Olympus E-PL8 First Shots: The sleek, slim new PEN makes its IR lab debut
posted Tuesday, October 4, 2016 at 12:29 PM EDT
Ah, the Olympus PEN Lite line is back once again, and this time in the most attractive package to date. Where we at IR loved the physical upgrades unveiled in the E-PL7 a few years ago, the E-PL8's exterior refines these and makes quite an elegant statement.
But that's the outside appearance, and our lab tests are all about what's to be found on the inside. In the case of the E-PL8, the imaging pipeline is stated to be virtually unchanged from the E-PL7, so we'd expect similar results. This is, of course, not a bad thing considering that we loved the image quality from the predecessor given its affordable price range, and our laboratory First Shots are here to confirm that the quality remains at that level.
We can also use them to compare to more current rivals such as the Panasonic GX85 in our Comparometer. Below are a few comparison examples against both the E-PL7 and the GX85, but feel free to use the Comparometer to compare the E-PL8 to any camera we've yet tested across the available ISO spectrum. And you can use our Lab Samples tab to pixel peep the various ISOs to determine if the beauty is, indeed, more than just skin deep.
Olympus E-PL7 vs Olympus E-PL8
As expected, both base ISO and ISO 1600 appear virtually identical between these two models.
Panasonic GX85 vs Olympus E-PL8
A subtle yet interesting difference can be seen here at ISO 1600. The G85 is more aggressive with noise reduction and therefore shows less noise in certain problem areas like the shadows on the wall behind the bottle. The E-PL8 on the other hand, at least here at default in-camera settings, chooses less noise reduction but retains a bit more fine detail. Both models are quite good for ISO 1600 in general.
Olympus E-PL8 Lab Samples • Overview • Best Prices
