Introduction

Ease of Use

The Olympus E-PL1 is the sixth member of the growing Micro Four Thirds family, joining the E-P1 and E-P2 models and Panasonic's G1, GH-1 and GF-1 line-up. All of these cameras take advantage of the mirror-less nature of the Micro Four Thirds standard to offer a smaller and lighter solution that more traditional DSLR cameras, targeting those users who want to trade up from a compact but who are scared away by the size and complexity of a DSLR. With it's all-plastic body the E-PL1 is one of the lightest models in this category, weighing 300g, and it's also a little smaller too, measuring 120.6 x 69.9 x 36.4 mm. Both the more expensive EP-1 and EP-2 cameras have metal bodies, so the E-PL1 has shed weight and lowered cost by using a plastic construction, although it still feels reassuringly well-made with very little flex in the overall design. The depth and weight increase when the supplied poly-carbonate mounted 14-42mm kit lens is fitted, making the E-PL1 instantly more DSLR-like, but fitting a pancake lens like Olympus' 17mm or Panasonic's 20mm creates a compact overall package that will particularly suit street photographers looking for an indiscrete camera.

The more modern styling of the E-PL1 is a lot more neutral than the overtly retro design of the E-P1 and E-P2 and will mostly appeal to the younger and more inexperienced audience that this model is aimed at. Our black review sample with silver metal accents looked quite stylish in an understated kind of way, although it lacks the more cohesive design of its predecessors. There's a generous, textured black plastic hand-grip on the left-front of the camera which I prefer to the original E-P1, and a shiny black panel on the rear where most of the controls are located. The E-PL1 is better constructed than you'd expect given its relatively small size, light weight and budget price-tag, certainly on a par with most entry- and mid-level DSLRs.

Large metal neck strap eyelets are located on top of the camera at the sides, with the rear dominated by the fixed 2.7 inch LCD screen, another cost-cutting measure (the E-P1 and E-P2 both have a larger 3 inch screen). When it comes to storing your photographs the E-PL1 uses SD / SDHC cards, an important decision by Olympus as this format is much more popular than the xD-Picture cards that most Olympus compacts use. The BLS1 battery which provides up to 500 shots under the CIPA testing standard (note that this drop to 280 images if using Live View all the time) is housed next to the SD slot, both protected by a plastic lockable cover. Also found on the bottom of the camera is a metal tripod mount located almost in the centre of the camera body, although not in line with the lens.

As with the E-P1 and E-P2, there is no optical viewfinder as on a DSLR. Instead, you can choose to buy the excellent detachable VF-2 viewfinder which slots into the E-PL1's hotshoe on top of the camera and is tilt-able to 90° so the camera can be used as you would a medium format model and with 100% field of view. The EVF has its own newly included port, situated just below the E-PL1's hotshoe and protected with a slide-off piece of plastic that will quickly get lost in the recesses of your camera bag. This port also allows the attachment of an accessory microphone if so desired via the EMA-1 adapter. New for the E-PL1 is the much-requested built-in pop-up flash, activated by a switch on the rear. This uses a folding design to raise the flash as high as possible above the lens, much the one on the Panasonic GF-1. It offers a range of flash synchronisation modes, an X-sync speed of 1/160 s / 1/2000 s, the ability to dial-in compensation of +/- 3 EV, and can also be employed to trigger an off camera flash (either the FL-50R or FL-36R). This little flash is a very useful addition that also importantly makes the Olympus PEN range more competitive with Panasonic's Micro Four Thirds models - we just wish that Olympus had also added it to the E-P2...

Front	Rear

The E-PL1's 2.7-inch, 230,000-dot rear LCD screen has a very wide viewing angle and remains visible outdoors in the sunshine too, but only if you increase its brightness level to the maximum setting (which affects the battery life). The resolution is merely average for a screen of this size, resulting in a slightly grainy display, but it does offer 100% scene coverage. The colour temperature of the screen can be modified if you think it doesn't match that of your calibrated computer monitor, but the contrast and gamma cannot be altered.

The LCD screen doubles-up as a status display, with three different screens on offer, which can be called up by repeatedly pressing the Info button in record mode. These include the camera's key settings and a small live histogram (although sadly not both at the same time), and no information at all. Sadly the E-P1 / E-P2's innovative level gauge, which makes it easy to straighten either the horizontal or vertical horizon, has been dropped from this model, as has the handy live preview of different exposure compensation and white balance settings in a multi-frame window.

You can also change all the important settings right on the LCD screen, which Olympus calls the Super Control Panel. This ingenious solution spares you the pain of having to enter the menu system, and makes most settings changes fairly simple. Pressing the Start / OK button calls up a vertical list of icons that can be selected and changed by using the navigation pad keys. Four of the most often-used functions - exposure compensation, focusing mode, flash and drive mode - each have their own dedicated button mapped onto the four-way pad, although we missed having buttons for the ISO sensitivity and white balance.

Olympus have attempted to make the E-PL1 more intuitive for beginners by offering the Live Guide mode. Choose the iAuto shooting mode and press the Start/OK button, and you can use an onscreen vertical slider system to change 5 of the camera's key settings - Color Saturation, Color Image, Brightness, Blur Background, Express Motions - as well as see a range of shooting tips. We're not sure about some of the names (Express Motions??), and it's only available in iAuto - the Super Control Panel replaces it in the other shooting modes), but overall Live Guide is quite a good idea if you know what you want to achieve but are unsure of the photographic terminology and methods that more experienced shooters take for granted.

Manual focusing is greatly enhanced by the 'enlarged display' function. Once you have selected manual focus mode, press the Zoom In button repeatedly until a green rectangle appears in the middle of the display. You can move this rectangle to one of the 225 available points using the four-way pad, and magnify into it by pressing Zoom In again. The default magnification is 7x, but you can raise this to 10x or 14x by pressing the Info button. This is real, non-interpolated magnification, very useful for accurate manual focusing - provided you find a way to steady the camera. A second press of the Zoom In button will let you see the full frame again.

The Olympus E-PL1 doesn't have the dual command dials for setting key options like aperture and shutter speed that the EP-1 and EP-2 offer. Instead the E-PL1 uses the arrow keys on the navigation pad. In the Manual shooting mode, up and down sets the aperture and left and right sets the shutter speed. Overall this is a simpler solution that's easier for beginners to understand, but more experienced photographers will definitely miss having a DSLR-like command dial, which makes it much easier to change the settings when holding the camera up to your face.

Pop-up Flash	Front

The main menu system on the E-PL1 is fairly straight-forward to use and is accessed by pressing the Menu button on the rear of the camera. There are five main menus, Camera1, Camera2, Playback, Custom and Setup. Annoyingly the Custom menu, which allows you to fine-tune the camera to suit your way of working, is hidden by default (there's an option to turn it on in the Settings menu). As mentioned previously, the Super Control Panel on the LCD screen speeds up access to some of the more commonly used options. Due to the large LCD screen and restricting the number of on-screen choices to six, the various options and icons are clear and legible. If you have never used a digital camera before, or you're upgrading from a more basic model, reading the easy-to-follow manual before you start is a good idea. Unfortunately Olympus have chosen not to supply it in printed format, so you can't carry it with you for easy reference.

The E-PL1 has an 11-point contrast detection auto-focus system, which is automatically increased to 25 points when Face Detection is turned on. With a non high-speed contrast AF lens mounted, the camera defaults to Manual Focus mode even if Auto Focus is selected. There's no useful AEL / AFL button on the rear of the camera as on the E-P1 / E-P2. The E-PL1 offers a comprehensive set of exposure modes, including P, A, S and M for advanced users. iAuto mode automatically recognises common scenes and and adjusts the camera settings accordingly to achieve the best results, perfect for complete novices, plus there's a range of different scene modes. The ePortrait scene mode allows you to soften shadows and smooth out unwanted facial features, either before taking the picture or afterwards.

Olympus are also heavily promoting the E-PL1's artistic capabilities, with two features in particular, Art Filters and Multiple Exposure, differentiating it from its main competitors. The 6 different Art Filters are Pop Art, Soft Focus, Grainy Film, Pin Hole, Diorama and Gentle Sepia - you can see the results on the Image Quality page. Unlike most other cameras, these effects are applied before taking a shot, rather than afterwards, so you can preview the effect on the LCD screen before pressing the shutter button. The Art Filters can also be applied to previously taken RAW images, either in-camera or with the supplied Olympus "ib" software.

The Multiple Exposure function allows two images to be superimposed onto each other, creating a composite, and you can either overlay a previous shot or the image that you are about to take. Multiple Exposure even works with RAW files as well as JPEGs, whilst the Art Filters are applied to a JPEG (with an unprocessed RAW file also saved). The Art Filters are a little over-the-top for my taste, and you can't tweak the default look, but the ability to to change the exposure, white balance and other key settings whilst previewing the effect is very welcome.

While the Art Filters get their own setting on the Mode Dial, the Multiple Exposure option is inexplicably buried away in the main menu system. The E-PL1 offers also four different aspect ratios that enable individualised framing of scenes, including the default 4:3 ratio employed by the Micro Four Thirds system. The available aspect ratios are: 4:3, 3:2, 16:9 and 6:6. They're quite a good way of personalizing your shots in-camera, with the ability to preview the effect again proving particularly useful.

Front	Live Guide

The Olympus E-PL1 has a built-in mechanical image stabilisation system which can be turned on and off via the main menu. Four different options are available - Off, On (I.S. 1), turn off the horizontal image stabilizer but leave on the vertical one (I.S. 2) or turn off the vertical image stabilizer but leave on the horizontal one (I.S. 2), both for when you want to pan with your subject and keep it sharp while the background blurs. The IS system offers up to 4 EV steps of stabilisation - in practice I found that 3 EV steps was more readily achievable. Also available is the impressively named Supersonic Wave Filter, whereby any dust particles that drift inside while changing lenses settle on a filter that protects the image sensor, and are then shaken clear when the camera powers down.

The Olympus E-PL1 offers a number of features inherited from Olympus' recent DSLR cameras. Among these are Pixel Mapping and spot metering, which comes in no less than three variations: midtone-based, shadow-based and highlight-based. The latter two make life easier for those who know what spot metering is but do not know how to use it in combination with exposure compensation. These options come on top of the usual centre-weighted and evaluative modes.

The E-PL1 can record high-resolution HD 720p 1280x720 movies in the 16:9 aspect ratio and standard VGA 640x480 movies in the 4:3 aspect ratio, both using the AVI Motion JPEG format at 30 frames per second. The Movie mode is accessed either by selecting the Movie option on the shooting mode dial and then pressing the shutter button to begin recording, or much more conveniently with a single press of the new one-touch Motion Picture button on the rear of the camera. The total length of an individual movie clip is restricted to 7 minutes for 1280x720 movies and 14 minutes for 640x480 movies, apparently due to an inherent limit of 2Gb for AVI files. Only Mono sound is recorded during video capture via the small internal mic on the rear of of the camera, but you can at least plug-in an external stereo mic. The HDMI port allows you to connect the E-PL1 to a high-def TV set, but only if you purchase the optional HDMI mini-cable.

You can shoot movies using the Program, Aperture-priority or Manual modes, giving you full control over exposure. Note that you can't change the shutter speed or aperture during recording though. The E-PL1 offers the ability to use any of the 6 Art Filters during video recording as well as still images. This instantly lends an interesting art-house effect to your home movies, with the Grainy Film option being particularly appealing. The frame rate is rather drastically reduced though for some of the filters. A Program option for point and shoot operation completes the movie shooting modes. An Electronic Image Stabilization system compensates for camera shake, and you can take a still shot during video recording, although this also ends the movie rather than just interrupting it. The new C-AF+TR focus mode applies to both still and moving pictures, locking the focus point on the mani subject and automatically following it around the frame.

Battery Compartment	Memory Card Slot

You can use a zoom lens during recording and really make the most of the wide range of compatible lenses. Focusing is set as for still images by half-pressing the shutter button. On the negative side, you'll find that if you choose continuous auto-focus, areas of the video will be blurred before becoming sharp again as the camera tries to refocus, and as noted above, the noise of the AF system is very intrusive. Using manual focus is much trickier but will ultimately produce better looking and sounding movies. On a more positive note, having the AF system is better than not being able to auto-focus at all, as with all current DSLR cameras that offer video recording. Hand-holding the E-PL1 during movie recording inevitably leads to obvious shake, despite the electronic image stabilizer, so for best results you'll need a dedicated video tripod.

The start-up time from turning the E-PL1 on to being ready to take a photo is pretty impressive at around 1.5 seconds. Unfortunately the Contrast Auto-Focusing system isn't going to win any speed awards, taking approximately 0.5 second to lock onto the subject and emit a loud beep (which can be turned off). Half a second doesn't sound like much, but it's enough to miss the moment and is noticeably slower than both regular DSLR cameras and the Panasonic Micro Four Thirds cameras. Thankfully it usually achieves focus most of the time, helped by the AF assist lamp - the E-PL1 doesn't have any notable problems locking onto the subject in low-light situations.

It takes about 2 seconds to store a JPEG image, allowing you to keep shooting as they are being recorded onto the memory card - there is a brief LCD blackout between each image. Storing a single RAW image takes around 4 seconds, but thankfully it doesn't lock up the camera in any way - you can use the menu system or shoot another image while the first file is being written to memory. The Olympus E-PL1 has quite a good Burst mode which enables you to take 3 frames per second for an unlimited number of JPEG images at the highest image quality, or 10 RAW images. Overall the E-PL1 is below par in terms of operational speed compared to a DSLR, especially hampered by its auto-focusing speed, but faster than most compacts.

Once you have captured a photo, the Olympus E-PL1 has a good range of options when it comes to playing, reviewing and managing your images. You can instantly scroll through the images that you have taken, view thumbnails (up to 25 onscreen at the same time and in a Calendar view), zoom in and out up to 14x magnification, view slideshows, delete and protect an image, add a sound clip and set the print order.

The Edit option offers a number of different ways to alter the look of an already-captured photo, including merging 2 or 3 into one, shadow adjustment, redeye fix, cropping, changing the aspect ratio, converting to black and white or sepia, boosting the saturation, resizing and applying the e-Portrait filter. The Info button toggles detailed settings information about each picture on and off, such as the ISO rating and aperture / shutter speed, and there are small brightness and RGB histograms available.

In summary the Olympus E-PL1 is an easier-to-use and crucially cheaper PEN model that doesn't compromise too much on features and build quality, although serious photographers will miss the key controls that have been removed to make the camera simpler.

Image Quality

All of the sample images in this Review were taken using the 12.3 megapixel Super Fine JPEG setting, which gives an average image size of around 7Mb.

During the review, the Olympus E-PL1 produced photos of excellent quality. Noise is very well handled, being virtually absent from ISO 100-800 and not being too obvious at the relatively fast speed of ISO 1600. At the fastest setting of ISO 3200, noise is easily detectable when viewing images at 100% magnification on screen, but the images are still perfectly usable for small prints and resizing for web use.

Colours were vibrant without being over-saturated in the default Natural picture mode, and you can always choose Vivid if you want even more punch. The art filters quickly produce special effects that would otherwise require you to spend a lot of time in the digital darkroom, while the various Picture Modes provide a quick and easy way to tweak the camera's JPEG images.

Image stabilisation via the camera body is a very useful feature that works well when hand-holding the camera in low-light conditions or when using the telephoto end of the zoom range. The 12.3 megapixel images were a little soft straight out of the camera at the default sharpening setting and ideally require some further sharpening in an application like Adobe Photoshop, or you can change the in-camera setting. The new built-in flash is a great addition that takes full advantage of the E-PL1's various flash modes, with good exposure and no red-eye.

Noise

There are 6 ISO settings available on the Olympus E-PL1. Here are some 100% crops which show the noise levels for each ISO setting, with JPEG on the left and the RAW equivalent on the right:

JPEG	RAW
ISO 100 (100% Crop)	ISO 100 (100% Crop)
ISO 200 (100% Crop)	ISO 200 (100% Crop)
ISO 400 (100% Crop)	ISO 400 (100% Crop)
ISO 800 (100% Crop)	ISO 800 (100% Crop)
ISO 1600 (100% Crop)	ISO 1600 (100% Crop)
ISO 3200 (100% Crop)	ISO 3200 (100% Crop)

File Quality

The Olympus E-PL1 has 2 different JPEG file quality settings available, with Fine being the highest quality option, and it can also shoot in RAW format. Here are some 100% crops which show the quality of the various options, with the file size shown in brackets.

Fine (5.2Mb) (100% Crop)	Normal (2.3Mb) (100% Crop)
RAW (11.9Mb) (100% Crop)

Sharpening

Here are two 100% crops which have been Saved as Web - Quality 50 in Photoshop. The right-hand image has had some sharpening applied in Photoshop. The out-of-the camera images are just a little soft at the default sharpening setting and benefit from some further sharpening in a program like Adobe Photoshop. You can also change the in-camera sharpening level to suit your tastes by changing the Picture Modes.

Original (100% Crop)	Sharpened (100% Crop)

Flash

The flash settings on the Olympus E-PL1 are Auto, Red-eye Reduction, Slow Synchro, 2nd-curtain Slow Synchro, Fill-in and Off. These shots of a white coloured wall were taken at a distance of 1.5m.

Off - Wide Angle (28mm)	Fill-in - Wide Angle (28mm)
Off - Telephoto (84mm)	Fill-in - Telephoto (84mm)

And here are some portrait shots. As you can see, neither the On or the Red-eye Reduction settings caused any red-eye.

On	On (100% Crop)
Red-eye Reduction	Red-eye Reduction (100% Crop)

Night

The Olympus E-PL1 lets you dial in shutter speeds of up to 60 seconds and has a Bulb mode as well for exposure times as long as 30 minutes, which is very good news if you are seriously interested in night photography. The shot below was taken using a shutter speed of 20 seconds at ISO 100. We've included a 100% crop to show what the quality is like.

Night Shot	Night Shot (100% Crop)

Image Stabilisation

The Olympus E-PL1 has an Image Stabilisation mechanism built into the camera body, which allows you to take sharp photos at slower shutter speeds than other digital cameras. To test this, I took 2 handheld shots of the same subject with the same settings. The first shot was taken with Image Stabilisation turned off, the second with it turned on. Here is a 100% crop of the image to show the results. As you can see, with Image Stabilisation turned on, the images are much sharper than when it's turned off. This feature really does seem to make a difference and could mean capturing a successful, sharp shot or missing the opportunity altogether.

Shutter Speed / Focal Length	Image Stabilisation Off (100% Crop)	Image Stabilisation On (100% Crop)
1/5th / 28mm
1/8th / 84mm

Art Filters

The Olympus E-PL1 offers six different Art Filters, which allow you to quickly apply an artistic effect to a photo before taking it (JPEG images only). The most useful of these is Soft Focus, because the FourThirds system lacks a dedicated soft focus lens, and the effect would require advanced knowledge of layers, blurring methods and blending modes if you were to reproduce it in post-processing. The six available Art Filters are shown below in the following series, which demonstrates the differences. Note that applying the Art Filters slows the camera down somewhat as the camera takes several seconds to process and save the image.

Pop Art	Soft Focus
Grainy Film	Pin Hole
Diorama	Gentle Sepia

Picture Modes

Olympus' Picture Modes, similarly to Nikon's Picture Styles and Canon's Picture Controls, are preset combinations of different sharpness, contrast, saturation and colour tone settings. The five available Picture Controls are shown below in the following series, which demonstrates the differences. There is also an additional Custom style so that you can create your own look.

i-Enhance	Vivid
Natural	Muted
Portrait	Monotone

Sample Images

This is a selection of sample images from the Olympus E-PL1 camera, which were all taken using the 12.3 megapixel Fine JPEG setting. The thumbnails below link to the full-sized versions, which have not been altered in any way.

Sample RAW Images

The Olympus E-PL1 enables users to capture RAW and JPEG format files. We've provided some Olympus RAW (ORF) samples for you to download (thumbnail images shown below are not 100% representative).

Sample Movie & Video

Product Images

Front of the Camera

Front of the Camera

Front of the Camera / Pop-up Flash

Isometric View

Isometric View

Rear of the Camera

Rear of the Camera / Image Displayed

Rear of the Camera / Turned On

Rear of the Camera / Main Menu

Rear of the Camera / Live Guide

Rear of the Camera / Live Guide

Top of the Camera

Bottom of the Camera

Side of the Camera

Side of the Camera

Front of the Camera

Front of the Camera

Memory Card Slot

Battery Compartment

Conclusion

The Olympus EP-1 is a largely successful attempt to bring smaller, DSLR cameras to the mass-market, providing an ideal upgrade path for compact camera users who may be intimidated by the size and complexity of a DSLR. The drive towards simplicity and cost may put off more experienced photographers who would be better served by the premium E-P2 model, although the E-PL1 still offers most of that camera's core functionality.

Importantly for the target audience, the E-PL1 is the first PEN to feature a built-in flash, very neatly implemented with a folding design that raise the unit above the lens and helps reduce red-eye. The new Live Guide is another beginner-friendly addition that makes understanding and changing apertures and shutter speeds to achieve creative effects very straight-forward indeed - simply move the slider and observe the effects live on the LCD screen. Other key changes include using the navigation pad to change most of the camera's key settings and the removal of more advanced buttons like AEL and ISO, making the E-PL1 better suited to compact camera upgraders than to DSLR shooters looking for a more portable second camera. That said, the E-PL1 certainly offers most of key photographic features, with only the top shutter speed of 1/2000th second and ISO speed of 3200 proving limiting.

No corners have been cut when it comes to image quality, with the E-PL1 offering the best image quality that we've yet seen on a Four Thirds camera, just like the E-P1 and E-P2 before it. low-light performance up to ISO 1600 is very good, offering comparable quality to an entry-level APS-C DSLR, despite the smaller sensor size. The noise reduction is more aggressive by default on the E-PL1 than the other two PEN cameras, but you can change this if you don't like the out-of-the-box results. In terms of movie recording, the E-PL1 is actually one of the most capable Four Thirds cameras despite its budget price-tag, with 720p HD quality, full manual control, a handy one-touch record button and the much-prized ability to add an optional stereo microphone. Only the large file sizes and limit of 7 minutes in HD mode detract from what is otherwise a great performer.

The only notable fly in the ointment for the E-PL1 is the half-a-second wait when focusing, something that also hampers the other PEN models. It's a long enough delay to miss that decisive moment, leaving you cursing as the lens zooms in and out before finally emitting the confirmation beep. As you'd expect, performance is quicker with a prime lens, but the E-PL1 ultimately suffers in comparison to the Panasonic Micro Four Thirds cameras and any DSLR that you care to mention.

If you can live with this slight annoyance, the new Olympus E-PL1 is an attractive, well-built and very capable camera with a more aggressive price-tag than competing models. Beginners in particularly should seriously consider the E-PL1 if they've out-grown their compact, while it also represents something of a bargain for prosumers if you can live with the simpler interface. The E-PL1 is certainly another bold step towards establishing both PEN and Micro Four Thirds cameras in general - with Samsung's NX10 and even Sony joining in, 2010 could be the year when small cameras with big sensors go mainstream...

Ratings (out of 5)
Design	4
Features	4
Ease-of-use	4.5
Image quality	4.5
Value for money	4.5

Specifications

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