At the moment of publishing this article, Adobe Lightroom doesn’t support the OMD EM1’s raw files. So when we decided to do a high ISO comparison, we made sure that the noise reduction settings for the OMD EM1 and its little brother the EM5 were on the exact same playing field. So we attached Sigma’s 30mm f2.8 lens to the cameras, shot them at the same exposure after using a handheld light meter, and then imported them into Adobe Lightroom for a quick view.
The images shot are JPEGs and resized for the web. They were shot at ISO 5,000 because both the OMD EM5 and EM1 both say that 6400 is an extension despite marketing that it is their native high ISO output.
Take a look at the images below and make judgements for yourself in our very informal comparison.


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