The short views expressed below are mine and are not influenced by any company or persons.

This camera has been the most astounding piece of technology that I have ever owned. I often wondered when seeing Sci-Fi programs on the TV in the 1960's and beyond like Star Trek if it was an incentive to create something like this?

As with most of the cameras I get I always try and add a grip of one kind or another and the grip for this camera is all in one piece not like the grips for the E-M5 stable.  The HLD-9 grip actually has a four way arrow pad and OK button that mimics the one on the back of the camera. The other buttons on the grip are the B-Fn1 and B-Fn2 along with a front and rear dials. There is also an additional 9 volt port for powering the camera from an AC adapter which finally uses a standard 2.5mm connector for attaching it to the grip.I have an adapter for my E-M5 II that uses the Olympus plug so it can't be used unless I wire up another connector to the power lead.

The grip holds an extra BLH-1 battery giving you extra power and the camera can be setup to use the battery in the grip first and the one in the camera is used automatically when it runs out. I must say that the BLH-1 battery is a huge improvement on the BLN-1 battery used in the E-M5 II.

The JPEGS created by the camera are simply outstanding, and that is without having set up the camera to the way you like it to process your images. The image noise to me only seems to creep in after ISO 6400 but then the images can still be used, similar to the E-M5 II images.  I always save my images in JPEG Super Fine and ORF, the ORF files are the raw data captured by the sensor and allows you to enhance or fix any mistakes I have made with exposure.  It doesn't bother me that the sensor is a 20 Megapixel one as I'm not going to be creating a billboard-sized image but that option is available to me with this fantastic camera. I'm not a pixel peeper as I'm more interested in the results.

This is the first camera I have purchased that I didn't get a printed manual for, instead I found the brilliant "Mastering the Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II" from Darrell Young. it's a "rockynook" book and as usual it's very informative with plenty of photographs explaining everything being discussed. The menu system is very different to the E-M5 II one but still takes a while to get used to and to figure out what those cryptic icons stand for.

I don't know what it is but I always seem to prefer the second version of Olympus cameras, there is something about them that just feels just right. The camera itself can get quite heavy especially with the grip attached and an older manual focus lens like the Tamron 200mm f3.5 sticking out of the M43 lens mount with a Canon FD to M43 adapter added. It gets even better when the FotoDiox focal reduction adapter is used but the images it produces are well worth it. The grip seems to balance everything nicely, in my hands anyway.

My favorite lens the Olympus 14-150mm II looks great on this camera, it's all weatherproofed and will be out in the rotten weather we have been having here but I've taken a liking to use the "Lumix G Vario 14-140mm f4-5.8" even though it is slightly slower and is shorter at the long end than the Olympus it seems to fit much better on the E-M1 II. The images created by this combo is also superb.

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The JPEGS created by the camera are outstanding, and that is without having set up the camera to your liking. Image noise to me only seems to creep in after ISO 6400 but then the images can still be used.  I always save my images in JPEG Super Fine and ORF, the ORF files are the raw data captured by the sensor and allows you to enhance or fix any mistakes I have made with exposure.  It doesn't bother me that the sensor is a 16 Megapixel one as I'm not going to be creating a billboard-sized image but that option is available to me with this brilliant little camera.  I have created some beautiful looking images using nothing more than the 1.3 Megapixel Olympus Camedia C100, I'm not a pixel peeper as I'm more interested in the results than what others say about the lack of pixels in an image.

The focusing speed is super fast with all my current M43 lenses and it does very well in low light situations, better than what I was used to with some other cameras I have owned.  The EVF is super clear and large enough even for spectacle wearers like me.  The thing I like about the EVF is that whatever I want to display on the rear screen I can have displayed on the EVF, hitting the Info button on the back of the camera cycles through the various information display options.  I really like the way that the orientation sensors are displayed, no more excuses for a crooked horizon anymore.  I usually only have the horizontal one showing but I can see the requirement for having the vertical one as well.

There are four function buttons and two on the portrait grip, not only that but the other buttons can also be re-configured to another function, for instance, I use the Movie Record button to turn the Digital Teleconverter on and off and use the Lever switch to use whatever Mode Dial setting I have selected in position one and to do movie recording in position two.  The Fn1 button is in the lever switch itself and found it awkward to access so I assigned it for focus peaking.

The first thing I did when getting the camera was to order a printed manual which I prefer it to have to look at a PDF file each time I want to check something.  The manual is always available to me at any time and makes using the camera much more enjoyable.

This camera looks like a camera, yeah, it's my opinion but it really does look the part and there are so many things to learn about using it, it is capable of doing so many things that I never would have thought of all those years ago when I first picked up a Zenit B.

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The camera arrived and I just couldn't get over how this looked and felt in my hands, it's a beautifully made piece of modern technology and felt like it could stand up to all kinds of rough handling. After using it until the battery ran out I noticed that the Date and Time needed resetting, it didn't bother me the first time as it didn't happen again for quite a while. As always I try to  get a battery grip, I ended up trying two of them and neither would work, they both had the same fault, the shutter button didn't work. It turned out that the camera was faulty and it just got worse over time. The person I bought it from was absolutely fantastic and just simply refunded me and was even concerned about the cost of the grips I had bought. I still have it but it behaves differently each time I use it, it's a thing of beauty that I would hate to put in the bin.

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I thought the camera was great as it had a built in motor drive to focus those "D" lenses, my neighbour attached one of his AF lenses and was completely blown away that they worked. I didn't have it for long, got fed up of having two incompatible systems and sold it with the lenses for £165.00.

After the initial shock of what was delivered compared to what was advertised on their website I went looking for a way to use this body to actually take photographs. I had a collection of Canon EF-S lenses I searched for a EF-S to M43 adapter which was capable of using the lenses to auto focus and use the aperture mechanism to expose correctly. It didn't take me long, I found a "Fully Compatible" EF-S to M43 Electronic adapter for £25.00 used. When it arrived I checked it out and everything worked, well, lenses were now using something totally foreign to them for focusing and most of the time it was much easier to turn off AF and just use the focus by wire method which turned out to be fun to use.

After a few months I got frustrated with the camera, there was no in camera shake reduction as it was provided by the lenses. I ended up buying the diminutive Lumix 14-42 f3.5-5.6 G Vario II, the brilliant 45-150 G Vario ASPH, and the fantastic G Vario 14-140mm f4-5.8 ASPH zoom. They all had "Mega OIS" which is simply shake control like it was on the Canon lenses I used.

I only used this for a few months as the EF-S to M43 started to have issues. It would refuse to recognise lenses it was quite happy with before and eventually gave up on every Canon lens I used. I did manage to sell the adapter for a profit, I mentioned all the problems I was having with it and the buyer didn't seem concerned. I never received any comeback or negative responses from the buyer. I would have loved to know why it started to fail like it did.