Last night, we were out with Olympus at Chelsea Piers in NYC getting some personal hands on time with the new Olympus OMD EM1 Mk II. We got to play with it in Iceland , and at Photokina , and last night we got to do something really crazy with the camera. Olympus claims up to 6.5 stops of image stabilization. So last night, we put that to the test and were quite surprised.

We tested the camera with the 300mm f4 and the 12-40mm f2.8. Check out what we got last night. Remember, this is all handheld and done by holding my breath. In fact, I ended up feeling sort of woozy last night after trying to stabilize my breath and body over and over again.

Olympus 300mm f4

A quarter of a second is pretty good at such a long focal length!

Olympus 12-40mm f2.8

Now here’s where we really had our minds blown. Totally handheld, by holding my breath and getting as stable shots as I could. There’s a ton of innovation and truly game changing technology here that professional and enthusiast photographers alike should really, really be paying attention to. Forget the whole school of thought that says “It’s Micro Four Thirds” when you can do this with a camera, who really cares?

They’re all so good these days to begin with. We’re still working on a full review, but know that it’s coming soon.