Originally posted by Urkeldaedalus Some nice shots!
I'm not surprised that you had some trouble with the lighting conditions. The EM-5 doesn't quite cut it in three AF areas: continuous AF, objects coming toward you AF, and dark conditions AF. In those conditions I generally rely on my K-5IIs, which finally has good low light focus for Pentax, although it could get better with continuous AF and smaller/more focus points. We'll cross our fingers for the next Pentax model on that one
The nice thing for you is you can just switch to your D800 in that situation.
I'm wondering if the new EM-1 will improve on some of these weaknesses since it has phase detect on its sensor. I am taking a wait and see attitude with that one though since I could see future model building on its improvements and I'm pretty pleased with the EM-5 AF in situations where it excels.
Yea, the AF on the EM-5 is a huge let down in this situation. It's amazing that out of the three cameras the K5 had the best "one hit lock on" AF accuracy out of the three cameras. I use Constant mode on the K5 and D800, because constant on the EM-5 just was confusing the camera like no tomorrow. the D800 hunted like mad with the AF, but once it locked on it was solid and tracked quite well, unless there was a sudden dramatic movement.
I finally finished going through all the photos, and uploaded them all to my flickr, an amazing bunch I think. the K5 at the end of the day wins for this kind of situation, it's was just more accurate for AF, and it's relative speed compared to the D800 just makes it the perfect tool. To top it off the dynamic range you can pull from the files is just the icing on the cake.
I will have a full write up comparison between the three cameras on my blog link from last nights event.
I still see it like this for me:
D800 - Weddings, formal portraits, land scapes
K5 - live music, walk around, rainy days, and general photography
EM-5 - street photography, impulse photography
Q - impulse photography, street photography, re-energize creativity device.