Olympus Silver w/ 14-42mm Lens Review, Compare, Prices, Discounts

Friday, November 20th, 2009 at 7:03 pm

Olympus Silver w/ 14-42mm Lens Review, Compare, Prices, Discounts.

Product: Olympus Silver w/ 14-42mm Lens

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This past holiday week-end I made the decision not to consume my Nikon DSLR with me on a 3 day road perambulate to Minneapolis. The majority of my time was spent wandering the Mall of America, and the E-P1 was an absolute delight the entire time.

This tiny camera makes me smile each time I utilize it!

If you don't care to word a long, winding review let me summarize it. The E-P1 doesn't have to execute any apologies for being little, its a stout fledged camera on its have merit.

Positives

* Sizable photo quality!

* Built in image stabilization (works stunning well too)

* Customizable and responsive interface/buttons

* HD movie mode with autofocus

* Indecent profile, doesn't acquire you noticed

* Serene. I'd say quieter than my old-fashioned rangefinders and design more mild than my DSLR's

Could be better

* Battery life

* Perhaps almost too customizable (glorious pleasurable learning curve) . Retain the manual handy!

I'm not a people shooter and certainly not a "street" shooter but my week-end was spent at the Mall of America, which is vast but all in doors. It was an arresting challenge. I found that although I fumbled with the interface and settings a bit, it became very piquant and almost mesmerizing to shoot publicly with the E-P1. It never drew attention, not once, where as I saw people clearing out from the sure DSLR guys like fish around a barracuda in the reef.

Lens: My only lens is the 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6, which doesn't sound too lively. However in practice it has been a enormous general utility lens that has rendered quite nicely, showing nice resolution and sharpness. I can only anticipate what the E-P1 will do with a quality, wide aperture prime. I'm up in the air about my next go, but the 50mm f/2 determined looks tempting. But then again it would be huge to try OM mount too! Arg....

Auto-Focus: I've read some questions about the auto-focus performance of this camera, but in normal operation haven't gawk an deliver yet. Granted I haven't tried to shoot a basketball game or dance recital yet so purchase this with a grain of salt. For my people shooting in the mall the AF performance has been astonishing and plot on. When I've gone to outdoor settings or even objective trying to snap something speedily from my car, I've found that the autofocus is quite a ways leisurely my D90. I judge it is valid world snappy, but it is probably a step slower to focus than any DSLR on the market. Not saying that's a abominable thing, some worth brilliant.

Sensor: The sharpness I observe from this camera is well beyond what I expected, so there may be something to the talk that Olympus removed the strong anti-alias filtering most DSLR's are plagued with. The jpg results thus far haven't required any post process sharpening and the Olympus color engine is a breath of novel air in my view.

Handling: Coming develop a DSLR will perform you pick a microscopic time to secure mature to the dissimilarity. Getting archaic to shooting with a LiveView demonstrate will also recall some getting ragged to. There isn't a front/rear two wheel control system as I'm passe to with the D90, but there are two principal controls for manual shooting and they can both be worked while shooting one handed. Very nice form! The buttons and functions are all fully customizable but seek information from to be nestled up with the manual a wee bit to do it. All in all composing from the LiveView LCD became very natural and fluid after a day. High marks to Olympus in designing such a usable system. The only thing I quiet have to figure out is a button to disable auto-focus so I can go fully manual.

Results: The bottom line to any camera is what it can get. The E-P1 is not a D700, A900 or 5DII. Those are different kinds of cameras that excel at higher ISO and coarse resolutions. What the E-P1 is to me is a system reliable of going toe-to-toe with any DX sensor system on the market in terms of deliverable results. No it doesn't shoot 8 frames per second. Again not that kind of camera.

This is a practical camera whose size and manufacture factor design it usable in places that larger cameras wouldn't work as well or possibly not at all. I'm seeing very detailed and moving results up to ISO 1,250. After years of shooting 35mm, DSLR and even huge format I'd have to say this is the most fun I've had with any camera I've owned. Its a camera guy's camera that the beginner can employ as well.

First a limited background. I have a couple of other SLRs and was mainly looking for something to give me finish to SLR quality files but in a considerably smaller physical package. A couple of downsides you should already be aware of from the product description.:

1. There is no pop-up flash. Not a spot for me, I don't ever exhaust them anyway (your mileage may vary) .

2. There is no viewfinder. Again not a jam for me, got aged to that very hastily.

Now some observations from having obsolete the camera:

- The sensor image quality is helpful. Dynamic range is at SLR quality. Noise levels up to and including ISO 800 is very shapely. ISO 1600 has a bit more noise than the Rebel XSI (also 12mp) with the noise increasing relative to competitors from there.

- The user interface is intuitive. I stale mostly Aperture Priority and Manual and found it easy to consume. Stuff in the menus were also easily found. Changing the settings were at times enthralling (like ISO) because of the smaller buttons, but given the camera's itsy-bitsy size its something I could forgive

- Its heavy, almost as heavy as a basic, entry level DSLR. Now the lens is light as a feather, however I feel a lot of heaviness comes because of the design quality of the camera, which is superb

- The RAW processing software that comes with the camera is useless. The interface is snide and the stability even worse. Wait for your current RAW processing software to add help and employ that.

The deal breakers:

- The kit lens is tiresome. Really plain. So uninteresting in fact that I found the system to not be very useful when the light levels got gross or you were indoors. Now this could easily be fixed by having a series of snappily pancake lenses, which I beget are coming, but sadly they aren't here yet.

- The auto focus is plain and unreliable, especially indoors. I found the AF to be very dull and borderline frustrating. Again, this was mostly indoors and in vulgar light levels, so a faster lens may alleviate the hiss.

Overall, this is a wonderful originate for Olympus and once the system is fleshed out a bit more (with lots of those hastily pancake primes at various focal lengths) I may think it again. However with the little lens selection available today, its not for me. You need to figure out if you can live with the kit lens (or the 17mm f/2.8 prime) while waiting for more lenses to near out for yourself.

I had been considering replacing my Leica d-lux 3 with the d-lux 4 when the EP-1 news came out. I immediately sold the d-lux 3 and ordered my EP-1. It is a diminutive larger than I was hoping, but out of the box, the first results were extraordinary, RAW format on a par with my nikon d-90 RAW, requiring very small post-production. Feels safe in the hand, responsive and swiftly auto-focus and great more satisfying to exercise than the leica - which I loved. Initial results in RAW mighty better than the leica, which was always unprejudiced a diminutive noisy.

This is a top notch camera, that I hope will continue to issue results. The only unusual drawback for me is that photoshop CS4 doesn't recognizethe Olympus Raw Format (ORF) . I have to go through Olympus software to convert, which severely disrupts my work perambulate, and the software is listless and clunky. Shooting JPGs alongside Raw in case I need the results faster.

If they accept the plugin updated soon, I'll be over the moon.

Very satisfied with this consume.

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