This past holiday week-end I made the decision not to take my Nikon DSLR with me on a 3 day road trip to Minneapolis. The majority of my time was spent wandering the Mall of America, and the E-P1 was an absolute delight the entire time.This little camera makes me smile each time I use it!
If you don't care to word a long, winding review let me summarize it. The E-P1 doesn't have to make any apologies for being petite, its a full fledged camera on its own merit.
Positives
* Great photo quality!
* Built in image stabilization (works pretty well too)
* Customizable and responsive interface/buttons
* HD movie mode with autofocus
* Low profile, doesn't get you noticed
* Quiet. I'd say quieter than my old rangefinders and way more quiet than my DSLR's
Could be better
* Battery life
* Perhaps almost too customizable (pretty good learning curve). Keep the manual handy!
I'm not a people shooter and certainly not a "street" shooter but my week-end was spent at the Mall of America, which is enormous but all in doors. It was an interesting challenge. I found that although I fumbled with the interface and settings a bit, it became very engrossing and almost mesmerizing to shoot publicly with the E-P1. It never drew attention, not once, where as I saw people clearing out from the obvious DSLR guys like fish around a barracuda in the reef.
Lens: My only lens is the 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6, which doesn't sound too exciting. However in practice it has been a great general utility lens that has rendered quite nicely, showing nice resolution and sharpness. I can only anticipate what the E-P1 will do with a quality, wide aperture prime. I'm up in the air about my next move, but the 50mm f/2 sure looks tempting. But then again it would be great to try OM mount too! Arg....
Auto-Focus: I've read some questions about the auto-focus performance of this camera, but in normal operation haven't see an issue yet. Granted I haven't tried to shoot a basketball game or dance recital yet so take this with a grain of salt. For my people shooting in the mall the AF performance has been wonderful and spot on. When I've gone to outdoor settings or even just trying to snap something quick from my car, I've found that the autofocus is quite a ways behind my D90. I think it is real world quick, but it is probably a step slower to focus than any DSLR on the market. Not saying that's a bad thing, some worth knowing.
Sensor: The sharpness I see from this camera is well beyond what I expected, so there may be something to the talk that Olympus removed the strong anti-alias filtering most DSLR's are plagued with. The jpg results thus far haven't required any post process sharpening and the Olympus color engine is a breath of fresh air in my opinion.
Handling: Coming form a DSLR will make you take a little time to get used to the difference. Getting used to shooting with a LiveView display will also take some getting used to. There isn't a front/rear two wheel control system as I'm used to with the D90, but there are two primary controls for manual shooting and they can both be worked while shooting one handed. Very nice design! The buttons and functions are all fully customizable but expect to be nestled up with the manual a wee bit to do it. All in all composing from the LiveView LCD became very natural and fluid after a day. High marks to Olympus in designing such a usable system. The only thing I still have to figure out is a button to disable auto-focus so I can go fully manual.
Results: The bottom line to any camera is what it can produce. The E-P1 is not a D700, A900 or 5DII. Those are different kinds of cameras that excel at higher ISO and extreme resolutions. What the E-P1 is to me is a system capable of going toe-to-toe with any DX sensor system on the market in terms of deliverable results. No it doesn't shoot 8 frames per second. Again not that kind of camera.
This is a practical camera whose size and form factor make it usable in places that larger cameras wouldn't work as well or possibly not at all. I'm seeing very detailed and sharp results up to ISO 1,250. After years of shooting 35mm, DSLR and even large format I'd have to say this is the most fun I've had with any camera I've owned. Its a camera guy's camera that the beginner can use as well.
1. There is no pop-up flash. Not a problem for me, I don't ever use them anyway (your mileage may vary).
2. There is no viewfinder. Again not a problem for me, got used to that very quickly.
Now some observations from having used the camera:
The sensor image quality is excellent. Dynamic range is at SLR quality. Noise levels up to and including ISO 800 is very clean. ISO 1600 has a bit more noise than the Rebel XSI (also 12mp)with the noise increasing relative to competitors from there.
The user interface is intuitive. I used mostly Aperture Priority and Manual and found it easy to use. Stuff in the menus were also easily found. Changing the settings were at times challenging (like ISO) because of the smaller buttons, but given the camera's small size its something I could forgive
Its heavy, almost as heavy as a basic, entry level DSLR. Now the lens is light as a feather, however I feel a lot of heaviness comes because of the build quality of the camera, which is superb
The RAW processing software that comes with the camera is useless. The interface is horrible and the stability even worse. Wait for your favorite RAW processing software to add support and use that.
The deal breakers:
The kit lens is slow. Really slow. So slow in fact that I found the system to not be very useful when the light levels got low or you were indoors. Now this could easily be fixed by having a series of fast pancake lenses, which I believe are coming, but sadly they aren't here yet.
The auto focus is slow and unreliable, especially indoors. I found the AF to be very slow and borderline frustrating. Again, this was mostly indoors and in low light levels, so a faster lens may alleviate the issue.
Overall, this is a fantastic start for Olympus and once the system is fleshed out a bit more (with lots of those fast pancake primes at various focal lengths) I may consider it again. However with the limited lens selection available today, its not for me. You need to figure out if you can live with the kit lens (or the 17mm f/2.8 prime) while waiting for more lenses to come out for yourself.I had been considering replacing my Leica d-lux 3 with the d-lux 4 when the EP-1 news came out. I immediately sold the d-lux 3 and ordered my EP-1. It is a little larger than I was hoping, but out of the box, the first results were incredible, RAW format on a par with my nikon d-90 RAW, requiring very little post-production. Feels good in the hand, responsive and fast auto-focus and much more satisfying to use than the leica which I loved. Initial results in RAW much better than the leica, which was always just a little noisy.
This is a top notch camera, that I hope will continue to deliver results. The only current drawback for me is that photoshop CS4 doesn't recognizethe Olympus Raw Format (ORF). I have to go through Olympus software to convert, which severely disrupts my work flow, and the software is slow and clunky. Shooting JPGs alongside Raw in case I need the results faster.
If they get the plugin updated soon, I'll be over the moon.
Very happy with this purchase.I needed something decent to have in my laptop bag when i wasn't lugging around all my SLRs and Lenses. This camera seems to be the perfect blend SLR and Point and shoot. The f/2.8 lens allow me to take great, non-flash photos in low-light situations without an obscene amount of noise. It has a great, solid build and with a decent amount of weight, it doesn't feel like it will fall apart at any minute like your point-and-shoot. I would say if you are in the market for something more advanced than a point and shoot, but nice and small, pick it up.
Also, I believe this is the smallest device to be able to take 720p video at f/2.8 (m4/3) with stereo audio. Great video device if you ask me.This camera has been a very pleasant surprise for me. The low light capability is extraordinary and as for framing pictures in bright sunlight I am very glad I got the optional optical viewfinder that fits in the hotshoe. But the picture sharpness and color quality are breathtaking. There is a learning curve on the menus but once you get used to it there are many in-camera scene types to fool with, such as old-fashioned grainy black and white. Most importantly, it is ultra-portable and unobtrusive in a good-looking way. I am thrilled with it!
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