Nikon Digital Photography Talk

New pictures with Olympus EP-1 4:3 Camera

We’ll, where is our new Nikon 4:3 system? Not much buzz lately and Nikon has been very quiet developing their new flagship Coolpix ‘P’ series. The Nikon P6000 got some initial bad press and wow, although I jumped onto the P6000 wagon as soon as it was announced, underwater housing accessories were either discontinued or never made it out the drawing board. Far from a perfect camera, the Nikon P6000 was and is a good option for those who actually had the patience to work around it and read the manual a few times.

I am not (usually) the kind of guy who jump onto the first generation of anything. Especially with Olympus, back in the day I’ve made a substantial investment with the Olympus E-10, Flash FL-40 and vertical grip to be replaced in a matter of months by the Olympus E-20 where it got 1 more mega pixel and a revised auto focus system which was very unpredictive on the E-10. For the last 2 weeks I’ve been snapping pictures with the new Olympus PEN EP-1 and the results are very good. Thanks to a mirror less with a larger sensor, the results are substantially better than those files from the P6000 -or P5000 for that matter- that are coming from a tiny sensor. Up to ISO 1600, the EP-1 is visibly better than the P6000. Perhaps this is not a fair comparison, but at $599, that’s just $99 more than what I paid for the P6000, the choice is clear.   The Olympus EPL-1 behaves like a point and shoot camera, it is slightly larger than my P6000 and sports a Zuiko 14-42mm F/3.5-5.6 Lens which in size is almost as big as our Nikon 35mm F/1.8 lens when collapsed into the body.

Canon G10, G11 or our Nikon flagship P series? IMHO, the size of the 4:3 sensor has the edge in image quality, especially when Nikon and Canon insist on cramming so many mega pixels on those pin head sized sensors;  at the moment there is a kit 14-42 lens but seeing some potential on this format, third party lens manufacturer like Sigma is adding them to their lens line. Even Olympus has other options in the pipeline including a nice Zuiko prime 17mm F/2.8. For what I want this camera, -point and shoot-, I’m not really after a vast catalog of lenses, other fellows might. Out of the box I was able to snap these sample pictures with the Olympus PEN EP-1 and I don’t complain at all. A polarizer filter was added for some of the pictures, so if you want to do the same, make sure to visit the video camera dpt in your store as this lens wears a tiny 40.5mm thread for filters. The Olympus EPL-1 has the heck of a JPEG engine, first 2 dozen shots were taken in RAW mode and edited with the cumbersome software included with the camera. After deciding to switch to JPEG fine, the camera gives great results with a  ”3D-esque” picture quality.  We get a more flexible Manual mode because we can go up to F/22 compared to F/8 on the Nikon P6000 -or Canon G series for that matter. The magnification without attachments is very, very good on the Zuiko lens. I haven’t tried the HD video mode, but I will soon.

Other folks might differ, but in my opinion, Nikon shout stay with L & S series as it is with mild improvements and trash the P series and replace it for a 4:3 mini system. I believe is doable from the folks who have given us almost a dozen kit lenses 18-xx. I don’t think it could be that hard to make another kit lens for the 4:3 format, split those wafers into larger chunks and with a line of superb flashes, voila! I’ll be a happy camper.

Get your Olympus PEN EPL-1 at B&H Photo Video