[shoplink 18844]Olympus PEN E-PL2[/shoplink] Hands-on Review by Digitalrev.
Short Olympus E-5 review at Pdnonline and Computerworld.
Sony NEX5 vs. Panasonic GF1, the showdown (Tyson Robichaud).
Panasonic 0.75x Wide-Angle Lens for Lumix DMC-LX5 (Black) for $149.95 at BHphoto.
DxOmark released a new update which brings support for the new Panasonic GH2.
Is GH2 ISO 3200 really this close to ISO 100 on GF1 with the 14mm F2.5? (Dpreview forum).
Sony NEX-5 vs Olympus E-PL1 head to head at Tech.sina
Olympus EPL2 USB Drive at Fotoactualidad.
Olympus E-PL2 sample shots with Voigtländer Nokton 25mm f/0.95 at digitaljournalofphotography.
Amazon Germany started to ship the Olympus XZ-1!
Reminder: There are a few Voigtländer Nokton auctions at [shoplink 15659]eBay (Click here)[/shoplink].
36 Responses
Olympus is doing its best to keep its camera offering up to date, even though Panasonic has not come up with a new sensor. I don’t think this is meant to convince people to dispose of the old model in favor of the new, just as most people do not replace their car on a yearly basis.
As far as image quality is concerned, based on image comparison thingy in dpreview it does seems the E-PL2 is producing nicer JPGs than the E-5… RAW comparison is currently not available, but most chances the differences will be less pronounced.
It does look like an nice little camera, but I will be holding on to my G1, thank you. When Olympus comes out with a model featuring a new sensor, hi res integrated EVF I’ll be the first to switch.
Having taken concert pictures with a 150mm f/3.3 lens, I see how IBIS could have helped use lower ISO and have less camera shake at the same time. This would have definitely helped to produce sharper pictures with less noise and better color, and far more keepers. A faster lens would have also helped (unfortunately I cannot afford the Olympus 150 f/2).
so, we are still waiting for DPReview to do the E-5!
why?
either:
– Olympus didn’t give them a body to play with (possible, but unlikely)
– they got drunk over Christmas and forgot about it
– its soooooooooooooo good that they are worried about their click through adds for other cameras 🙂
E5 has a pen sensor. Do you still believe in miracles?
From http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1022&message=37514112 – :
“Quite simply, nobody has had any time to work on the E-5 review since before Christmas. Work on it was suspended in order to prioritise the potentially more popular K-5, D7000 and D3100 reviews. And, given the amount of other reviews that are being prepared, work hasn’t re-commenced.
At present we have around 3.5 people working on reviews, meaning we can only really be working on 3 or 4 cameras at a time. Given the E-5 was launched at the same time as the S95, G12, LX5, P7000, D7000, D3100, K-5, K-r, NX100, GF2 and GH2, and Olympus has subsequently also launched the more mainstream XZ-1 and E-PL2, I’m afraid that the E-5 hasn’t yet got back to the front of the queue.
We have shot (and published) the test data for many of these cameras already, so we’re trying to make sure nobody is left totally in the dark.
Richard – dpreview.com”
thanks Dummy
so, perhaps dpreview (which is owned by amazon) … can’t get around to reviewing the E-5 because the Oly 4/3 market is so small, so less people clicking through to their Amazon links. Better to spend their time reviewing Nikon gear. Is this a big: Booooooooo, bad DPR?
Not bad. Common sense. Unless DPR has unlimited resources, why should it review such a camera that appeals to very few people.
i wonder if they reviewed the Leica M9?
> Is this a big: Booooooooo, bad DPR?
E-5 isn’t selling well because there is no DPR review. And there is no DPR review because E-5 isn’t expected to sell well.
Now, I personally can’t care less: E-5 isn’t my cup of tee (and users have already spoken). But some folks at Oly PR unit should do something. Unless it is official that Oly too doesn’t want E-5 to sell.
I want the USB drive, now! Is there a way to buy it from US?
Why do we have to depend on DPR review? Are those people at DPR so good that they can altered the fate of a camera?
There are interesting reviews out there made on E-5 that will help users to make decision whether to buy one or not.
One of the review, I found interesting is from PopPhoto, you can compare E-5 resulsts with other tested SLR in it’s class, and the results might be surprisingly good for Oly users.
Check it out here:
http://www.popphoto.com/content/tested-olympus-e5?pnid=70749
DPR tend to be consistent. it’s a good way of comparing one camera to another. so their reviews of he 60D & D7000 will have been closely watched by (for example) Olympus 43 quitters? they also review pretty much every camera (except the E-5) 🙁
Kai is not too positive on the new m43 cameras. And I fully agree with him.
Admin, you keep posting the link to Noktons on ebay, and the link continues to point to Adorama’s “lens not available” page
Thanks WT21!!! I just discovered I copied the wrong link. It has been fixed now.
> Amazon Germany started to ship the Olympus XZ-1!
Uhm… Where did you get that? Amazon.de allows to preorder the ZX-1 – nothing close to the “Auf Lager”:
Dieser Artikel ist noch nicht verfügbar.
Reservieren Sie sich Ihr Exemplar jetzt und Sie erhalten es pünktlich zum Erscheinungstermin.
Verkauf und Versand durch Amazon.de. Geschenkverpackung verfügbar.
Hi Dummy!
I recieved emails from 4 german people that just got the XZ-1 form Amazon germany. It is not in Stock right now.
They could be ordering via Amazon Market, which are bunch of small/etc outlets selling via Amazon.
Because “Dieser Artikel ist noch nicht verfügbar.” means definitely and unequivocally that the camera is not officially available on Amazon via Amazon itself.
It was listed as available at amazon.de a few days ago, but now it seems to be sold out. Just be patient… 😉
This review took place in Hong Kong because Hong Kong is one of the earliest city to sell the EPL-2. Lots of stocks here too. And they are selling it for 4500HKD in Hong Kong now (the lowest price I saw).
yes, in the german systemkamera-forum are the first user-samples of the XZ-1:
http://www.systemkamera-forum.de/systemuebergreifende-technikdiskussionen-objektivadaptierung/15370-olympus-xz-1-erste-erfahrungen.html
The reviewer says the EPL1 will stay on the market with the EPL2. That might be true, but who in the world would buy an EPL1 with the EPL2 available, unless there was maybe a $250 price difference.
What a useless review… he dosen’t say anything on the camera itself except that Olympus are bastards… So stupid.
I agree with YeahYeah, that was a terrible review.
it was a whine from the second he said “now, i like this whole m4/3 concept”. complained that it was just minor upgrades and that olympus was milking the m4/3 hype. but the biggest upgrade to the whole kit he did not mention at all. he did not mention anything about the upgrade to the zoom lens. did not mention anything about the focusing speed. nor did he mention anything about the focusing of the lens during video mode. he dismissed the new accesory port 2 and made fun of the name of the penpal attachement. he was basically dismissing the whole release of the e-pl2 as a marketing ploy by olympus. frankly this was not a review of the camera at all!!! if i can review him as a reviewer, on a 5 point scale, he dropped 6 notches. i really wonder what his agenda is?
While it is not a review rather than a camera presentation, the author is completely right by complaining that Olympus only did another very incremental update of the exsting PEN line without moving really ahead. What the EPL-2 now has incorporated, is available at the competition from the beginning or since a long time, and partly is still not availaible at any PEN (build-in EVF, tiltable screen, full HD video, just to name some).
then, he is misrepresenting himself. don’t call it a review, call it a rant. besides, how much ground breaking technology can develop in a year and a half since the ep-1 came out? not much!! what they have done is make different iterations of the camera that appeal to different segments of the market. and isn’t that what they are supposed to do? capture as much of the market as they can? the ep-1/ep-2 with the dual knob controls for the enthusiast, the epl-1 for the point and shooters and the epl-2 slots in between the two. now they did do some tweaks to the AA filter that improves on the image and they did improve on the lens focusing mechanism together with the accessory port improvement. but this reviewer mentioned none of those. so, what kind of a review is that? and as for those things that you mentioned, like the tiltable screen and HD video, have you checked the price of the the epl-2? it is $599 in the US. the panasonic gf-2 is going to slot in at more than US$800. so right now, olympus has the epl-1 and epl-2 both selling at less than US$600. a great price for a camera capable of so much. they offer it with the same sensor as their flagship e-5. is that good for the epl’s? sure!! is that bad for the e-5? i can tell you the images from the e-5 are just spectacular and much better than the ep-1. so, they did not limit the e-5 at all, and taken as a whole package, i think that german review knew what they were talking about when they rated the e-5 third behind the nikon d3x and canon 1ds in terms of the best cameras out there.
Actually he did mention the new lens. And the E-5 has the same sensor but a different processor Truepic V+ on E-5 and Truepic V on EPL2.
digitalrev is dubbed the “top gear” of cameras. like top gear, they dont really focus on the specs, but rather how they felt using the camera. it should be taken with a grain of salt.
DigitalRev does a great job with these videos, although they are not reviews in the typical sense, you get to see the camera in someones hands, along with some still shots he takes as he walks around. And the video/sound of the production is superb. Much more entertaining than reading the same review over and over. And he does throw in a nice ISO comparison, which shows that the EPL2 has better noise control…
John Lewis in the uk has EPL2 in store but not online yet , the review off the EPL2 is technically wrong in a few places , its well filmed but misleading , I believe that the camera has been purchased by the reviewer , he has not been briefed by Olympus and as such his motives are questionable . In the uk the Epl2 costs just over £100 more than the epl1 for the quality off body and upgrade off lens I think it’s worth the extra , some people thought the epl1 was not quite upto scratch quality wise and some people can’t afford the extra for the epl2 , either way both off those types off customers can now be satisfied , I don’t think Olympus should be marked down for responding to this feedback , it’s not what some off us want to see in m43 but I’m sure that’s not far away
Let’s not kid ourselves. Oly is pretty much just rehashing the old stuff with the EPL2. This is such a small incremental change that it’s not even worth much discussion.
The only thing that might be interesting is the new lens. Though I had the Panasonic 20mm 1.7 on my EP1 95% of the time.
Well the EPL2 is far more appealing than the EP1, and the kit lens is what it is, I plan on attaching a 20mm f1.7, a 50mm f2.0 and whatever else comes out that is good.
EPL2 has better:
Autofocus
Ergonomics
Screen
Software
Look
Lens
Price
Hotshoe
Dramatic Tone
The EPL2 is now the best option in Oly MFT, even if the professional model will soon beat it out. And for less than a third of the price of the E-5, but with many of the same features (minus: 920k screen, viewfinder, 5 stop IS, V+ Truepic, and a few other things – they “can” both produce similar images).
I’m buying an EPL2 the second it comes out, and if it performs terribly, then I’ll get an E-5 or the new MFT pro, but if it is sufficient, than I think it will be a phenomenal camera (a camera that fixes many of the problems that all previous Oly MFT cameras have had.)
Forget the thumbdrive, I want a 50-200 SWD insulated coffee mug!
http://www.canonmugs.com/vmchk/Canon-Lens-Mugs-/-Thermos/1pcs-X-Canon-Lens-70-200mm-Thermos-Travel-Mug.html
Olympus EPL2 USB Drive at Fotoactualidad: that is not the e-pl2, but the e-pl1
ps – what’s wrong with oly pushing out annual incremental updates to each of their E-P# & E-PL# cameras … isn’t that what we wanted instead of the three year wait from E-3 to E-5, I would much rather that we were on the E-6 having already has E-4, and E-5 around the E-30 time … maybe the 43 system would still have some life?
(I say this as an E-30 + 50/2 + 14-54 II owner who will not invest any more in the system and now only considers at m43 gear, 50/2 was a recent addition but most probably my last)
I’m a bit shocked at the very different color reproduction of the E-PL2. Look at the ISO comparison at the end of the video. The green cup, the reds…