 My new E-P2 |
| Review Date: February 17, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Ellee Koss, |
| When I first saw the E-P1 I wanted one and waited until the E-P2 made its debut. This camera is incredible and intense - it has so much capability I have just begun to scratch the surface. And it fits in my small waist pack! Congratulations to Olympus on a job well done! I look forward to experimenting and enjoying. |
Can't live with it Can't live without it.
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| Review Date: January 25, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Picture Perfect Guinea, Anaheim, CA USA |
I bought this camera for its light weight and high ISO performance. No disapointment in either area. My main camera is a Sony a700 with 18-250 zoom as my walkaround lens. I have a nine month old dgthr and the two together can be a bit much to carry. I am very happy with the portability of this camera the color and image quality is great. The autofocus is tricky and too slow in dim light. The manual focus has a 7x magnifier that activates when you turn the focus ring. I do a lot of night shooting and got great results with manual focus. The spot meter is REALLY touchy. I am getting pretty good at spot metering and then using exposure lock so I don't have to reset in manual. The camera is so good looking I can't put it down. The Olympus raw converter is adequate. I do not own photoshop. Occasionally I have to adjust white balance. That's it.
The video in this camera is terrific. I have a sony mini DVD camcorder which I will proobably never use again now that I have this camera.
This camera has a steep learning curve but if you love photography, you will love the ride. I started shooting my own 35 mm with a Honeywell Pentax in 1974. A teacher loaned my his Oly Pen in 1973. This camera brings back a lot of precious memories in incredible color and image quality.
It is NOT a point shoot. It is a real camera. I recommend it highly |
great little camera
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| Review Date: January 25, 2010 |
| Reviewer: William A. Koplitz, Northern Virginia, DC suburbs |
I had been waiting for a camera like this for a few years and had tried what was already on the market but wasn't happy with the quality of the image and kept returning those cameras. This camera meets or exceeds my expectations for a camera of this size and weight. I've made about 1500 photographs over the last month and I carry it with me everywhere. What I specifically like about the camera is the size and weight and the quality of the photographs, I also like the ability to change lenses and the flexibility of shooting using the viewer on the back or the electronic range finder viewer on the top. After using and getting to know the electronic (eye level) viewfinder I prefer the screen on the back of the camera but can see situations where the electronic viewer will come in handy.
I find the controls easy to learn and simple to use and well thought out and I'm looking forward to spring and summer with this camera in my pocket.
The only thing I'd change about the camera to make it even better would be a longer battery life, to bring one charge up to around 700 images. It's hard to say what it really is right now, best guess is 250 - 300, as I'm using it in below freezing weather. It will be great when more micro 4:3 lenses show up on the market. |
Good stills, poor video
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| Review Date: January 2, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Photo-Am, Brooklyn, NY USA |
I'm a happy owner of the two Panasonic P&S cameras: DMC-ZS3 and DMC-ZR1 purchased from Amazon. Those two advanced P&S cameras are very good and along with my two others - Nikon D90 and D700 cover all my photography needs. The only area where I'd like to have some improvement is shooting the high quality video with good sound indoors at the relatively low light conditions.
The most high quality video out of those 4 cameras I'm getting from Panasonic ZS3 but there is one problem - its stereo microphones are on the top of the body facing the ceiling and if you shooting a movie clip of someone speaking in a relatively noisy environment those microphones collect all the noise around and make the voice of the person in the front of you camera a kind of indistinctive.
So I was looking for a relatively small camera with the front microphones which could take good low light movie clips. A new Olympus EP2 with its relatively big sensor seemed to be a perfect candidate to fill that position. Because of my special interest in that camera this writing is not a comprehensive review but it's rather focused on the EP2's video-recording capabilities.
The new Olympus Micro-Four-Third Pen EP-2 looked pretty good on the paper so I purchased it and was testing for about a week by now. The build quality of its body is pretty good. It's a little bit heavy, but feels solid and reliable. The retractable zoom lens Zuiko 14-42 mm feels somewhat flimsy but it's a kind of trade-off for about twice shorter lens size than of the similar Panasonic's one. From my prospective it's very convenient for transportation, but some people might complain that it makes the camera startup time a bit longer.
Having received my EP2 from Amazon the first idea was to check its picture quality against my ZS3 and D90. At the very low light conditions D90 was the only competitor to EP2. Depending on the used lens the results of Nikon D90 were from "slightly better" (for Nikon zoom lens 18-200mm at 18mm and F/3.5) to "remarkably better" (for Sigma primary lens 50mm-F/1.4 at F/2.8). For the outdoor pictures and those taken indoors at the good light conditions the quality of EP2 shots were somewhere in between D90's and ZS3's, however more close to ZS3 ones. Such a comparison might not look fair for DMC-ZS3 because its sensor has about 8 times smaller area, but taking into account that ZS3 is much more sophisticated device than many others P&S cameras the results of the actual picture quality comparison turned out to be not that obvious.
I was taking some outdoor pictures of landscapes and architecture by both EP2 and ZS3 cameras and while comparing those shots edge-to-edge at 100% crop I had hard time to find out any significant difference in the image quality, and the only depth of field could help to recognize which camera was used to take a certain shot. On the pictures of white buildings on a sunny day with the blue sky Olympus produced some reddish tint while Panasonic shots were more close to white. On the other hand Olympus provided a slightly wider dynamic range especially if you set the contrast to the lowest (-2) position. The EP2 menu allows you to choose a number of shooting modes like NORMAL, VIVID, MUTE, etc. in each of which you can adjust separately the contrast, saturation, and sharpness. Actually that tuning does not make a big difference but is a nice to have feature.
For indoor testing I put the two cameras EP2 and ZS3 together into their auto mode and wanted to see what would be the results without my intervention. That experiment showed me that while ZS3 tried to set the best possible for that camera shooting parameters, e.g. the lowest ISO, EP2 automatic settings were far from optimal. While taking pictures of the same subject indoors the first camera (ZS3) set automatically ISO=400, Aperture=3.3 and Shutter Speed=1/15, while EP2 set ISO=1600, 3.5 and 1/60. The result was - approximately equal amount of noise on both pictures. No subject was moving and so there was no any reason for EP2 to set that relatively high shutter speed. So I assume that it would be better not to rely on EP2 automatics but set a lower ISO (around 400) manually.
One of the best features of Olympus EP2 is its in-camera image stabilization, which allows you to decrease the shutter speed about 3 stops from its original value. In my testing I was able to get pretty good, none-blurred hand-held photographs at the shutter speed as slow as 1/8 - around 90% of shots were good (just keep your breath while shooting :). When I switched to Program mode and set manually the ISO=400 the camera responded with the shutter speed about 1/15 and I started getting much clearer, almost noiseless pictures! From my prospective the noise becomes visible starting from ISO around 500-600 or higher. The quality of pictures taken at ISO=1600 is still acceptable for small prints but if you want to take good portraits it's better to keep ISO at 400 or less. There is a workaround how to get better indoor pictures with the less manual operations: if you are not shooting kids of animals, you can switch to the "S"hutter priority mode and set a default shutter speed as low as you can handle (taking into account the advantage of the internal image stabilization), for example 1/15. Then camera will be adjusting its ISO accordingly and most of the time it will be lower than its default "1600" value. In that case EP2 will give you a completely noiseless clean picture. However sometimes when you're taking pictures of your kinds of pets you might not have enough time to perform all those manual corrections.
So if you want to get maximum picture quality out of EP2 you have to set manually some shooting parameters. But the accessing of its menu is a separate story... It took me about 10-15 minutes with Panasonic cameras to find out how to adjust the major shooting settings and no more than one hour for Nikon D90, but unless you are an Olympus fan, you must read its manual first! After learning its menu organization you will find how to reach quickly the necessary functionality, but there is another trick - you can get to some settings in a variety of ways but the available functions or its behavior might be somewhat different depending on which way you got there. So you definitely have to spend some time for the learning curve to be able to operate the Olympus camera in a real situation.
I was generally satisfied with the quality of the kit zoom lens 14-42mm - the still pictures were sharp with the good colors and contrast. The auto focus for outdoor still pictures was quick enough, while for indoor ones it was slower but still acceptable. The precision was also good - I could not get better sharpness when I was focusing manually. Generally the auto focus system can either choose dynamically the part of the frame to focus on or you can manually point to a certain area to be used for focusing. There is also one display mode which might be very helpful for manual focusing - in that mode once you start turning the focus ring the camera zooms the central part of the picture up to 7x or 10x which helps you to obtain the best focus. Once you stop the focus adjustment it quickly returns to the normal 1x display mode.
So you can get good out-of-the-box outdoor still shots and you might have much better results for indoor shots if you are willing to learn its manual and to perform some manual adjustments while shooting pictures.
The best thing about Olympus EP2 for shooting movies is its front-side stereo microphone. It has a wide enough frequency range, so even the recorded music sounds good (but not HiFi). It has a pretty good sensitivity and a remarkably low its own noise, which makes this camera outstanding from this prospective from many others. It means it would be very good for example for recording a low voice or birds singing in silence.
EP2 has the two video modes: VGA 640x480 and HD 1280x720. There is nothing to write home about the VGA low resolution mode - it's no better than of any P&S camera. The quality of the HD mode depends on the light conditions: it is good for outdoor shooting but shows much noise on the indoor clips. However it is not a show-stopper, the major problem is its really bad auto focus.
I took a number of movie clips which could be divided into 3 groups.
1) On a sunny day I took a few clips which showed a blue cloudless sky, dark blue sea with some waves and a few ships far in the sea. I did not move the camera and no moving subjects were in site. That was the only case where I could not admit any noise or compressing artifacts on the EP2 clips. ZS3 clips for the same subject showed a little bit artifacts on the blue sky which looked like subtle difference of blue tint in some areas, not a big deal.
2) On the same sunny day I recorded a panorama of some buildings across the street.
Some noise became visible in some areas (not everywhere) of the EP2 clips. Because there was plenty of light it seems in reality that was a result of MPEG/MP4 compression which looked like ordinary noise. On the ZS3 clips in the similar MPEG/MP4 mode the same level of noise was visible across the entire picture, but in the AVCHD mode the noise was hardly visible anywhere at all.
The major and the crucial difference between those two cameras was in the auto focus behavior. With ZS3 I could not admit any visible auto focus activity or any relevant sound. Either I was doing panorama with the same focal length or I was zooming in-and-out - the picture remained in focus all the time. The ZS3's auto focus system worked very smoothly and actually was doing small periodical adjustments back-and-forth which you could hardly even admit, but which helped to keep the recording picture in focus while the focal length or a distance to the subject was changing.
With EP2 I experienced the two variants of behavior, both abnormal:
a) When you're doing some panorama, so the distance to the subject is changing, or if you're zooming in or out the auto focus might remain insensitive, unresponsive for some time and so your picture might start getting out of focus. And then, all of a sudden, the auto focus system might start a very intensive work for catching focus back and because of that it will very quickly change the focus in its entire range which will make some bad periods of interference in the recording clip accompanied by the audible sound of the hard-working auto focus mechanics. So the system does every time 1-2 big adjustments and catches focus, after a while it repeats again.
b) The auto focus system might also start continuously hunting focus doing big adjustments back-and-forth a number of times. When it finally finds focus and you continue panorama again or any moving object comes in site then that long focus-hunting process might start again and as a result most of your clip will be completely out-of-focus.
3) While shooting indoor clips at the relatively low light the ZS3's auto focus behavior remained almost the same as for outdoor clips - it was smooth and consistent. With EP2 I experienced either the unlimited focus hunting (same as 2b above) or even something new: after doing a number of big back-and-forth adjustments it could hang up forever in one of that extreme positions and just die, e.g. whatever you do, it stops responding and the only option is to cancel recording, which means you lost that clip. So in the relatively low light indoor situations the EP2's auto focus does not work at all, e.g. it does whatever, but normal focusing.
There is also a "Tracking" auto focus mode but this feature is very unreliable and in real world it looses a moving subject almost immediately and so it's not helpful at all.
Having not normally working auto focus you can not apply zoom because once you start zooming the picture will go out of focus immediately. I found that the only possibility to shoot movie clips is to turn off auto focus, don't use zoom, and keep the constant distance to the shooting subject.
The picture quality of the clips taken with EP2 in that indoor environment turned out to be much worse than outdoors. I was shooting a kind of a lecture where a person was talking and showing some exercises. For that light condition the entire picture was filled with the fluctuating noise. The edges of that person's body and face were a kind of fuzzy, not sharp. The eyes looked more like dark spots. I tried to do some post-processing for those clips and in particular to convert them into AVCHD format, but it did not help - the stronger noise reduction you try to apply the more details you loose or to more extent the initial noise becomes replaced with the flickering compression artifacts but it did not help to make the person's image clearer. In any way those clips did not look like the High Definition but rather like Wide-VGA ones.
The clips taken by ZS3 in MPEG/MP4 mode were no better, but in AVCHD mode it was a very different picture - there was much less noise on that person's body and face, the edges were much more sharp and I could normally see their eyes, not just like dark spots. There were artifacts in the darker background but it was not much distracting because the main subject demonstrated a pretty good quality which I would consider as a real High Definition one.
So for still pictures the new Olympus EP2 camera can provide a pretty good quality but I would hardly consider it to be used as a camcorder.
UPDATE: Based on some early comments I updated some paragraphs to provide more details and less emotions. I want to thank those who helped to make this review more clear.
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GREAT knockabout small camera
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| Review Date: December 14, 2009 |
| Reviewer: R. Kaufmann, San Diego CA USA |
Bottom line: this camera represents a fantastic compromise between price, portability and picture quality. For those who can't take their big DSLRs everywhere they want to take pictures, this is the best camera I've found. Folks who are moving up from point and shoots should get a "real" DSLR as their move-up camera; this thing is really for those who already have DSLRs and looking for a great 2nd camera.
Likes:
Image quality, feel, size, weight. Really, you get great pictures up to ISO 400 (and I'm picky), and ISO 800 is completely usable. This is my replacement for a Canon G9, and this camera is just a little bit bigger and TONS better.
This is a system with multiple manufacturers. I'll be able to upgrade bodies and lenses from different companies without worrying about compatibility. Panasonic may make a better body a year or two from now -- no worries, I'll just buy it and know my lenses will just work.
The 14-42 lens is really sharp. I've ordered the 45-200 and pre-ordered the super-wide 7-14 zoom. They all weigh about a pound. I also have a Gitzo Traveler. My travel photo kit will be quite nice, small and light. Ahhhhh!
I synch external 3rd-party strobes at 1/320th of a second. Very, very nice.
The electronic viewfinder is bright and clear. I really like the diopter correction.
Just OK:
The autofocus isn't as good as my prime DSLR (a Canon 1ds iii, so you know from whence I speak!), but is a heck of a lot better than normal point & shoots. The autozoom function while manual focusing is a nice touch, but in moderated-to-low light is too noisy to get tack-sharp focus. A "preview" button would be a nice workaround, but only if it was just used to temporarily freeze the zoomed view and show a quick focus check.
Dislikes:
As *everyone* says, you have your choice of one option at a time: strobe, electronic viewfinder, or external microphone connection. Arghhh!
The USB connector is some darned combo AV / USB thing. It is NOT compatible with standard USB cables. My suggestion: don't take the cable with you on the road, but instead use a separate card reader to download pictures.
The battery it came with is lame. Get a higher capacity battery for $9. In fact, get two! Maximal Power DB OLY BLS-1 Replacement Battery for Olympus Digital Camera/Camcorder (Black)
I really wish they made a very little strobe for this other than the Olympus FL-14 Flash for Olympus E-P1 Micro Four Thirds Digital Camera. The FL-14 is lame (no tilt or swivel, low power), but the FL-36R is too big. The ideal setup would be to just use a wireless trigger and move the strobe off-axis.
The user interface is a little weird. I actually had to read the manual. I suspect this is just because I'm a Canon-head, but be warned. I'm getting used to it, which mostly means going into the secret setup menu (you have to turn on the detailed setup menu) and customizing things. One strong suggestion: set Auto-ISO to 100-400. No real penalty in picture quality at ISO 400, and you won't mind if the camera swings between 100 and 400 as it pleases.
The user interface requires you to use the wheel often, e.g. to change the f-stop/shutter tradeoff in "P" mode. It's way too easy to push on the ring and accidentally change a setting (e.g. ISO 100 --> 6400!). This has happened to me a few times.
The bracketing feature is useless for HDRs. You only get to change by 1 EV; you need two or three.
(In response to an excellent comment, here's a follow-up...)
I agree that ISO 1600 is "really good," but in my opinion 400 is the highest ISO that maintains the best quality. In fact, there's really no noise to clean up -- even in solid red areas of the picture. 800 and above, you're trading off quality for sensitivity. I suspect we're really agreeing with each other, but I could have been more explicit. So, here goes: this thing has near-DSLR image quality in a very small, nice package. If you make huge prints, stick to 400 or lower (advice that's also relevant for all but the highest-end DSLRs); judicious use of Noise Ninja, et al, may allow you to push a bit past 400, but you're literally pushing your luck. ISO 1600 is fine for smaller prints, and more than fine for web pages, etc.
For the numerically inclined, here's the noise index from Noise Ninja:
ISO 100 11
ISO 200 14
ISO 400 20
ISO 800 28
ISO 1600 46
ISO 3200 99
ISO 6400 148
My rule of thumb: 20 and under is near-perfect, 20-30 is quite usable, and 40+ has issues.
And since I've written my original review, I've come to appreciate the auto-tracking continuous focus mode. I have my Fn key mapped to MF (manual focus), so I can bounce back and forth easily. I sure wish the camera had a few more mappable buttons, though. I'd really like to also get access to the white balance set command as well as the depth of field preview. Oh, well.
Also, I built a dual-illuminant DNG Color Profile for my E-P2. Amazing improvement! I was able to take a picture of the target on my LCD, bring the pic into Lightroom (where the profile is automatically applied), and then see that the colors of my displayed image exactly match the original. Nice stuff. Just google "dng color dual illuminant" to see how to do it.
As you can tell from the above, I also built some Noise Ninja profiles. Feel free to get them at [...]
Finally, the nice guy who runs epaperpress made ptlens work with the E-P2 about an hour after I asked him to. I highly suggest using ptlens from Photoshop to correct barrel distortion, etc.
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