Digital Camera Review: Olympus Pen E-PL1

RETRO: The E-PL1 doesn't quite have the retro appeal of the
E-P1 and E-P2, but it's still reasonably appealing in design.

The E-PL1 is Olympus' perfect answer to all the criticism it received over the noteworthy but expensive E-P2.

A WHILE back, we reviewed the Olympus E-P2, an update to the retro-styled E-P1 — we loved the camera but thought it was pushing things a little bit in terms of pricing.

The problem is that while the E-P2 addressed some of the issues with the E-P1 (such as the lack of an electronic viewfinder), it added on quite a bit of money to the price, putting it firmly into a much higher-end category than most people were willing to get into.

Olympus was obviously aware of this criticism, as shortly after, they announced the E-PL1, the camera that goes much further in features and yet comes in at a little lower price too.

In the box

You’d think that for the price, Olympus would have removed a whole load of features from the E-PL1.

Well, believe it or not very little has been removed from the camera — the most significant losses are the input wheels that allowed you to navigate the menus and adjust the shutter and aperture. The screen is also a smaller 2.7in one (but with the same resolution as the E-P2) and you cannot record stereo audio when recording videos.

From what I understand, the reason for removing the input wheels was to make the interface more familiar to compact camera users.

Indeed, most users probably won’t miss it when navigating the menus but for people who use the manual exposure mode, it does make adjusting aperture and shutter a tad less intuitive.

Instead of rotating input wheels, you use the four-way direction pad for adjusting aperture and shutter in manual mode — Up/Down for shutter adjustment, Left/Right for aperture — not too bad, though not as elegant as the E-P2.

On the upside, Olympus has (finally) included a built-in pop-up flash, which is great — I don’t use flash much, but when I do, it’s something I’m really glad the E-PL1 offers.

Design-wise, the camera is more blocky than the E-P2 and certainly looks a little more plasticky (even though the front plate is made of aluminium). However it still retains much of the general design-cues and is roughly the same size.

REDESIGNED: The E-PL1's buttons have been tweaked
to look more like Olympus' consumer compact cameras.

There’s not much to look at in the front, but on the back the controls have been greatly simplified — apart from the missing input wheels, the number of buttons has also been greatly reduced and mirror the control scheme of Olympus’ compact digicams.

In use

In all the usual modes, the E-PL1 performs much like the E-P2, which means it works fine and the controls generally don’t get in the way of your shooting.

As far as I can tell, even the autofocus performs much the same as on the E-P2 — it’s not as fast as Panasonic’s GF1, but it’ll do in bright lighting. Just don’t expect to be able to take action shots in dim light, as the autofocus tends to struggle a little bit in such situations.

The E-PL1 we received was a pre-release version without the final firmware, but our impressions of the high ISO noise performance was similar to the E-P2. But we did get slightly sharper results, which apparently is due to a weaker anti-aliasing filter.

In fact, the E-PL1’s performance is so much like the E-P2 I just won’t repeat myself — just read our E-P2 review at Digital Camera Review: Olympus Pen E-P2 for more of the handling and performance.

What’s new however is a dedicated record button that falls right under the thumb — this button allows you to quickly engage video recording at any time in whatever mode, and you get continuous autofocus in video recording mode too.

PRESS THE RED BUTTON: The dedicated record button allows you to record videos anytime, and can also be customised to perform other functions.

The problem is, of course, the microphone will pick up the autofocus motor sounds during video recording.

This brings me to the next item — like the E-P2, the E-PL1 also carries the little accessory port just under the flash hotshoe. This expansion port accepts the same electronic viewfinder or external microphone adapter as the E-P2, so if you don’t want to capture the AF motor during video recording, I suggest you get the external microphone adapter.

Oh yes, just before this review was published, Olympus announced a firmware update for the entire Pen series that addresses a couple of issues I had with the E-P1, E-P2 and the E-PL1.

According to the documentation on the new firmware, autofocus speed has been improved, while an option has been added to both display the playback image and menus on both the VF-2 electronic viewfinder and the camera’s built-in LCD as well.

The image display thing is important because as I mentioned before in the review of the E-P2, I tend to frame with the VF-2 at eye level, while I like to use the back LCD to review the images I’ve taken. Before the firmware, I had to physically switch between the LCD and the VF-2 to do that.

By the time the firmware came out, however, we returned the E-PL1 so I was not be able to test how well the new firmware worked on the camera.

iAuto

If there’s one thing that really stands out on the E-PL1, it’s got to be its iAuto mode.

I don’t usually use the fully automatic shooting mode in digicams, but I have to admit that the iAuto is something special for the novice photographer.

Why? Well instead of having a completely automatic mode which takes all control away from you, the software designers at Olympus have come up with a really novel system to allow you to have a measure of control over the camera’s various aperture, shutter, white balance and exposure compensation settings without necessarily understanding how they work.

Instead of having you adjust confusing shutter speed settings to reduce motion blur or stop fast-moving subjects, the iAuto mode has an “Express Motions” setting with a slider with “Blurred Motion” at one end and “Stop Motion” at the other end of the scale.

The meaning is obvious — just slide towards Stop Motion and it will stop fast moving subjects while sliding it to the other end of the scale means just the opposite.

Again, instead of having you understand what each shutter setting does, you get a “Blur Background” mode with a slider that allows you to get more blur or more sharp backgrounds.

I’ve seen a lot of automatic, so-called “idiot modes” in my time, but I have to say that Olympus is the first company that attempts to make usually difficult-to-explain settings easier to understand — and it works for the most part.

Conclusion

While the E-PL1 doesn’t quite have the retro chic of the E-P1 and E-P2, it is generally a much improved camera and at a slightly cheaper price too.

In fact, if you’re a novice photographer who wants to be able to control the camera like the pros without having the steep learning curve of understanding concepts like depth of field and shutter speed and aperture combinations, then the E-PL1 could very well be the camera for you.

Pros: Solid number of features for pros and novices alike; iAuto mode is brilliant for novice shooters; good picture quality.

Cons: Not as nice-looking as the E-P2; autofocus still slower than the competition.

(Olympus Corp)
Digital camera with interchangeable lens
SENSOR: 12.3-megapixels (4,032 x 3,024-pixels)
LENS: Micro Four Thirds interchangeable lens mount
SHUTTER: 60sec – 1/2,000sec
ISO RANGE: 100 – 6400
EXPOSURE MODES: iAuto, P, S, A, M
VIEWFINDER: 2.7in external LCD
BATTERY: 1,150mAh lithium-ion
STORAGE: SDHC
INTERFACE: USB 2.0, HDMI out
OTHER FEATURES: Built-in image stabilisation, accessory port for external EVF
DIMENSIONS (W x D x H): 12.1 x 7 x 3.6cm
WEIGHT: 334g