We went to France for a week or so at the end of August 2009. Starting near Bergerac in the Dordogne then in the Lot et Garonne and finally in the Gers we were going to be in the best landscape in south-west France, so what camera to take? What better than the Olympus E-P1, my latest acquisition, for an extended test of its capabilities.
The E-P1 is a Micro Four Thirds camera styled after the famous Olympus Pen series. If Micro Four Thirds is new to you, check out my piece on it earlier in the blog. Basically it is a system that allows for cameras no larger than big compacts to have a large sensor (half the effective size of a full-frame 35 mm camera) and interchangeable lenses. Currently there are four models available. Two of them, Panasonic G1 and GH1, look like small digital SLRs. The E-P1, first available in the UK in June 2009, now has a competitor – the Panasonic GF1 that is identical in size. Since I have a Panasonic G1 on which the GF1 is based, I will discuss the key differences.
I’ve no doubt that the E-P1 will be bought in large quantities by people, mainly women I think, who want a grown-up compact camera with an attractive design that does something special “out of the box”. True, the E-P1 is quite expensive at just under £700 in the UK with the 14-42 mm kit lens but the Canon G11 is pushing towards that price at £570. What the EP-1 does is quite special. The lens, 28-84 mm equivalent, is crisp with hardly any distortions or vignetting throughout the range. The sensor produces good files up to and including ISO 1600 and the sensor-based image stabilisation means that shots at 1/8 second can be unblurred. The combination of these two means that low-light shots (1/8 at f3.5 and ISO 1600) are entirely possible and you can also freeze motion using the 1/4000 second shutter speed. The USP is that the firmware that produces the jpeg pictures is arguably the best in the business. The default settings produce prints up to 13.5 x 10.8 inches at 300 dpi with slightly enhanced saturation and contrast producing a punchy image with high definition. There are 19 scene modes and 6 “art filters” to play with. There’s also HD video with stereo sound at 1280 x 720 or standard VGA video at 640 x 480. A lot of users will leave the camera in “intelligent auto” mode but complete photographic control is available.
Professional reviewers have so far compared the E-P1 to a digital SLR because it inherits much of the culture of the dSLR but it is of course a hybrid. To my mind it has very little of the SLR about it. If we’re talking pro SLRs, it’s large heavy bodies with optical viewfinders and generally large heavy lenses. Taking a decent set of that stuff out probably means two camera bodies, three to five lenses, flash(es), tripod(s) and maybe laptop. It’s at least 10 kilos. In fact, for me it’s probably more because my main system is Canon but my backup is Fuji which means Nikon lenses. While this is my equipment of choice at home or in the studio I’ve very seldom taken any of it on holiday or day trips. The gap between that and the compacts (see earlier) was filled by a Samsung GX10 and two lenses bought as a kit but I do now think that m4/3 is the way forward particularly as I can use so many of my old manual-focus lenses on this format. So I’m going to look at the E-P1 as a very versatile grown-up compact camera.
Not having a viewfinder of any kind, I do rather miss being able to move the E-P1 to my eye but I’ve found that I can visualise the shot, set the zoom to an approximate position and then do the final framing holding the E-P1 quite close to my body. I have to use glasses for this but holding the camera about 6 inches from the eyes with elbows tucked into my chest is a good arrangement. Conversely I use the two non-viewfinder compacts (Fuji F31 and Panasonic TZ6) much more at arms length – I’ve no idea why! It would be nice to have a viewfinder. (The new Panasonic GF1 has an optional one but with lowish resolution and a price tag of £199 it seems quite easy to resist). I don’t think the lack of a viewfinder is very important except when focusing manually but the option for zooming the display is very useful there. Neither do I think that the fairly low resolution LCD (230,000 dots versus the 460,000 common on other cameras) is a drawback. It’s clear enough for me. But I do wish that there was an articulated LCD as in the E-330 so that I could use it as a waist level finder and shield it from the light but I appreciate that this would have increased both size and price.
One thing that it is not the class-leader in is speed of focusing. In fact it is significantly slow if all the focus points are used and/or continuous focus is set. Single-point focus speeds it up to an average performance in good light. It does of course help if you point the focus point at something with high contrast at the same distance as you want to focus to. I’m expecting Olympus to address the focusing speed and I would imagine that this can be improved by new firmware since the Panasonic G1, using the same sensor and also when using the Olympus kit lens is a great deal faster.
As with a dSLR there is the expected control of common parameters. Nothing is missing and there are many personalizations that can be made in the menus. It is also possible to use a setting to appear to enhance the dynamic range of a shot. This is no better or no worse than other manufacturer’s implementations but I think it is something that is best done in post-processing preferably using a tool like Lightroom. The E-P1 meters accurately and is generally accurate with automatic white balance. In fact as a would-be compact camera it is very good at its default settings.
It’s been said by some reviewers that the image quality of the E-P1 is not as good as that of the Panasonic G1. I have both and it’s my view that this is not the case and that the raw image quality is if anything identical as one would expect from images made by the same sensor. I think reviewers might have been confused by using Adobe Camera Raw. It is better to look at the G1 raw files with SilkyPix and the E-P1 raw files using Olympus Master 2. Another good test is to print raw images using Qimage Studio.
The jpeg images at the default settings from the E-P1 are excellent.
We were having lunch at Le Vieux Logis at Tremolat in France and Didi my wife asked me to take a photo of one of the tasting courses so she could reproduce it. This is from the E-P1 set on iAuto (and cropped). For those foodies amongst you this is a lobster ravioli on which are some cepes in a glazed sauce and a fresh vegetable bruschetta. Tremolat is on the River Dordogne more-or-less between Bergerac and Sarlat and Le Vieux Logis serves its gastronomic tasting menu on weekdays for lunch at 38 Euros a head. It’s remarkable value for money. Don’t think I do this every day! It was my Birthday.
The E-P1 does not have a built-in flash and this is a drawback. Its competitor the Panasonic GF1 does have one but it is a puny thing with a guide number of 6m at ISO 100 (half the strength of a flash on a good compact but definitely better than no flash at all). There is a “matching” flash available for the E-P1 that mounts in the hotshoe but at £150 and no head movement it is really only for design victims. The Olympus FL36 (the earlier version of the 36R) can be had cheaply, the head moves in two directions and zooms, and it is matched to the software in the E-P1. Being largish and black it looks a bit silly on the E-P1 but it works well.
The E-P1 is not without its design faults either. The tripod bush is not below the centre of the lens which makes if difficult to do good panoramas. The output connectors are on the right side of the camera where the leads could interfere with the hand gripping the camera. The rotate-and-click dial is fiddly and it is easy to rotate it without realising, thus changing a setting on the menu. There is however a very useful thumb wheel that duplicates the main wheel. Set against these niggles there are some very useful things. The LCD display is configurable to display what you want and the Info button will move through the pages you choose. One of these is a page that indicates the horizontal and vertical level of the camera and when it is level in both directions the indicators turn green. You can see histograms, rule of thirds squares, measures and much information. Best is the interactive display of the most important shot settings called the Super Control Panel; it is immensely useful and if you don’t want all the information you can just call up the Function menus. Some of these are of course present in other cameras but Olympus does it best.
There are differences between the processing engines in the Panasonic and Olympus cameras. The latest version of the Panasonic Venus engine handles digital noise much better than before but at the expense of some fine detail. Olympus leaves you with some of the noise and more detail. My G1 produces less good results at ISO 1600 than the E-P1 does. The E-P1 goes up to ISO 6400 and the G1 to ISO 3200. I don’t regard either as usable, though always worth a try for those shots that you otherwise would miss. I have a suspicion that the base ISO of the E-P1 is really 200 and that 100 is achieved through software. Therefore we should be comparing ISO results with the G1 on that basis and there isn’t a lot in it.
The E-P1 takes what it calls HD video at 1280 x 720 in stereo sound without the provision for an external microphone. My main experience of video on a stills camera is with my Canon 5D Mk II so I’m a complete snob in that respect. The E-P1 does well enough, very much better than the results from any of my compact cameras (as you would expect). It’s honestly not within my expertise to judge the quality.
My E-P1 usually hangs off an adjustable lanyard round my neck and it’s pretty much a take-everywhere camera as a result. The 14-42 mm lens that came with it is usually attached as it’s a useful range and good for a “kit” lens. Because I like using it so much I would like to tell you that I take it out with me most days. But I don’t. What I do take is my Ricoh GX100 that I described in the Compact Cameras write-up earlier. This little Ricoh is noisier and less in every way than the E-P1 but it has a nice 24-70 mm equivalent lens, a built-in flash and a primitive but working electronic viewfinder. If I’m unsure of what I might encounter then the GX100 does it for me; maybe the Panasonic TZ6 might do the same but I like the control of the GX100. This then probably defines the E-P1 for me. It’s a lovely camera, works well, produces super shots, my wife loves to use it, it’s a “must” to take on holiday, but it is not an all-rounder. Most of the reviewers so far, even the ones that have panned it, would like to own an E-P1 and I suspect that many may have bought their review samples.
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