First Real Use of OM-D E-M5 Mk II Hi Res Mode

Last week from my office in downtown Seattle, I took a quick shot of an architecture detail that spans several buildings, two of which were only recently completed (or mostly completed), filling in a gap that existed in the past.  That day, I was trying out the Olympus 40-150mm f/4-5.6 "R" zoom lens, and the resulting late afternoon image looked great when viewed as a whole, but was not all that sharp (shown at the end of this post).  I made a mental note to capture it more carefully from an office with a better viewpoint and with a better lens some later time.

Final 70 Mpixel Pano Image from Two Hi-Res Frames.  Olympus Hi-Res Plug-in for Photoshop; Processed and Graded in Photoshop; Finished in Lightroom.  75mm f/1.8; f/7.1; ISO 200; 1/60th second.

A few days ago, I set up the E-M5 Mk II with the superb Olympus 75mm f/1.8 prime on a Gorilla pod in a better office spot, and realized right away that this was a good time to try the Hi Res ("40 Mpixel") mode of the E-M5 II, which I had only played around with previously.  I was curious to see whether I could get a steady enough shot with the Gorilla Pod setup in a typical high rise office building.  I took about 15 frames, RAW+JPEG, including a few shifted slightly to capture the exact framing that I wanted (75mm was just a tiny bit too tight).

100% Crop of Final Image.  Note this would be equivalent to a 111" tall print at 72dpi screen resolution.
You can see the full-res image on flickr.

100% Crop of Original Handheld Snapshot
(16 Mpixel image with 40-150mm f/4-5.6 R @ 85mm and f/6.3).
The full image is shown below.  The lighting was actually better that day.

I had very little time and couldn't quite figure out how to set a delayed shutter release for the Hi Res mode (hint:  it is down in the menus and nothing like you set the delay for a regular shot).  About half the frames were unusable due to small movements that left aliasing jitters on hard edges due to shifts between the multiple captured frames in a single hi-res shot.  Of the remaining frames, one was critically sharp; another few were usable with just very slight aliasing jitters at 200%.  I combined two frames (using only a tiny bit of one frame for the right edge to get the framing that I wanted) to get the image above.  I processed the RAW files using the Olympus Photoshop hi-res import plugin, which is serviceable, but extremely slow.  The resulting pano (as cropped) is about 70 Mpixels, and it is pretty sharp and holds up well to processing.  In order to keep the detail, I did not suppress the noise too much, but it is noisy at 100-200% viewing.  I think it would print quite well.

Overall, it is pretty impressive to be able to pull off a hi-res architecture shot that easily exceeds the resolution of a D800 family image with such compact gear, but this kit is clearly a much less flexible tool given the limitations of the hi-res sensor-shift feature of the E-M5 II.  For fixed architecture images, it is a pretty good match, and you still get a single 16 Mpixel raw file in case part or all of the hi-res file is unusable.

Original Handheld Snapshot
(16 Mpixel image with 40-150mm f/4-5.6 R @ 85mm and f/6.3).