All content, design, and layout are Copyright © 1998–2023 Digital Photography Review All Rights Reserved. Rather than try to follow this we found it best just to take the shot and delete any experiments we weren't happy with - we weren't wasting film after all. Like the Lumix G1 and GH1 before it, this allows the VF-2 to deliver a highly detailed image which is a joy to compose with, and which makes manual focusing much easier. Press the right side of the control dial and you can select an individual AF area which is useful if, as is occasionally the case, the 11-area system selects part of the frame that doesn’t contain your main subject. You’re looking at about approximately 1MB per second of footage in the HD mode, with each clip limited to a maximum file size of 2GB; Olympus estimates this will get you around seven minutes of HD footage or 14 minutes in the VGA mode.

The E-PL2 forgoes the scalar readouts favoured by Panasonic on the GF2 and Sony on the NEX-3/5 in favour of an unadorned numeric display with the currently active setting highlighted in yellow. The main accessory is of course the VF-2 electronic viewfinder supplied as standard with the E-P2, but Olympus has also announced the (S)EMA-1 which equips the E-P2 with an external microphone input. Against its closest competitor – Panasonic’s GF1– there’s not much to divide the two cameras, so we pitched them in a head to head.It’s certainly compact compared to a DSLR, but measuring 121x70x35mm for the body alone (without any lens mounted) and weighing 385g with battery and card, it’s definitely on the chunky side of the compact market. The Olympus E-P2 is the second Micro Four Thirds camera from Olympus, following last Summer's launch of the popular E-P1 model. The E-PL2’s accessory port also allows you to mount the SEMA-1 adapter which lets you connect an external microphone for far superior audio quality during movies.

Although the accessory port can be used for a variety of add-ons - an adapter for an external stereo microphone being the other option currently available - its main use is likely to be to allow the use of the VF-2 viewfinder. We've provided some Olympus RAW (ORF) samples for you to download (thumbnail images shown below are not 100% representative). While the high resolution screen provides a crisp sharp image, even when magnified for manual focussing, it lacks the touch-sensitivity of the Lumix GF-2 and the articulation of the Sony NEX-3/5.How does the lens perform, is it really as light as Nikon claims, is there any chromatic aberration? II kit zoom we took a series of hand-held shots using a range of shutter speeds with the camera set to shutter priority mode. With the tweaks and refinements to the Olympus E-P2 being relatively modest, existing E-P1 owners shouldn't feel the need for an upgrade. We've found Olympus images straight out of the camera to be slightly cool in the past but generally the opposite proved to be the case here, particularly when the E-P2 was left on iAuto and landscape setting boosted greens and blues to vibrant levels.

The eight available Art Filters are shown below in the following series, which demonstrates the differences.prime adding 71g to the weight and 22mm to its thickness, while the standard 14-42mm 3x zoom adds 150g to the weight and 44mm to its thickness. Admittedly, as we've found using the E-P1 over the months since its release, if you prefer to utilise natural/ambient light for your photography (or simply shell out extra for accessory flash) there's a work around in that performance at higher ISOs (here up to ISO6400) is acceptable. This gives the Olympus the advantage that it doesn't suffer from the 'tearing' that can occur if you move the Panasonics quickly (meaning that the camera is trying to draw a slightly different scene by the time is updates each different color, giving vertical objects a red, green and blue edge for a split second). To be fair though, Panasonic’s Lumix GF1 is virtually the same size at 119x71x36mm, albeit a bit lighter at 341g including battery.

The maximum resolution is 4032×3024 pixels in the 4:3 format, with two lower resolutions and the choice of Fine or Normal JPEG compression.is supposed to result in a more accurate display of focal length on the camera display, in EXIF data and in playback.