Olympus EP-1 Review
Feel
The moment you first pick up an EP-1 you get an immediate feeling of how solid it is. It feels like a good chunk of metal, not excessively heavy, but you're certainly aware of it's presence. Just to make this clear I'm reviewing the EP-1 (hereafter the Pen) with the 17mm lens and matched viewfinder. The viewfinder itself is worth talking about, it is big and lovely to look through, I haven't had any trouble seeing the brightlines as yet and they give a reasonable representation of what you're getting. Obviously parallax is an issue for anything terribly close, but this isn't a major factor.
The first thing that irked me about the design was the strap, it's a nice enough strap but Olympus are using those little D-ring type things to attach the strap to. This leads to a constant jingle-jangle as you move the camera around and it wasn't long before I decided to take them off and switch to a single loop strap. Since this is only connected on one side of the camera, I can loop it over my head with my arm through and let it hand down my side, also it means if I'm wearing a suit jacket it will sit into the inside pocket (not inside it, but enough to take the weight off).
All in all I find it a very comfortable camera to have on me, it's small enough that I can keep it round my neck all day and not be too worried about it, but equally it's big enough that when holding it, it feels like a “proper” camera. In an ideal world I would love to have the finder built into the camera, but there is no feasible way of doing this with such a big finder, especially one that only covers the 17mm range!
Image Quality
I owned a G9 previously, and was quite happy with the image quality when used within the limits of it's ability. I'm happy (though not surprised) to say that the Pen blows it out of the water. There's plenty written up on the internet already about the image quality so I won't dwell on it. Suffice to say that it has reached a point where for me it is “good enough”. Obviously what's good enough for me will not necessarily be good enough for you. But if I can print out a 10x8 at ISO 1600 with very little visible noise (and mostly luminance rather than chroma from what I can see) then I'm happy. There should be enough literature out there now in the form of reviews to see whether you think it can do what you need it to when it comes to image quality. If you're not sure, then go to a shop that has one and take test shots with your memory card.
Autofocus
It's not the quickest in the book, it certainly feels slower than the G1 and roughly similar to my G9. It is however quick enough for most situations. Focus speed seems to be markedly better on the 17mm than the zoom, and indeed the Panasonic 14-45mm seems to be quicker than the Olympus zoom. What this tells me is that we have not yet reached the plateau for this type of autofocussing, and I'm confident that future firmware updates and new lens designs will improve this. I really would not recommend the continuous autofocus, as it's truly disconcerting to have the lens constantly seeking back and forth, it also doesn't seem to be terribly reliable. The single af/manual option is nice but the focussing ring only needs a tiny nudge to suddenly zoom the image to 7x magnification, I really would like the sensitivity on that to be lowered slightly!
Menu and Customisation
The menu system on the Pen is both one of it's greatest features and it's biggest flaw. Let me explain, the menu should be familiar to anyone that has used an Olympus E system DSLR, but there are certain things that you'd expect to have access to more easily, the most notable of these being the Super High Quality JPEG option. Even following AP's review where this was mentioned, it took me a couple of minutes to dig it out of the menu.
On the positive side the menu system allows for a huge amount of customisation. Like your manual focus to go clockwise, anticlockwise? It's up to you. As it's a focus by wire arrangement you can decide which way you want to turn the manual focus ring. The function button is another thing that I've immediately changed, it has several possibilities such as one touch white balance (one of the most useful), to depth of field preview, or how I have mine set, to turn the screen backlight off. One thing I did think was that I wish they had two Fn buttons, as it would be nice to have two of those options. Although it's not quite the same, the left button on the directional pad (normally assigned to AF mode) can also be assigned to one of the possibilities from the Fn button. It's not a perfect solution (especially if you like to change you focusing mode often!) but it's nice to have it.
Basically there is a huge amount of tinkering you can do in the menu, and it's really worth getting to grips with it early on. A little while slogging through and finding out what you can change will make the difference between you thinking how to use the camera, and just being able to use it.
Art Filters
I bought the Pen thinking “I wish they didn't put these sort of gimmicks on cameras”, I have to say that my feelings on this have changed. With a working knowledge of photoshop (or similar) it would be easy to reproduce the effects of them, and indeed have more control over the final image. However I've found that when shooting RAW and JPEG I'll often switch to one of the filters just to see what will happen, safe in the knowledge that if it all goes wrong I've always got the RAW to fall back on. I've actually been very pleased with some of the shots that have come from the grainy black and white setting, and if you've been shooting without the screen, seeing these images later is akin to getting film back from the lab, you were never 100% sure what you would get, and when you're pleasantly surprised it's a great feeling.
Things I would change
Most of the things I would change about this camera could be accomplished in firmware, and I hope that Olympus decides to implement some of them.
There should be an option to switch off the power light, it's not terribly subtle in dark conditions having this glowing green circle.
Also I would love for there to be a way to confirm focus when using the viewfinder, without having to rely on the “Beep” that the camera makes. A better solution would be to have the Power Light programmable to flash when focus was attained.
As well as being able to set the AF mode to do different functions like the Fn button, I'd like it if the same functionality were extended to the rest of the 4 way controller. I very rarely find myself changing the drive mode, and if I could set the WB to function as one touch WB I'd be a happy man.
Conclusion
Honestly, I think I'm in love. This is the first digital camera I have had an emotional relationship with. My Ricoh GR1v, my Mamiya C330f and my Canon EOS 3 have all been relationships as far as I'm concerned, they really were more than the sum of their parts. I'm pleased to finally find a digital to share my life with!
Disclaimer:
A lot of this was written under the influence of insomnia/swine flu/alcohol, so I take no responsibility for any of it making sense. On the other hand, if there's anything more you'd like to know or you feel I've left something out (I've left lots out!) then let me know and I'll try to answer!
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