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Olympus OM-5 Teardown

By Phillip Andrew Iglesias

The Olympus OM-5 seems to be an underrated dark horse of a camera primarily used for stills and capable of capturing high-quality footage.

The camera was released on November 18, 2022, with many compelling features, including a 20MP micro four-thirds sensor, DCI and UHD 4K video with no time limitation, 10fps burst shooting with AF-C and 30fps with electronic shutter, and a 121-point autofocus system. It also has weather sealing and image stabilization.

At the base of the camera, we removed nine silver Philips screws along with the base cover plate.

There were two screws under the LCD screen.

We popped open the dust caps on the port side and removed three screws. Now, the dust cap trim assembly can come off. There weren’t any screws under the memory card door.

Sliding up the eye cap revealed two screws. We didn’t find any screws under the rubber thumb grip.

Back to the memory card slot side of the camera, we peeled back the rubber palm grip and extracted four screws.

The memory card door is removable—this helped a lot!

Deep in the battery slot was one silver screw.

We nearly missed one silver screw toward the base of the camera. This screw was under the base cover plate.

The rear panel refused to come off even after some wiggling. We turned to the front of the camera and completely removed the right-hand rubber palm grip to see if there were any remaining screws.

Two screws were removed right below the OM-5 decal.

Next, we removed the left-hand rubber palm grip and found two silver screws just above the lens release button.

The rear panel was somewhat of a problem to remove because there were many screws, but we finally found a hidden screw under some soft felt on the rear panel.

Finally, we were able to wiggle the rear panel out of place.

Two ribbon cables were disconnected to allow the rear panel to separate from the body.

Going back to the front of the camera, we removed one silver screw. This screw was holding the faceplate trim in place.

Under the OM System logo, two screws were removed.

Now, we can start to disconnect the ribbon cables. The top panel needed to come off first, and then seven ribbon cables were disconnected accordingly.

We could not find any visible screws for the top panel, so we unfastened the circuit board screws. But before we did that, we disconnected three remaining ribbon cables.

Four silver screws were removed from the circuit board.

Here, we tried to wiggle off the top panel to no avail. There was one silver screw next to the right strap mount and another under the exposure adjustment button that seemed to hold it down.

Finally, the top panel was disconnected from the body.

Two more silver screws were holding the circuit board that needed removal.

Before removing the circuit board, we needed to remove four silver screws. These held down the battery pins soldered into the circuit board. We needed to be careful because the pins can bend easily.

After removing all the aforementioned parts, the circuit board was removed.

We needed to carefully remove the sensor assembly so that none of the focus adjustment shims would move from its posts. There is a magnetic speaker in the body of the camera, which would attract the shims and cause problems.

Overall, the Olympus OM-5 is a 7/10 in teardown difficulty—the faux leather covered many hidden screws.

Thanks for reading. If you’re interested in more camera teardowns, we feature a new one every month. Be sure to sign up for our newsletter so you don’t miss them!

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