OM System OM-1 Mark II Review

The sensor is a quarter the area of full frame and that fact sets the ceiling: twenty megapixels, noticeably noisier past ISO 3200, and shallow depth of field only with fast and expensive glass. Everything else is an argument for why that might not matter. Live ND simulates up to six stops of neutral density by stacking frames inside the body, so you can blur a waterfall at midday without carrying filters, and the second generation adds a graduated version that darkens a sky the same way.

Handheld high resolution composites eight frames into eighty megapixels with no tripod. Focus stacking and focus bracketing happen in camera and hand back a finished file. Fifty frames a second with continuous autofocus, a hundred and twenty locked, and the deepest weather sealing anyone certifies, which is why the people who use these are birders and hikers rather than studio photographers.

The problem is the price. Twenty-four hundred dollars buys a full-frame body with better files, and the counterargument is entirely about the size and weight of the long lenses you put in front of it. For that buyer, nothing else is close.