Like many photographers in the Olympus / OM System world, I’m in the process of upgrading my photography gear from the E-M1III to the OM-1. Fortunately, SmallRig just started shipping a camera cage for the OM-1, since their long-unavailable cage for the E-M1II (which also fit the E-M1III) does *not* fit the OM-1. Before I sell off the old cage, I thought it might be helpful to compare the two models for anybody that may be in the market for one or the other.

At a high level, there are some key changes: some mounting points went away, or moved; the overall shape changed just slightly (in the process, access to body-front buttons is improved); and the new cage has a built-in Arca-Swiss mounting plate and captive attachment tool.

Looking at the front (E-M1III cage on the left, OM-1 cage on the right), you can see the family resemblance, but also that the old cage’s front mounting holes have been removed. I never used them, hopefully they’re not irreplaceable for anybody that *did* use them.

There’s a hole lot going on (sorry, bad pun) on the bottom of the new cage. All the holes got reconfigured, there’s explicit provision for mounting on DJI RS2 / RSC2 gimbals, and there’s now a captive attachment tool (a.k.a. a screwdriver) — courtesy of 3 tiny rare earth magnets.

The changed arrangement of the cage’s side is more of an impact to me — I used to use those bottom 3 holes for a digital video cable clamp, but I can adjust (and the fact that they went away to make room for the Arca-Swiss mount makes it a fair trade for me). Also, this side of the new cage is shaped as a NATO rail — so, another way to attach stuff here.

The cage’s upper corner now sports a cold shoe in place of two mounting points. This may / may not be an improvement, depending on your use cases. For me, it simplifies mounting a microphone.

You can see that the mounting points on the top rail changed pretty dramatically from the old (above) to new (below) cage. This won’t impact my rig, but you may / may not have issues with it.

If you look closely at the above image, you can also see a rubbery pad that was added to the inside of the cage’s bottom rail — this gets clamped against the bottom of the camera body when the cage is mounted, and so should help stabilize the cage / camera interface.

All-in-all, I’ve got to say that I’m impressed (as always) by the build quality of SmallRig’s new OM-1 camera cage. A few mounting points have changed, and that will likely cause a person or two a bit of heartburn while they adjust their setups. But the new Arca-Swiss baseplate will simplify life for a lot of users, and the cage’s mounting points should do the job for most people. Also, while the old cage is incompatible with the new OM-1 body, the new cage is backwards-compatible with the E-M1II and E-M1III — so photographers with a mixed camera body setup will be well-served by upgrading to the new cage (that is, if they only need a single cage).

If you’ve got 20 minutes to spare, The Narrowband Channel over on YouTube has a good discussion of some ways you can set up this cage.