Olympus E-620

Manual Controls

The E-620 offers extensive manual control, including shutter-priority, aperture-priority and full manual exposure.

By default the Fn button on the top right of the camera back controls face detection, but it is programmable with a total of nine functions. The most practical use of this button, in our opinion, is for depth of field preview, which is strangely lacking its own control on a body otherwise festooned with buttons.

Focus

The standard autofocus system uses a 7-point sensor. There are three focus modes. Single autofocus locks the focus setting when the shutter button is pressed halfway. Continuous autofocus attempts to maintain focus on a moving subject while the shutter is held halfway down, and finally there's manual focus.

The autofocus system uses 7 points, which can be user-selected or left on auto.

Olympus provides three flavors of autofocus in Live View mode. There's Imager Autofocus, which analyzes the contrast on the actual image sensor to focus the lens — it seemed to work accurately on our preproduction model, but took up to a few seconds before shooting. AF Sensor employs the same quick focus sensor used when shooting with the viewfinder, but the camera has to flip the mirror down to achieve focus, then flip it back out of the way before taking the photo, temporarily blanking out the Live View image. Finally there's Hybrid Autofocus, which uses the imager system to get an approximate focus but then fine-tunes the result using the autofocus sensor when you press the shutter button down fully. In our experimentation, we didn't see a lot of advantage in using the hybrid focus system over simply relying on the autofocus sensor alone, but this could change when we shoot with a final production model of the camera..

ISO

The ISO settings range from 100-3200 at full resolution. Three-frame ISO bracketing is available while shooting.

White Balance

In addition to automatic white balance, custom setting by shooting a neutral card and manual entry of color temperature in degrees Kelvin, there are eight white balance presets: daylight, shade, cloudy, incandescent, three fluorescent settings and flash. White balance can also be fine-tuned in 14 steps along the amber-blue and green-magenta axes. Three-frame white balance braceketing is available while shooting along these same axes. Persnickety photographers will be pleased with this exemplary level of fine control, ordinarily found in much more expensive models.

Extensive preset and manual white balance controls are provided.

Metering

Three metering patterns are available. Digital ESP uses the entire screen and attempts to achieve a balanced exposure, center-weighted metering balances the exposure to concentrate on the center of the frame, while spot metering concentrates on just the middle 2% of the screen.

Shutter Speed

Shutter speeds range from 2 seconds to an action-stopping 1/4000 second.

Aperture

The available apertures vary depending on the lens being used, of course. In the case of the 14-42mm kit lens, the largest aperture at the widest setting is f/3.5 and f/5.6 at maximum zoom. Minimum aperture is f/22. The E-620 lacks a dedicated depth of field preview button, but the Fn button (which controls Face Detect mode by default) can be assigned to DOF preview instead, stopping down the lens to show the actual area in focus before shooting.

Image Stabilization

Unlike Nikon and Canon, Olympus builds its image stabilization system right into the camera body, meaning it's available for any lens you attach. There are three flavors of image stabilization. I.S. 1 is the standard setting, while I.S. 2 turns off the horizontal stabilizer to create a blurred background when panning side to side, and I.S. 3 turns off the vertical stabilizer for panning up and down.

Picture Quality & Size Options

The E-620 allows you to shoot in four different aspect ratios: 4:3 (maximum resolution 4032x3024), 3:2 (maximum 4032x3024), 16x9 (maximum 4032x3024) and 6x6 (4032x3024). Each aspect ratio offers a large, middle and small setting, and can also be shot as RAW or RAW+JPEG.

The E-620 supports four aspect ratios.

Picture Effects

There are five picture modes available — vivid, natural, portrait, muted and monotone — in addition to a custom for a user-defined selection. The parameters that change from setting to setting include contrast, sharpness, saturation level and gradation, which is Olympus' term for dynamic range optimization setting.

Choosing a Picture Mode is like selecting a particular type of film back in the analog age.

It's also easy to create in-camera multiple exposures with the E-620. The basic multiple exposure capability allows you to shoot two images, controlling the size and opacity of each. It's also possible to store a photo as a RAW file on your memory card and use it as a third layer in the -exposure sandwich you create.