Valuable and valent accessories with design-related weaknesses

The battery grip has all the features you could wish for and more, as well as two independent of the corresponding buttons on the housing assignable with individual functions buttons, it sits perfectly and bomb-proof (if this is not the case with someone who has that done something wrong or its housing or handle is bent), and is ergonomically designed and manufactured dibasic. Valent and precisely fitting and solid sitting in particular as the HLD-4 for the DSLR-top models from Olympus.

The unconventional adjacent construction that dispenses with a battery-shaped connector block, which is pushed instead of the camera batteries in the camera bay, however, has not only advantages but also disadvantages.

Advantages are the compact dimensions of the handle, in the event that it is stored separately, and the simplification of piecing by the fact that the camera battery can be left in the camera when applying. A more frequent change between working with and without handle is made easier in principle.

This simplification is not quite as critical again that must be removed for the attachment of the HLD-7 two covers a rubber cover on the bottom of the camera, which goes into a reserve recess on the battery grip, and a plastic cap on the spring-loaded contact pins of the HLD-7, the counterpart the form to the contacts at the bottom of the camera. To make matters worse, that the plastic cap nowhere exists a similar reserve recess, so you have to store the part of either somewhere loose or leave the part is therefore once again one of the variety, which is ideal for getting lost.

Fully developed, the construction is not on this point, especially since you should never store the handle because of the sensitive contact pins without patch plastic cap, even when it comes to the rubber cover at the bottom of the camera, because the handle can also be in position and tighten the screw to a certain extent, as long as the rubber is still sitting on the camera, and there is a danger that in before you notice the error, continue to push the pins of the handle in this, as is good for them.

These are now no paranoid-theoretical considerations, I have my HLD-7 straight from the service back (who has the least handled easily under warranty), after one of the pins was stuck. Whether as a result set up forgotten plastic cap, or nichtabgenommener rubber cover on the body, could be when I noticed it, no longer reproduce.

Another disadvantage results directly from the fact that a battery in the camera remains who basically always photographed with battery grip and thereby also the extension of the term will be used by two batteries, which is repeatedly forced only to change the battery unscrew the handle. That you can adjust the camera if the camera or the battery grip to be consumed first, thus is only a crutch that will address this disadvantage. So you can decide if you would have a little less uncomfortable and wants to claim his batteries unevenly by discharges the handle battery first, and the camera battery only taps, if you do not have timely replacement for the handle battery on hand, or whether its Batteries pairs will occupy evenly and the camera battery discharges first and thus whenever also handle battery is empty, each with handle disassembly equal both changes.

And last but not least we imagine, even if a battery in the camera remains room for two more would have under control can actually be, not just for one. When depending on type of use compared to the DSLR competition quite limited operating time of the E-M1 on a single charge that would, in my view, no such colossal exaggerated power supply that the desire somehow forbids.

Despite the criticisms, which I fully meet here as the positives, I guess due to the grip of the aforementioned properties but very and will probably in the long run much more frequently without having to use the camera as. Therefore, I also give at least four points.