- REVIEWS
ional. To top it off, the price was even better due to LR’s 18th birthday-day sale. Everything was simply excellent as always. Thanks LR!! Read Less
I loved this camera so much that I bought one even before I dr...Read More
opped my rental at FedEx. Read Less

t holds two batteries, which is nice in some portrait-shot situations, but it can't be removed. It also has built-in GPS recording and a special Bird AF algorithm that when set and used with C-AF+TR, promises to focus in on bird heads and eyes. We rented this body to consider it for purchase to help with our bird photography, but Bird AF really performed only so-so in our experience. It's great at finding a bird in the frame, and if there's only one bird that's stationary, it does find the head and eyes well if you give it an extra half-second before firing. What it's not good at is locking and holding focus on birds in flight particularly in flocks; in that situation, you don't have an extra half-second for the lens to find bird eyes. In our tests, the E-M1 Mark III (which reportedly will not have Bird AF added to its firmware, because it lacks the second processor the E-M1X has) or this camera, without Bird AF set but using C-AF (no tracking) is better at focusing birds in flight, especially in flocks. There are "sticky" settings you can play with in the E-M1X menu to try to get it to hold focus better on birds in flight, and we tried them, but in our experience, C-AF works better anyway. YMMV.
The E-M1 Mark III also has Starry AF for night photography which works quite well at autofocusing stars, something most cameras cannot do well; this body does not have Starry AF in the firmware at this writing. Though we do more bird photography than astrophotography, in our opinion, Starry AF is more useful than Bird AF. All told, especially at the lower price point, we prefer the E-M1 Mark III to this body.
Rent these two bodies for yourself from lensrentals and see which you prefer before buying. Note that you won't go far wrong whichever one you choose in part because there is a lot of overlap. They are both excellent pieces of gear to work with.
As always, flawless service from lensrentals.com. Read Less