First off the bat I'd like to clarify that I approached Olympus to test out this camera. This was an unsolicited review and the main reason I approached them is that because I have been looking for a camera system just like this for the past few years and during the World Ski and Snowboard Festival I was presented with the opportunity to hit up a rep since they were the main sponsor of the Olympus Filmmaker Showdown and had several kits lying around for the filmmakers to try out. My main interest in this camera was it's small size and potential pocket-ability. I love my DSLR, and have shot with an incredible 7D for the past few years, but I often find myself leaving it at home and wishing I had a smaller but still pro-level (quality-wise) setup to take along to parties, on short road trips or fun little missions with my friends. Something for when I didn't want to pack all my gear, which can weigh as much as 15-20 pounds even stripped down, but still wanted to have a chance to capture some special imagery.
What the hell is Micro 4/3rds?
A few years ago a new category of camera was created as a direct result of the fundamental difference between a digital and tradition camera. Without the need for a mirror so that you could see through the lens, you could now put a large sensor into a very compact body and even reduce the size of the lenses. Basically the love-child of a point-and-shoot and a DSLR, a mirrorless camera, often referred to as a "Micro-4/3rds" camera, has the size advantage of a smaller camera, but allows the user to swap lenses and achieve a nice shallow depth-of-field. These things are basically just small SLRs and share almost all the same features except weight and bulk.
Low-light performace is great
As much as I love to geek out, for the sake of keeping this short and actually readable I have decided to take the camera out into the world for a month, shoot and not really think about it, and then write this review as more of a real-world use report than anything else. For those of you who revel in twenty page reviews full of tech specs and all kinds of useless info written by some guy in an office somewhere, there are plenty of those to be found online:
Official Olympus EPL-5 product page
Crazy in-depth review at Image Resource
After being handed a package consisting of two EPL-5 bodies, a slew of kit lenses, 12mm and 45mm prime lenses (not zooms) and all the batteries, flashes and doo-dads I needed I promptly decided to treat and use this camera exaclty as I would my own. Ie. I tossed the manual to the side, slapped the 12mm lens on the body and just started shooting. I thought it would be especially interesting to see how much I could figure out, and what level of images I could get out of this body knowing absolutely nothing about it and with no expectations.
As a professional photographer and a bit of a computer geek, I may be at a bit of an advantage to some but what I quickly found was a great little camera system that was mostly quite easy to figure out and start getting great shots right out of the box. After only a few hours I had pretty much figured out how to access all the important functions that I needed and can honestly say that anyone with a basic understanding of how SLRs work should have no major problems operating this camera. All the familiar functions are right there on the main screen, with the 4:3 shooting mode (taller than normal, resulting in more photo in each photo) leaving plenty of room on the LCD screen for all those icons. On day two I discovered by far and away my favorite feature of this camera - touch the screen on your subject to auto-focus and snap a shot at the same time - and another day later I finally cracked open the manual to see if I was missing out on anything. Sure enough I found a few more hidden features, proving once again men are idiots and manuals are boring but full of useful information.
The 45mm at f1.8 and the touch-screen work magic together
Over the past six weeks I have taken this camera through hell and back. It's been to parties, covered in beer, left at friends' houses and been up and down the resort a dozen times. It's gone on a midnight full-moon snowmobile mission, been hung out of an open helicopter door in Alaska and taken on a handful of hikes. I shot landscapes, portraits and plenty of action - putting it through it's paces without really trying. And let me tell you, with a few minor exceptions this is by far and away the most favourite camera I have ever used.
They say the best camera is the one you have on you, and the iPhone has done a damn good job of proving that. But what I also had a feeling about, and now know is true, is that if you can find a small camera with a decent sensor paired with a great quality but still small in size lens - and can fit that all in your jacket pocket - then real magic can happen. And sure enough, the EPL-5 proved beyond a doubt that it was capable of being that camera.
Shot from a moving helicopter with the 12mm prime
Things I fucking love about this camera:
- Small size means you never have to leave it at home
- Micro 4/3rds mount means tons of lens choices
- High-quality sensor results in incredible image quality and great low-light performance
- Battery seems to last forever (like a week!)
-Touch-to-shoot is the coolest feature ever
-[UPDATED] 8 frames-a-second shooting!!!
Things I wasn't super stoked on:
- Menu system could be better designed
- Some of the buttons are a bit hard to tell if they've been pressed
- RAW files were a pain in the ass to deal with on older versions of Photoshop
My setup:
As I mentioned before I was handed quite a nice kit. But most important to any photographer worth his salt is the quality of the lens. A great lens can make an incredible image on pretty much any camera, and a shitty lens will make the best camera perform like a toy. And because of that I was super excited to be handed to incredible lenses to test with the camera. 12mm f2.8 and a 45mm f1.8 primes which performed as well as any top-end Canon glass I've ever used. Incredibly sharp and with a beautiful rendering of color, light and detail, these two lenses performed beyond expectation and were attached to the camera 98% of the time. Seriously beautiful glass. Because of how much I fell in love with these lenses, I unfortunetly do not have much to say about the kit lenses but I did send the 14-150mm out on an assignment to shoot a fashion show and it performed extremely well.
Taken with the 12mm @ f2.0
Shooting mode:
RAW vs JPG is a debate that I am not prepared to get into right now but I personally ALWAYS shoot in RAW mode and this camera was no expection. Giving you about a million times more control over the image in the computer, RAW mode allows you to save blown highlights, recover lost detail in the blacks and used properly can allow you to really make your images shine. Put simply the EPL-5s RAW mode performed flawlessly, with the small annoyance that users of older versions of Photoshop are going to have to convert the files to DNG (with the free Adobe converter) before processing. An annoying additional step but one that will actually help you preserve your ability to process your photos in the distant future.
Flashes and other add-ons:
There is a small handle "upgrade" that screws on to the side of the camera and adds a nice little bump on the front of the body that gives your fingers more grip. I am not sure why this is not just built right into the body as handling is so much better when it is on there.
Additionally I was provided with a sweet little clip-on flash that attached to the top of the camera and allowed me to shoot in darker settings. I only used it twice but it seemed to perform well once you realize that you need to give it a bit of time to charge between shots. Most importantly, I was able to use it in conjunction with a slow-shutter mode with allowed me to shoot in my preferred flash/party-style where much of the scene is blurred because of a longer shutter speed but the flash freezes the main action. No idea what I'm talking about, look at the photo below:
Slow shutter + Flash = Party style!
Image Quality
It's funny how technology works. We can all remember when all that mattered about a digital camera was how many megapixels it had, yet when asked the other day how many the EPL5 had I was left saying "You know what? I have no idea but it really doesn't matter anymore" (the answer is 16 BTW). You see, once the camera companies realized more megapixels does not automatically mean better quality (more = smaller = less reaction to light) they started making all kinds of other improvements to image quality. And in that regard this camera performs flawlessly and leaps and bounds above anything I've seen out of this size body. Perfectly sharp files that respond extremely well to a touch of sharpening, the files out of this camera were of as high quality as anything I've seen out of my DSLR. In other words, quality is not of issue with the camera. AT ALL.
Shooting Action
Many people on this site will be wondering if this is a good camera to use to shoot skateboarding or other action sports. The answer is both yes and no.
No, it does not have 8 frames-a-second shooting like some DLSRs, but no pocket-sized cameras really do. [Important edit: Holy Shit! Turns out this baby DOES shoot at 8 frames-a-second... who would have thought?! I'm blown away and must investigate but will be looking into this more ASAP. Initial tests after putting it into the newly-discovered sequential mode seem to show exactly that, 8fps shooting, even in RAW mode. WOW!]
Yes, shutter reaction time is basically nil and if you have good timing you will nail the shot, just like they did in the old days before super-speed motor drives were the norm.
You can even shoot a few frames in a row, at a speed that i would guess to be about 1-2 frames a second [Edit: Again, it turns out that perhaps I was not shooting in the fastest mode - these are my results of what I personally experienced shooting in RAW mode at the time], which is quite good I thought for this class of camera. Whether this suits your needs is going to be a personal call but I would not call this a negative against the camera as I personally did not expect it to shoot burst modes like my DLSR.
VIdeo Mode
I decided to focus on the still side of this camera for this review but as a cinematographer I was obviously also eager to check out the video that it produces. I only shot video a few times with it but what I can say is this ... As on the photography side, colors are rendered beautifully and depending on the lens you can achieve a really beautiful shallow depth-of-field look (blurry background) which we all desire so much. On the LCD things look beautiful.
But ... the codec (compression scheme) Olympus chose for the video is a bit on the shitty side and during quick pans and other action moves I was able to observe blockiness (like when Netflix slows down) in the skies and backgrounds. That said, once everything was said and done and the clips were edited into a short film you could hardly notice. Again, this is going to have to be a personal choice on what is most important to you.
Price
At $499 for the body, and more depending on which kit lens you choose if you go that route, it's pretty hard not to admit you're getting an incredible bang for your buck with the E-PL5. With the features it packs, and most importantly, the incredible quality it delivers, in my opinion this camera is a great value. Just remember, like all interchangeable lens camera systems, to get the most out of your camera you are going to have to spend some serious money on lenses, which can go all the way up to $2000 a pop. But you know what they say, "Good glass ain't cheap but it'll last forever".
It's easy to get swept away in specifications and high-tech wizardry but as a working photographer I've come to the conclusion that as much fun as it is to geek out about all that stuff, the only thing that matters in the end is the final photograph. And after thousands of frames I can say with confidence that the photo files that come out of this camera are as good or better than anything I've worked with before. Tack sharp, beautiful detail, great handling of color and light ... I shot some of my favourite photos of the past year in the last month with this baby. And that just goes to prove exaclty what I was talking about before - it's precisely because of the fact that I was constantly throwing the camera into my pocket on the way out the door (something I would hardly ever do with my SLR) that I was able to capture those images in the first place.
So grab a camera (this one would be a grat choice!), get out there and start shooting!
Here's 2 of my favorite galleries of shots I took with the E-PL5:
