Here’s Part 1 and Part II of the review, in case you’ve missed it.
Part III deals with the important aspect of image quality. I can confidently say right now that most photographers will not be disappointed with the E-P1.
All the images taken are shot using the Program mode unless otherwise indicated. This was done to see how well the E-P1′s metering system fares and how the image processing engine handles jpeg images.
ISO Noise
It seems that everyone is engrossed with the ISO race after the megapixel race tapered off, while it’s understandable, I don’t really think they’re that big of an issue nowadays with larger sensors as there are a lot of details retained with most sensors these days, it only boils down to how good (or bad) the noise processing engine handles the captured noise that will make or break the final image.
The Olympus E-P1 has a smaller than APS-C/35mm sensor, so it is expected to have more noise than its larger sensor counterparts, but to be honest, the noise discrepancy isn’t as great as it used to be. There are a lot of details retained at high-ISO which makes ISO 1600 more than usable in most circumstances. The expanded 3200 and 6400 is still respectable, though not really recommended, but thankfully, the good monochrome modes of the EP-1 makes good use of those high ISO settings.
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ISO 1600
ISO 1600
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For web-sized use or small prints up to 5R, the noise at ISO 1600 is very usable and when viewing the inkjet photo printouts, the details are well retained just like most DSLR images I’ve printed in the past. Again, it’ll depend on your requirements whether or not these level of noise is acceptable.
Here’s a set of 100% crops at different ISO settings.
Full Scene
ISO 100
ISO 200
ISO 400
ISO 800
ISO 1600
ISO 3200
ISO 6400
As you can see, details are starting to soften due to noise reduction at around ISO 800 while artifacts start creeping in at the same ISO range. Saturation and contrast is also affected as the ISO moves up, but that’s common and standard for almost all cameras anyway. Even the ISO 6400 is very usable for non-critical work, banding isn’t very offensive either. This is quite a feat for a small 4/3 sensor and the resolution of the sensor is very high providing a lot of details, while the kit lens works splendidly in tandem with the sensor.
The noise reduction algorithm seems to be conservative, only the higher settings will produce offensive amount of smearing of details.
Below is a set of images at ISO 800 showing the different levels of in-cam noise reduction of the E-P1, starting with the full image view.
Noise Filter: OFF
Noise Filter: LOW
Noise Filter: STANDARD
Noise Filter: HIGH
In small prints or 640×480 web-sized images, the Standard and High noise filter settings would look pretty decent, but for most circumstances, it’s best to leave the Noise Filter in the Off or Standard setting, at the most to prevent excessive smudging of details at higher ISO.
Exposure
The Olympus E-P1′s evaluative and center-weighted metering modes proves to be effective and pretty accurate in most shooting environments except for high-contrast, back-lit scenes (which is a common problem for almost all cameras anyway). In overcast or subdued lighting, the exposure is very accurate and provides good color saturation and excellent skin tones at its default settings. Colors are nice and rich with the red/orange getting a little aggressive in saturation, but not to the point of clipping. The out-of-the-box images are pleasing and accurate with a balanced amount of sharpening present, which is great if you want to spend less time post-processing your RAW files.
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Scenes against a predominantly white background would underexpose a little, as expected.
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In the default settings, the contrast is pretty high (hence the pleasing images in overcast conditions) and you’ll see dynamic range limitations quite easily. The photo below was taken a few hours before sunset and the sky isn’t as bright as the photo depicts. Lowering the contrast adjustment to -2 retained a lot more details in the sky areas. The E-P1 also has a tendency to underexpose a little when faced with high contrast scenes, but rarely more than 2/3 of a stop.
Sharpness
With the default settings intact, the E-P1 produces good sharpness and detail rendering. Sharpening artifacts appear in high contrast, hard-edge scenes such as my son’s shirt in the photo below. Even with the Noise Filter turned off, some shadow details are lost, but overall, the E-P1 creates very high detail images. I’d assume that much can be improved when shooting RAW and a proper RAW converter, but unfortunately, I wasn’t supplied with the Olympus Master 2 software.
Add a proper dose of ACR and USM, the good amount of details become excellent.
White Balance
I’ll keep this part short. Auto WB works well in almost all conditions including tungsten lighting, with only some issues if small halogens are used. Overall, the E-P1′s Auto Wb and presets generally work just as well, if not better, than my DSLR.
Depth of Field
Sensor size affects depth-of-field and having a small sensor would mean that it’ll be more difficult to isolate objects from the background compared to an APS-C or 35mm sensor. The E-P1′s Micro 4/3 sensor would require a fairly long focal length in order to produce pleasing out-of-focus background compared to traditional DSLRs, especially if the subject cannot be placed near the lens’ closest focusing distance.
The examples below are taken with the kit lens at 42mm, f/5.6 at its closest focusing distance. With small subjects (<3″) the separation is decent but not satisfying. When it comes to portraits, it’s very difficult to isolate the subject from the background when shooting head/shoulder framing even when the subject/background distance is increased.
Fortunately, the E-P1′s kit lens does produce a nice and smooth out-of-focus bokeh.
Monochrome Images
It may be strange to have a dedicated section about monochrome images but I personally love shooting mono and the E-P1 delivers as good as out-of-the-cam monochromatic images closest to film that I’ve seen in quite a while.
My current DSLR allows the same amount of parameter adjustments as the E-P1, but the DSLR’s noise is rather low and when I bump the ISO up, the noise pattern doesn’t really look like film. The E-P1”s ISO noise pattern looks very consistent with slide film, in my opinion, and with almost no tweaking in-camera, they look very punchy and detailed. The prints look really great when printed on glossy paper.
I can replicate the tonality of the E-P1 B&W images on my DSLR, but being a DSLR with a low-pass filter, I usually have to go sharpen them anyway even at its highest in-cam sharpening setting, which makes shooting B&W jpegs a bit pointless if I have to sharpen it in post anyway. The E-P1 gives me great B&W without any fuss – and I love that.
Verdict
I’ll make it clear right now that this review is meant to provide you actual user’s experience without any preconceived bias for or against Olympus, the 4/3 system, nor the E-P1. If you’re a subscriber to my site or know me through photography forums, you know how excited I’ve been since the first leaked rumor about a retro camera from Olympus. I’ve been more than ready to buy the EP-1 mainly because of the form factor, prime lens availability and I trust Olympus cameras in terms of Zuiko optics.
Overall, I’d have to say I’m impressed with how well the optics, sensor, and processor works together to deliver really good image quality without going through RAW processing and post-processing sharpening. I’m not sure if the E-P1 has a low-pass filter, but the images are quite sharp without unsharp-masking (USM) applied, but improves greatly with USM added in post-processing.
It’s quite obvious that I’m very disappointed with how clunky the focusing system is, and I really don’t understand why anyone who have used a digital camera post 2005 will find the AF to be acceptable in speed and accuracy. If this was a $400-500 camera, then I’d accept that as a compromise, but not a $900 camera as that price range already ventured into the entry-level DSLR category and I don’t think the $400+ premium is worth the entry fee to own a retro digital camera.
The Olympus E-P1′s AF shortcoming is almost identical to the Sigma DP1/DP2, the price of the camera isn’t cheap, and having a major usability feature handicap an otherwise superb camera is a sad sight.
I’m not a big advocate of buying first-generation electronics or mechanical products, as most products inherently have bugs that aren’t sorted out while the manufacturer rushes to push the product out in the market. Most of the time, it’s the first-generation buyers who become beta-testers while manufacturers rectify and perfect everything in the second release. We’ve all seen that with cars, computers, phones, cameras, and so forth. So if I were you, I’d wait until Olympus comes up with a solution for the AF and upgrade the LCD as well. They’re relatively minor improvements with major benefits and should trickle into the next release. As a matter of fact, if they can fix the firmware to support AF assist from Olympus FL flashguns, then the usability of the E-P1 goes up several notches and I’ll rank it among the best cameras in the market overall.
I can very enthusiastically give the E-P1 a 9/10 if I’m basically judging it by its look and final photo output. However, just as we don’t rate a car by its engine alone, we can’t blindly praise the E-P1 without being aware that an auto-focus system is a critical part of a modern camera and the E-P1 fails to deliver on that point. Unless you’re buying an Epson RD-1, Leica M8, or a medium format back, you’d really expect a decent auto-focus system for a camera released in 2009, especially with a product so hotly anticipated by experienced photographers with practically zero competition in the market.
Keeping the AF and LCD issue in mind, I’d have to give the E-P1 a 7/10, which is still favorable, but a little disappointing.
If you can’t resist the uber good looks of the E-P1 and don’t really need a responsive camera, by all means, do purchase the dual-lens kit now. It’s a great camera with very unique appeal. However, if you rely on AF quite a bit and feel that $900 bucks is a lot of dough for an “incomplete” release, then I suggest you wait for an update from Olympus.
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About David L. Tong
EJ: Thanks for posting…. I've heard from many that the AF with Panasonic lenses are much faster on the E-P1, you might wanna give the 20mm Panasonic a try since it received really good reviews all over the net. :)
Beautifully written! I already have the the camera even before I read this, gave me a though but i think i'm still happy with the camera but would love for Olympus to have that firmware update for better AF or if they could even provide a flash for it that would maybe include the Af-assist lamp or something to improve on the AF.
Hi, I think the price in the Phil isn’t that far off from int’l prices, I think the camera is pretty good in value, the development of m43 isn’t cheap, neither is it a mere strip-down from standard 4/3 cameras, so i think the price is fair.
great review for the EP-1 sir. i’m having second thoughts on buying the camera. it’s waaaaay too pricey for me. but i like the design of a interchangeable lens compact camera. perfect for travel. as for the menu command design, i’m very much familiar with it since im an olympus user. hope olympus and axis global would lower the price…
Do you think this merits a minor re-write of the Verdict section, now that the AF performance has been improved somewhat with the new firmware? It's not a huge improvement, but it *is* noticeable IMHO with the 17/2.8 lens.
Update: 9/15/2009 – Olympus E-P1 Firmware Update Available.
Nice review! Thanks for sharing.
Regards,
clipping path
The numbers dont lie quote ?that discrepency is the 90% caused by the af seek to
infinity fault the engineers foolishly implimented
AF in certainly not the ep1s strong point , hopefully a firmware update can get the camera to not rack out to infinity at each button push, and perhaps be more sensitive to contrast as well.
But the af performance is not a deal breaker.
The weakest aspect on the ep1 , for me is the menu system , your criticisms of it were perfect
the ep1 is a fine machine, the camera is a joy to use and the af, while not the greatest certainly allows a user experence better than you suggest
i give the ep1 8.5 out of 10
otherwise your review was a great read , thanks
Hi Cosinaphile: Thanks for the comments.
As I mentioned repeatedly in my review (even highlighted it in red actually), the whole point of the AF issue that I have with the E-P1 is it's lack of AF assist. Whether or not it works is not the point, the point was, when compared to even a cheap p&s with an af light, it is an inexcusable shortcoming for a camera at this price point. The fact that cheap P&S cameras don't have an issue with low light focus locking due to the availability of an af assist is the point.
DPreview pretty much says exactly the same thing, the difference mainly is I don't have to be as "marketing-correct" in presenting my criticism of the E-P1's AF.
I never suggested that the E-P1 being inferior as a camera overall, as mentioned in my conclusion, I still like the camera A LOT and have told several experienced photographer friends to get one if they plan to use it for street and prime lenses most of the time.
Its just that for my usage, at least with the kit zoom lens, I can't live with the amount of AF mis-hits I get at night and low-light.
Olympus really needs to hire an English documentation team, it seems that all their manuals run through an automated Japanese-to-English software translator, which is a shame coz of the enormous amount of flexibility available in the system.
Again, thanks for the visit.
Having owned the ep-1 for over a month ,i can say with certanty that your criticism of the ep1s focusing ability is a bit extreme . I shoot indoors extensively in dim light and cannot replicate the poor experence you seem have had with the camera used for testing,
Your choice of a google screen as a focus test chart is also misleading and not indicitive of real world use . It would have been far better to set up a still life in a dimmed room with objects of various contrast to ses when focusinfg fell short of average for af systems of this type
with a similar reference camera for comparison.
Thanks for a good review!
Here's the reason why I don't bother reviewing video functions of cameras… Because of great videos like these… There's no way I can shoot video that well haha. Splendid stuff.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mU0QPPj2KEU
Here's the reason why I don't bother reviewing video functions of cameras… Because of great videos like these… There's no way I can shoot video that well haha. Splendid stuff.
<object width="560" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/mU0QPPj2KEU&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/mU0QPPj2KEU&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"></embed></object>
http://www.youtube.com/user/OlympusPen
Check out all the new adapters available!!!!
M42, Leica, Canon, Nikon, OM, Pentax K, Minolta/Sony etc etc
http://www.kindai-inc.co.jp/mount_novomicrofosa.h…
Thanks for the visit, fellow Dave…
I agree, I'm not sure what the eventual purpose of reviews are if people just keep giving positive comments just because they've bought it already and hide the flaws with one or two liners to justify its shortcomings.
In this day and age of high-quality products, it's actually more critical to write about the shortcomings than the expected output of a product anyway. Praising a camera for its good photo output is like giving credit to and ice cube for being cold.
Thanks for the visit, fellow Dave…
I agree, I'm not sure what the eventual purpose of reviews are if people just keep giving positive comments just because they've bought it already and hide the flaws with one or two liners to justify its shortcomings.
In this day and age of high-quality products, it's actually more critical to write about the shortcomings than the expected output of a product anyway. Praising a camera for its good photo output is like giving credit to ice for being cold.
Thank you for a FANTASTIC review rather than the usual poorly veiled sales pitches. I was ready to buy, but I agree with your conclusion on waiting for the second generation due to the poor auto-focus.
Jay: I think the Sigma DP1 still takes the cake for supreme AF failure on a modern camera hehe.
The EP-1 would do nicely with fast lenses, it's still leaps better than the Sigma.
Thanks for the review. Your comment about similar focus concerns to the DP1 was valuable to me. I sold me DP1 due to the hopeless way if hunted for focus. I think I shall keep waiting….
Evil, EVIL, EVIL!!!!!!! hahahahaha
Check this out… Rumoured EVF arrving?
Check this out… Rumoured EVF coming soon.
http://tinyurl.com/ldd3pe
"Want" pala not wants hehehe wrong grammar
David, the b/w images wants to make me weep :(
Here are some post-processed B&W. Stunning.
Please do click the images to view them large, they look much better.
<img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3022/3741736453_e497aa7849_m.jpg" width="180" height="240" alt="Olympus EP-1 " />
<img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3447/3742532338_366673c08e_m.jpg" width="240" height="180" alt="Olympus EP-1 " />
<img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2472/3742534502_4163b81bd8_m.jpg" width="240" height="180" alt="Olympus EP-1 " />
<img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2592/3742538502_7ede01b674_m.jpg" width="180" height="240" alt="Olympus EP-1 " />
<img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2542/3741746407_bbcf48f4a3_m.jpg" width="240" height="179" alt="Olympus EP-1 " />
<img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3424/3741749393_d5a0d78ec2_m.jpg" width="240" height="180" alt="Olympus EP-1 " />
<img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2432/3741751553_5ba1b9eee6_m.jpg" width="240" height="180" alt="Olympus EP-1 " />
<img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2510/3742547610_bbc2b94aff_m.jpg" width="240" height="180" alt="Olympus EP-1 " />
<img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2599/3742548792_a6b186621f_m.jpg" width="180" height="240" alt="Olympus EP-1 " />
Yohan: Unfortunately for me, indoors and night photography dominantes what I shoot :(
Crossing my fingers with the firmware solution…
Man, a 3-parter! You definitely put more work into your review than I did mine :) Great stuff, Dave. I totally agree about your findings, although I reached a different conclusion as far as suitability of the E-P1 for my purposes. Disappointing that we can't throw away our DSLRs just yet, but the E-P1 is still a breakthrough camera for me.
David, If a firmware update fixes this then I am getting one :)
Yohan: Unfortunately for me, indoors and night photography dominantes what I shoot :(
The EP-1 deserves a long review IMO, I like the camera and had really high expectations and frankly, i wasn't that disappointed with the exception of the AF.
Crossing my fingers with the firmware solution…
I really, really, really wish this is firmware-fixable… I still want one :(
John: You know how much I wanted this camera, right… Yes, it did drop an anvil and made me think twice. If it's only the LCD or even the wobbly lens, I would have still went through with the purchase. I shoot indoors and at night most of the time, not having AF is hard for me. If it's for a travel cam shooting sceneries and such, this'll be a gem to bring.
Didik: I sure hope they'll give it a try first. My expectations may not be the same as your friends' and if they're used to P&S focusing speed and don't mind the price tag, then the EP-1 is a really, really good camera to own.
Like I said in the review, I'm not bashing the EP-1 at all, I still love it but i won't spend my money on it right now and be envious when the corrected version comes out in the near future.
The EP-1 was a lot less disappointing for me than when I was considering the Sigma DP1 and the Ricoh R8 a couple of years back.
ive told my friends who were lined up for oly pen. and now theyre having second thoughts on having this as their side unit.
An interesting review… that sure have damped your initial lust. Still, for people who don't have an AF assist lamp in their cameras, the AF issue might be forgivable… but this is 2009 already – that should be a standard feature nowadays.
Kasama ako dun Didik :(
sa dami ng nagaabang ng oly pen. xD
always a good read.
Exactly pare!! Kudos for a well written and highly informative review. Thanks!!! :)