This first look at the Olympus E-P1, aka the ‘Digital Pen,’ is by Wired UK editor Holden Frith.
The Olympus E-P1 is a handsome camera, and it takes handsome pictures. It also comes at a handsome price, but a day of taking photos and an hour spent examining the results suggest that it may be a price worth paying.
The design harks back to the Olympus Pen series, a landmark in popular photography that first appeared in 1959 and eventually sold 17 million units in its various guises. While the body looks back to the past, however, the innards are focused sharply on the future. The E-P1, Olympus hopes, will create a new category of camera that marries the best of a compact with the best of an SLR.
It will, for the time being at least, come with an SLR’s price tag: £699 for the body and zoom lens. (Olympus will sell the body and 14-42mm zoom lens for $800 in the U.S.) That’s a bit of an obstacle, and it will put off some who fall in love with its looks. Those with a less superficial interest will stick around to see the interchangeable lenses, the large image sensor and the full manual exposure control, and may start to think about a long-term relationship.
It’s likely to be a rewarding one. The quality of the images taken during a one-day test were uniformly excellent, with fine detail and low noise even at high ISO settings. Shutter lag, the bane of the compact camera, is brief enough to seem non-existent, and auto-focus is swift and sure. The results are more than a match for SLR kits in a similar price bracket.
Its technical proficiency makes this a very good camera. What makes it great is its sense of style, which leaves an SLR feeling clunky by comparison. It’s less about looks – although the E-P1 is an order of magnitude cooler than any SLR – than a feeling of intimacy that comes with the small, perfectly formed body. It puts far less of a barrier between you and your subject than a full-sized camera.
It’s fun, too. The art filter shooting modes let you render your images in grainy black and white or lurid pop art, as well as several more subtle effects. They’re all very addictive, lending even the most mundane of shots an air of art-house profundity. The 14-42mm zoom (equivalent to 28-84mm on a full-frame camera) is a good all-rounder, while the 17mm (34mm equivalent) f2.8 pancake lens is admirably sharp and compact.
Inevitably, some compromises have had to be made to fit all this technology into such a slender frame. There’s no viewfinder, for example, and framing shots using the LCD screen is less precise than getting your face up against the glass. It’s also more of a strain on the eye, especially when the sun’s out. Nor is there a built-in flash, but with relatively fast lenses and good low-light performance, that’s less of a drawback than it might seem. A suitably retro hot-shoe flash is sold separately, as is a detachable viewfinder, but the latter only works with the fixed-length 17mm lens.
Most of the compromises, though, have been pulled off successfully. Selecting image modes via an LCD menu feels odd at first on a camera that evokes the pre-digital era, but most adjustments can be made using controls that feel reassuringly mechanical. Shutter speed and aperture are set using two scroll wheels on the back of the camera, while on the top plate, a dial selects the shooting mode and a small button provides a convenient way to adjust exposure compensation. Delving more deeply into the menus is relatively painless thanks to an intuitive interface and a combination tilt-scroll wheel that speeds up navigation. The smaller buttons on the back, like the exposure and focus lock controls, are slightly fiddly, but still eminently usable.
I am, you may have gathered, smitten with the E-P1. I wish it was a couple of hundred pounds cheaper and I wouldn’t mind a built-in viewfinder, but even so, I’m tempted. Would I sell my current camera to pay for it? Not quite. There are times when I’ll want the full SLR experience, but I’m sure that if I do take the plunge, the SLR will be spending a lot more time in the cupboard. The Olympus E-P1 is a serious camera with a sense of style, and there aren’t too many of them.
Specs:
Dimensions: 121 x 70 x 35mm (body only)
Weight: 335g (body only)
12.3-megapixel Live MOS Sensor
TruePic V image processor
Built-in IS with max. 4 EV steps efficiency
Adapter for all ZUIKO DIGITAL & OM lenses
Face Detection and Shadow Adjustment Technology
20 shooting modes (5 exposure modes, i-Auto mode, 14 scene modes)
HD Movie with stereo sound featuring depth of field and Art Filters
Multi Exposure function
Art Filters can be applied to RAW images
HDMI TV interface
Level gauge
Hi-Speed USB 2.0 interface
Three frames per second with sequential shooting (max 14 in RAW mode)
ISO 100-6400 for wide-ranging sensitivity
Versatile bracketing functions for white balance and exposure
Simultaneous writing of RAW and JPEG
SD memory card (SDHC compatible)
High-speed data writing and lossless RAW compression for quick processing
7.6cm HyperCrystal LCD
Sample shot. showing grainy film effect:
Source: Hands-on: The smart, retro Olympus E-P1 [Wired UK]
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