The Olympus E-M5 Mark III Menu System Simplified

I wanted a digital book that I'd have with me for handy reference versus a hardcopy book that I wouldn't carry around. The Kindle version of this book fits that bill.The content is also useful because it too does what I want and goes beyond the nuts and bolts of how to set up camera settings. The camera's manual does that. Why buy a book if it does the same thing?? This book provides the value-add of why and when to use different settings as well as where settings are located in the very deep hierarchies of Olympus menu systems.What is terrible. I mean really awful, is the layout of the Kindle edition. They should really give it away or sell for a max of $1.99. There are no breaks in the text. It's like one big run-on sentence. Picture someone talking 100 mph and not stopping to take a breath! The layout is the moral equivalent of that. It makes it tough to find or absorb info because of that. It needs more spacing, some easy to view diagrams (the figures that are there now are labelled n - n+ along the bottom of each - as readers we have to keep scrolling back to the original diagram with all the figures because all that listed in the text is "See Figure X, Y, Z") and maybe some boxes with tips or pointers to break it up and make the text readable.I hope Darrell Young's book from Rocky Nook will be better...

Just another great book by David Thorpe that covers the Olympus E-M5 Mark III's non intuitive Menu System. This is not about using the camera but a breakdown of every menu item, what they do and his recommendations of which are the best settings to use. There are a few typos in this first printed edition but not to the point where it distracts from the overall content. I have other Simplified Menu books by Mr. Thorpe, the Lumix G9 and Lumix G80-85 and find them all very useful and better than the supplied users guides by the camera makers. His preferred settings are also mostly very useful, certainly as a starting point.

I have found the content excellent. The author works through all of the menu options for the E-M5 Mark III and explains each of the options. My major complaint is the Kindle format presentation. At the beginning of each section, the relevant menu categories are shown as small illustrations, like thumbnails. These are labeled as figures. These figures are referenced in the text, but the actual figures are not shown with the text. It appears that the intent is for the figures to be shown since they are referenced as (fig 1) etc. However the figures do not appear. To see the relevant figure, you have to go back to the beginning of the section where all of the figures for that section are shown. Perhaps this is a issue with my device -- a Fire Tablet.There are also a few typos, such as the word "hen" instead of the appropriate word "when."

The extremely large, bold font (approximately 18 pts) made reading the material unpleasant and difficult to access easily. I'm guessing this was done primarily to inflate the size of the book (241 pages; probably would have been more like 100 pages with a normal size font). And - unforgivable for any reference work, in my opinion - no index! In any case, it didn't work for me so I returned it.

This book is helpful to those trying to learn this camera’s feature-rich but complex menu system. However, as has been pointed out by another reviewer, the book’s layout is rather poor. I have both the Kindle version and the bound print version. I often find the print version of books easier to read than the Kindle version, but in this case the print version appears to be almost directly produced from the Kindle version. Had I known that, I would have skipped the print version, which is about twice the price (but note that both are fairly inexpensive). All that being said, I’m glad to have this book.

I wanted photos of the various menus and a written description of how to use each feature.

Needs a thorough proof read. In fact the author acknowledges that there may be errors in the book. Hard to follow. Not many pictures to assist in understanding the camera.

Good, methodical treatment of the somewhat overwhelming Olympus menu system. Between this and the owners manual I am gradually figuring out how to get the most out of my E-M5.

Contains much that is not in the Olympus manual.

Just the job

No sirve para nada. Totalmente inútil. Parece un documento escrito en word por un niño de 12 años, sin estructura, sin imágenes. No sirve ni como guía de bolsillo ni para nada. Una completa decepción.

This is an comprehensive rundown of the E-M5 Mark III's operating system. Aside from a few typographical problems, there's not much to criticize. Olympus software is intimidating in itself; the detail in this book won't make it any less daunting, but it does clarify a number of esoteric functions. Well done in that regard. Be forewarned, though—illustrations are sparse. If you're a visual learner, you probably shouldn't get this book.

Not finished reading this yet. So far the material seems comprehensive, with plenty of explanation. This is very helpful. I noted that in the mobile (cell) version there are no illustrations of the menu items. To have had these would have been helpful so as to be sure that one could be on the "same page" with the written word and the actual, physical camera (various icons are used) and to easily see associations among grouped items.