Quick Olympus E-P1 Hands On

Earlier today, I got a chance to have a photographers lunch with Derrick Story and Pinar Ozger. We talked about all sorts of things: the economy, jobs, and other creative endeavors. But you probably don’t want to hear about that. No. You probably already know that Derrick has had his mitts on a review sample of the Olympus E-P1 Digital PEN and you want to hear about the camera already. Since I did indeed get to play with the camera for a bit, I can certainly oblige.

First things first. In hand, the E-P1 is most definitely not a compact camera. It’s not shaped or sized like one. On the other hand, it is most definitely not a SLR of any kind. It’s size and shape is somewhere in between the two. It’ll go into a jacket pocket, as long as you don’t have a huge lens on it. It’ll go into a purse or small bag. It won’t go into your jeans pocket.

Let me try to describe this a different way. Holding the E-P1 is a lot like holding a rangefinder. Pinar noted that it felt very similar in size to her Leica Ms, though it was a bit lighter. To me, it feels nice and solid in hand. Solid like it was made out of a single chunk of metal. Solid like how the new Apple MacBook Pros feel compared to other laptops. In short, it feels good.

In operation, everything works pretty much as one would expect. I didn’t have any issues poking about its control set. In less time that it takes to write this, I put the camera into Av program mode, set my aperture to a reasonable setting, sorted out exposure compensation, and snapped off a few shots. The schnick-schnick of the shutter (yes, there’s a real mechanical shutter in there) is super subdued and would be hardly noticeable if you didn’t hear the focus confirmation beep going off before the shutter tripped. Shut off that beep and you’ll be good to go almost everywhere that requires a bit of discretion with sound levels.

Speaking of focus operation, much has been said about the fact that contrast detection autofocus is typically slower than the phase-detection systems in SLRs. And more has been written about the fact that the E-P1’s focus system isn’t as fast as the zippy system in the Panasonic GH1. Not having had my hands on a GH1, I can’t address that. But what I can say is that autofocus speed is reasonable. It’s not as fast as the autofocus system on my D700 bodies, but it’s a heck of a lot faster than any compact camera I’ve used. Faster is always better, but in the time I played with it, I didn’t have any complaints. I should note, however, that I didn’t try to take pictures of kids or pets zipping around at high speed.

If you need to drop back to plan B, manual focusing works like a charm. When you turn the focusing ring, the viewfinder zooms in letting you judge critical focus. You can move your zoomed view around the photo with the control pad if you’re not in the right place. And, the focus ring (at least on the zoom lens on this review unit) has a nice feel. It’s not so sensitive that you’d have a hard time settling in on just the right focus. With a bit of practice full-on manual focus should be easy as pie, if you’re into that kind of thing.

What about shutter lag? I didn’t notice any. In manual focus mode, I didn’t perceive any time between when I fully pushed the shutter button and when I heard the shutter release. When using autofocus, the shutter releases right after the confirmation beep. Any lag that people run into in day to day operation will probably be from autofocus acquisition. (See earlier disclaimer that I didn’t shoot any running kids or pets during my brief hands-on!)

For our lunch, we had plenty of sunshine and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. There was so much Sun that I actually got a sunburn. Ouch. In other words, it was a perfect test to see if the display was usable in full on daylight. The E-P1 passed with flying colors. I didn’t have a problem using the display at all. Furthermore, while 230K pixels might be a low resolution spec these days, I didn’t notice it being a problem either. In the slightly more reasonable lighting level under a roof, I found the display to be quite colorful and easy to use. I think this is one of those cases where more resolution would be nice, but the display as-is is perfectly usable.

After playing around with the camera for a bit and talking with Derrick about his experiences with it, I think I only have two open questions left. The first is how it performs in low light conditions. Derrick posted a set of photos on Flickr showing various ISO settings, and the results look promising. I intend on printing his sample images out at 8X10 and 12X18 sometime soon and see how they look. I’m still curious, however, how the E-P1 will to perform in more challenging lighting conditions. Stage lighting, for example.

The final question is how much latitude there will be in the RAW files when working with them in something like Lightroom or Aperture. Right now, this is simply unknowable as neither Adobe Camera RAW or Aperture has support for this camera’s RAW files. Hopefully, there will be the same amount of malleability for highlight and shadow recovery as well as general exposure adjustments as what we’ve become accustomed to from digital SLRs. Obviously, I’m not expecting D700 levels of plasticity, but I am interested to see how much latitude there will be in practice.

Let’s cut to the chase. Would recommend the E-P1 as a general purpose all-around enthusiast camera based on what I experienced today? The answer is a totally unqualified yes, especially if you’re looking for something smaller than an SLR. Put it this way, cameras like the Canon G10 are no longer of interest at all to me at all. Do I want to replace my Nikon D700 bodies with the E-P1 for my professional work? Ha! No way. Do I want a Digital PEN for all those times where the bulk or noise of my Nikon or Canon gear is too much? Oh yes. Yes indeed.

Many thanks to Derrick Story for the chance to spend a bit of time with this camera!