Olympus PEN-F High-Res Shot Mode

Astounding resolution from High Res Shot Mode

by Mike Tomkins

In early 2015, Olympus debuted a brand-new feature in its enthusiast-grade E-M5 Mark II. Dubbed High Res Shot Mode, this was the cause of much excitement because it allowed a pretty impressive step forward in resolution, a significant reduction in noise levels, and an impressive resistance to moiré artifacts. All of this was achieved thanks to a technique known as oversampling.

In effect, what the E-M5 II did was to capture eight images in quick succession using an electronic shutter to avoid resolution-robbing vibrations. Between each frame's capture, the camera made very subtle adjustments to the positioning of its sensor-shift image stabilization system. These sub-pixel sized adjustments let the sensor gather more information about its subject, resulting in the advantages mentioned above.

The technology itself isn't actually new; it dates back at least as far as the late 1980s to the ProgRes 3000-series cameras from Kontron. And over the years, we've seen a handful of fixed-lens consumer cameras such as the Ricoh RDC-7, JVC QX3 HD and JVC QX5 HD use a similar approach. (There are likely others which have done the same, but if so they escape our memory right now.)

What made the Olympus E-M5 II so exciting was that it brought oversampling to an affordable, interchangeable-lens camera which already had reasonably high resolution, bringing the potential for extremely high-res imagery to the masses. Shortly after Olympus launched its first High Res Shot Mode-equipped model, rival Ricoh brought a similar function to its Pentax K-3 II DSLR -- albeit with some differences in the implementation -- and the game was truly on!

And now, Olympus' High Res Shot Mode arrives for the first time in a PEN-series camera. That makes it all the more exciting, in no small part because it allows resolution akin to what you'd expect from a medium-format camera, but in a body that's even more compact than that of the E-M5 II. And as an added bonus, the higher resolution of the Olympus PEN-F's new image sensor means that there's more data than ever for this new camera to work with.

Where the E-M5 II was limited to a 40-megapixel JPEG or a 64-megapixel raw file in High Res Shot Mode -- and where the Pentax K-3 II still records at its native sensor resolution of 24 megapixels -- the Olympus PEN-F will be able to provide a whopping JPEG resolution of 50 megapixels in High Res Shot Mode. Switch to raw format, and you'll be able to capture imagery at an astounding resolution of 80 megapixels!

To reach these lofty heights, though, you'll need to process your raw files on your computer. Adobe Camera Raw 9.5 and Lightroom CC 2015.5 / Lightroom 6.5 now natively support PEN-F High Res raw files, as does a free Photoshop CS5 or higher High Res Shot plug-in from Olympus. Or you can use the newly-upgraded Olympus Viewer 3, which now supports processing of High Res Shot Mode raws. You'll need to be using at least a reasonably recent computer, as the plug-in and Viewer 3 need a 64-bit processor / operating system and 4GB of memory, but if you've made an upgrade in the last few years it's very likely your computer will meet the grade. (And if not, you can still shoot 50-megapixel JPEGs in-camera, or process your High Res Shot Mode raws in-camera to obtain a 50-megapixel JPEG after the fact. You just won't quite reach the 80-megapixel limit without processing your images on a computer.)

Of course, there are some gotchas when shooting at such high resolutions. For one thing, you're going to want to be using reasonably high-quality lenses to get the best results. If your glass isn't up to the job, no amount of technical wizardry is going to improve your results.

You'll also need to be shooting with the camera mounted on a tripod and with a subject that's pretty much static, because any subject or camera motion during capture of the eight frames used to make a High Res Shot Mode image will prevent the technique from working. That rules out use of the function for sports, nature, family photos and the like, but if you're shooting landscapes, architecture, still lifes, product photography and the like, you should be just fine.

You'll be limited to a sensitivity of ISO 1600-equivalent or below, although this makes a lot of sense when one considers that your subjects must be static, and that increasing the sensitivity would also raise noise levels (and thereby rob detail courtesy of noise reduction.)

But enough of the theory: What about the real world? How does the Olympus PEN-F's High Res Shot Mode compare to that of the E-M5 II, or the similar Pixel Shift Resolution mode of the Pentax K-3 II? And how does it compete with what's possible from a camera which offers really high-res imagery captured in a single shot? That's what we wanted to know, so we got the PEN-F into our lab to answer the question just as quickly as possible.

Read on to see how the PEN-F performed. We don't think it's too much of a spoiler to say that the results are absolutely stunning!

NOTE: The Olympus PEN-F images below are 100% crops from High Res Shot Mode JPEGs at the 50-megapixel resolution provided in-camera. We're comparing these to 100% crops of 40-megapixel High Res Shot Mode JPEGs from the Olympus E-M5 II, 24.35-megapixel Pixel Shift Resolution JPEGs from the Pentax K-3 II, and 50.6-megapixel JPEGs from the Canon EOS 5DS R. All crops link to full-resolution images straight out of their respective cameras. Since we're most interested in resolution and noise levels in this analysis, we're comparing images shot at the lowest noise reduction level offered by each camera.

Below are a couple of comparisons of 80-megapixel raw conversions from the Olympus PEN-F against 64-megapixel raw conversions from the Olympus E-M5 II using Olympus Viewer 3 with default settings at ISO 200 and 1600. As noted previously, these maximum resolutions cannot be attained in-camera.

You can view the intermediate ISO conversions using the following links (clicking on the crops above provide access to ISO 200 and 1600 files):
ISO 400: PEN-F E-M5 II
ISO 800: PEN-F E-M5 II