Olympus E-P2 Review

Overview

Olympus E-P2 Overview

Reviewed by Shawn Barnett, Mike Tomkins, and Zig Weidelich
Review Posted: 04/19/2010

In the summer of 2009, Olympus announced the beginning of a new era of small, interchangeable-lens digital cameras, as the company debuted its first Micro Four Thirds-system camera, the Olympus E-P1. Less than five months later, the company introduced the P1's sibling -- the Olympus E-P2 -- retaining many of its predecessor's features, but with a variety of important differences. The company is continuing to align its Olympus E-P series cameras with the old PEN system of film cameras, dating back to 1959, and like the previous model , the E-P2's style reflects that heritage.

The Olympus E-P2 uses the same 12.3-megapixel sensor from the E-P1, capable of both still and HD video capture. Body styling is also largely unchanged, with the biggest difference being a change in body color and finish. Where the P1 was offered in either silver with black trim, or a white with tan trim limited edition, the P2 gets a new color scheme. The body itself is still stainless steel, but now has a thin layer of black paint under a clear coat, giving a translucent black finish, accompanied by black trim panels. Looking a little closer, the other main difference is the addition of a new accessory port reminiscent of that in Panasonic's Lumix DMC-GF1. As with the Panasonic GF1, the Olympus E-P2's accessory port allows use of a hot shoe-mounted external electronic viewfinder, the VF-2. Olympus's external EVF has a rather higher specification than that from Panasonic, though, and the company is also using the port to allow for external microphone use via an optional adapter.

The Olympus E-P2 also has tweaks in a number of other areas. The camera's autofocus system now has subject tracking capability in both still and movie modes, and the focus assist function has been changed to automatically center its 7x / 10x zoom around the selected AF point, useful for fine-tuning focus of an off-center subject manually.

There's also a new i-Enhance shooting mode that tweaks image color to emphasize the main subject, and two new Art filters on top of the six from the E-P1. Video enthusiasts will be pleased to find manual control of shutter speed, aperture, and ISO sensitivity during movie capture. There's also support for industry-standard remote control over the HDMI connection, when using compatible equipment in the Olympus E-P2's Playback mode.

As well as the existing 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 and 17mm f/2.8 lenses which shipped alongside the E-P1, Olympus has also announced two new lenses with the E-P2. Due in the first half of 2010, these are the 9-18mm f/4-5.6 and 14-150mm f/4-5.6. A small flash is also currently available for the Olympus E-P series cameras.

Shipping as of December 2009, the Olympus E-P2 is available in three configurations. With the ED 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 zoom lens and VF-2 viewfinder, the price is US$1,099.99; and with the 17mm f/2.8 and the VF-2 electronic viewfinder, the price is US$1,099.99. Earlier this year, the VF-2 was removed from many kits, bringing the prices of both the 17mm and 14-42mm kit down to $899.99.

Olympus E-P2 Review

by Shawn Barnett and Mike Tomkins

Just a few short months after introducing the E-P1 "Digital Pen," Olympus launched another version of the small, interchangeable lens SLD digital camera. Most of the guts are the same, as are the body features. Much of what was added came from very early feedback from reviewers, including the black body, requested mostly by males, according to an Olympus representative. Others insisted on an electronic viewfinder.

The Olympus E-P2 user experience is very similar to that of the E-P1, except for the addition of the VF-2 electronic viewfinder -- which really does change the experience quite a bit.

Look and feel. The new black body still has some chrome accents, and the 17mm lens is still silver. Both silver and black 14-42mm lenses are available for the E-P1, with silver shipping on the white camera and black shipping with the silver camera. Only the black lens ships with the Olympus E-P2. Kits are available both with, and without the large electronic viewfinder. Naturally, when attached to the camera this adds to the overall size and weight. The good news is that you forget about the extra bulk when you put the viewfinder up to your eye and take in the big, bright 800 x 600 pixel image it gives you. Note also that the hot shoe is elevated by 0.18 inches (4.6mm) compared to the E-P1, whose top deck is almost flat.

One major feature I prefer over the Panasonic GF1 is the larger grip area that's offered by the Olympus E-P2 and E-P1. The large rubber pad helps get a better purchase on the camera, and the thumbgrip on the back also makes a more secure hold. Functionally the Olympus E-P2 is identical to the E-P1, so existing users will feel right at home.

Most of the remaining controls can be seen from this angle, starting from the left. The mode dial peeks out from its porthole on the top deck, and is set via the knurl on the back. The focal plane indicator is stamped between that and the flash hot shoe, which has the tilting VF-2 electronic viewfinder in place. As with the E-P1, there is no built-in flash on the Olympus E-P2. The blue Super Sonic Wave Filter lamp is next, followed by the power switch, whose outer ring glows green when the power is on. The shutter release button is now black instead of silver, ringed by a smooth bit of silver metal. The EV adjustment button is last. While it's easy to forget while you're shooting, it's well-placed for easy adjustment with your thumb on the back.

On the small shelf behind the Olympus E-P2's top deck, Olympus has engraved the words, "OLYMPUS PEN Since 1959 E-P2." It's a shame that they didn't just revive the name PEN and call it the PEN F1 or something, because E-P2 is hardly catchy, and also a pain to type.

The 3-inch LCD is still limited to 230,000 pixels, though it is large, vibrant, and good outdoors thanks to its HyperCrystal technology. The lower resolution makes Manual focus a little more difficult than it was on the recently-reviewed Panasonic GF1, even with the 7x or 10x zoom option.

On the back you can see the speaker and the unique horizontal scroll wheel, used for zooming and changing menu items. Four buttons run down the right side of the LCD, and a Function and Info button flank the navigation disk/wheel. The disk and wheel combination is small, but works surprisingly well. The wheel works better than most manufacturers' designs, a pleasant surprise. I'm not crazy about the layout of the rest of the buttons, though. It might be that the Olympus E-P2 is so short that the controls are just harder to reach than I'm used to. Reaching the button on the VF-2 is not easy either, and I typically use my left hand instead of trying to stretch my thumb. In the lower right corner you can see the card write lamp.

Note also the camera strap loops, which unfortunately require the annoying D-rings to work with most strap systems. These have become more of a burden thanks to the Olympus E-P2's movie mode, as every motion of the D-rings is recorded as the sound travels dutifully down the camera's lovely metal skin, quickly arriving at the microphone openings. Perhaps you can sense my irritation with this unnecessary metal-to-metal connection when cloth-to-metal is mostly standard on modern digital cameras and even camcorders. Since I don't like neck straps, I solved the problem by simply keeping the camera strapless and ringless, save for a third party wrist strap with a toggle lock for security.

LCD. As I mentioned, the 3-inch LCD is big, but low-resolution, and its viewing angle is 176 degrees. Fortunately it's not the only way to frame images with the E-P2, thanks to the VF-2 electronic viewfinder, which has SVGA resolution.

The Olympus E-P2 has many display screens, which you select by pressing the Info button, but I'm afraid none of them meets my needs all on one screen. Though I like the leveling feature, that screen doesn't tell you what aperture or shutter speed you have set, which is pretty important on a camera like the Olympus E-P2. If you want the histogram or exposure info, you have to lose the leveling feature. I found myself hitting the Info button way too often when using the Olympus E-P2.

And if you shoot in the Art Filters mode and have the center-AF point screen up, you can't zoom in to focus, because the Set button both zooms and changes the Art Filter. Guess which wins?

Function. The Olympus E-P2 includes a Function menu that works a lot like the Function menu on Canon PowerShots, only the E-P2 has two unique dials at its disposal for easy navigation.

Press the OK button in the center, and it brings up a menu matrix that's identical to the translucent screens seen on recent Olympus digital SLRs. It's a good system either way, but I prefer the panel shown above, because it shows more of the available options in each category without having to go to a different screen.

Optical viewfinder. The VF-1 optical viewfinder, available for $99, is not included with the E-P2's 17mm f/2.8 kit, something that does come with the E-P1's 17mm kit. The one I have has a faint silver frame inside, but neither this line nor the viewfinder itself represents the actual image captured by the 17mm lens, which is noticeably wider; and naturally there's also some significant parallax error between this viewfinder lens and the capture lens.

For some reason I accidentally touch the front or rear optic too often, and I lament that the back of the viewfinder has no rubber guard to protect my glasses. Of course, with this big, square, nostalgic novelty mounted, we begin to approach the size and shape limitations found in the smaller SLRs, and the one place to mount a flash is occupied. The advantage, though, is that you get a third point of contact with your body (your face), offering inherently greater stability than you get while holding the Olympus E-P2 out in front of you to see the LCD.

Electronic viewfinder. The new VF-2 electronic viewfinder is noticeably larger than the one available for the Panasonic GF1, and it's also higher resolution. It attaches the same way, though, via the new Accessory port on the back beneath the hot shoe, which means that it won't work on the E-P1. It's a friction fit, unfortunately, which means that you can accidentally nudge it off if you're not careful. There's a springloaded pin that slips into the hot shoe's locking hole for some security, but it still manages to loosen a bit in a bag if I'm not careful. I'd prefer a more positive locking mechanism.

Functionally, though, it's really nice. The rubber ring around the viewfinder optic protects your glasses, unlike the back of the VF-1 with its hard plastic. Better yet, it doubles as the diopter adjustment mechanism, which you can turn to focus the viewfinder. It manages to accommodate my -3 vision just fine.

The view is really large, offering a 100% view of the scene, with 1.15x magnification. It's a nice view, to be sure. I can't tell you how many times I brought the E-P1 up to my eye before remembering there is no optical viewfinder built in. It just feels like an SLR. Now if you need to, you can shoot the E-P2 like it is one. I find myself shooting happily with the VF-2, especially out in sunlight, but I still pull the camera from my eye to see the playback. With the original firmware, this doesn't work, because the playback image appears in the electronic viewfinder until I turn it off. Thankfully, Olympus was listening, and has tweaked the firmware in a new version due in late April 2010, allowing the viewfinder and LCD to remain active at the same time. (This will of course come at the expense of battery life when enabled, since the camera must power both displays at once).

The only drawbacks are the fact that you can't use the EVF in combination with other accessories (such as a flash or the microphone jack adapter), and how much bigger it makes the E-P2 -- which is the same reason I generally leave the VF-1 off the E-P1. At least the VF-2 is more versatile, able to show the true image even with a zoom lens, or a nearby subject. It's also a little better for manual focusing, given the higher resolution.

The EVF's brightness and hue can also be adjusted independently via a menu item that shows the last image captured as a sample.

Accessory port. The new port can also be used for an External Microphone Jack, into which you can plug a microphone like the Olympus ME51S, ME31, or many other third party microphones, a feature missing from the E-P1. Unfortunately, the microphone jack adapter lacks a dummy hot shoe or mounting point on which to attach small microphones, necessitating a bracket attached to the tripod mount, should one want camera and microphone together.

Lenses. The primary kit lens designed for the Olympus E-P2 is the 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6. It's a shortened version of the standard kit lens shipped with so many digital cameras, equivalent to a 28-84mm zoom in this case. It does a neat trick, though, when you twist it from its resting position: it pops out to its full operating length.

There's an unlock switch on the left of the barrel, but this actually unlocks the mechanism that keeps the lens from retracting back to its stowed position, so opening the lens is just a simple twist to the right. See the video at left for a visual demonstration using the E-P1. What the locking mechanism doesn't do is prevent the lens from extending. I occasionally noticed that I'd already partially extended the lens while removing the camera from its bag, causing me some worry that I might possibly damage the mechanism over time.

Though I appreciated the effort Olympus made to keep this lens from being a gigantic nuisance, making this small camera a lot larger, it took me some time to like this lens; and in the end, I don't like it at all. While slightly faster than on the P1, our sample was still unbearably slow to focus on the P2, and is a little too big for me even when tucked away. According to our tests, the 14-42mm took 0.96 seconds to focus and fire at wide-angle, and 0.91 seconds at telephoto. That's very slow, and when one adds the motion blur introduced at certain shutter speeds (see below), the picture is complete. Olympus has announced a new firmware update due in late April 2010 aimed at reducing autofocus delay, but we can't be sure by how much this will improve until we can test an updated P2.

My favorite of the two lenses is the 17mm f/2.8, the only other Olympus lens available specifically for Micro Four Thirds as of this writing. Its low barrel distortion made shooting with this pancake design a sincere pleasure, and its faster autofocus made me return to it again and again. Chromatic aberration is a little high, unfortunately, but that can be dealt with. While out shooting with the Olympus E-P2, I had to remind myself a few times to get the 14-42mm lens mounted for a few shots; and after I got too frustrated with the autofocus, I returned to the 17.

Tiny caps. The two kit lenses have very small caps, both of which seem about the same size. The problem is, they're not. The 17mm's cap measures 37mm, and the 14-42's measures 40.5mm. They're easy to lose, if inexpensive to replace, but serve their purpose just fine.

Lenses and adapters. With only moments before they were due to ship back, we took the liberty of trying the Olympus E-P2 with the rather elite lenses that came with our Panasonic GH1, the second Micro Four Thirds digital camera. They both fit and worked well. Most impressive was Panasonic's 7-14mm on such a small body.

The Lumix Four Thirds lens adapter also allowed us to attach some of the more interesting Four Thirds lenses in house, including the 150mm f/2.0 monster lens. Olympus's equivalent is the MMF-1, a silver Four Thirds adapter. Focusing is a lot slower with this adapter for most of the lenses we tried, so though it's possible, it's not entirely desirable to use Four Thirds lenses with the Olympus E-P2.

Sweetening the deal for OM-system lens owners like me is the MF-2 OM Adapter, which allows attachment of some really fine lenses. We tested my 50mm f/1.8 lens and posted the results on SLRgear.com. It's not good enough that I recommend everyone go out and snap up OM lenses to use with the E-P2, but it's still usable if you have the time to focus manually, and don't mind limiting yourself to f/4 or higher. Focusing is a little more difficult to do on the E-P2 than on the OM-1, because you have to press the Info button to navigate to the MF screen, then the OK button to zoom in on the scene, and if you're hand-holding the Olympus E-P2, the zoomed view can be shaky.

The Micro Four Thirds lens system is continuing to grow, thanks to Panasonic's introduction of another new lens, the 14-42mm f/.5-5.6. Olympus also has two new Micro Four Thirds zooms nearing the market -- the 9-18mm f/4-5.6 and 14-150mm f/4-5.6. The first third-party Micro Four Thirds lens has also been announced by a new startup, albeit a repurposed fully manual CCTV lens design. A wide range of available adapters further broaden the possibilities. Below are photos of the lenses, with links to their respective pages on SLRgear.com, where we have already reviewed many of these lenses.

Micro Four Thirds lenses
Olympus M.Zuiko 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6	Panasonic Lumix G 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6
Olympus M. Zuiko 17mm f/2.8	Panasonic Lumix G 20mm f/1.7
Olympus M.Zuiko 9-18mm f/4-5.6	Panasonic Lumix G 7-14mm f/4
Olympus M.Zuiko 14-150mm f/4-5.6	Panasonic Lumix G 14-140mm f/4-5.8
Panasonic Lumix G 45-200mm f/4-5.6	Panasonic Lumix G 14-45mm f/3.5-5.6
Panasonic 45mm f/2.8 DG Macro	Noktor 50mm f/0.95
Micro Four Thirds Adapters
Olympus Four Thirds MMF-1	Panasonic Four Thirds DMW-MA1
Olympus Four Thirds MMF-2	Panasonic M-Mount DMW-MA2M
Olympus OM Adapter MF-2	Panasonic R-Mount DMW-MA3R
Cosina Voigtlander VM mount	Cosina Voigtlander F mount
Cosina Voigtlander K mount

With the 17mm f/2.8 attached, the Olympus E-P2 does indeed fit into the front pocket of my slacks, and with some effort I managed to get it into my back jeans pocket when I didn't want to leave it in the car on a hot day. It's an easy fit into a sportcoat pocket, if you can handle a pound of camera gently tugging at your shoulder. Olympus materials even show someone putting the E-P1 into a cargo pocket on some shorts. That actually works well if the pocket is mounted higher on the hip, but the lower pockets allow the camera to swing a little too much, causing bruising at best, camera damage at worst.

Where's the Flash? The Olympus E-P2 is the second non-pro camera to ship without some kind of built-in flash (the first was the E-P1). It's either a courageous or a crazy move, but given the poor performance of most built-in flashes on small cameras, I don't think an available-light photographer like me will miss it. Those who do can opt for the Olympus FL-14 flash, available for $199.99. The FL-14 lacks a bounce feature, though, and mounts quite low and close to the lens, so its usefulness is limited. FL-36R and FL-50R flashes are also compatible with the Olympus E-P2, but the flashes are not capable of remote controlling other strobes via the camera's TTL flash exposure system. Of course you also can't use the VF-2 with the flash mounted, so there's that limitation as well.

The Olympus FL-14 slips into a soft bag for storage and mounts in a snap. It's also pretty simple to use, defaulting to TTL-Auto mode, which allows the E-P2 to have full through-the-lens exposure control. It has a tendency to overexpose, though, and doesn't back off of exposures when specular highlights are detected, something I'm used to from other flash systems. Hence faces can be a little too bright and shiny in photos, and near objects are too often overexposed. I prefer using the Olympus E-P2 without flash. The Olympus E-P2 does quite well at high ISO, so the lack of a built-in flash is a message from Olympus that you won't need it.

Movie modes. The Olympus E-P2 records AVI movies at 1,280 x 720 or 640 x 480 pixels, both at 30 frames per second. Maximum file size is 2GB, and the maximum recording time is 7 minutes in HD mode, or 14 minutes in Standard Def (VGA). You can also use the ART filters to limited effect. Some of the filters slow the frame rate so much that I doubt most would want to use them. These include the Pinhole and Grainy Film modes. The Diorama filter goes as far as to disable audio recording and plays back at roughly 15x realtime speed. See our Video tab for more.

New to the E-P2 is complete Manual control over exposure while recording, including ISO sensitivity, while the E-P1 only offered Program or Aperture priority control modes. Shutter speed ranges from 1/30 to 1/4,000 second.

A new autofocus mode also applies to Movie mode, called C-AF+TR, which means continuous AF and tracking. Lock the autofocus system on the main subject and the autofocus target will follow the subject as it moves around the frame.

HDMI plus CEC. The HDMI port is not new to the Olympus E-P2, but CEC control is. That's where you can remote control the camera through your television remote control, provided it offers CEC compatibility. Usually there are four colored buttons on the bottom of the remote.

Audio technology. Olympus is also touting the audio technology they've built into the Olympus E-P2's Movie mode, which they say is as good as their best audio recorders. It's described as Wave Format Base Stereo PCM/ 16-bit at 44.1kHz. Unfortunately, that's only for movie recording or for attaching audio to a photograph; there is no audio-only recording mode, as we've seen on some other cameras. That's a shame, because I'd love to take advantage of that kind of high-end audio capability. As with the E-P1, the only way to record audio with the E-P2 is with the stereo mic on the front of the camera, just left and right of the Olympus logo. That is, unless you purchase the new external microphone jack mentioned above, and a microphone.

Music built in. Also built into the Olympus E-P2 are five ambient tunes to use with slideshows and videos, created by Daishi Dance, a famous Japanese musician.

Leveling indicators. The Olympus E-P2 has leveling indicators that show whether you're tilting the camera left or right (roll), and they also help tilt the camera up or down (pitch) to split the horizon evenly, helpful when the horizon is not visible. See Olympus's diagram at right. The leveling system can be recalibrated by the user if it loses accuracy.

Metering. Olympus's older ESP metering system has been updated with a new 18 x 18 matrix metering system, sampling 324 separate areas. You can also choose center-weighted and spot metering modes.

Many other features have become so common it's a little much to go on about. Face detection for example: The Olympus E-P2 can recognize up to eight faces in a scene, even when people are moving; it then sets exposure to ensure sharp, well-exposed pictures. There's also sensor-shift image stabilization, a good feature for a camera without an onboard flash; and Olympus's SuperSonic Wave Filter for dust reduction.

Accessorized. Cameras like the E-P2 are made for the enthusiast who likes to accessorize, with one of those accessories included in the bundle. Shawn thought his Gordy's Camera Strap completed the look. See his gallery for an example of the trend toward gadgety goodness.

Sensor and processor. Olympus hasn't told us much about the 12.3-megapixel LIVE-MOS sensor, except that it's similar to the ones in the E-30 and E-620, and identical to the sensor in the E-P1.

Multiple exposures. You can also overlay images right in the Olympus E-P2 with the Multiple Exposure tools, first seen on the Olympus E-30 digital SLR.

Aspect ratios. You can choose multiple aspect ratios to shoot with the E-P2, including the sensor's 4:3, but also 3:2 (more common among SLRs), 16:9 (better for HD television display), and 6:6 (which is of course the same as 1:1 -- a square image).

Exposure modes. The Olympus E-P2 includes the four standard modes, Program, Aperture, Shutter, and Manual exposure modes, but also includes an Intelligent Auto mode that analyses the scene and chooses among Portrait, Landscape, Night Scene, Sport and Macro modes. Movie mode is of course for movies, and Scene mode avails you of 19 Scene modes, including Portrait, e-Portrait, Landscape, Landscape + Portrait, Sport, Night Scene, Night + Portrait, Children, High Key, Low Key, DIS Mode, Macro, Nature Macro, Candle, Sunset, Documents, Panorama, Fireworks, and Beach & Snow.

iEnhance. A new picture mode called iEnhance picks out a dominant color in a scene, and boosts that one color so it stands out more, enhancing scenes like sunsets, fall foliage, etc.

In-camera editing. Also carried over to the Olympus E-P2 is the ability to develop RAW images in-camera, including the ability to apply Art Filters to RAW images. JPEGs can have Red-eye fixes, trimming, shadow adjustment, resizing operations, and even sepia and saturation adjustments applied.

Storage and battery. Like the P1 before it, the Olympus E-P2 uses SD cards exclusively for storage, with nary an xD-Picture Card in sight. This was important for the company's Micro Four Thirds camera line to gain widespread acceptance, so it was a good move. As with most digital cameras capable of recording in HD, the Olympus E-P2 requires a Class 6 or better SDHC card to capture 1,280 x 720p video.

For a battery, Olympus chose the BLS-1 lithium-ion battery, also used in the Olympus E-620. It's rated at 300 shots per charge in the E-P2. That's not a lot for an SLD, and we were only able to shoot for about a day while on vacation at that rate, so consider a spare.

Shooting with the Olympus E-P2

by Mike Tomkins

With Micro Four Thirds still being a relatively young format, I found myself rather caught between a rock and a hard place shooting with the E-P2. I didn't have the opportunity to try any of Panasonic's lenses in my time with the P2, and while I appreciated the quality of Olympus' 17mm f/2.8 lens, I generally don't find myself reaching for prime lenses very often. My personal style is to shoot with a zoom, framing with the lens rather than my feet -- and my only option was hence Olympus' 14-42mm lens, whose issues with blurring we covered in-depth in our Olympus P1 review. The problem still remains when used in concert with the P2. The good news is that Olympus will be shipping two more Micro Four Thirds lenses within the next few months, and Panasonic is also continuing to increase its Micro Four Thirds offerings. In the meantime, I just had to try and remember to shoot around the shortcomings of the 14-42mm lens, avoiding shutter speeds between 1/100 and 1/200 second.

Wandering around downtown Knoxville shooting gallery photos, I definitely appreciated the compact size of the E-P2's body. Much like Shawn, I preferred to use the P2 without the neck strap that I'd ordinarily consider a must when shooting with an SLR. With the prime lens attached I could easily slip the camera in my coat pocket between shots, and even with the 14-42mm lens attached it was fairly comfortable to just carry the P2 in one hand for extended periods, using a wrist strap for a feeling of security. With my large hands -- I'm over six feet tall -- I didn't find the P2's body wildly comfortable to hold for single-handed shooting, however. I've been reviewing the PL1 alongside the P2, and found its rather more prominent grip made it much less tiring to shoot with, and noticeably easier to hold steady.

The P2's bundled electronic viewfinder was a pleasure to shoot with, with its high resolution, generous 1.15x magnification and 100% field of view. I found myself using it a lot more than I'd thought I would. Given that it's relatively bulky, I initially thought I'd end up leaving it in the camera bag (or at home), but instead I frequently ended up using it when shooting with the PL1 as well. That said, if the P2's LCD display offered higher resolution, I'd probably have used the electronic viewfinder rather less often -- if only to save a little bulk and weight. The LCD proved easy to see in a good range of conditions, even on a sunny spring afternoon in Tennessee. I've just grown somewhat spoiled by higher-res displays, and find it a little uncomfortable returning to a lower-res type.

I did find Olympus' menu design a little clumsy, although by and large I was able to avoid it thanks to the comprehensive Super Control Panel display. Most of the common adjustments I wanted to make could be found and adjusted in this one display. When I wanted something that couldn't be found in the Super Control Panel though, it sometimes took a little digging, thanks to some counterintuitive design choices. For example, the option to enable or disable face detection -- which affects the camera's focusing and metering systems -- is nowhere to be found in the tabs related to focus or exposure. Instead, it's rather bizarrely located in a tab related to Display, Sound and PC settings, none of which seem to have anything to do with face detection.

I was also caught out by the fact that the P2's Exposure Shift function (which allows one to fine-tune the different metering modes to their tastes in terms of exposure level) isn't reset by the Custom Reset function. This caused me to have to discard much of a day's gallery shooting solely because all of the shots were underexposed by a setting I'd accidentally left behind while transcribing the P2's menu layout. (The shots could fairly easily have been salvaged, but our gallery shots are always published just as created by the camera, so this wasn't an option for me). Exposure Shift is a very useful function if one sets it intentionally, and as something that is omitted even by many semi-pro DSLRs, its presence in the P2 is impressive. It's just a shame that nowhere does the camera or manual warn one that a Custom Reset leaves certain settings like this one untouched. Perhaps a more complete reset function is called for as an extended option, safely positioned behind a warning. At the least, the manual should clearly state which functions aren't reset.

I also found that I frequently jumped around in the menus unintentionally, thanks to the fact that one control doubles both as the camera's main dial and four-way arrow pad. I didn't find the main dial particularly comfortable to use with my large hands (and with the dial partially recessed in the thumb rest towards the right-hand end of the camera). Hence I seldom used it as a dial, but found that when using it as an arrow pad it was far too easy to turn the dial slightly at the same time, and jump up or down an option or tab beyond the one I'd wanted. There's no way to set the P2 to disable the main dial in menus and use only the arrow buttons, or vice versa.

Those slight quirks aside though, I must admit I found the P2 rather fun to shoot with, and would definitely consider one as an accompaniment to a full-sized DSLR, rather than opting for a fixed-lens compact with a much smaller sensor (and the image quality issues that would bring). Even when one has the time and energy to bring a DSLR, it's not always an option. I'm sure I'm not alone in having been refused entry to public events when carrying my DSLR, even when seeing others gain admission unhindered while carrying bridge cameras with similar telephoto reach and resolution. Equally, a DSLR can attract your subject's attention -- and rob the scene of spontaneity -- in a way that doesn't happen with a smaller and less obtrusive camera. There's also something to be said for the theory that no matter how good the camera, it's essentially useless if one ends up leaving it at home because it's too much hassle to take everywhere you go.

The Olympus E-P2 definitely avoided many of those pitfalls for me, and I was able to find plenty of enjoyment shooting with it. It's a relatively compact camera that forgoes the limitations of fixed lens models with postage-stamp sized sensors. For that, I found myself relatively happy to live with its few quirks.

Olympus E-P2 Image Quality

Olympus E-P2 versus E-P1 at ISO 1,600

Olympus E-P2 at ISO 1,600	Olympus E-P1 at ISO 1,600
Looks like there's slightly different framing between these two cameras, making the E-P2's image elements seem larger than the E-P1's, but the performance seems about the same between the E-P1 and E-P2, cameras separated by mere months. The leaf pattern is the one place where perhaps the E-P2 shows slightly more aggressive anti-noise processing, obliterating some of the leaf pattern detail more so than you can see at right in the E-P1's image.

Olympus E-P2 versus Panasonic GH1 at ISO 1,600

Olympus E-P2 at ISO 1,600	Panasonic GH1 at ISO 1,600
Though I suspect that the Panasonic LiveMOS sensor is the same in both the E-P2 and the GH1, the two companies have taken a very different approach to image processing. Olympus's TruePic V may have a little special sauce after all. It's hard to compare these two images because of the exposure difference, but you can get the general idea. The Olympus leaves a little more chroma noise in place and sharpens a little more in low-contrast areas. The GH1 captures the Mosaic image a little better. And the red leaf fabric has a little less detail, but more vibrant color. Both are 12.3-megapixel sensors.

Olympus E-P2 versus Canon T1i at ISO 1,600

Olympus E-P2 at ISO 1,600	Canon T1i at ISO 1,600
Canon, too, has come a long way with their noise suppression technology, and their 15.1-megapixel images are remarkably noise free at ISO 1,600. But remember this is a smaller Micro Four Thirds sensor at 12.3-megapixels going up against Canon's 15-megapixel APS-C sensor. Both sensors have smaller pixel sizes than normal, but the T1i theoretically has more resolving power. Yet the E-P2 looks quite good against the T1i.

Olympus E-P2 versus Nikon D5000 at ISO 1,600

Olympus E-P2 at ISO 1,600	Nikon D5000 at ISO 1,600
Chroma noise of various sizes is visible in both images, but the Nikon D5000 handles the Mosaic image a little better, as well as the leaf crop. But the bottle image is harder to call. There's a mixture of luminance noise and chroma noise in the E-P2 image that doesn't look quite as smooth as the D5000 shot, but the E-P2 will likely look more film-like when it's printed large. The exception is the sharpening applied to the label, which is quite dramatic, making it pop from the background a little too much. Still, the point here is that the Olympus E-P2 virtually eliminates the advantage that APS-C has had over Four Thirds. I could go back and forth with quite a few more cameras, but these really are the best performers under $1,200.

Detail: Olympus E-P2 vs E-P1, Panasonic GH1, Canon T1i, and Nikon D5000

Olympus E-P2 ISO 100 ISO 3,200	Olympus E-P1 ISO 100 ISO 3,200	GH1 ISO 100 ISO 3,200	Canon T1i ISO 100 ISO 3,200	Nikon D5000 ISO 100 ISO 3,200
Detail comparison. An ISO 1,600 comparison is only so helpful. A camera's ISO 100 performance is also of value, so I've pitted the same set of cameras against each other in the high-contrast detail department. The 12.3-megapixel Olympus E-P1, E-P2, and the 15.1-megapixel Canon T1i come out on top, with the slight edge overall to the Canon T1i. All three show evidence of edge enhancement around the letters, but also have more detail to work with overall. I also give the slight edge to the T1i at ISO 3,200. Though the image is hazier, it retains more of the color of the letters, and more salvageable separation between the lines inside the letters, like inside the L in Lager. Bear in mind that the T1i also beat out the 12.1-megapixel full-frame Nikon D700, plus the APS-C Nikon D90, and Canon XSi at this test as well. Also consider that this test is not independent of lens quality, focus errors, and other variables, so again take this mostly as a comparison of what each camera was able to do with the best standardized optics we can muster. The Olympus E-P1 and E-P2 used the rather excellent Olympus Digital Zuiko 50mm f/2 Macro. The GH1 used its excellent14-140mm kit lens. The others used our laboratory-standard Sigma 70mm f/2.8 EX DG Macro lenses, which are very sharp.

Olympus E-P2 Print Quality

ISO 100 JPEG shots look great printed at 16x20 inches, and detail even holds together quite well at 20x30 inches, especially for wall display.

ISO 200 and 400 shots are also usable at 20x30 inches, but ISO 400 shots tighten up a bit more to what we'd call tack sharp at 16x20.

ISO 800 shots are still reasonably good at 16x20, with only minor luminance noise.

ISO 1,600 shots are usable at 13x19 inches, but come back to what we'd call sharp at 11x14 inches.

ISO 3,200 shots are grainy at 11x14, though still usable for wall display; for greater sharpness, though, stick to letter size or 8x10. Color does fade a bit at this size as well.

ISO 6,400 shots are a little too soft for 8x10, but look quite good at 5x7.

Overall, a very impressive performance from the Olympus E-P2.

Analysis. Olympus has once again produced a nice little SLD (Single Lens Direct-view) digital camera, one with personality and pretty darn good image quality. It's impressive that Olympus was able to respond so quickly to the desires of the press and its early users, adding a few key features that make a difference to the user experience and the Olympus E-P2's utility. To me the most important of those features is the new Accessory port, which allows attachment of the EVF and the external mic jack. The addition of full Manual exposure control to the Movie mode is also great for aspiring movie makers who don't want a stray flashlight beam to upset their exposure while making an X-Files fan film.

Initially, the Olympus E-P2 was only available in bundles with a lens and the VF-2 electronic viewfinder, making its price a little high. While it's still not available as a body-only package for those who've already purchased an E-P1 and want the extra functionality, the P2 can now be purchased without the viewfinder for those who want to save a little expense. Despite the EVF's excellent quality, I'm not sure it's a must-have accessory; and so it was a smart move on Olympus' part to recognize this and create additional choices for the product bundle.

In the Box

The Olympus E-P2 ships with the following items in the box:

• E-P2 body
• VF-2 shoe-mount electronic view finder
• 14-42mm or 17mm lens (if purchased as a kit)
• Body cap
• Lens caps
• Lithium-ion battery BLS-1
• Battery charger BCS-1
• Multi-cable
• Shoulder strap
• Olympus Master CD-ROM
• Instruction manual
• Warranty card

Olympus E-P2 Conclusion

As an evolution of the E-P1, the Olympus E-P2 retains much of what is great about its predecessor, while building on feedback from the E-P1 to offer some important new features. Key among these features is the accessory port, whose design bears more than a passing resemblance to that of the Panasonic GF1. Impressively, this has been added without any increase to the Olympus E-P2's weight versus that of the E-P1, and with a negligible difference in size. As with the GF1, the accessory port has an important disadvantage, though, in that prevents you from using a flash in the camera's hot shoe. This is even more of an issue for the Olympus E-P2 than for Panasonic's camera, given that the E-P2 lacks a built-in flash strobe, or any other form of external flash connectivity beyond the hot shoe itself. The Olympus E-P2's accessory port does have a couple of distinct advantages over that of the Panasonic GF1, able to accept not only an electronic viewfinder, but also an external stereo microphone adapter -- something which could prove useful to videographers shooting with the Olympus E-P2.

The Olympus E-P2's viewfinder is a delight to use, with a very high resolution, clear image that makes manual focusing so much easier. It also makes it somewhat easier to hold the camera steady -- I definitely find it easier to get a sharp shot with the camera at my eye, rather than held at a distance from my body. The only significant downside to the EVF was its bulk. It's similar in size to Panasonic's equivalent, but truth be told they're neither things of great beauty. When connected to the camera, the EVF adds significantly to its size, and since it doesn't lock in place I found myself nervous about leaving it attached to the camera as I strolled between shooting locations. I found myself wishing that the Olympus E-P2's LCD offered the same high resolution instead. The PEN series cameras are largely about their compactness, after all, and the EVF detracted from that for me.

Unsurprisingly given its close relationship to the P1, the Olympus E-P2 offered similar image quality. There was perhaps a touch more noise processing, but the differences were by and large quite subtle. Like the E-P1 before it, I found the E-P2 offered great color and saturation, and surprisingly good high ISO performance given its smaller sensor relative to most APS-C DSLRs. Unfortunately, when using the 14-42mm kit lens I did experience the same vibration blur issues Shawn previously discovered with the E-P1. These can be worked around by using another lens, or avoiding certain shutter speeds, but the affected shutter speeds are ones the camera will commonly pick by itself -- and I did find a frustrating number of photos I'd shot in Program mode ended up having slight blur issues. The E-P2 also has somewhat lesser dynamic range than most DSLRs, and defaults to a fairly contrasty look. I further noticed in my own shooting that I often needed to dial in just a touch of negative exposure compensation.

The Olympus E-P2 is still rather inconsistent when it comes to speed. Sometimes it feels quite swift -- for example, in terms of prefocused shutter lag, or in continuous mode burst shooting. Unfortunately, power-on and autofocus both still felt rather sluggish compared to current DSLRs. That said, AF speed has improved somewhat since the E-P1. Olympus has also announced -- but not yet shipped, as of this writing -- firmware which promises to further improve autofocus speed, for all current PEN-series cameras. It remains to be seen how much of an improvement this will bring for the E-P2, and whether this will have the side-effect of erasing the E-P2's slight speed edge over the E-P1.

A few other changes of note were in the addition of further scene modes and art filters. I'm not entirely sure that beginners really take advantage of scene modes -- I get the distinct impression that "set and forget" to Auto mode is probably a prevalent choice -- but if you're the kind to take advantage of them, then an increased selection is likely a good thing. The new Cross Process filter did yield some unusual, retro images, but I found the Diorama filter to be rather frustrating. In still image mode it reduced the live view framerate to the point where framing became awkward. In movie mode, it disabled sound recording altogether, and caused playback speeds so greatly accelerated as to make Diorama movies largely useless in most situations.

Quibbles aside though, I really did enjoy my time with the Olympus E-P2. In my own personal shooting, I've largely forgone compact cameras these days, being greatly disheartened by the ill effects of the megapixel war on image quality. My daily shooter is a digital SLR, but I must admit I've too often found myself leaving it at home because of its size. Shooting with the Olympus E-P2 reinforced for me the most important attribute of any camera -- that it's not left sitting at home when you need it most. Olympus' design goal for the PEN series was to create a truly compact camera with much of the versatility of a DSLR, and I think the E-P2 fulfils that request pretty admirably, making it an easy Dave's Pick.

Design

Olympus E-P2 Design

Roll-over the various controls and features with your mouse for a brief description. Note: Rollovers are best viewed with the latest versions Firefox, Safari, or Opera browsers, or Internet Explorer 6 or earlier.

Front View. The Olympus E-P2 has a very clean, retro looking front, with minimal controls. The grip bevels down as it approaches the lens, and gives a little when you press on it. It's nice to use a metal camera again. Those dots left and right of the logo are holes for the stereo microphones.

Left View. No controls to see on this side of the camera, which is smooth apart from the metal eyelet to which the neck strap can be attached.

Right View. The right side of the camera contains access to the USB/AV and HDMI ports. Note the D-ring, the only "retro" component on the Olympus E-P2 that we don't like much. Our key complaint is the noise the metal-to-metal interface can make while you're recording video.

Top View. The top panel has a few controls including the Mode dial (activated from the rear), On/Off switch, Shutter button, and Exposure Compensation button. A hot shoe is provided for flash or the optional optical viewfinder (it's included with the 17mm kit).

Back View. The majority of controls are on the camera's rear panel, along with the 3.0-inch, 230K dot LCD. The Main dial is easy to use despite its small size, as are the buttons on the Arrow pad. The SubDial is also easy to use, and well placed despite its position atop the rear thumb-rest.

Bottom View. The camera's bottom panel is flat, with a the metal tripod mount off-center from the lens mount. The battery door conceals the SD and battery slots.

Operation

Olympus E-P2 Operation

The Olympus E-P2 packs a lot of features into a very compact body. This of course means that many features are accessed via menus shown on the LCD instead of dedicated buttons. Still, Olympus has crammed a lot of controls into what little space is available, and they've given a lot of flexibility on how many of them function, via an extensive set of Custom and Setup menu options. (See our Modes & Menus page for details.)

Most major functions are accessible via the 11 buttons on the back and three on the top deck. A Function button activates an L-shaped menu that offers access to major functions, like White balance, Drive mode, Image stabilization, Aspect ratio, Compression, AF mode, Face detection, and AF point.

Menus can be navigated either with the Main and Sub dial, or using the four arrow buttons. The dials are also used to adjust shutter speed and aperture in Manual exposure modes.

Record Mode Displays

Full-time Live View
The information display in record mode includes the shutter speed and aperture settings, exposure mode, flash mode, ISO sensitivity setting, metering mode, AF mode, number of available images, resolution, aspect ratio, image stabilizer mode, drive mode, white balance, picture mode, focus confirmation, battery status, etc. You can also enable a live histogram. Through the Custom menu, you can select one of three styles of grid displays. See the illustration below (courtesy of Olympus America) for information callouts in record mode.

As you change exposure settings, the display changes to reflect what the captured image will look like, also known as "exposure simulation."

Level Gauge
The Olympus E-P2 includes a nifty Level Gauge feature, which when enabled, displays the amount of roll (left/right) and pitch (forward/backward) as bars on the bottom and right hand-side of the screen respectively. (The animation at right is from the E-P1, but the E-P2 is identical.) This helps ensure that images are level with the horizon, or parallel with a subject for critical work such as architecture or macro. You can also calibrate, or "zero-out" the level gauge, in a Custom menu.

Super Control Panel
In record mode, the LCD monitor displays the "Super Control Panel" when you press the Info button with the Live Control menu active, or when you press the OK button thereafter. (The animation at right is from the E-P1, but the E-P2 is very similar.) You can navigate around in and make changes to a number of menu options (ISO, White Balance, etc.). See the illustration below (courtesy of Olympus America) for callouts of the various settings that are shown and adjustable from this screen.

Live Control
The Olympus E-P2 features a menu display type reminiscent of the Function menu found on Canon PowerShots, called Live Control. (The animation at right is from the E-P1, but the E-P2 is very similar.) The menu is accessed by pressing the "OK" button, unless the Super Control Panel has been used more recently, in which case you simply press the Info button with that panel active. The Live Control display overlays commonly used functions along the right hand side, while options for the currently selected setting are displayed along the bottom. Menu options in this mode include Scene mode (when SCN exposure mode is selected), Art filter mode (when ART exposure mode is selected), Movie AE mode (in Movie mode), Picture mode (in all but Scene, Art filter or Movie modes), White Balance, Sequential shooting/self-timer, Image Stabilizer, Aspect Ratio, Record Mode (image size and quality), ISO sensitivity, Flash mode, Metering mode, AF mode, Face detection, AF target selection and Movie sound record (in Movie mode).

Playback Mode Displays

Information Screens
In Playback mode, the default image display shows the most recently captured image. Pressing the Info button cycles through the main display (with no information), a simplified display with basic information overlay, a detailed thumbnail display with RGBY histogram, shooting info and highlight/shadow display, a luminance histogram overlay display, and a blinking highlight/shadow display (overexposed areas are shown in red, underexposed in blue). The last display type will be stored and shown the next time by default. Pressing the Right or Left arrow displays the next or previous frame, while pressing the Up or Down arrow jumps 10 frames forward or backward.

Index and Calendar Views
Turning the Sub dial to the left cycles through a four, nine, 16, 25, 49, and 100-image index display, and finally a Calendar display. The arrow pad keys are used to select a particular frame in an index view. In Calendar view, you can display images arranged by date, and you can select a date by using the arrow keys, then pressing OK. If more that one shot was taken on a single date, the first shot on that date is displayed.

Magnified View
Turning the Sub dial to the right enlarges the captured image as much as 14x. You use the four arrow keys to move around the zoomed image, and if Face Detect is enabled, a frame is displayed around a detected face. You can press OK to move the frame to another face. After pressing the Info button in magnified view, you can view other images at the same magnification by using the Left and Right arrows. When Face Detect is enabled, you can jump to the next or previous face by using the Up and Down arrows, useful for quickly checking for closed eyes or focus issues.

Optics

Olympus E-P2 Optics

Olympus M.Zuiko Lenses

The Olympus E-P2 is compatible with any Micro Four Thirds lens, with Olympus and Panasonic together having shipped a total of eight lens models at the time of writing (March 2010). Three further Micro Four Thirds have been announced, but have not yet reached the market. Olympus has dubbed their Micro Four Thirds lenses "M.ZUIKO," and only two M.ZUIKO lenses have been released. The Olympus 17mm f/2.8 M.ZUIKO Digital is a sharp, fairly fast (f/2.8), and compact prime lens with an equivalent focal length of 34mm. Also offered is the Olympus 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 ED M.ZUIKO Digital zoom lens offers a fairly typical 3x zoom ratio, with a 35mm equivalent focal range of 28-82mm. Two Olympus E-P2 kits are available, bundling either the 17mm or 14-42mm lens with the E-P2 body and external viewfinder for US$1,099.99. Sold separately, both lenses cost US$299.99 apiece.

One interesting feature of the 14-42mm lens is that it "collapses" for a smaller footprint when not in use. Shown unmounted to the left of the E-P2 above, it's in its collapsed position in this photograph. The  design does seem to be somewhat of a compromise, however. In our review of the Olympus P1 we discovered some issues with vertical blurring in images shot with this lens at shutter speeds of between around 1/100 and 1/200 second. The problem is caused by vibrations induced from the shutter mechanism, and is still apparent when the 14-42mm lens is used in concert with the P2. For that reason, discriminating users planning to make prints above 8 x 10 inches may want to avoid this lens, or bear the problem in mind when selecting shutter speeds.

Olympus also announced two new lenses alongside the P2. Due sometime in the first half of 2010, these are the Olympus M. ZUIKO Digital ED 9-18mm f4.0-5.6 (super wide angle zoom, 18-36mm equivalent), and the Olympus M. ZUIKO Digital ED 14-150mm f4.0-5.6 (high-power wide to telephoto zoom, 28-300mm equivalent). Further options are available from Panasonic, Olympus' partner in the Micro Four Thirds format, which currently offers six Micro Four Thirds-mount lenses - two primes, and four zooms. One third party -- a new startup company called Noktor -- has also announced a completely manual, Micro Four Thirds compatible 50mm F0.95 prime lens.

In addition, no less than nine different adapters make it possible to mount a wide selection of current and historic glass on a Micro Four Thirds camera. Lenses that can be adapted include certain standard Four Thirds, Olympus OM, Leica M / R, Voigtlander VM / Ai-S / PK-A/R / KA, and Carl Zeiss ZM / ZF / ZK types. These adapters generally have some limitations as to compatibility and available features, which will depend on the specific model being used.

Because the E-P2 features in-body image stabilization, Olympus' M.ZUIKO lenses do not themselves incorporate optical image stabilization. Some Panasonic Micro Four Thirds lenses offer image stabilization and work with the Olympus E-P2, but note that you have to disable one or the other image stabilization system.

Olympus E-P2 Autofocus

11-Area AF. Focus areas are bit large and their size is fixed, making it difficult to focus on small objects without resorting to manual focus.

The Olympus E-P2 has an 11-area contrast-detect autofocus system, using the main imaging-sensor to determine focus, similar to how most Point & Shoot cameras work. There are two AF Area options: "All Target" mode, where the camera automatically selects the active area(s) for you, or "Single Target" mode, where you specify the active area by selecting it with the 4-way controller or either of the dials.

You can register a "Home" position for the active AF by pressing the Function (Fn) and EV Compensation buttons simultaneously from the AF selection screen that's accessible from the Live Control and Super Control Panel screens -- but not the one that's accessed through the Custom menu. The function button can then be configured to toggle back and forth between the current AF position and your Home position, useful for quickly retrieving your favorite AF area position. There is no option to change the size of the active area, a feature which was also missing from the P1, and one we still think would be a useful enhancement, as we had difficulties focusing on the small AF target in our Indoor Portrait series.

In addition, the E-P2 offers a Face Detection function, capable of simultaneously locating up to eight individual faces. Each face the camera finds is indicated on the display or electronic viewfinder with a white frame, and is then taken into account when focusing and metering. There's no advance indication of which individual face the camera will focus on, nor any way to manually select which face to prioritize. The face that was selected for AF operation is only momentarily indicated with a green frame, once AF lock has already been achieved. On the plus side, you're not limited to the P2's 11 autofocus points - the camera will lock focus on a face anywhere within the frame.

Of course, the Olympus E-P2 also offers a manual focus mode. In MF mode, an option called MF assist causes the camera to optionally magnify the preview image by 7x or 10x whenever the focus ring is adjusted, to help determine critical focus. A slight change from the P1 is that the MF assist preview is now centered around the user-selected focus point, helpful when trying to manually focus on an off-center subject. For use with old manual-focus lenses (which lack the communication that would tell the body when the focus ring was being adjusted), or perhaps to simply check the focus that the AF system has achieved, you can also enable the 7x/10x magnification manually by using the Info button to select the Zoom display screen mode (with the green AF square in the middle); then just press the OK button to activate the zoomed view. Use either control dial to switch between 7x and 10x magnification, and the Arrow pad to move freely around the entire image frame. (The magnified area can also be moved around in other display modes while manually focusing, but after a brief pause without focus operation will reset to the active AF point location, making it rather less useful than in the Zoom display mode.)

As we note elsewhere, the LCD on the E-P2 isn't one of the newer-generation high-resolution designs, as it has only 230K dots. For precise manual focusing, the higher-resolution articulating electronic viewfinder proves a better choice, thanks to its high resolution of 1,440K dots (800 x 600 pixels x three dots per color). That said, we found that we could still produce sharp images when focusing manually using the LCD, at least under ideal conditions. Ideal conditions mean the camera mounted on a solid tripod, and a subject with strongly contrasting fine detail to examine while focusing. Under such conditions, we could consistently produce results as sharp as those delivered by the AF system, but we always felt like we were guessing somewhat as to where optimum focus really was. The excellent EVF certainly mitigates our issues with manual focusing on the P1, but does rely on your bringing the external viewfinder along everywhere you go, so we'd still be happier if the E-P2's LCD screen had more resolution.

Autofocus servo modes consist of S-AF (single shot autofocus), C-AF (continuous autofocus), MF (manual focus), S-AF+MF (single shot autofocus with manual focus tweaking), and C-AF+TR (continuous autofocus with tracking). By default in S-AF or S-AF+MF modes, focus is locked when the shutter button is half-pressed, although this behaviour can be changed through the Custom menu. When AF tracking is enabled, the E-P2 can follow the subject as it moves around the field of view, tracking it across the AF points to keep it in focus.

In both C-AF modes, the camera continuously cycles its AF system, which helps it track moving objects, keeping the current lens focal distance setting closer to the current subject distance than it might otherwise be. This can reduce AF "hunting" when it comes time to snap the actual shot. Because contrast-detect AF systems have to perturb the focus in order to tell whether the image is actually in focus or not, the E-P2's Continuous-AF mode disturbs the viewfinder display on the LCD while it's operating. That is, the viewfinder image continuously shifts in and out of focus when C-AF is active, as the camera constantly re-checks its focus setting. This is a necessity for any contrast-detect AF system, but the amount of defocusing required by the E-P2 to check focus is greater than we've seen in some other systems.

AF in Movie mode

In Movie mode, you have the same focusing options available as when shooting stills, with the exception of face detection autofocus, which is not available. There are a few differences from their still image counterparts though -- the most obvious being the absence of the beep that serves to confirm AF lock. In C-AF mode, there's also a green frame to indicate the focus point, which is absent in still image mode. Finally, both C-AF and C-AF+TR modes don't hunt around the focus point -- which means they make less objectionable sound on the audio track, but also means they take longer to detect and react to a change in subject distance. Since AF operation is picked up by the camea's internal microphone, you may want to choose either S-AF, S-AF+MF or MF modes to minimize the impact of the focus motor noises.

Olympus E-P2 Sensor Cleaning

The Olympus E-P2 features an ultrasonic dust-reduction system, especially important since the E-P2's shutter is normally open for full-time Live View. The system automatically runs at power-up, and unfortunately, there is no option to disable it or run it manually, as it does contribute to startup time. The SSWF ("Super Sonic Wave Filter") LED on the top of the camera blinks when self-cleaning is performed.

We have found, however, that in-camera dust-removal systems are less than perfectly effective. You're still going to need to use a sensor-cleaning kit fairly often, so the advantage of in-body dust removal is perhaps less than it might seem. If you've got dust specks on your sensor (and sooner or later you will), you're going to need to clean it. There are a lot of products out there intended to address this need, but a distressing number of them work poorly (if at all), and many are grossly overpriced. Advertising hype is rampant, with bogus pseudo-scientific jargon and absurd product claims. And prices -- Did I mention prices? How about $100 for a simple synthetic-bristle brush?

So how do you know what product to use?

We don't pretend to have used everything currently on the market, but we can tell you about one solution that worked very well for us. The "Copper Hill" cleaning method is straightforward and safe, and in our routine usage here at Imaging Resource, highly effective. Better yet, the products sold by Copper Hill Imaging are very reasonably priced. Best of all, Nicholas R (proprietor of Copper Hill) has put together an amazingly detailed tutorial on sensor cleaning, free for all.

Sensor cleaning is one of the last things people think about when buying a d-SLR, but it's vital to capturing the best possible images. Take our advice and order a cleaning kit from Copper Hill right along with your d-SLR, so you'll have it close at hand when you need it: You'll be glad you did!

(While they've advertised on our sister site SLRgear.com from time to time, we receive no promotional consideration from Copper Hill for this note. We just think their sensor cleaning products are among the best on the market, and like their way of doing business. -- We think you will too. Click here to check them out.)

Kit Lens Test Results

Zoom
Excellent performance with the 14-42mm kit lens.

The Olympus E-P2 is available bundled with an Olympus 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 ED M.Zuiko Digital Micro Four Thirds lens, the first Olympus M.Zuiko zoom. The kit lens possesses a very typical optical zoom range of 3x, and the 35mm equivalent focal range is about 28-84mm, because of the E-P2's 2x "crop factor." Results were very good at 14mm, with only slightly soft corners and strong detail throughout the frame. Coma distortion in the trees was low; however, chromatic aberration in the corners was moderate. Results were excellent at the 42mm setting, with sharp corners and just a a hint of chromatic aberration. Overall, an excellent result for a kit lens. The Olympus E-P2 does not offer a digital zoom mode.

Macro
A smaller than average area (for an SLD* kit lens), with excellent detail.

As with zoom performance, the Olympus E-P2's macro performance will depend entirely on the lens in use. However, with the 14-42mm kit lens set to 42mm, the Olympus E-P2 captured an smaller than average minimum area measuring 2.12 x 1.59 inches (54 x 41 millimeters). Resolution and detail were excellent, with very little if any softening in the corners. (Most lenses have some softening in the corners at macro distances, the Olympus E-P2's kit lens has much less than most.) Excellent performance for a kit lens here as well.

*SLD = Single Lens Direct-view

Geometric Distortion
Very low to moderate geometric distortion with the 14-42mm kit lens in JPEGs, much higher than average distortion in uncorrected RAW files.

In-Camera JPEG: Barrel distortion at 14mm is 0.7 percent

In-Camera JPEG: Pincushion distortion at 42mm is practically nonexistent

Uncorrected RAW: Barrel distortion at 14mm is 2.2 percent

Uncorrected RAW: Pincushion distortion at 42mm is 1.0 percent

When shooting JPEGs, the Olympus E-P2's 14-42mm kit lens produced about 0.7 percent barrel distortion at wide-angle, somewhat less than that produced by most cameras we've tested, though slightly noticeable in some of its images. At the telephoto end, there's almost no distortion, practically imperceptible. This is the tendency for the lens to bend straight lines outward (like a barrel -- usually at wide-angle) or inward (like a pincushion -- usually at telephoto).

To see how much correction is taking place in the camera, we converted RAW files from the above shots with dcraw, which does not correct for distortion. As you can see, at wide angle, the barrel distortion is very high at about 2.2%, and pincushion distortion at telephoto is also fairly high at about 1.0%. We expect this for smaller interchangeable lenses though, so it's nothing to be concerned about unless you are using a RAW converter which does not understand the embedded "opcodes" to perform distortion corrections automatically. Most RAW converters these days are capable of applying distortion correction automatically, as specified by the manufacturer. (There's going to be some loss of resolution as a result of such correction, because pixels in the corners of the frame are being "stretched" to correct for the distortion. Obviously, a lens that doesn't require such correction, and is also sharp in the corners to begin with would be preferable, but relaxing constraints on barrel and pincushion distortion likely brings other benefits in the lens design.)

Chromatic Aberration and Corner Sharpness
Moderate and bright chromatic aberration at wide-angle with the 14-42mm kit lens, much lower levels at full telephoto. Some soft corners at wide-angle.

Chromatic Aberration. Chromatic aberration in the corners with the E-P2's 14-42mm kit lens is moderate and noticeable at wide-angle (14mm). At full telephoto (42mm), C.A. is low, and not as noticeable.  In both cases, the color fringing gradually reduces in brightness and width as it approaches the center of the image, where it is almost nonexistent.

Corner Softness. The Olympus E-P2's 14-42mm kit lens produced some soft corners in a few shots. At full wide-angle, the left side corners were softer than the right, with the top left corner being the softest. Blurring extended fairly far into the frame. The other corners, however, showed almost no softening in the corners, and the center of the image was a quite sharp. At full telephoto, all four corners were pretty sharp, as was the center. Over all, a better than average performance for a kit lens here.

The images above were taken from our standardized test shots. For a collection of more pictorial photos, see our Olympus PEN E-P2 Photo Gallery .

Exposure

Olympus E-P2 Exposure

Metering
Five metering systems are available on the Olympus E-P2: Digital ESP, Center-weighted, Spot, Spot HI (highlights), and Spot SH (shadows). All are accessed through the various menu systems on the camera's LCD monitor. Under the default Digital ESP setting, the camera takes an exposure reading from 324 segments of the image, and chooses the best exposure based on brightness and contrast across the entire scene. Center-weighted metering reads from the center of the frame, but from a fairly large area. Spot metering simply reads the exposure from the very center of the image, so you can pinpoint the specific area of the photograph you want properly exposed. (Spot metering is very handy when you have a subject that's backlit, or that has a very different brightness, either lighter or darker, than the background.) The two additional Spot options provide highlight and shadow control, whenever shooting in very bright or very dark conditions.

Exposure and autofocus are optimized for faces when Face Detect is enabled. Metering range is from 0 to 18 EV, at room temperature with a 50mm f/2 lens at ISO 100. An AE/AF Lock button locks the current exposure settings whenever pressed, so you can independently lock exposure and focus. (AE Lock is useful when you want to base your exposure on an off-center subject. Point the camera at the subject, lock the exposure, then recompose your shot however you like. Your subject will be correctly exposed, regardless of what might be in the center of the frame when you finally snap the shutter.) Through a Custom menu, you can designate the function of the AE/AF lock button, and how it works in conjunction with the Shutter button. You can also specify which metering mode is used when this button is pressed. Available options are Auto, Center-Weighted, Spot, Spot HI, and Spot SH.

In situations where exposure compensation is necessary, simply press the Exposure Compensation button on the top of the E-P2 (next to the Shutter button) and turn either control dial or press the left and right Arrow buttons. In all exposure modes except Manual and Bulb, the exposure value scale will display on the LCD, and you can increase or decrease the exposure in either 0.3, 0.5, or 1.0 EV increments (selected via a Custom menu option), up to a maximum of +/- 3.0 EV. Or, you can use the Auto Exposure Bracketing (AEB) function to automatically bracket three frames at 0.3, 0.7, or 1.0 EV steps each. The auto bracketing will center its efforts around whatever exposure you've chosen as the starting point, including any exposure compensation adjustments you've made -- meaning that it's possible to bracket one exposure as far as 4.0 EV on one side of the metered exposure value. AEB is handy for those times when you want to make sure you get just the right exposure for a critical subject.

The Olympus E-P2 also gives you the ability to individually tweak the exposure of each metering mode, via a Custom menu option called Exposure Shift. This allows you to assign a separate compensation in 1/6 EV steps between -1 and +1 EV for Digital ESP, Center-weighted, and Spot metering modes. Unlike exposure bracketing, the exposure shift function is limited to operating within the camera's standard exposure compensation range. That is to say, if you dial in a -1.0 EV exposure shift, and the maximum -3.0 EV of exposure compensation, the camera will only reduce the metered exposure by 3.0 EV -- it won't go outside of the maximum exposure compensation range to a -4.0 EV exposure. Unlike the exposure compensation function, use of exposure shift isn't indicated on the P2's record or playback-mode information overlays.

White Balance
White balance options include Auto, Sunny, Shadow, Cloudy, Incandescent (Tungsten), Fluorescent 1, Fluorescent 2, Fluorescent 3, Flash, One-Touch, and Custom, to accommodate a variety of lighting situations. Pressing the White Balance button and turning either Control dial or pressing on the left and right Arrow buttons adjusts the setting. The Olympus E-P2's Custom setting lets you directly specify a color temperature using the Kelvin temperature scale, from 2,000K to 14,000K. This is accomplished by first highlighting the Custom white balance menu item, and then holding down the Exposure Compensation button while turning either Control dial or pressing the left or right Arrow buttons. The One-Touch option is useful for basing the white balance on a white card. You can also adjust the white balance, controlling the amount of amber-blue and green-magenta bias in the color balance, in any of the selected modes, in +/- 7 steps. This ability to "tweak" the white balance, called White Balance Compensation, is very helpful when dealing with difficult light sources. The E-P2 also features white balance bracketing. If activated, the camera will write three separate images for each press of the shutter button, either biasing between amber and blue or green and magenta. You can set the images to vary by two, four, or six arbitrary adjustment steps.

ISO Sensitivity
The Olympus E-P2 lets you adjust its light sensitivity in either 1 or 1/3 EV steps, within a range of ISO 100 to 6,400 ISO equivalents. There's also an Auto mode in which the camera selects an ISO sensitivity appropriate to the subject's brightness. To keep noise and shutter speeds inside your desired range, you can set both maximum and minimum ISO limits for the Auto mode, within a range of 200 to 6,400 equivalents. By default, Auto ISO is only available when shooting in Program, Aperture-priority or Shutter-priority modes, but through a Custom menu option it can also be enabled in Manual mode. This allows both shutter speed and aperture to be manually specified, while the camera varies sensitivity so as to match the metered exposure. The net result is similar to the unusual Shutter/Aperture-priority (TAv) mode we've seen on Pentax's digital SLRs, although with the disadvantage that exposure compensation remains unavailable since the P2 believes itself to be operating in Manual mode. There is also a useful  ISO bracketing feature, where the camera takes three images, varying the ISO but keeping the shutter speed and aperture fixed.

The higher ISO settings are helpful when you want faster shutter speeds under normal lighting, to help freeze fast action. Of course, as with all digicams, the higher ISO settings produce photos with more image noise, in much the same way that higher-ISO films show more film grain. To combat this problem, the E-P2's Custom menu offers a variable high ISO noise reduction function -- which Olympus calls Noise Filter -- with options of either Off, Low, Standard, or High. There's also a separate Noise Reduction option in the Custom menu, which reduces noise in long exposures by capturing a second exposure containing only the dark current noise, then subtracting this from the image. This effectively doubles exposure times when in use. By default, long exposure noise reduction is applied automatically on longer exposures, but the function can also be disabled or enabled manually.

Picture Modes
There are also options on the Record menu to set the color mode. As well as the Vivid, Natural, Muted, Portrait, Monotone, and Custom options found in the E-P1, there's a new i-Enhance option which automatically detects the main subject in any scene, then boosts brightness / saturation selectively for those areas of the image so as to draw your attention to the subject. This effect is intended to better match what the human eye sees. Contrast, Sharpness, and Saturation levels may be adjusted in five steps for i-Enhance, Vivid, Natural, Muted, and Portrait; while Contrast and Sharpness levels can be adjusted in five steps for Monotone. Yellow, Orange, Red, or Green filter effects are available for Monotone, as well as Sepia, Blue, Purple, or Green picture tones. In addition, the Olympus E-P2 has a Gradation setting to control the brightness of the entire image. You can choose between the Auto, Normal, Low, and High Key settings. Finally, the i-Enhance mode offers three-step control over the strength of the effect -- High, Standard, or Low. A color space option under the Custom menu lets you choose between sRGB (for Windows machines) and Adobe RGB (for Adobe Photoshop) color options.

Multiple Exposures
The Olympus E-P2 supports multiple exposures overlaid as one image. You can overlay two subsequent images while they are being taken and save the result as a JPEG or Raw file. By enabling the Auto Gain feature, the camera can automatically adjust the gain so that the resulting image is averaged from the source images . Alternately, the result can be additive (as it would be in a multiple exposure shot with a film camera) if auto gain is left disabled.

It is possible to combine more than two images by using the Overlay function, which allows selection of any preexisting Raw image to use as a starting point for the multiple exposure. By saving each multiple exposure as a new Raw file, it's possible to combine an essentially unlimited number of exposures into a single image, although doing so requires the overlay image to be manually reselected through the menu system after each shot, a somewhat tedious process that requires at least seven button presses.

When shooting static subjects -- or those where blurring is desirable, such as waterfalls -- the auto gain function can also be used to reduce image noise in-camera by averaging it out across multiple exposures. This technique allows the use of higher ISO sensitivities than might otherwise be advisable, and the optional RM-UC1 tethered remote cable release can be used to prevent the camera being moved between shots. Uunfortunately, the cable release doesn't allow navigation of the menu system, which would be required to merge more than two subsequent exposures in-camera.

The E-P2 offers one further method of creating multiple exposures through its Playback menu Image Overlay function. This allows selection of either two or three Raw images which are then combined into a single combined image, which is saved as a new Raw file. This allows a greater degree of control over the combined image than the Record-mode multiple exposure function, since the brightness of each source image can be adjusted separately in twenty steps.

Drive Mode and Self-Timer
The Drive setting accesses Single-shot and Continuous modes, as well as Self-timer modes. Single-shot shoots one frame per shutter press, while Continuous mode shoots bursts at about 3 frames-per-second. As is usually the case, the number of frames you can capture continuously is limited by the camera's buffer memory capacity, the speed of your memory card, and the image file size and quality.

The Olympus E-P2 also offers two Self-Timer modes for self-portraits or those occasions when you don't want to risk camera shake on a long exposure by pressing the Shutter button to trip the shutter. You can choose between a 2 or 12 second countdown. The 2 second countdown is useful for times when you're taking a long exposure with the camera on a tripod. Surprisingly for a camera without a mirror, there is also an Anti-Shock option, which allows a programmable delay from 1/8s to 30s between the shutter button being pressed and the actual exposure taken.

When the optional RM-UC1 Remote Cable is attached via the USB-AV/OUT port, remote operation is available. No wireless remote is available for the E-P2.

Shading Compensation
Like many of the companies other SLR and SLD cameras, the E-P2 implements what the company calls Shading Compensation -- another term for lens vignetting or corner shading correction. Canon and Nikon offer a similar feature on some of their recent models, and it's nice to see the Olympus E-P2 does too. It's not clear whether the camera applies fixed compensation based on lens type, or by analyzing the actual light fall-off in the corners of captured images.

Art Filters
Like the E-30 and E-620 SLRs, the Olympus E-P2 offers what the company calls Art Filters effects. There are eight to choose from, two more than were offered by the E-P1. As well as the Pop Art, Soft Focus, Pale & Light Color, Light Tone, Grainy Film, and Pin Hole filters of the previous camera, the E-P2 includes Diorama and Cross Process filters. What's unique about these is that the camera performs these filters as it captures the image, taking them into account when determining exposure variables. The effect is also previewed on the camera's LCD or electronic viewfinder while framing the shot, although in a couple of modes the preview is rather coarse, and greatly slows down the live view. The Diorama filter is the worst offender, slowing the live view down to around two frames per second, and the Pin Hole filter also brings a significant slow down.

 As one might expect, Art Filters are not applied to RAW files. If RAW mode is chosen, the camera will automatically enable LN+RAW mode, and save the modified image as a large/normal JPEG. For the two new filters, Diorama blurs the top and bottom of images to simulate shallow depth of field, while Cross Process yields surrealistic colors much like the effect achieved by cross-processing positive transparency film in chemicals intended for negative film.

The images above were taken from our standardized test shots. For a collection of more pictorial photos, see our Olympus PEN E-P2 Photo Gallery .

Not sure which camera to buy? Let your eyes be the ultimate judge! Visit our Comparometer(tm) to compare images from the Olympus PEN E-P2 with those from other cameras you may be considering. The proof is in the pictures, so let your own eyes decide which you like best!

Performance

Olympus E-P2 Performance

Imaging

Olympus E-P2 Image Quality

Color

Saturation & Hue Accuracy
Good color and hue accuracy overall, with minor oversaturation of strong reds and blues.

In the diagram above, the squares show the original color, and the circles show the color that the camera captured. More saturated colors are located toward the periphery of the graph. Hue changes as you travel around the center. Thus, hue-accurate, highly saturated colors appear as lines radiating from the center. Click for a larger image.

Saturation. The Olympus E-P2 pushes reds and blues a bit, and dark greens very slightly, while undersaturating some cyans and yellows. With a default saturation of only 105.6% (5.6% oversaturated), the E-P2 doesn't oversaturate as much as most consumer cameras. Most consumer digital cameras produce color that's more highly saturated (more intense) than found in the original subjects. This is simply because most people like their color a bit brighter than life.

Skin tones. Here, the Olympus E-P2 also did well, producing natural-looking skin tones, just slightly on the pinkish side. Where oversaturation is most problematic is on Caucasian skin tones, as it's very easy for these "memory colors" to be seen as too bright, too pink, too yellow, etc.

Hue. The Olympus E-P2 did push cyan toward blue, red toward orange and yellow toward green, but shifts were relatively minor to moderate. Overall accuracy was still very good. (The cyan to blue shift is very common among the digital cameras we test; we think it's a deliberate choice by camera engineers to produce better-looking sky colors.) Hue is "what color" the color is.

Saturation Adjustment
The Olympus E-P2 lets you adjust the image saturation, contrast, and sharpness in five steps each. As can be seen below, the saturation adjustment was quite effective, covers a useful range, and does a good job of not impacting contrast.

Saturation Adjustment Examples
-2	0	+2

The table above shows results with the default as well as the two extreme saturation settings. Click on any thumbnail above, then click again to see the full-sized image.

Sensor

Exposure and White Balance

Indoors, incandescent lighting
Very warm cast with Auto, but good color with the Incandescent and Manual settings. Average positive exposure compensation required.

Indoors, under normal incandescent lighting, color balance was very warm with the Auto white balance setting. Results with the Incandescent setting were quite good, very similar to the Manual setting, which was the most accurate. The 2,600 Kelvin setting was quite cool with a blue-green tint. The Olympus E-P2 required an average amount of positive exposure compensation here, at +0.3 EV. Overall color looks good, though the blue flowers look slightly purplish, probably due to the E-P2's tendency to punch up reds a little. ((Many digital cameras reproduce the blue flowers here with more of a purplish tint, so the Olympus E-P2 actually performs a bit better than average here.) Our test lighting for this shot is a mixture of 60 and 100 watt household incandescent bulbs, a pretty yellow light source, but a very common one in typical home settings here in the U.S.)

Outdoors, daylight
Bright colors overall, though a tendency toward high contrast under harsh lighting. About average exposure accuracy.

Outdoors, the Olympus E-P2 performed pretty well, with good color but slight overexposure in the outdoor far-field house shot. The Olympus E-P2 required an average amount of positive exposure compensation (+0.7 EV) to keep facial tones bright on the "sunlit" portrait test. That left the model's face a little dark, but there were still a lot of blown highlights in her shirt. Default contrast is on the high side, but fortunately, there's a contrast adjustment to help compensate. Overall, good results here, especially when the contrast setting is turned down (see Extremes section below).

See full set of test images with explanations
See thumbnails of all test and gallery images

Resolution
Very high resolution, 1,700 ~ 1,800 lines of strong detail.

In camera JPEGs our laboratory resolution chart revealed sharp, distinct line patterns down to about 1,800 lines per picture height horizontally, and about 1,700 lines in the vertical direction. Extinction didn't occur until about 2,600 to 2,700 lines horizontally and vertically. We weren't able to extract much more resolution by processing the E-P2's ORF files using Adobe Camera Raw. Use these numbers to compare with other cameras of similar resolution, or use them to see just what higher resolution can mean in terms of potential detail.

See full set of test images with explanations
See thumbnails of all test and gallery images

Sharpness & Detail
Good sharpness overall, though edge-enhancement artifacts on high-contrast subjects are visible. Moderate noise suppression visible in the shadows.

Sharpness. The Olympus E-P2 captures fairly sharp images overall, though quite a few edge enhancement artifacts are visible on high-contrast subjects such as the branches, roof and trim in the crop above left. Edge enhancement creates the illusion of sharpness by enhancing colors and tones right at the edge of a rapid transition in color or tone.

Detail. The crop above right shows some moderate noise suppression artifacts in the darkest areas of the model's hair, smudging individual strands together, though quite a few strands are visible. Overall detail is better than average for a Four-Thirds sensor, and better than quite a few APS-C sensors as well. Noise-suppression systems in digital cameras tend to flatten-out detail in areas of subtle contrast. The effects can often be seen in shots of human hair, where the individual strands are lost and an almost "watercolor" look appears.

RAW vs In-Camera JPEGs
As noted above, the Olympus E-P2 produces fairly sharp in-camera JPEGs. As is almost always the case, though, quite a bit more detail can be obtained from carefully processing RAW files than can be seen in the in-camera JPEGs. The Olympus E-P2's JPEGs are good straight from the camera, but it's surprising how much more detail is visible after processing in a good RAW converter. Take a look below, to see what we mean:

Camera JPEG (SuperFine)	RAW via Olympus Master 2 (Default settings)	RAW via ACR (USM=300%, radius=0.3)

In the table above, mousing over a link at the bottom will load the corresponding crop in the area above, and clicking on the link will load the full resolution image.

As you can see, the Olympus Master 2 conversion resulted in an image very similar to the in-camera JPEG in terms of detail. The Adobe Camera Raw conversion however contains more fine detail than the camera JPEG, while at the same time showing fewer sharpening artifacts: Like the Olympus E-P1, the E-P2 rewards RAW shooters with really excellent detail.

ISO & Noise Performance
Low noise up to ISO 400, moderate to high at higher ISOs. Very good performance for a Four-Thirds sensor.

Default High ISO Noise Reduction
ISO 100	ISO 200	ISO 400
ISO 800	ISO 1,600	ISO 3,200
	ISO 6,400

The Olympus E-P2's images are quite clean at ISO 100, and ISO 200 is almost as good. We start to see some bright as well as dark noise pixels at ISO 400, but detail is still very good, with just a hint of chroma noise creeping into the shadows. ISO 800 is quite a bit softer due to more aggressive noise reduction, but detail is not too bad. At ISO 1,600, we see additional detail loss, as well as more obvious purple and yellow blotches in shadow areas. At ISO 3,200, noise grain is coarser and blurring is stronger still, as you'd expect. The yellow and purple chroma noise is also a lot stronger. ISO 6,400 is very noisy, having very little fine detail and also a strong purplish color cast, especially in darker areas. All things considered, the Olympus E-P2's high-ISO images are quite good for a Four-Thirds sensor camera, and very similar to the E-P1's. As always, see the Print Quality section below for maximum recommended print sizes at each ISO.

A note about focus for this shot: We shoot this image at f/4, using one of three very sharp reference lenses (70mm Sigma f/2.8 macro for most cameras, 60mm f/2.8 Nikkor macro for Nikon bodies without a drive motor, and Olympus Zuiko 50mm f/2.0 for Four Thirds and Micro Four Thirds bodies). To insure that the hair detail we use for making critical judgements about camera noise processing and detail rendering is in sharp focus at the relatively wide aperture we're shooting at, the focus target at the center of the scene is on a movable stand. This lets us compensate for front- or back-focus by different camera bodies, even those that lack micro-focus adjustments. This does mean, though, that the focus target itself may appear soft or slightly out of focus for bodies that front- or back-focused with the reference lens. If you click to view the full-size image for one of these shots and notice that the focus target is fuzzy, you don't need to email and tell us about it; we already know it. :-) The focus target position will simply have been adjusted to insure that the rest of the scene is focused properly.

Extremes: Sunlit and low light tests
High resolution with good overall detail, but somewhat high default contrast and limited dynamic range. Good low-light performance, but metering struggled quite a bit at lower light levels.

Sunlight. The Olympus E-P2 struggled a bit with the deliberately harsh lighting of this test, as its contrast was a little high at its default setting, and the dynamic range was somewhat limited. Shadow detail is pretty good though, albeit a bit noisy. (Compared some other cameras, including earlier Olympus models, we prefer seeing a bit of noise in the shadows to the alternative of lots of detail lost due to noise suppression.) Although we liked the detail in the shirt better at +0.3 EV with the default contrast, we preferred the +0.7 EV exposure overall, because the exposure of the skin tone in the face was better, without blowing out as many highlights as with +1.0 EV. Depending on the photographer, you could lean one way or the other. Pros and advanced users will want to shoot darker, to hold highlight detail. For those E-P2 owners that are going to want to just print an image, the +0.7 image would probably produce the best-looking print with little or no tweaking. The bottom line though, is that the E-P2 had difficulty with the wide dynamic range of this shot, at least with its default settings at ISO 100.

Because digital cameras are more like slide film than negative film (in that they tend to have a more limited tonal range), we test them in the harshest situations to see how they handle scenes with bright highlights and dark shadows, as well as what kind of sensitivity they have in low light. The shot above is designed to mimic the very harsh, contrasty effect of direct noonday sunlight, a very tough challenge for most digital cameras. (You can read details of this test here. In actual shooting conditions, be sure to use fill flash in situations like the one shown here; it's better to shoot in open shade whenever possible.)

Contrast Adjustment
As mentioned previously, the camera's contrast adjustment was at least some help in handling the harsh lighting.

Minimum Contrast
Contrast set to lowest, +0.7 EV	Contrast set to lowest, Auto Exposure

At its lowest contrast setting, the Olympus E-P2 did a better job of preserving highlight detail, maintaining fairly natural-looking skin tones, and holding more in the shadows, but the limited dynamic range makes it perform a bit below average in this regard. These shots were taken at ISO 100. ISO 200 improves dynamic range a bit.

Contrast Adjustment Examples
-2	0	+2

The shots above show the results of the minimum, default and maximum contrast settings. While you can see the extremes, it's pretty hard to evaluate small differences in contrast on small thumbnails like these, click on any thumbnail to go to the full-size image. The Olympus E-P2's contrast adjustment helps a little with the strong highlights here, but we'd really like to see slightly greater range, at the low end. Even with the lowest contrast setting, the dynamic range isn't terribly impressive: While dropping the exposure slightly helps the highlights, and the contrast adjustment opened up the shadows somewhat, the camera still struggles with the deliberately harsh lighting of this test. (Which means it will also have issues with strong, direct sunlight.)

Dynamic Range vs ISO Sensitivity
ISO 100, f/8, 1/250s	ISO 200, f/8, 1/500s

As was true for the E-P1, it's important to note that for maximum dynamic range, you should select ISO 200 when shooting with the Olympus E-P2. Although Olympus doesn't say, we think this is the E-P2's native ISO and why Auto ISO starts at ISO 200. While there is a bit more noise at ISO 200 versus 100, dynamic range is better, as can be seen in the highlights and shadows of Far Field shots above. The E-P2 also offers four Gradation options (Normal, Auto, High and Low Key). The above shots were taken with Gradation set to Normal.

Face Detection
Off at 0 EV	On at 0 EV

Face Detection
Like most Point & Shoot cameras these days (and some DSLRs in Live View mode), the Olympus E-P2 has the ability to detect faces, and adjust exposure and focus accordingly. The E-P2 does it automatically in iAuto mode, when a Portrait scene mode is selected, or when Face Detection AF mode is selected. As you can see from the examples above, it really works, as the image with face detection enabled is much better exposed for the face, an excellent performance under very difficult lighting such as this.

Because digital cameras are more like slide film than negative film (in that they tend to have a more limited tonal range), we test them in the harshest situations to see how they handle scenes with bright highlights and dark shadows, as well as what kind of sensitivity they have in low light. The shot above is designed to mimic the very harsh, contrasty effect of direct noonday sunlight, a very tough challenge for most digital cameras. (You can read details of this test here.)

	1 fc 11 lux	1/2 fc 5.5 lux	1/4 fc 2.7 lux	1/8 fc 1.3 lux	1/16 fc 0.67 lux	1/16fc No NR
ISO 100	1.6 sec f2.8	3.2 sec f2.8	6 sec f2.8	13 sec f2.8	25 sec f2.8	25 sec f2.8
ISO 200	0.8 sec f2.8	1.6 sec f2.8	3.2 sec f2.8	6 sec f2.8	13 sec f2.8	13 sec f2.8
ISO 400	0.4 sec f2.8	0.8 sec f2.8	1.6 sec f2.8	3.2 sec f2.8	6 sec f2.8	6 sec f2.8
ISO 800	1/5 sec f2.8	0.4 sec f2.8	0.8 sec f2.8	1.6 sec f2.8	3.2 sec f2.8	3.2 sec f2.8
ISO 1600	1.6 sec f2.8	1/10 sec f2.8	1/5 sec f2.8	0.4 sec f2.8	0.8 sec f2.8	1.6 sec f2.8
ISO 3200	1/20 sec f2.8	1/10 sec f2.8	1/5 sec f2.8	0.4 sec f2.8	0.8 sec f2.8	0.8 sec f2.8
ISO 6400	1/40 sec f2.8	1/20 sec f2.8	1/10 sec f2.8	1/5 sec f2.8	0.4 sec f2.8	0.4 sec f2.8

Low light. The Olympus E-P2 exposure metering struggled in our low light test, causing severe underexposure at the lowest light level when using aperture priority autoexposure. We had to resort to trial and error in manual mode to get the exposure right at the dimmest light level, then adjusted shutter speed to match the increase in light at successively higher levels. Noise is low up to ISO 400, though there are a few hot pixels visible at lower light levels. White balance is quite neutral, and there doesn't appear to be any sign of banding at any ISO, an increasingly common issue lately.

The camera's autofocus system was able to focus on the subject down to almost the 1/8 foot-candle light level unassisted with the 14-42mm kit lens. That isn't as good as most DSLRs, but very good for a camera using contrast-detect autofocus. We did however notice the camera sometimes gave false focus confirmation at lower light levels. The E-P2 unfortunately does not have a built-in focus assist lamp.

How bright is this? The one foot-candle light level that this test begins at roughly corresponds to the brightness of typical city street-lighting at night. Cameras performing well at that level should be able to snap good-looking photos of street-lit scenes.

NOTE: This low light test is conducted with a stationary subject, and the camera mounted on a sturdy tripod. Most digital cameras will fail miserably when faced with a moving subject in dim lighting. (For example, a child's ballet recital or a holiday pageant in a gymnasium.) Thanks to their phase-detect AF systems, digital SLRs tend to do much better than point & shoots, but you still shouldn't expect a quick autofocus lock with moving subjects. The E-P2 uses contrast-detect autofocus, as is found in most point & shoot cameras, so its low-light focusing ability is less than that of most SLRs with phase-detect systems. That said, though, the larger, more sensitive pixels of the E-P2's sensor do better under dim lighting than do the tiny pixels of most point & shoots, (A useful trick is to just prop the camera on a convenient surface, and use its self-timer to release the shutter. This avoids any jiggling from your finger pressing the shutter button, and can work quite well when you don't have a tripod handy.)

Output Quality

Print Quality
Excellent print quality, good color, good-looking 16x20-inch prints from camera JPEGs, quite usable 20x30-inch prints. RAW files can access even more detail.

ISO 100 JPEG shots look great printed at 16x20 inches, and detail even holds together quite well at 20x30 inches, especially for wall display.

ISO 200 and 400 shots are also usable at 20x30 inches, but ISO 400 shots tighten up a bit more to what we'd call tack sharp at 16x20.

ISO 800 shots are still reasonably good at 16x20, with only minor luminance noise.

ISO 1,600 shots are usable at 13x19 inches, but come back to what we'd call sharp at 11x14 inches.

ISO 3,200 shots are grainy at 11x14, though still usable for wall display; for greater sharpness, though, stick to letter size or 8x10. Color does fade a bit at this size as well.

ISO 6,400 shots are a little too soft for 8x10, but look quite good at 5x7.

Overall, a very impressive performance from the Olympus E-P2.

Testing hundreds of digital cameras, we've found that you can only tell just so much about a camera's image quality by viewing its images on-screen. Ultimately, there's no substitute for printing a lot of images and examining them closely. For this reason, we now routinely print sample images from the cameras we test on our Canon Pro9000 Mark II studio printer, and the Canon Pixma MP610 here in the office. (See the Canon Pixma Pro9000 Mark II review for details on that model.)

Viewfinder

Olympus E-P2 Viewfinder

Olympus E-P2 External Electronic Viewfinder

One of the main design changes in the Olympus E-P2 as compared to the previous E-P1 model is the addition of an accessory port, much like that featured in Panasonic's Lumix DMC-GF1. The Olympus E-P2's accessory port allows use of either an external electronic viewfinder -- which may be included in certain product bundles, and can also be purchased separately -- or an optional adapter for an external microphone jack adapter. Either accessory mounts in the flash hot shoe, so their use precludes that of an external flash strobe, or simultaneous use of both accessories.

When slotted into the hot shoe, the viewfinder mates to a small female connector that's ordinarily concealed behind a cover that doubles as a hot shoe cap. The viewfinder itself also includes a cap to protect its corresponding male connector, and when the caps are removed, they can be slotted together for safe keeping. The connector provides electronic connections with which to provide a live view signal that's similar to that of the LCD display, although with a significantly higher resolution. The viewfinder assembly includes a mechanism to provide smooth articulation through a 90-degree arc, allowing viewing anywhere from directly behind to directly above the camera body.

The LCD panel used in the E-P2's external viewfinder yields the same 1.15x magnification as the pentaprism viewfinder of the Olympus E-3 digital SLR, although with a slightly lower eyepoint of 18mm. It offers the same 1,440,000 dot resolution as the built-in electronic viewfinders found in the Panasonic G1 and GH1. That's particularly impressive, because it's significantly higher than either the resolution of the Panasonic GF1's external viewfinder, or for that matter the Olympus E-P2's own LCD panel. The generous magnification and high resolution are complemented by a 100% field of view, refresh rate of 60 frames per second, 400cd brightness (double that of the average EVF, according to Olympus), and a 300:1 contrast ratio (said to be triple the norm). Subjectively we found the display included with our preproduction E-P2 provided a high refresh rate, and showed very little tearing or ghosting. Thanks to individual pixels for red, green, and blue colors there are also no RGB shifts or artifacts, something which can be a problem on LCOS-based electronic viewfinders which alternate colors from each specific pixel location.

The Olympus E-P2's removable viewfinder also includes two built-in controls. There's an EVF/LCD button to select which display should be active, and the bezel of the eyepiece acts as a diopter correction knob providing -3 to +1 diopters of adjustment. Olympus has announced updated firmware for the P2 due in late April 2010, which will allow simultaneous use of the EVF and LCD display.

Olympus E-P2 Full-time Live View

By its nature, the Olympus E-P2 is always in "Live View" mode: In that respect, it's like any point & shoot digicam with a rear-panel LCD that works as its viewfinder. The differences with this camera are that it has interchangeable lenses, and has a larger sensor to provide better low-light performance than typical pocket cameras.

The Olympus E-P2's electronic viewfinder essentially mirrors the output of the main LCD display, but with a significantly higher resolution. As you change exposure settings, the display changes to reflect what the captured image will look like, also known as "exposure simulation." Much like the E-P2's main LCD display, Olympus has provided both brightness and hue adjustments for the electronic viewfinder, which can be found on page two of the Custom Menu Options, Tab D.

Several display modes are available, allowing for information overlays including a live histogram. The information display in record mode can include shutter speed and aperture, exposure mode, flash mode, ISO sensitivity setting, metering mode, AF mode, number of available images, resolution, aspect ratio, image stabilizer mode, drive mode, white balance, focus confirmation, battery status, etc. Through the Custom menu, you can also enable one of three styles of grid displays. See our Operation page for information callouts in record mode.

Viewfinder Test Results

Accuracy
Excellent accuracy from the LCD monitor and detachable EVF.

The Olympus E-P2's LCD monitor and detachable electronic viewfinder proved very accurate, both showing essentially 100% coverage with our Olympus Zuiko Digital 50mm f/2.0 low distortion prime. Excellent results here.

Video

Olympus E-P2 Video Recording

by Dave Etchells and Mike Tomkins

Video recording in SLRs and other removable-lens digital cameras is an increasingly common and important feature, a trend the Olympus E-P2 continues. In common with its competitors, it offers the ability to use a variety of lenses for video recording, and offers greater control over depth of field than do typical camcorders or digicams. In a welcome change since the previous P1 model, Olympus now allows fully manual control of both shutter speed and aperture for video recording. There's also provision for external stereo microphones via an adapter that connects to the new accessory port beneath the camera's hot shoe, whereas the original P1 allowed only its internal stereo mic. The E-P2 provides video capability in a smaller package than most other interchangeable-lens cameras, particularly when fitted with Olympus' M.ZUIKO DIGITAL 17mm f2.8  lens. We found the Olympus E-P2 to be a competent video platform compared to competing cameras, falling towards the higher end of the range in terms of capability and features. Let's take a quick look at its overall specs, and then dive a little deeper into its features and options:

Olympus E-P2 Basic Video Specs

• 720p (1,280 x 720), 30 fps HD recording
• 640 x 480, 30 fps SD recording
• Motion JPEG encoding, AVI file format
• Autofocus is possible during recording, but we don't recommend it (highly visible/audible)
• In Program and Aperture Priority AE, camera adjusts shutter speed / ISO sensitivity during recording to maintain metered exposure
• In Manual AE, full control of shutter speed, aperture and ISO sensitivity is possible, but only before recording starts
• EV adjustment is available in Program and Aperture Priority AE prior to recording, but not during
• "Art Filters" can be applied to video, but most adversely affect framerate, sometimes drastically
• Video recorded with Diorama filter plays back at ~15x normal speed, and has audio disabled
• Stereo audio recording via built-in microphones, plus external input via optional accessory port adapter
• Still + Video mode snaps still image at the end of video recording
  
  

Olympus E-P2 Video Resolutions & Recording Formats

The Olympus E-P2 records either 720p (1,280 x 720 pixel) High-Definition or 640 x 480 pixel Standard-Definition video with Motion-JPEG compression, using the AVI file format. Frame rate is always 30 fps, but bit rates may vary somewhat, depending on the resolution being recorded and complexity of the subject. Stereo audio is recorded as 44.1 KHz PCM data, embedded in the AVI files. Here's a run-down of the Olympus E-P2's video specs:

The Olympus E-P2 offers just two video settings, either HD (high definition), recording at a resolution of 1,280 x 720 pixels and 30 frames/second, or SD (standard definition), recording 640x480 pixels, also at 30 frames/second. Its HD mode conforms to the "720p" spec, but doesn't offer the higher-resolution "1080i" mode HD option. This may not be much of a sacrifice, as 1080i recording in digicams and SLRs often brings with it either unacceptable levels of compression artifacts when faced with even modest amounts of movement in the video frame, reduced frame rates, or both. Likewise, the E-P2's 30 fps frame rate is faster than some cameras that are limited to the 24 frames/second "cinema" standard (although depending on your intended use, this may actually be a disadvantage), but it doesn't reach the level of smoothness and motion-capture ability offered by models sporting 60 frames/second recording. In both frame rate and resolution, it ranks roughly in the middle of the pack of current interchangeable-lens video-capable cameras.

The Olympus E-P2 records using Motion JPEG compression, saving its files in the AVI format. This is a somewhat more computer- and edit-friendly compression technology than MPEG4 or AVCHD, but at the expense of noticeably larger files: Expect to burn about 250 megabytes of card space for each minute of HD recording, and about 120 megabytes for each minute of standard-definition video. Interestingly, while the Olympus E-P2 uses Motion JPEG compression, it does vary the compression level used, depending on the complexity of the subject or amount of motion in the frame, to result in relatively fixed bit rates. That is, the megabytes/minute of video don't vary much, regardless of whether you're filming a blank white wall or highly detailed scene with lots of change from frame to frame. On higher-capacity cards, individual files are limited to 2 gigabytes in size, corresponding to a bit over 8 minutes of HD video, or 16-17 minutes of SD.

Here are some examples of video from the Olympus E-P2, showing typical results under daylight conditions.

Olympus E-P2 Video Samples
HD Quality: 1,280 x 720, 30fps (131 MB)	SD Quality: 640 x 480, 30fps (62.2 MB)

Olympus E-P2 Video-Mode Focusing

The bugaboo of video with interchangeable-lens still cameras has been (and in most cases continues to be) focusing; specifically, the lack of autofocus capability during movie recording. In this area, the Olympus E-P2 once again places about midway in the range of current models. It does permit autofocus cycles during video recording, but the AF operation will be quite evident, both visibly and audibly in your recordings. At least, that will be the case when using the internal microphone and the Micro Four Thirds format lenses that Olympus currently offers. Using an external microphone should help at least somewhat, by increasing the distance between lens motors and camera, as well as allowing the use of mechanisms to isolate vibrations between the two. We've also heard that using the "video rated" 14-140mm zoom lens that Panasonic ships with their DMC-GH1 camera greatly improves the AF behavior of Olympus P-series cameras during recording, but haven't had the opportunity to test the GH1's lens on the E-P2 ourselves.

In its Movie mode, the Olympus E-P2 by default performs an autofocus cycle if you half-press the shutter button before recording a video. Once the recording has begun, half-pressing the shutter button has no effect; fully pressing it stops the recording. The AEL/AFL button on the camera's back panel will trigger an AF cycle any time, even while a recording is in process, though, and there's also a continuous AF mode that will update the focus setting whenever the camera detects a change in the image.

With either of the Micro Four Thirds lenses Olympus offers with the E-P2, the autofocus cycle is a pretty obvious affair: The image very visibly changes size as the camera adjusts the focus back and forth, and the sound of the focus activation is quite audible on the audio track in all but the loudest surroundings. As a result, we generally tried to avoid focusing during recording.

The Olympus E-P2's focus adjustment is of the "fly by wire" type, meaning that the focus ring on the lens isn't directly coupled to the lens elements, but instead simply commands the camera to move the lens elements. What this means in practice is that you can't avoid AF noise in your soundtrack by using manual focus and making only slow adjustments: The camera moves the lens in small, discrete steps, so slow adjustment of the focus ring in MF mode only means that the steps occur less frequently, not that they're any smaller or quieter. Rather than a continuous rattle, you'll hear individual ticking noises when the focus ring is adjusted slowly. One solution to this would be to simply mount an old mechanically-coupled manual-focus lens on the E-P2 via an adapter, but for most people, the solution will be to simply avoid adjusting focus while recording.

If you're using an external microphone that doesn't pick up lens noise as much, or you're not recording audio through the camera, then you may find the bobble in image size acceptable enough that it's useful to have the camera autofocus during recording. There is a continuous-AF option available in video mode that provides for exactly this. As noted, it isn't terribly quick (at least with the kit lens), but it will for the most part keep the camera focused as the framing changes. In either AF mode, you can manually specify which AF point to use for determining focus. In single-area-AF, you also have the option of  a multi-area mode, in which the camera focuses on the closest high-contrast object in the scene. Unlike its predecessor, the E-P2 also offers tracking AF capability in continuous mode, allowing the camera to follow a moving subject anywhere within the frame during video recording.

In continuous-AF mode, the camera does a pretty good (if not infallible) job of figuring out when the scene has changed. It wasn't clear to us whether it was choosing when to run a new AF cycle based on a change in brightness, color, or (most likely) simply change in the contrast-detect focus signal itself. Some subtle changes seemed to lull it into complacency, so it sometimes let changes in subject distance get a bit ahead of it. Fairly significant changes produced an immediate and generally accurate response, but we also encountered some situations (most often under indoor lighting) where the lens could "hunt" over a fairly wide range. Overall, our strong preference was to use the single-AF mode, and just let the camera focus before the recording of each clip began.

One piece of good news relative to focusing, though: If you shoot in aperture-priority or manual mode with the lens stopped down, depth of field when recording videos can be pretty deep indeed. If you have a lot of light to work with (eg, outdoors in bright daylight), you can stop down to f/16 or even f/22 and the lens will effectively be hyperfocal from a few feet to infinity. The lower resolution of video recording helps a lot here too: With only a third to a quarter of the linear resolution of the camera's still images, the image can be quite a bit more out of focus on the sensor than would be tolerable for still images before you'll be able to discern the softness in the resulting videos. (The lens is quite soft at f/22 for still image shooting, due to diffraction limiting, but the lower resolution of video mode again renders this somewhat moot: Videos at HD resolution will be somewhat less crisp at f/22 than at the lens' sweet spot (around f/4 at wide angle, f/8 at tele), but we'd put the results well within the "acceptable" range.)

Olympus E-P2 Video Exposure Control

Some video-capable cameras offer only fully automatic exposure in movie mode, but the Olympus E-P2 gives you a choice of either Programmed, Aperture-Priority, or Manual exposure modes -- and even better, you can choose not only the shutter speed and aperture, but also the ISO sensitivity which the camera will use. All three exposure variables are fixed from the start of video recording in manual mode, while in the other modes the camera will adjust sensitivity and shutter speed during recording so as to retain the metered exposure. In Programmed and Aperture Priority modes, 3.0EV of exposure compensation is available in 0.3 EV steps.

The E-P2 doesn't report  the aperture it's selected in Programmed Auto mode, but very much tends toward larger apertures: It'll stop down some in full sunlight, but for any lighting that's much less intense than that, it tends to shoot wide open. We personally didn't mind this at all, as for most subjects we like the shallower depth of field that comes from shooting wide open. (Although the lower resolution of video vs still images means that DOF will be a good bit deeper at any given aperture than you might expect.) Still, the lack of "live" autofocus mentioned just above meant that we did find ourselves using Aperture Priority metering sometimes when the subject distance was likely to change a fair bit during the recording of a clip.

Like most video-capable SLRs, the Olympus E-P2 lets you choose from the camera's full range of White Balance settings, including manual white balance and a "Custom" (Kelvin temperature) mode that spans an unusually wide range from 2,000 - 14,000K.

Like the P1 before it, the Olympic E-P2 is very unusual in allowing use of the self-timer in video mode. The self-timer feature seems less useful for video recording than it is for still images, since you'll presumably still need to trim the end of the clip, to cut out the part where you walk back to the camera stop the recording. Still, it at will at least save you from editing the beginning of the clip, so does offer some utility.

It's not strictly an exposure control feature, but this seems as good a place as any to mention the Olympus E-P2's Movie + Still recording mode. Selected via the second Record Menu screen, this option snaps a still image at the end of each movie clip: When you press the shutter button the second time, to stop movie recording, the shutter actuates, and the camera captures a full-resolution still frame. We suppose this is could be useful at times, but in our own movies, the action is usually over by the time we're ending a clip, so that's perhaps not the ideal place to capture a still frame. Still, there are times when we'd like to have a high-resolution still image of a video subject available, and this option is much quicker than having to switch back out of Movie mode to capture one.

Olympus E-P2 Image Stabilization During Video Recording

The Olympus E-P2 incorporates Olympus' body-based image stabilization, so any lens attached to it effectively becomes an image-stabilized model. (Note, though, that when using a lens that has its own image stabilization, you have to choose either the camera's IS or that in the lens; they won't work together.) All three IS modes the E-P2 offers are also available while recording movies. The four modes are IS 1 (stabilizer on), IS 2 (horizontal panning), and IS 3 (vertical panning). As in still-capture mode, you can also set the focal length of the lens explicitly, from 8-1,000mm, for use with non-Micro Four Thirds/Four Thirds system lenses that don't communicate their focal length to the camera.

We somewhat expected to be able to hear the operation of the IS system during video recording, but instead found it to be completely silent. (At least, we weren't able to hear any trace of it in the audio track, even in very quiet surroundings.) It worked quite well, lending a good bit of added stability to our hand-held movie recordings, particularly when the kit lens was set toward the telephoto end of its zoom range.

We did notice that the IS system produced significantly more motion artifacts when it was active than when it was not. With its 30 fps frame rate, the Olympus E-P2's "rolling shutter" artifacts (see below) generally aren't quite as noticeable as those from some cameras with slower frame rates. When the IS system is active, though, the image jiggling effect we commonly associate with the rolling shutter image capture approach becomes much more prominent with the IS system in IS 1 mode. Switching to either IS 2 or IS 3 (horizontal or vertical panning mode) seemed to help this considerably, even for camera motion in the stabilized direction.

Digital and Body-Based Stabilization: Slightly longer effective focal lengths with video IS
Perhaps explaining both its silence and its impact on rolling shutter artifacts, we also noted that video-mode IS on the E-P2 appears to involve at least some amount of digital IS, of the type that stabilizes the video image by changing how the image data is clocked from the array. The key here is that the E-P2's sensor has a lot more pixels than required to generate even its 1,280 x 720 high-definition video, let alone its 640 x 480 standard definition output. In the HD case, there are 3.15x more sensor pixels than video pixels horizontally and 4.2x more vertically. This means you can compensate for camera shake pretty precisely, simply by changing which rows or column of pixels you're reading from to construct a given video frame: If camera movement shifted the image up by (for instance) an amount corresponding to a quarter of a video pixel, just shift your data readout up one row of sensor pixels to compensate.

To get a useful amount of image stabilization with this approach, you need to leave a band of "spare" pixels around the periphery of the sensor, so you can follow the image across the sensor array without running out of pixels at one edge. This in fact is exactly what the Olympus E-P2 does when you enable image stabilization in its movie mode: It crops the image slightly, then compensates for camera shake by changing the portion of the sensor it uses for the video frame. The net result is roughly a 30% increase in effective focal length: With the 14-42mm kit lens, maximum wide angle in video mode with IS active is roughly a 36mm equivalent (18mm on the lens barrel) vs the 28mm equivalent (14mm actual focal length) in still-capture mode.

Olympus E-P2 Audio Capabilities

Audio recording in movies is optional with the Olympus E-P: Audio can be turned on or off via the Live Menu, accessible by pressing the OK button on the camera's rear panel. Audio is recorded as 16-bit, 44.1 KHz stereo PCM, which Olympus advertises as being equal to the best quality provided by any of their popular handheld audio recorders. Stereo recording is done either via two microphones on the camera's front face, appearing as small black dots on either side of the Olympus logo above the lens, or via the EMA-1 adapter that connects to the accessory port and offers an external stereo microphone jack (shown at right mounted on the P2's hot shoe, with the ME-51S stereo mic and extension cable attached).

The internal mics did a pretty decent job of providing a stereo effect, although the localization of sound sources wasn't as good as with a high-quality external stereo microphone. (No surprise, really, given that good stereo microphones start at around $200 for just the microphone by itself.) Per their advertising, sound fidelity was indeed quite good; voices sounded natural, and sound outdoors was recorded clearly and in considerable detail.

Our one criticism of the E-P2's sound was that there seemed to be a bit more background noise in its audio tracks than we've noticed on some other cameras we've tested. There's no manual volume or input level control, so audio levels are set entirely automatically by the camera. (This is quite typical of video-capable SLRs that also record audio.) The combination of the auto-gain circuitry and the camera's somewhat "bright" sound quality tended to emphasize background noise, though, particularly in the upper midrange of the frequency spectrum. The result was a tendency toward noticeable hiss in the background of the E-P2's audio tracks. Also, the sensitivity to nearby background noises tended to limit the amount of gain increase when responding to reduced subject volume, so distant subjects were generally more difficult to hear clearly than closer ones. (This obviously will always be the case, what we're trying to say here is that the audibility of subjects fell off more rapidly with distance than we sometimes expected.) Ultimately the camera recorded any audio we were interested in hearing, but the hiss was more prominent than we'd have liked, and it would be nice if the mics' response pattern better suppressed sounds from behind and around the camera, favoring sound from in front of the camera more strongly.

In common with most other built-in mics on SLR-style cameras, the Olympus E-P2's internal mics were also very sensitive to hand movements on the body and operating noise from the camera itself. We mentioned the noise associated with focusing of the kit lens above, and found that adjustments of the zoom setting could also be heard in the audio track in quiet surroundings. A less-obvious source of noise were the little D-rings (which are actually triangular) that attach the neckstrap to the body. As with the P1, we noticed odd clicking noises in the E-P2's sound track, which we traced back to the D-rings clicking against the body as the strap flapped about while we were recording. We're not big fans of D-ring strap connections anyway; this gives us a new reason to dislike them. (We much prefer the rectangular body-mounted lugs used by some manufactures, that the strap passes through directly.)

All of these quibbles with the internal microphone are at least somewhat mitigated by the provision of an external microphone connection. As well as allowing a higher-fidelity mic to be used, the optional EMA-1 accessory port adapter's microphone jack allows the mic itself to be distanced from the camera, reducing the likelihood of noises from body handling or the AF motor being picked up. Note that use of this adapter (which we didn't receive in our test kit) precludes use of the electronic viewfinder accessory, meaning that movies using an external microphone must be framed on the P2's LCD display. The EMA-1 adapter also doesn't provide any means of mounting the microphone should its weight not be supported by the 3.5mm microphone jack itself, so most external mics will need to be held separately, or attached to the camera via a bracket connected to the tripod socket. Even if a small external mic is mounted directly on the microphone jack, it will still likely provide somewhat better isolation than the internal microphone, though.

Olympus E-P2 Movie Recording User Interface

The Olympus E-P2's movie mode is accessed via a separate position on the camera's mode dial, rather than being initiated from within one of the still-picture Live View modes. (The E-P2 is, of course, always in Live View mode, as there's no built-in optical viewfinder with Micro Four Thirds cameras.) There's no separate control button to start/stop movie recording: Pressing the shutter button begins recording, pressing it again stops it. Half-pressing the shutter button triggers an AF cycle without recording anything, just as in still-picture mode.

While some may find it more convenient to have a dedicated button to start/stop movie recording, we find the E-P2's use of the shutter button more intuitive. It might be nice to be able to initiate movie recording from any still-capture mode, but the flip side of that convenience would be a more cluttered on-screen information display when shooting still images (to accommodate information appropriate to only video recording), and a more complex Live Menu structure (already quite crowded in still-image mode). At least within the context of the Olympus E-P2's other controls, we prefer having movie mode as a separate mode dial option.

Setting adjustments in movie mode are made via a Live Menu, which appears down the right side of the LCD when you press the OK button on the camera's back. Options on the Live Menu for video recording are:

Olympus E-P2 In-Camera Image Adjustment for Movies

Olympus has for some time now made a big deal of their Art Filters in marketing their DSLRs. We know people that like these effects a lot, but confess that we've personally never found them very compelling. With the E-P2, Olympus has carried the full set of Art Filters over into Movie Mode, so those users who are into such things can take advantage of the same effects in their videos.

As usual, though, there's no free lunch, and the processing required for some of the Art Filter effects can significantly slow the frame rates. Here's a summary of what we found when shooting video using the various Art Filter effects:

As the above table shows, the only time that the actual frame rate changed in the movie file itself was with the Pin Hole filter in HD mode. For the Diorama filter, frame rate is equally slow, but the file is encoded as 30 fps - so playback appears accelerated by ~15x. For this reason, audio recording is disabled in Diorama mode. For the Soft Focus and Grainy Film modes, the frame rate in the AVI file remained at 30 frames/second, but the apparent frame rate (based on the visual jerkiness of motion in the scene) dropped noticeably. In the case of Soft Focus, the drop in apparent frame rate was pretty significant. The four other filters (Pop Art, Pale & Light Color, Light Tone and Cross Process) had no apparent impact on frame rate.

Computer Requirements for Viewing HD Video

A typical computer these days has little trouble dealing with still images, but high-definition video can be another matter. Depending on the file format involved, it can take a pretty beefy computer to handle HD-resolution video playback without stuttering or dropping frames. The Motion JPEG image compression used by the Olympus E-P2 is one of the less compute-intensive formats, though, and its 1,280 x 720 resolution means there's a good bit less data in each frame to deal with than in videos with 1,920 x 1,080 resolution. The net result is that you should have no problem playing video files from the E-P2 on your computer, as long as it's a relatively recent and reasonably powerful model. We don't have a specific benchmark for this, but if your computer is less than 3 years or so old, it should have no problem with the E-P2's video streams. (By contrast, to play AVCHD or other keyframe-encoded video formats at full 1,920 x 1,080 resolution can demand a very powerful CPU and video card, to keep up.)

Olympus E-P2 Video Mode: The Bottom Line

Overall, the Olympus E-P2's video mode worked pretty well: It wasn't the most capable that we've tested to date, but neither was it the least. The addition of AF tracking and an adapter for external microphone support make it more versatile than the video mode of its predecessor, the E-P1. It should be reasonably competent at handling the bulk of the movie recording most consumers will care about, further enhancing the E-P2's appeal as a compact SLR-grade camera for travel and day to day portability: For the vast majority of consumers, it will eliminate the need to lug along a digicam, just for the sake of capturing video snapshots.

Flash

Olympus E-P2 Flash

To the disappointment of some, the Olympus E-P1 didn't have a built-in flash, and the E-P2 continues that omission. It does, however, have a dedicated hot shoe for mounting external flash units, like Olympus's compact FL-14 flash. Other Olympus flash units such as the FL-50R, FL-36R and FL-20 also work, and non-dedicated units can also be used provided they have a compatible trigger voltage and polarity. (Olympus hasn't stated the trigger voltage or polarity, though.)

Note though that the hot-shoe offers photographers an either/or decision: if you want to use the shoe-mounted external electronic viewfinder or external mic input adapter, then the hot shoe isn't available for use with an external flash strobe. Given that the P2 doesn't offer a sync terminal or wireless flash support, this means you have a decision to make for any given shot -- do you want flash, or do you want to use the accessories? Using both at once isn't an option.

The advantages of a good external flash are many: more power for increased range, faster recycle times, longer battery life, reduced red-eye, auto zoom to match coverage to the current focal length, and the ability to adjust the tilt and swivel of the head to allow light from the flash to be bounced off nearby surfaces such as a ceiling, for a diffuse effect. (The FL-14 does not, however, tilt for bounce-flash operation.) Many external flash units have a powerful AF assist illuminator, and other useful features such as modeling flash and high-speed focal plane (FP) sync mode are common on higher end models.

When using a dedicated external flash with the Olympus E-P2, seven flash modes are available: Auto, Red-eye Reduction, Forced On (Fill flash), Forced Off, Red-eye Reduction + Slow Sync, Slow Sync, and Slow Sync 2nd Curtain. X-Sync speed (the maximum shutter speed with the flash enabled) is 1/180 second by default, about average these days. Through a Custom menu setting, this upper limit can be reduced in 1/3 EV steps to a minimum of 1/60 second. A separate Custom menu option allows configuration of the minimum shutter speed at which an attached flash will fire. The default is 1/60 second, and can be altered in 1/3 EV steps, within a range of 1/30 to 1/180 second. The high-speed FP mode offered on some external flash units including the FL-36R and FL-50R is also supported, which should permit flash usage up to the 1/4,000 second maximum shutter speed the E-P2 is capable of.

The Olympus E-P2 allows you to adjust flash and ambient exposure independently of each other, by providing flash exposure compensation between -3 and +3 EV in one-third EV increments. An option in the Custom menu also allows for flash exposure compensation to be independent or additive to ambient exposure compensation. Flash exposure bracketing is also supported, where three shots can be taken at one-third, two-thirds, or one EV increments of flash exposure compensation. The metered exposure is captured first, followed by shots under and over the metered exposure, each with a separate press of the shutter button. Of course, if the external flash supports it, manual output power control is also available.

High ISO Noise Reduction

Olympus E-P2 Noise Reduction

The Olympus E-P2 offers four levels of noise-reduction, which gives good control in choosing how you want to make the trade-off between subject detail and noise level. The E-P2 applies NR to its JPEGs at all ISOs, so we've included crops at all ISOs in the tables below. The combination of shooting with NR turned down to the lowest setting and using a good noise-filtering program after the fact can produce very clean images with lots of fine detail in them. RAW images with no NR or sharpening are also shown for comparison.

See for yourself how the noise reduction works under daylight-balanced lighting. Click on any of the crops below to see the corresponding full-sized image.

Noise Reduction Comparison In-camera JPEGs Daylight-balanced illumination
	NR = Off	NR = Low	NR = Standard	NR = High
I S O 1 0 0
	NR = Off	NR = Low	NR = Standard	NR = High
I S O 2 0 0
	NR = Off	NR = Low	NR = Standard	NR = High
I S O 4 0 0
	NR = Off	NR = Low	NR = Standard	NR = High
I S O 8 0 0
	NR = Off	NR = Low	NR = Standard	NR = High
I S O 1 6 0 0
	NR = Off	NR = Low	NR = Standard	NR = High
I S O 3 2 0 0
	NR = Off	NR = Low	NR = Standard	NR = High
I S O 6 4 0 0

The above crops show the effects of the four available noise reduction settings, under the studio HMI lighting we use to simulate daylight. To our eyes, the default (Standard) level of noise reduction strikes a pretty good balance between noise and subtle subject detail, although the red fabric swatch presents a real challenge, as it does for virtually all cameras we test. Cranking the noise reduction setting up to High produces very smooth-looking images, while still maintaining good detail in areas of high local contrast (as seen in the circular scale), but a lot of detail is lost in areas of subtle contrast (the red fabric swatch is a particularly challenging subject, and the detail loss there is worse than you'd find in most real-world examples). At the other end of the scale, the Off noise reduction setting leaves a lot of noise in the image, but also leaves the subject detail largely undisturbed: Use this setting if you have good third-party noise reduction software; with appropriate processing, the result could be quite good. You should be able to do even better working from the RAW files.

But how does the Olympus E-P2 compare to other compact Micro Four Thirds models? See the following table which compares at the default Noise Reduction setting at ISO 800 and above.

High ISO Comparison with Olympus E-PL1, Olympus E-P1 and Panasonic GF1 (In-camera JPEGs, all default NR) Daylight-balanced illumination
	Olympus E-P2	Olympus E-PL1	Olympus E-P1	Panasonic GF1
I S O 8 0 0
	Olympus E-P2	Olympus E-PL1	Olympus E-P1	Panasonic GF1
I S O 1 6 0 0
	Olympus E-P2	Olympus E-PL1	Olympus E-P1	Panasonic GF1
I S O 3 2 0 0
	Olympus E-P2	Olympus E-PL1	Olympus E-P1	Panasonic GF1
I S O 6 4 0 0				N/A ISO 6400 not supported
				N/A ISO 6400 not supported
				N/A ISO 6400 not supported

To our eyes the newest Micro Four Thirds model, the Olympus E-PL1, has the cleanest looking images of the group, though E-P2 isn't far behind. The E-P1 looks a touch noisier, but also leaves more detail in the red fabric. You can really see a difference in Panasonic's approach to noise reduction. It leaves more detail in the red fabric, at least at moderate ISOs, but also shows more chroma noise. Each camera manufacturer makes somewhat different trade-offs between noise and image detail, compounded by the number of different NR settings each offers. Be sure check out our RAW crops, to see how sensor output compares without NR or other in-camera processing.

Imatest Results

Olympus E-P2 Imatest Results

We routinely use Norman Koren's excellent "Imatest" analysis program for quantitative, thoroughly objective analysis of digicam test images. I highly recommend it to our technically-oriented readers, as it's far and away the best, most comprehensive analysis program I've found to date.

Our comments below are just brief observations of what we see in the Imatest results. A full discussion of all the data Imatest produces is really beyond the scope of this review: Visit the Imatest web site for a full discussion of what the program measures, how it performs its computations, and how to interpret its output.

Here's some of the results produced by Imatest for the Olympus E-P2:

sRGB Accuracy Comparison
Olympus E-P2	Olympus E-P1	Panasonic GF1	Panasonic GH1	Panasonic G1

The Olympus E-P2 showed excellent overall color accuracy, as well as fairly accurate saturation levels. Hue accuracy was exceptionally good, with small hue shifts in reds, oranges, yellows and some greens and purples. The larger shifts in aqua and cyan are very common among the cameras we test; we think they're an effort to produce sky colors that look better on monitors and in print. Average "delta-C" color error was only 4.61 after correction for saturation, which is excellent. (Delta-C is the same as the more commonly referred to delta-E, but delta-C takes into account only color differences, ignoring luminance variation.) Average saturation was 105.6% (oversaturated by 5.6%), with only minor oversaturation of bright reds, deep blues and some purples, dark greens and browns. The E-P2 undersaturates some yellows, aquas and cyans. All in all, a very good color response for this class of camera. Mouse over the links below the illustration above to compare results with other recent Four Thirds sensor cameras.

Adobe RGB Accuracy Comparison
Olympus E-P2	Olympus E-P1	Panasonic GF1	Panasonic GH1	Panasonic G1

As is true of most SLDs and SLRs, when using the Adobe RGB color space (which provides a much wider gamut, or range of colors that can be expressed), the Olympus E-P2 delivers more highly saturated color, and has the highest saturation of the group compared above. Average saturation was 115.7%, and average saturation-corrected hue error was 4.19 "delta-C" units, actually slightly more accurate than the sRGB result. Again, mouse over the links below the illustration above to compare results with other Micro Four Thirds SLDs.

This image shows how the Olympus E-P2 actually rendered the colors of the MacBeth chart, compared to a numerically ideal treatment. In each color swatch, the outer perimeter shows the color as actually captured by the camera, the inner square shows the numerically correct color after correcting for the luminance of the photographed chart (as determined by a second-order curve fit to the values of the gray swatches), and the small rectangle inside the inner square shows the numerically correct color, without the luminance correction. This image shows the generally excellent hue and saturation accuracy, however you can see a slight greenish tinge in the bright yellow and orange swatches, something you can also see in the yellow yarn in our Still Life images. The tinge is very slight, though -- less noticeable than a similar shift in current Panasonic SLD models.

The bottom row of the chart shows exaggerated white balance errors, revealing that the camera produced a slightly cool color balance when using Custom white balance, with a WhiBal card as the reference.

There's a lot in this particular graph, a lot more than we really have room to go into here. (This set of plots has also changed a few revisions back in Imatest. Some of the plots that were once shown here are now shown in other Imatest output. Since we largely focus on the Noise Spectrum plot, we only show the graphic above, which includes that plot.)

In comparing these graphs with those from competing cameras, we've found that the Noise Spectrum graph at lower right is the most important. Cameras that manage to shift their noise spectrum to higher frequencies have much finer-grained noise structures, making their noise less visually objectionable. In the graph above, this would show up as a noise spectrum curve that remained higher on the right side, representing higher noise frequencies.

The Olympus E-P2 does a pretty good job of keeping a lot of the luminance noise energy (indicated by the black line) up at high frequencies. What little low-ISO luminance image noise that's there is fairly fine-grained as a result. Chroma noise at low spatial frequencies is slightly higher, especially in the red channel, but this is not unusual, and the amount of chroma noise in the E-P2's low-ISO images is better than Panasonic's Micro Four Thirds cameras. The Panasonic G1, GH1 and GF1 all have red and blue channels that exhibit noise power in the 2 to 3+ range at the low frequency end.

Looking at the lower-left plot in the illustration above, the E-P2's component noise levels are nicely matched, with RGB channels following the luminance channel (plotted in gray) very closely. Compared to the Panasonic GF1, its closest competitor, the E-P2's noise is quite a bit higher in the deepest shadows, especially luminance noise, where it is roughly double the GF1. In lighter shadows (log density = -1), the E-P2 is a bit noisier in the luminance channel, about the same in the green channel, but less noisy in the red and blue channels. The E-P2 is about on par with the GF1 in the midtones and highlights, with the GF1 still showing higher red and blue components, but similar green and luminance channel levels. Overall, a good performance for a Four-Thirds sensor.

Above is the same set of noise data at ISO 200, the Olympus E-P2's native or "base" ISO. As you can see from the graphs, noise is a bit higher than at ISO 100, especially red channel noise at lower frequencies, but still relatively low.

Above is the same set of noise data at ISO 1,600. Here, the Noise Spectrum graph is shifted quite a bit toward the left-hand, lower-frequency side than it was at ISOs 100 and 200, coarsening the "grain" of the image noise patterns quite a bit. The red and blue channels still exhibit a bit more noise at the low end of the frequency spectrum, but track luminance noise very closely at all but the lowest frequencies. Looking at the lower left graph again, noise is higher than the GF1 in the deepest shadows, very similar in the lighter shadows, and slightly better than the GF1 at higher brightnesses.

Here's the same set of noise data at ISO 3,200. Here again, the Noise Spectrum graph is shifted even more toward the left-hand side, coarsening the "grain" of the image noise patterns further. The tracking of overall noise levels relative to the GF1 is very similar to what it was at ISO 1,600, with the E-P2 having a slight edge at all brightness levels except for the darkest shadows.

Here's the same set of noise data at ISO 6,400. The Noise Spectrum graph is similar, but notice the noise levels are much higher. (Particularly evident in the pixel noise plot in the upper right corner of the illustration.) The GF1 does not offer an ISO 6,400 setting.

This chart compares the Olympus E-P2's noise performance over a range of ISOs against that of other recent Micro Four-Thirds models. While we continue to show noise plots of this sort because readers ask for them, we each time point out that the noise magnitude is only a small part of the story, the grain pattern being much more important. Here, we can see that the Olympus E-P2's luminance noise magnitude graph very closely matches the E-P1's. It starts out a little higher than average relative to its "competition", and stays higher than the rest up to ISO 800, where it's roughly equal. At ISOs 1,600 and 3,200, luminance noise levels are lower than its competition, an indication more aggressive noise reduction is likely at work. The E-P2 and E-P1 are the only camera in this group to offer ISO 6,400, and although they don't look too noisy from this graph, fine detail really takes a hit after noise reduction is performed. Still, really excellent performance overall, when you consider the size of the E-P2 compared to a typical SLR. Do keep in mind these measurements are taken with each camera set at default settings, so the shape or position of the curve could be influenced by the settings you choose to use. The Olympus E-P2 offers four levels of noise reduction, with the above data collected using the default, "Standard" setting.

Olympus E-P2 Dynamic Range Analysis

A key parameter in a digital camera is its Dynamic Range, the range of brightness that can be faithfully recorded. At the upper end of the tonal scale, dynamic range is dictated by the point at which the RGB data "saturates" at values of 255, 255, 255. At the lower end of the tonal scale, dynamic range is determined by the point at which there ceases to be any useful difference between adjacent tonal steps. Note the use of the qualifier "useful" in there: While it's tempting to evaluate dynamic range as the maximum number of tonal steps that can be discerned at all, that measure of dynamic range has very little relevance to real-world photography. What we care about as photographers is how much detail we can pull out of the shadows before image noise becomes too objectionable. This, of course, is a very subjective matter, and will vary with the application and even the subject matter in question. (Noise will be much more visible in subjects with large areas of flat tints and subtle shading than it would in subjects with strong, highly contrasting surface texture.)

What makes most sense then, is to specify useful dynamic range in terms of the point at which image noise reaches some agreed-upon threshold. To this end, Imatest computes a number of different dynamic range measurements, based on a variety of image noise thresholds. The noise thresholds are specified in terms of f-stops of equivalent luminance variation in the final image file, and dynamic range is computed for noise thresholds of 1.0 (low image quality), 0.5 (medium image quality), 0.25 (medium-high image quality) and 0.1 (high image quality). For most photographers and most applications, the noise thresholds of 0.5 and 0.25 f-stops are probably the most relevant to the production of acceptable-quality finished images, but many noise-sensitive shooters will insist on the 0.1 f-stop limit for their most critical work.

The image below shows the test results from Imatest for an in-camera JPEG file from the Olympus E-P2 with a nominally-exposed density step target (Stouffer 4110), and the E-P2's settings such as Contrast (0) and Gradation (Normal) at their default positions. The E-P2's native ISO sensitivity of 200 was used, yielding the best dynamic range numbers.

Here, we can see that he tone curve shows pretty nice gradation in both the highlights and shadows. Total dynamic range is pretty good at 10.7 f-stops, however the score at the highest level (5.58 f-stops) is poor, perhaps a result of the nice-looking tone curve, which does cause the camera to use some of its available output dynamic range to produce the pretty tails at both highlight and shadow ends of the curve. There's also some noise in the deep shadows, which when closely observed show a moderate amount of noise, though there is still a lot of subject detail present. In general, we find this far preferable to low noise with detail obliterated by over-aggressive noise reduction, and applaud Olympus on the excellent job they've done, in intelligently managing noise and subject detail.

The illustration above shows the results from Adobe Camera Raw 5.6, with Auto settings (slightly better results are likely possible with manually tweaking, but we weren't able to do better, due to what appeared to be some truncation of the individual color channel data at the highlight end of the tonal range). As can be seen, the score at the highest quality level is much better than the camera JPEG at 7.88 vs 5.58 f-stops, and total dynamic range increased from 10.7 f-stops to 11.5 f-stops. It bears noting though, that extreme manipulation of RAW files to extend dynamic range can introduce severe color shifts in the resulting files: This dramatically increased dynamic range may only be really usable when converting the images to black and white. (As is the case with most cameras.) With the E-P2, the results from Adobe Camera Raw clipped the green channel slightly in the brightest wedges of the step chart. Also worth noting is that ACR's default noise reduction settings reduced the pixel noise (see the plot in the lower left-hand corner) quite a bit relative to the levels in the in-camera JPEG, which tends to shift scores towards the high quality category.

Dynamic Range, the bottom line:

Not surprisingly, the Olympus E-P2's Imatest dynamic range scores were very similar to the E-P1's. That is, they both scored rather poorly when compared against other current Four-Thirds models, and of course lag behind most DSLRs with APS-C size sensors. Dynamic range scores from ACR converted RAW files however did quite well, beating some APS-C cameras, but only after extreme manipulation which resulted in false colors at the highlight end of our step target.

To get some perspective, here's a summary of the Olympus E-P2's dynamic range performance, and how it compares to other digital SLRs that we also have Imatest dynamic range data for. (Results are arranged in order of decreasing dynamic range at the "High" quality level.):

When it comes to the Olympus E-P2, as noted above, its low scores for camera JPEGs reflect Olympus' decision to leave more image noise in its files, so as to not have to trade away as much subject detail. We're finding that we prefer this approach to cameras that smudge away subtle subject detail just to achieve lower noise levels in areas of flat tint, so we encourage readers to look at our actual test images (particularly the OUTB and FAR shots, which really challenge a camera's dynamic range), rather than making their decision solely on the basis of the numbers in the chart above.

Olympus E-P2 Resolution Chart Test Results

The chart above shows consolidated results from spatial frequency response measurements in both the horizontal and vertical axes. The "MTF 50" numbers tend to correlate best with visual perceptions of sharpness, so those are what we focus on here. The uncorrected resolution figures are 2,599 line widths per picture height in the horizontal direction (corresponding to the vertically-oriented edge), and 2,545 lines along the vertical axis (corresponding to the horizontally-oriented edge), for a combined average of 2,572 LW/PH, almost identical results to the E-P1. Correcting to a "standardized" sharpening with a one-pixel radius reduced the resolution score by quite a bit, resulting in a lower average of 2,002 LW/PH, indicating that the Olympus E-P2 oversharpens at its default settings. The corrected numbers put the E-P2 pretty much on par with its competitors.

To see what's going on, refer to the plots below, which show the actual edge profiles for both horizontal and vertical edges, in both their original and corrected forms. Here, you can see that a fairly high amount of in-camera sharpening is applied in the horizontal direction (oversharpened by 12.4 %), as well as in the vertical direction (12.2 % oversharpened), explaining why standardized sharpening reduced the MTF 50 numbers so much. You should thus turn the camera's sharpening down for optimal results when sharpening in-camera JPEGs post-exposure in Adobe Photoshop or other image editing software. (And, as always, careful processing of RAW files in a good third-party RAW conversion program will likely yield a good bit more fine detail than can be seen in the in-camera JPEGs, regardless of in-camera sharpening settings.)

Note: We don't feature SFR-based LW/PH resolution numbers more prominently in our reviews (eg, outside the Imatest pages) because we've found that they're *very* sensitive to minor differences in in-camera image processing. Relatively small changes in the amount of in-camera sharpening can have a large effect on the resulting resolution numbers. Imatest attempts to compensate for this by adjusting to a "standard' sharpening, but this approach can't completely undo what happens inside the cameras, and so often gives inconsistent results. Sometimes the "standardized" sharpening happens to just match the shape of the edge profile with the in-camera sharpening applied, and you'll get wildly high results. At other times, it will tend to correct in the opposite direction. Unfortunately, ignoring the in-camera sharpening entirely can result in even greater discrepancies, particularly between models from different manufacturers. Turning off sharpening in the camera may or may not fully eliminate the sharpening, so simply turning off sharpening in the camera JPEGs isn't a reliable solution. It also wouldn't be the way most people shoot the cameras. We could process RAW files with no sharpening, but then that'd only suit the people working primarily or exclusively from RAW, and would open another can of worms as to what RAW converter was used, etc, etc.

The bottom line is that numbers for resolution only take you so far. Detail handling and edge acuity are very complex issues; ones that don't easily boil down to a single number. The best approach is to simply look look at the broad array of standardized test shots we take with each camera, to the point of downloading and printing them with whatever processing you'd use if you owned the camera and shot with it. See how the differences stack up for you visually, and make your decision on that, rather than on abstract resolution numbers.

RAW Files

Olympus E-P2 High ISO RAW Image Quality

We've recently started looking at RAW files converted with dcraw, an excellent freeware raw converter. dcraw usually offers timely support for the latest cameras, but more importantly, it does not apply any noise-reduction, sharpening or other corrections such as geometric distortion correction to the output files. (We found that Adobe Camera Raw still applies some limited noise-reduction when its NR settings are set to zero, and it also applies other corrections depending on the make and model of the camera). There will always be differences between RAW converters, in terms of the sort of demosaicing algorithms they use (the processes by which they convert the separate Red, Green, and Blue data sets to an array of full-color RGB pixels), but dcraw seems to use a fairly generic algorithm that delivers good sharpness with relatively few artifacts, and can be counted on to not apply any noise reduction if you don't want it to.

Below are crops from Olympus EP-2 high ISO RAW files compared to RAW files from other Micro Four-Thirds models: the Olympus E-P1, the new Olympus E-PL1 and the Panasonic GF1. All were converted with dcraw with no noise reduction or sharpening.

High ISO RAW Image Quality Olympus E-P2 vs E-P1, E-PL1, and Panasonic GF1 RAW files converted with dcraw, no NR, no sharpening Simulated Daylight
	Olympus E-P2	Olympus E-P1	Olympus E-PL1	Panasonic GF1
I S O 8 0 0
	Olympus E-P2	Olympus E-P1	Olympus E-PL1	Panasonic GF1
I S 0 1 6 0 0
	Olympus E-P2	Olympus E-P1	Olympus E-PL1	Panasonic GF1
I S O 3 2 0 0
	Olympus E-P2	Olympus E-P1	Olympus E-PL1	Panasonic GF1
I S 0 6 4 0 0			N/A ISO 6400 not supported	N/A ISO 6400 not supported
			N/A ISO 6400 not supported	N/A ISO 6400 not supported
			N/A ISO 6400 not supported	N/A ISO 6400 not supported

To our eyes, the newer Olympus E-P2 and E-PL1 have slightly better noise performance compared to the E-P1, though the E-P1 does a little better with the red fabric. Color response is a bit different though. The Olympus models appear to have a slight edge over the Panasonic GF1 in terms of high ISO noise. Click on the crops above to load the full size images.

Menus

Olympus E-P2 Modes and Menus

Olympus E-P2 Capture Mode

When powered on, the camera is automatically placed into Record mode. The Exposure Mode dial on top of the camera sets the main shooting mode, with the following options:

•  Program AE (Program Shift): This mode places the camera in control over both aperture and shutter speed, while the user has access to all other menu functions. Turning either dial cycles through a range of equivalent exposure settings, enabling the Program Shift mode.
•  Aperture Priority: Puts the user in control of the aperture setting while the camera selects the best shutter speed. (The aperture range varies with the lens in use.)
•  Shutter Priority: The opposite of Aperture Priority, this mode allows the user to set the shutter speed, from 1/4,000 to 60 seconds, while the camera selects the most appropriate aperture setting.
•  Manual: Provides complete user control over the exposure, including both aperture and shutter speed settings. A Bulb shutter setting also becomes available in this mode, allowing variable length exposures for as long as you hold down the shutter button.
•  Movie Mode: Used for shooting HD (1280x720) or SD (640x480) movies at 30 frames per second with stereo sound. A menu allows Program, Aperture Priority or Manual modes to be used, as well as the one of the eight available Art Filters. A few of the art filters reduce the capture frame rate, causing the video to appear sped up when played back. The Diorama art filter is particularly strongly affected, and hence audio recording is disabled when using this filter.
•  Scene Mode: This mode provides access to the 19 preset shooting modes via a scene menu. Scene modes available are: Portrait, e-Portrait, Landscape, Landscape + Portrait, Sport, Night Scene, Night + Portrait, Children, High Key, Low Key, DIS Mode, Macro, Nature Macro, Candle, Sunset, Documents, Panorama, Fireworks, and Beach & Snow.
  
•  Art Filters: This mode accesses the eight available Art Filter modes: Pop Art, Soft Focus, Pale & Light Color, Light Tone, Grainy Film, Pin Hole, Diorama and Cross Process. As in movie-mode, frame rate can be adversely impacted when using art filters, and the diorama effect in particular causes a very slow refresh rate for live view.
  
•  Intelligent Auto: This mode gives the camera control over most  exposure variables: The E-P2 analyses the scene and automatically selects from Portrait, Landscape, Night Scene, Sport, and Macro exposure modes. The user can still adjust image resolution / compression, aspect ratio, drive mode, image stabilizer, focus mode / point, and flash mode.

Playback Mode: The Playback button on the rear panel accesses Playback mode, where you can review captured images. The left and right arrow keys scroll forward and backward one image at a time, while the up and down keys scroll ten images at a time. You can enlarge captured images or display them in an index format for quick viewing.

Olympus E-P2 Menus

Pressing the Menu button provides access to the camera's full menu system. The following options are available in most camera modes as menu tabs at the left of the display:

Record Menu 1:

Record Menu 2:

Playback Menu:

Custom Menu:

Setup Menu:

Comparison

Olympus E-P2 vs Other PEN SLDs

The table below compares the Olympus E-P2 with the E-P1 and E-PL1. A red cell means that a given camera performs below the other two, a green cell means that it performs better than the other two, and a yellow cell means it falls between the other two. In cases where two cameras share a superior capability, both cells will be colored green.

Olympus E-P2 vs Closest Competitors

The table below compares major features of the Olympus E-P2 with Panasonic GF1 and G10 SLDs.