ciclofotografico: weekend di laboratorio in Val Maira, 27-29 settembre 2024
Computational stuff and other things
Let’s finish with a mix of considerations. First, some computational functions are indeed useful for working better, even if they seem specialized: I’m thinking specifically of the GND, the gradual ND filter in the camera. Besides being a nice technology, it is implemented in a fairly intuitive and quick way; you end up using it because it allows you to shoot a few more keepers. I use it when the sky is hazy, to get a bit more texture, as an alternative to a classic HDR.

Second, battery life: I’m finding it satisfactory. It performs excellently with continuous focus, while activating face recognition or other advanced features noticeably decreases its longevity (as you would expect). It’s nothing dramatic, but it’s not miraculous either; during long assignments (like sport photography, but also extended reportage), bring a few spare batteries.
It must be said that this limit is very easily bypassed: the camera operates normally even when connected to a power bank, so it has (virtually) an infinite battery. Additionally, Patona has spoiled us by creating a line of batteries with a direct USB cable connection, the Protect BLX-1 Platinum: essentially like a dummy battery, but it’s also a real battery. So, zero anxiety. Using it all day this way, connected to my 20,0000mah powerbank, it got slightly warm on the left side, but that’s probably the processor; nothing noteworthy on the battery side.
There is another small limitation that isn’t specific to the OM1 but rather to the OM-System ecosystem in general: you can’t register two cameras simultaneously on the app! It’s necessary to register one camera at a time every time you want to download some photos. Since sending photos in real time is part of my work routine (not for the agency, but for all my own projects), this is a pretty annoying aspect; but it does not depend on the features of the Om1 anyway.
About White balance
Initially, I found that the WB was often off, which is a problem for works that requires output directly in JPEG. It was also a known issue of the Om1 mark I. However, with version 1.1 of the firmware, released shortly after the launch, everything was resolved: no more problems, and an absolutely reliable automatic WB, true to Olympus tradition.

Recap: Om1.II VS Em1
What I don’t like
- The “alternative” on/off button, which is really too small compared to the very comfy Em1’s.
- The poor visibility of the green/white focus square, which is not adjustable/customizable.
What I like
- Quick startup
- Face recognition is useful in the work routine
- Excellent EVF and overall shooting experience
- Lots of customization, as always
- Tough construction
To sum up, the OM1.II was received rather coldly, also due to the clumsy communication from OM System. It was perceived as a minor upgrade from the mark I, so minor that it seemed like just a firmware update, leading to criticism of the high cost of the camera and the simultaneous sudden devaluation of the first series.
Yet, if we ignore technological constraints and overlook the communication aspects, a fairly simple fact remains. The face recognition works and is intuitive, and this is a very significant upgrade; the mark I’s was optimized for birds, while this one is effective for humans too: thank you, OM, for being so inclusive!
This leap in quality is even more noticeable compared to the EM1, both II and III, where face recognition was not reliable enough to ensure consistent results in real-world conditions. In the spring, I decided to invest in the OM1.II, and so far, I do not regret it at all. By the way, thanks to FotoRenata for embracing the Cicloreporter project and for providing invaluable assistance and advice. It’s great to have a real-life reference point to consult.
Anyway, the new AF, combined with the small improvements and technical additions, makes the camera a valuable work tool. If I had the budget, I wouldn’t hesitate to buy a second one to streamline my kit. For now, I’m enjoying the one I have.
That’s the end!