David Busch's Olympus OM-D E-M5: Guide to Digital Photography (David Busch's Digital Photography Guides) Paperback – November 20, 2012

Purchased OM-D camera Body and 45 1.8 in July 2012-The camera body, the appropriate lenses, the grip, hand strap, and extra batteries, will cost a tidy sum...over $2200. But you don't need to purchase everything all at once. You will need time to understand the range of options this digital camera provides. From "point and shoot" to full "manual" controls, the serious amateur will need time to learn the controls and his/her preferences.I also, recommend obtaining David Busch's new book on the Olympus OM-D E-M5. It lays out the camera's many control options in starter mode and advances to hidden features, to help the serious photographer. Practice, Practice Practice is required.I use the OM-D for my business and personal/professional photography needs. It has been an excellent purchase, already paying for itself. The images have been excellent. Great detail and, with practice, HDR capability will provide even better results. The smaller size, compactness, reduced weight, and precision of the OM-D and lenses were overriding factors in my decision to purchase. I tried many other compact camera systems, including Canon G series and Olympus PEN PL-1.By the way, if you own the film camera OM-1 series lenses, you can re-use them with this camera, with the correct adapter. The lenses, I have will not sync with the auto focus and shutter controls, but they are fine in manual mode. These are high quality optics, which were unused for 30 years. It was a nice surprise. I now have lots of lens choices.Thanks Olympus!

I bought this book at the same time I purchased Olympus OM-D E-M5 camera. The book is helpful and well illustrated with large very easy to view diagrams, images and illustrations. The text is easy to read and understand and has helped me into using this very complex camera. The book itself is four times larger than the OEM manual, is as heavy as the camera, at 1 8 lbs and is beautifully printed on heavy weight glossy stock. My book seems well bound and no pages have come loose as some people reported. This binding looks very sturdy and should hold up as well as my other well bound books.Some reviewers have stated that this book is no better than the Olympus manual. Not true! The supplied Olympus printed user manual is almost impossible to read, with very small print, no detail, and just enough to get you started. The full user manual is on the Olympus setup disk but I won't really need to spend much time reading it because of this book. The full user manual will be a handy reference when placed on my Tablet for travel. The book itself is probably too heavy to travel with but that's why the full user manuals are on disk. It would be nice if Olympus did make a small full user manual for the camera bag but few companies do that anymore.The very best place to get started for your first settings on the camera is to read the wonderful Dpreview article on how to setup the camera for optimum first use. It's several pages long but will save you hours of trying to figure out the best settings see [...] This book itself explains settings but does not necessarily recommend the most useful settings that the dpreview article shows how to to get in just a few pages. It's most useful for a great start and even makes this book more understandable and useful.The Olympus OMD camera is my first Olympus model and it is quite a shock to adjust to the many differences in menus compared to the Canon and Panasonic lineup. I haven't read a lot of the book yet, but most users will only need to read the sections that will be helpful to them along with the full user manual on the Setup disk.If you are contemplating purchasing the Olympus OM-D E-M5 or have already purchased one, this book will help you get the most from your camera. If you are not sure you want to buy the camera, this book could help you decide and be a great help once you do decide to purchase it. BTW: I think the camera is quite special especially if you are a professional or an advanced amateur. It will be a challenge for the enthusiast but not impossible. The camera will frustrate the novice photographer. However the camera is well worth the time and investment. I was disappointed that the kindle version of this book was so expensive and much more than the printed version. I don't understand that but if it was available at a reasonable price, i would have preferred the kindle version for the portability.Update: I was very pleased to discover that if you purchase the book from Amazon you are eligible to buy the Kindle version at a later time for the reduced price of $2.99 instead of the regular kindle retail. I really enjoy the kindle versions since I can carry around both the PDF manual and this very helpful book for addition explanation. I think the kindle HDX is perfect for both PDF books and the Kindle book. The Kindle version works well on all Kindles and on your computer.

I was a little worried about the people's reviews here saying you can learn it all from the manual. Because I read the manual, and lots of it didn't make sense.I guess maybe I would have figured out much of it after shooting a few thousand photos, experimenting, and missing opportunities to failed experiments. Or maybe of I found some smart people at Internet forums who would tutor me.But this book is great. It's like a human being translated the manual into explanations that regular people can ip understand. And even though I have been taking pictures for years, I think the time and level was right. Not too much of the basics of photography to bore me, but a succinct reminder about what each aspect of digital photography means -- which would be enough for a beginner but never felt too wordy for an experienced user.But since the OMD is such a powerful, adjustable camera, I found this book to be very readable and very helpful..It's super affordable, has great pictures, and I'll be keeping the kindle version on my phone when I travel, for reference.

As a user manual for using OM-D E-M5, then it's a good book with all you need to do it.The problem with me is that I don't think I need a manual on how to set to certain mode. What I expected is a recommendation from an experienced professional of the E-M5 to come up with:- Best practices to exploit the most of the custom settings for different scenarios, (for eg. I know that we can set Fn1 and Fn2 to several different functions, but to a professional which function(s) should be put to those buttons in real life for the best use?)- Good tips and trick that would apply to E-M5, (for ex. with its 4/3 lenses and good ISO capability, is there any good rule for speed, aperture and iso that can be applied?)- What are the gotchas we need to know and how to avoid them?David can do it better, but with the rate of many new cameras coming out every day, I don't think we can expect much from him for just one of the models he had only skimmed through.