Anyone have experience with micro 4/3rds format cameras?

The VF-1 looks interesting, though parallax can be a bitch
 
The 20mm lens arrived today, so here is the first pic:

1/10s, f/1.7, ISO 100, JPEG fine, PP only resizing to 1024x768 with bicubic sharpening:
https://pic.armedcats.net/t/th/the_interceptor/2010/10/09/Bananas_1024.jpg

100% crop:
https://pic.armedcats.net/t/th/the_interceptor/2010/10/09/Bananas_100p_crop.jpg

Not too bad I'd say for a wide-open lens on a compact in bad light. The learning curve is still steep with the cam and its settings (and fortunately it is widely configurable), but so far this is not bad. Coming from a D700 with a load of primes is somewhat of a spoiler, but the E-PL1 definitely chucks out the best pics I have seen from a compact thus far.

The ISO noise is okay. The in-cam-noise-reduction at low takes out a lot of chroma and a bit of luma noise while preserving a lot of details. In low light, noise becomes aparrent above ISO 400. Could be worse, will shoot and post more tomorrow...
 
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More pictures!

Straight out of the cam, so pictures may take long to load (average size around 5MB). No post processing (= PP) of any kind. I did this to demonstrate the potential of the camera and the lens without the interference of any PP corrections. I mainly used ISO 100 and 200, apertures between 1.7 and 3.5 and varying shutter speeds for proper exposure. The camera was set to JPEG fine with maximum resolution of 12 Mpx in 4:3 format.

See individual picture EXIF data for details (note: no EXIF info in the thumbnails!).



General observations:
I'm quite happy with this kit. It is easy to use once you've set it up, and the picture quality sure is excellent for a compact. The lens has the perfect focal length (equivalent to 40mm) for pretty much everything you do and works very well even wide open. There is a tad of softness introduced at f/1.7, but it's still sharp and perfectly useable, corners remain good. Overall peak sharpness is reached around f/3.5. The in-camera image stabilizer enables you to take sharp pictures with up to 1/10s with the 20mm (40mm eqiv.) lens. That, together with the lens working well even at f/1.7, means that this is quite a low-light-friendly combo.

As for neccessary picture corrections, the only things I would probably do besides cropping are some mild color and contrast adjustments. I may "hardwire" these directly in the cam's settings once I have more experience with this kit and can be sure which way to go with brightness, contrast and saturation, but the basic settings definitely are not far off the ideal. Pretty much all reviews have claimed that this camera has an excellent JPEG engine, and I can vouch for that. I have seen a lot of compacts with good sensors and lenses being spoiled by bad in-cam JPEG handling, and the E-PL1 definitely doesn't disappoint. I wanted a compact walkaround camera which produces JPEGs which are fine out of the camera, and so far it's just brilliant. Crisp, sharp and colorful images right out of the camera, with no signs of compression or other artifacts even in "busy" pictures (trees, etc.).

The build quality of the gear is okay. The Olympus E-PL1 is a bit plasticy on the outside as it is the budget model below the E-P1/2, but it is solid underneath and good to operate. The main dial on the top feels nicely solid, the buttons on the back are a bit flimsy - they work flawlessly, but they don't feel solid and have quite some play. The release button however is solid as well, you can feel both pressure points with ease.
The 20mm Panasonic lens is on par with that. It is made of plastic on the outside, but it feels solid. The focus ring operates nice and smooth, and there isn't much to go wrong with this sturdy little gem anyway. Manual focusing feels a bit odd, because with turning the focus ring you actually "crank" the AF motor by hand. It works, but it definitely feels very different than a real manual lens.

Menus and changing the settings are well-thought-out. I found myself a bit lost with other compacts, but this one is quite logical once you've enabled the "full" menu in the settings. Then, you have access to all kinds of settings and can use this more or less like a dSLR, only without dials to set it up. I mainly shoot in fully manual 'M' mode. There is a live histogram on screen makes choosing the right settings very easy, it has not let me down thus far.

I haven't mastered the 'A' mode yet however. The auto-ISO-setting works very well, and I can choose the aperture to my liking, but there is no way to choose a minimum exposure time before the camera starts cranking up the ISOs. So while I could easily choose f/1.7 and 1/20s at ISO 200 in 'M' and get a perfect picture, the 'A' mode accepts f/1.7 but stops at 1/80s and uses ISO 800 to compensate. There may be a way to set the camera to a minimum exposure time before taking other measures, but I haven't found it yet.

Otherwise, there are some minor oddities with the handling. For whatever reason, the camera does not have a tilt sensor, so all images come out as landscapes. Tilting them to portrait format is no hassle in post production, but you ask yourself why the cam does not do this.
And the minimum exposure time of 1/2000 of a second can be a bit tight if you shoot wide open in bright sunlight. At base ISO (100, even when 200 is recommended) you may need to close the aperture of the lens somewhat to avoid overexposure, which in turn might prevent you from having the DoF you would like to have.

... oh well, and the color combination of the lens and the camera are a bit odd, since the lens is a Panasonic and the camera is an Olympus. The camera is black and bright silver, and the lens is grey-ish silver. They surely go okay together, but on a second glance this might disturb some. Doesn't put me off though...

EDIT: put up two more pictures, will probably add an ISO noise comparison tonight.
 
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And the minimum exposure time of 1/2000.

That is seriously off putting. I often find the minimum of 1/4000 to be annoying, and 1/2000 is much more limiting than that :cry:. Are there any custom firmwares around which raise it? The lens seems to have a fair amount of CA as well.
 
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That is seriously off putting. I often find the minimum of 1/4000 to be annoying, and 1/2000 is much more limiting than that :cry:. Are there any custom firmwares around which raise it?
Not that I'm aware of. I'll see whether I will run into this limitation in real life. I don't even know whether it is fixable by a firmware update, but I suppose it is.

The lens seems to have a fair amount of CA as well.
I didn't see any exceptionally large amount of CA in those pics.

The CA's are being corrected when the lens is used with Panasonic bodies, the Olympus bodies only correct the distortion.
 

Here's my first worthwhile shot, 14-42mm lens in place. I could use a 20mm pancake but that'll come later; I'm still getting used to just how pricey the interchangeable lens thing is. the Interceptor, do you find yourself using the pop-up flash a lot? I haven't yet found myself in a situation where I do need flash, and with my last compact I'd turn it off most of the time anyway, but it was nice to know it was there.
 
Not that I'm aware of. I'll see whether I will run into this limitation in real life. I don't even know whether it is fixable by a firmware update, but I suppose it is.

I didn't see any exceptionally large amount of CA in those pics.

The CA's are being corrected when the lens is used with Panasonic bodies, the Olympus bodies only correct the distortion.
I couldn't see anything more than moderate or low amounts of CA in those images. Anyways, short of shooting jet fighters at an airshow I can't think of any other instances where I have used a faster shutter than 1/2000s... :dunno:

For those in the need for speed, the Voigtl?nder Nokton 25mm f0,95 will be available in abourt two weeks...

Here's my first worthwhile shot, 14-42mm lens in place. I could use a 20mm pancake but that'll come later; I'm still getting used to just how pricey the interchangeable lens thing is. the Interceptor, do you find yourself using the pop-up flash a lot? I haven't yet found myself in a situation where I do need flash, and with my last compact I'd turn it off most of the time anyway, but it was nice to know it was there.
Looks good, although the standard zoom isn't the last word in speed, when it comes to light and AF-speed.
 
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If you're shooting at f0.95 you are going to wish you can go higher than 1/2000 :p. In sunlight and wanting use f1.8 on my 50mm, i reguarly exceed 1/4000 a second.
 
Another one straight from the cam:



I accidently shot this one with the lens wide open, but it still came out nicely.
 
short of shooting jet fighters at an airshow I can't think of any other instances where I have used a faster shutter than 1/2000s... :dunno:
I agree as far as we're talking about the actual need for short shutter times. But I ran into situations (such as shooting a flower in direct sunlight) where 1/2000 sec. simply was too much even at base ISO to shoot it with f/1.7. It came out overexposed.
 
I agree as far as we're talking about the actual need for short shutter times. But I ran into situations (such as shooting a flower in direct sunlight) where 1/2000 sec. simply was too much even at base ISO to shoot it with f/1.7. It came out overexposed.

Dial the EV down some to -0.3 to -1.0 before you shoot. Problem solved.
 
I agree as far as we're talking about the actual need for short shutter times. But I ran into situations (such as shooting a flower in direct sunlight) where 1/2000 sec. simply was too much even at base ISO to shoot it with f/1.7. It came out overexposed.

DPReview says this is a common problem with the Olympus micro 4/3 cameras, something that the Panasonic GF1 doesn't have.
 
Dial the EV down some to -0.3 to -1.0 before you shoot. Problem solved.
You don't understand ... there is no way to reduce exposure other than closing the aperture of the lens. The sensor already is at its smallest sensitivity, the exposure time at its shortest period. The camera has no more ways to reduce the amount of light hitting the sensor, so there is no option to decrease the EV in this situation.
 
If you're shooting at f0.95 you are going to wish you can go higher than 1/2000 :p. In sunlight and wanting use f1.8 on my 50mm, i reguarly exceed 1/4000 a second.

I was going to say ND but Epp beat me to it. I don't know what you expect other than impossibly fast shutter speeds using a fast prime during the day without an ND.
 
Interestingly, the other two compact m43 cameras made by Olympus offer shutter speeds of 1/4000s, and so do the Panasonic bodies. So there should be no technical reason whatsoever that made Olympus limit the minimum shutter speed to 1/2000s in the E-PL1. I hope it will be fixed in a future firmware update.
 
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I don't know what you expect other than impossibly fast shutter speeds using a fast prime during the day without an ND.
Well, technically, shutter speeds on SLRs have gone as high as 1/16,000th. I'm sure it's technically possible to have a faster shutter yet, but I doubt there's enough demand for manufacturers to actually implement it.

Additionally, if it were a CCD sensor (yeah, I know it's not, this conversation is now for the lulz) it could theoretically electronically shutter down to a few microseconds. Imagine shutter speeds of 1/128,000! :D
 
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