Digital Camera: Olympus Pen E-P2 Review

Updated with an electronic viewfinder and a tweak or two, is the latest Olympus Pen still a worthy buy?

It was not that long ago that I reviewed the Olympus’ Pen E-P1 Micro Four Thirds camera at Digital Camera Review: Olympus Pen E-P1 and at the time, I was pretty much enamoured with the looks and general picture quality of the camera, though it did have it’s flaws, chief of which was the lack of an optical viewfinder and a pop-up flash.

With Panasonic’s release of its Micro Four Thirds entry, the DMC-GF-1, which had a pop-up flash and an add-on electronic viewfinder (EVF), the Pen was starting to look a little less attractive, although it still is a much better-looking camera.

Well, perhaps realising this, Olympus has released the Pen E-P2 just less than a year after launching the E-P1, this time with an add-on EVF.

Styling and features

The E-P2 is practically a twin of the E-P1 — the body shape and button layout remain completely unchanged from the E-P1, in fact. The one major change in styling is that the E-P2 comes in a black finish by default instead of the brushed aluminium look of the E-P1.

Obviously, it’s a matter of taste, but I still like the brushed metal look of the E-P1 over the black of the E-P2.

Nevertheless, the E-P2 is still a handsome camera to look at and oozes that retro appeal that I like so much.

The other major difference is of course, the built-in accessory port on the back, just below the flash hotshoe — much like the one on the Panasonic DMC-GF-1 (although it’s not compatible — I tested it), the accessory port accepts an EVF that slides right on to the flash hotshoe.

Familiar: The control layout of the Pen E-P2 is the same as its
predecessor and should be familiar to compact camera users.

The EVF is not identical to the GF-1’s however — the E-P2 has a much higher resolution 1.44-million dot EVF (that’s 800 x 600-pixels x RGB) compared to the 202,000-dot add-on EVF of the DMC-GF-1.

The EVF is hinged and can be tilted upwards so you can use it even when shooting at low angles.

Overall, I quite like the EVF although it would have been better to have a sensor on it to detect when your eye is there and have the camera auto-switch between the EVF and the built-in Live View LCD.

As it is I sometimes wanted to look through the EVF and realised I had forgotten to press the switchover button.

Everything that the E-P1 had is right there in the E-P2 as well so I won’t dwell too much on it since you can check the review for the details.

It’s worth mentioning that the E-P2 has two exclusive Art filters — Cross Processing and Diorama.

The Cross-processing Art filter mimics an old film processing technique of using the wrong chemicals with slide film, thus producing strange, otherworldy colours.

However, it’s the Diorama Art filter that really caught our fancy — this filter adjust the colour and selectively blurs the final image to produce an image that really looks like a shot of a miniature diorama.

It’s a bit difficult to explain. but check out the photos to see what I mean — sure it’s gimmicky. but I can immediately see that there are some shots which would really look quite funky when using this filter.

Flip up: the add-on EVF for the Pen E-P2 can be flipped up to allow
you to use it even when the camera is low down on the ground

Picture quality

In terms of picture quality, our tests show that the E-P2 produces image quality much like its sibling, in other words, good exposure and sharpness at low ISO settings.

Again, image quality is noticeably better than any compact camera on the market, thanks to the larger sensor used in the Micro Four Thirds system and generally better optics on the E-P2 than most compact cameras.

When compared against other modern DSLRs, the E-P2 exhibits a little more noise reduction (and consequently slightly less detail) than DSLRs with larger sensors.

I can confirm that the autofocus performance has not really been improved since the E-P1 — it’s still generally slower, than say, the DMC-GF-1, but if you grew up with manual focus like I did, the E-P2 performs more than adequately in the autofocus department.

It’s just a matter of understanding the limitations and working within them.

The situation is much the same in the high ISO department — noise is generally very well controlled, with practically noiseless results from ISO 100 to 400, and still good results at ISO 800 with a tad of detail loss due to noise reduction.

ISO 1600 is still usable but there is an obvious loss of detail as the noise reduction is pretty strong at this point and at ISO 3200 and ISO 6400, the NR gives up and leaves much of the noise in.

Video performance is much the same as well and produced 720p videos with reasonable (but not outstanding) sharpness but with excellent audio quality and in stereo too.

There’s also a focus tracking feature now which allows you to lock on to a subject in continuous focus mode and have the camera follow the subject as long as it’s within the frame.

Audio of the autofocus servo motors is still captured in continuous AF mode, but this time there is a bit of a fix — the E-P2’s accessory port can accept an add-on that gives you a stereo microphone input although you’ll have to first take off the EVF if it’s connected.

Not a perfect solution, but it’s better than having your videos having a constant “gerk-gerk” sound when the autofocus activates.

Conclusion

So the real question is whether the E-P2 is a worthy upgrade to the E-P1 — in a word, no.

Unless you absolutely must have an electronic viewfinder, the E-P2 is not a major enough upgrade over the E-P1 that you should run out and replace your current E-P1.

If you’re a new buyer however, and if it comes down to a choice between the E-P1 and E-P2, I’d say go for the E-P2 if you can afford it.

Having said that, however, you should also be seriously looking at the Panasonic DMC-GF-1 as a possible alternative.

The E-P2 has a much nicer build quality, a higher-quality EVF, stereo video recording and some nifty Art filters, while the GF-1 has faster autofocus and a built-in flash.

Pros: Nice EVF; great styling.

Cons: Not many new features over the E-P1.

Digital camera with interchangeable lens 

Manufacturer: Olympus Corp

Sensor: 12.3-megapixels (4,032 x 3,024-pixels) 

Lens: Micro Four Thirds interchangeable lens mount 

Shutter: 60sec – 1/4,000sec 

ISO range: 100 – 6400 

Exposure modes: iAuto, P, S, A, M 

Viewfinder: 3.0in external LCD 

Battery: 1,150mAh lithium-ion 

Storage: SDHC 

Interface: USB 2.0 

Other features: Built-in image stabilisation, accessory port for external EVF 

Dimensions (W x H x D): 12.1 x 7 x 3.6cm 

Weight: 335g




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