Olympus PEN E-P1

Buttons & Dials

There aren’t many buttons on the E-P1, but thanks to the two well-designed Live View menus and the availability of two convenient control dials, that works out fine. The main control dial does double duty as a four way controller for direct access to key settings, which proved practical, without a lot of accidental turning. As for the ridged sub dial, it’s well positioned for easy access with your thumb, clicks slightly as you turn it to help with fine adjustments, and has just enough resistance to prevent turning it accidentally.

In addition to the Fn button, the left side of the four-way controller (set to autofocus mode by default) can also be reprogrammed to access metering mode, flash mode, image stabilizer settings and turning the LCD backlight off.

When you’re shooting in program, aperture-priority, shutter-priority or manual mode, you can change the default operations of the two dials in several ways. For example, while shooting in program mode both dials are used to adjust program shift by default. If you prefer, though, you can leave the sub dial to handle program shift and use the main dial for exposure compensation instead. We found that particular combination uncomfortable (the main dial moves too easily, leading to accidental exposure adjustments), but you might love shooting that way, and the E-P1 offers lots of customization flexibility. You can even swap the effect of rotating the dials, if right-left makes more sense to you than left-right for a particular function.

Effects, Filters, and Scene Modes

The multiple exposure capabilities of the E-P1, which are available both while shooting and as an in-camera editing effect, are fun to use and can produce handsome results. While shooting, two consecutive shots can be combined to create a single image. You can also use a RAW file stored on the memory card as one of the two images to be combined, allowing you to keep a library of component parts available for your multiple exposure experiments. By default, each image is set to half brightness, but this can be overridden so each image is reproduced with its full brightness value. For getting a precise alignment of multiple exposure frames, shooting in Live View displays a semi-transparent view of the first frame while you line up the second. If two frames aren’t enough to suit your needs, you can shoot in RAW mode and use the newly taken multiple exposure as one part of a new multiple exposure combination. Overall, though, there is more flexibility to the multiple exposure function in playback mode.

Art Filters

The E-P1 also features the six Art Filters that have become standard equipment on Olympus SLRs. These virtual filters have a dramatic effect on the scene you’re shooting, and there’s no way to control the intensity of the effect. And if you’re shooting JPEGs, you have the shot with filter effect, but no unaltered version available if you change your mind. There are workarounds to this problem. Shooting RAW + JPEG provides an unaltered RAW file and a filter-enhanced JPEG. You can also shoot RAW alone and add the Art Filter effect by using in-camera RAW processing.

The Art Filters take a few seconds to apply, so there will be a delay between shots. They’re also available while shooting video, but that processing cuts down on your frame rate, often substantially.

The first time I saw the Art Filter effects I was not a believer, but after shooting with the feature on a few cameras, I have to admit that there are times when they can transform an ordinary shot into something more interesting, particularly the Pop Art and Grainy Film effects.

Picture Modes

Sticking with the tried and true system employed in the E-30 and E-620 SLRs, the E-P1 provides five Picture Modes plus the option to tweak the settings and create a custom version. In addition to affecting color hues, the Picture Modes can be adjusted for contrast, sharpness and (except for Monotone) saturation, with five steps for each setting. The Monotone mode offers a toning effect (sepia, blue, purple and green) along with virtual filters that mimic the effect of shooting with colored filters with black and white film. A yellow filter, for example, makes clouds appear more prominently.

Picture Effect Samples
Art Filters - Pop Art Art Filters - Soft Focus Art Filters - Pale & Light Color Art Filters - Light Tone Art Filters - Grainy Film Art Filters - Pin Hole Picture Modes - Vivid Picture Modes - Natural Picture Modes - Muted Picture Modes - Portrait Picture Modes - Monotone Picture Modes - Custom More...

In-Camera Editing

The in-camera editing options are pretty sparse. Working with JPEG files you can use Shadow Adjust to brighten the foreground in a heavily backlit image, but there’s no control over the level of processing to be performed. There’s automatic red-eye fix, image rotation and image trimming, though only two landscape and two portrait sizes are supported, making this capability pretty much worthless. Images can also be trimmed to a different aspect ratio but, again, the lack of sizing flexibility is a limitation. Files can be resized to lower resolution versions. As for color adjustments, you can turn a picture black and white or sepia, and saturation can be adjusted to one of 11 levels. Finally there’s e-Portrait processing, a kind of digital spackle that attempts to detect a face in a photo, then smooths out complexion flaws.

Raw files can be processed in the camera, though the system is a bit strange. You change the camera settings — white balance, for example, or film mode — then enter playback mode, find the RAW file and choose RAW Data Edit. The camera then processes the stored RAW file using the camera settings currently in effect, and saves the results as a JPEG. It’s better than nothing, but feels clumsy and doesn’t provide interactive adjustment control.

One interesting benefit of the in-camera RAW file processing, though, involves the Art Filters. Ordinarily Art Filter effects are applied when you shoot an image and that’s that — you don’t have a copy without the odd filter effects if you change your mind or want to experiment further. If you take a shot in RAW mode without using a filter, though, you can later set the camera to an Art Filter mode, pull up RAW file processing and create a separate JPEG with the effect applied. Would have been nice if this tidbit were included in the manual, of course, but it works.

A potentially useful option is adding a sound bite (up to 30 seconds) to an image in playback. This can be handy for noting when and where a shot was taken without reaching for a pen and paper. You can also create audio captions which will play back during a slide show. It would be better, though, if you could add the sound while shooting, instead of having to enter playback mode and then record the audio.

Our favorite image manipulation feature is definitely the multiple exposure capability, which can be used while shooting or during playback. In editing mode, up to three RAW images can be overlaid, with precise control over the density of each. If combining three images leaves you wanting more, you can save the result as a new RAW file, then combine that with additional images.

Menu

The E-P1 uses three menu systems: Live Control menu along the right and bottom edges of the Live View screen, a full-screen Super Control Panel superimposed on the Live View display and a traditional full-screen tabbed menu.

Pressing the OK button while shooting brings up the Live Control menu, a strip along the right side of the screen that displays common settings and a strip along the bottom that shows the options available for that setting. The main dial can be used for moving vertically through the menu (by spinning it or pressing up and down), the sub dial or pressing right and left on the main dial provides horizontal navigation. The available settings include white balance, drive mode, image stabilization, aspect ratio, image size, flash, ISO, metering, autofocus, face detect, and autofocus target.

With the Live Control menu displayed, pressing the Info button brings up the Super Control panel, a full-screen menu system with nearly all available shooting options available. Putting all your options on screen at once makes them easier to navigate than the Live Control menu strip, but there’s a hitch: since there’s no optical viewfinder, you can’t leave this full-screen menu live while shooting, the way you can with an SLR or the electronic viewfinder-equipped Panasonic GH1.

The full-screen menu system is used for shooting settings not included in the Live View control schemes plus the host of infrequently changed options.

Instruction Manual

The 164-page instruction manual begins with a 24-page basic guide combining a reasonable explanation of how you set up the camera and squeeze off your first shots with mind-bogglingly dense diagrams of the Super Control panel and Live View screens that may sap newbies of the will to go on. For those hearty souls who do continue, the main manual does well with some topics, including an appropriate mix of illustrations, diagrams and dry but functional text, but leaves many important concepts very poorly explained. Art Filters, for example, are given a cursory listing on page 5, with no explanation of what any of them do, and never reappear in the manual. The gradation setting is an Olympus-only term for dynamic range adjustment, but we only learned that after calling our friends at Olympus and asking. Similar lapses crop up frequently, capped off by an index that’s dangerously close to useless. Want to know about sound recording? The camera can do it, but the index doesn’t include the words ‘sound’ or ‘audio.’ Want to find out what resolution settings are available? Don’t look up ‘resolution’ or ‘image size’ — it’s listed under ‘number of pixels.’ Your best bet is to download a PDF version of the manual and use the software search function to find what you’re seeking: it’s available for download directly from Olympus by clicking here.