When I was down in Seattle last week, I stopped by a couple of Best Buy locations in search of a new digital camera. Mine had been stolen at the Canucks game earlier in the month and I needed one as a replacement, mostly for professional purposes.
I needed a camera that could take high-quality product shots for the product reviews that I do, but it was also important that the camera be reasonably compact as I would be bringing it along to trade shows like CES in January. That’s why I settled on the Olympus E-PL1 Micro Four-Thirds Camera. It’s not much larger than a point-and-shoot, but it has a DSLR-like sensor, interchangeable lenses, and RAW support.
You may have noticed me talking about this camera during last week’s Dot Com Pho episode as well. Now that I’ve been able to play around with it for a few days, I thought I’d share some of the pictures that I have taken with this camera. As I mention in the DCP video, the image sensor on this camera is about twice as big as a point-and-shoot. It also provides for more manual control.
So far, I have to say that I’m quite pleased with my purchase. The Olympus E-PL1 offers some great “bokeh” effects when taking macro photos, blurring out the background effectively for a nice artistic touch. Playing with some of the settings, you can also get some fantastic colors, incredible clarity, and a fair bit of versatility.
The kit that I bought was the standard one, coming with the 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 zoom lens. Without geeking out too much, you could say that range is roughly equivalent to the 3x optical zoom you get on most point-and-shoot cameras.
Moving forward, I’d really like to get a pancake or macro lens, as they’re more compact and can make for some terrific close-up pictures. I’d also be interested in a telephoto lens so that I can get some more zoom. My old Canon S3 had 12x zoom, for example, which I’m currently missing on the Olympus.
You can click on any of the thumbnails above to see the larger image.
I’m far from being a professional photographer and I surely have a lot more to learn, but I’m having a pretty good time with the Olympus E-PL1. You can find it on sale from $459.99 on Amazon.ca, depending on which color you prefer. That’s the lowest I’ve seen in Canada, as most retailers are still selling it in the $500 to $600 range. That comes with free shipping too. I have the black version, but it’s also sold in silver and in blue.
More pictures will be added to my Flickr photostream fairly regularly, so be sure to check that out from time to time.
Those are some great pictures Michael. I especially like the sharpness of the detail. I also think Lexi Fung is just the cutest thing, next to my kids of course.
I’ve been really happy with it so far. It’s a good price and it produces great quality pictures. The only thing is that the autofocus can be a little on the slow side, especially under lower light conditions.
Awesome Michael. Great images. Do you shoot raw? If so, do check out Lightroom. Enjoy the new camera!
It’s capable of shooting RAW, but I’ve been doing JPEG so far. I might dabble in RAW at some point in the future, but I’m happy for now.
I see. Just in case you wanted to test out your camera fully, shooting RAW gives you endless control of your images. You can shoot with a wrong White Balance setting and still fix it 100%. In fact, shooting raw means you never adjust the actual raw file. Just making changes to filters and layers above the original file = non-destructive. Plus, you have a much greater tolerance for adjustments (exposure for instance) without “killing” the image. If you like your JPG’s now, you are going to love them even more after exporting from a post processed RAW file. Just saying 🙂
Oh, I know what RAW is. I’m just not as interested in dealing with the extra step for now.
Whats the difference between this and the EPL2? Have you tried the video functions? How’s the audio?
The differences between the two are minimal. The E-PL2 has a higher maximum ISO and I think one setting faster for the shutter speed. Video is okay, but the built-in mic is mono I believe. Here’s a sample I took: http://youtu.be/kL9tNRKCizE