E Pee One, A Poll, are You In or Out?

[back alley]

i thought that i would be more excited about this camera and then have to start planning to dump the g1...but not so.
no one is more surprised than i.

 

[Pherdinand]

where do you load the film?

 

[Colman]

, it was much slower than his D300 with a 50mm on

Well yes, I'd assume that it would do badly in a direct comparison with a D300!

 

[Stephen S. Mack]

What's E Pee One, eh, Precious?

We wonders, yes, we wonders.😀

With best regards to all.

Stephen S. Mack


I've never claimed to be ahead of the curve or even up to date.😛

 

[Diane B]

Not sure....

Not sure....

There really isn't a reply that suits me. I don't like LCD only but might be convinced. I have a G1 and love the EVF. Shot all day today with 5D and G1 so I had to be convinced.

I did expect a good deal--and most of it seems to be true--except a VF. I may wait until Fall and see what both Panasonic and Olympus do and make a decision--or not.

Diane

 

[peterm1]

I have posted before saying probably no as I would want to use it with 3rd party lenses (Leica M and LTM with adapters) but need focus confirmation in a viewfinder to make it a workable option for me - I will not use a damn arms length framing method. An optional electonic add on finder for traditional framing - but with inbuilt focus confirmation a la the little Ricoh GX cameras would have been a pretty good comprimise but without something of this sort on is rather limited in options.

I suppose all cameras are compromises but I honestly dont understand how they did not realise that traditional composition and framing is a dead set requirement for many enthusiasts of the sort who might otherwise buy such a camera.

 

[Gabriel M.A.]

I want to put it in my pants like that guy in Spinal Tap.

LOL


::thumbs up::

 

[deepwhite]

I already placed an order, and hope that I can get it ASAP.

Why I'm buying one:


[A Small All-In-One DSLR] - I mainly shoot with RFs, wide-angle and 50mm. I want an all-in-one 2nd camera for tele + zoom, and video recording.

I tried the E-P1 last week. Its size is right for my Angenieux 35-140, which will become 70-280 on the E-P1, perfect as my 2nd cam. The 720P video looks good; the sound of the video, however, really surprised me, as I didn't expect sound quality this good from a camera.

There is a margin for everything. For me (a small guy), the size of the E-P1 is right within the margin of my definition for a "small camera".


[Decent MF / I Don't Care About AF] - I don't think I'll be using the kit lenses anyway, as decent as they felt like with my limited experience with them.

I mounted my Summilux 35/1.4 preA on the E-P1. The MF is easier than I thought, and I got not problem focusing it with my eyes staring at the LCD.


[Not To Use the M Lenses or Replace the R-D1s] - I've been very satisfied with the R-D1s, and I'm not planning to use the M lense on the 2x crop E-P1. One thing I'm very interested is to see what a "Nocti-video" is like, but that's probably it. As I said, I'm buying the E-P1 mainly for MF tele-zoom lenses.


Something came in and now I forgot what I was going to say.... I'll just leave them in another reply when they came back to my head.

 

[Colman]

I mounted my Summilux 35/1.4 preA on the E-P1. The MF is easier than I thought, and I got not problem focusing it with my eyes staring at the LCD.

Can you describe the process of focusing with a manual lens?

 

[deepwhite]

Can you describe the process of focusing with a manual lens?

I only got to play with it for 2 minutes (there was a long long line), so I just watched the LCD and turned the focus tab til I thought it was focused. I went home and checked the photo and found it ok (but I deleted it cause it's a bad shot...). I didn't try the "magnifying while focusing" feature as I have with the Panasonic L1.

 

[Colman]

Ah, ok. I'm curious to find out if one can leave magnify-while-focusing on, focus on the LCD and compose through the optical VF, sort of like a Bessa-T with a very big RF window.

 

[Pickett Wilson]

In reference to Colman's post above. This whole things feels like twisting yourself into a pretzel to make a camera somehow work for you. Isn't this thing actually a step backward?

 

[emraphoto]

given the design and what not i am wondering if autofocus is even a concern? every digital point and shoot i have used is run in manual focus mode. the sensors generally have deep dof and with a 17mm lens? it seems scale focusing would be adequate for most situations?
case in point the dp1. almost all the reviews and hubbub on the internet complained bitterly of it's slow autofocus (which it most certainly was) yet missed the fact that it had a brilliant manual focus interface and using scale focusing it was very, very quick in shutter response. a great street shooter in my opinion.
well, will i buy it? hmmm not sure. as of late i have come to realize the power of small cameras as photojournalist tools so maybe i will take it for a test drive.

 

[historicist]

I had a quick play with one in a shop today. It's surprisingly big and heavy in the hand compared to the pictures, but still small and neat. Build quality seems very high, mid to upper end dslr feel, regardless of what is actually under the metal 😉

The focus was surprisingly fast (under shop flourescent lighting). About the same as any modern compact camera, i.e. not going to give a D3 sleepless nights but fast enough for non-sports uses. Bit better than DP2 I think, not as good as G1, but better than I had expected.

 

[Colman]

In reference to Colman's post above. This whole things feels like twisting yourself into a pretzel to make a camera somehow work for you. Isn't this thing actually a step backward?

Only if you can justify an M8. My interest is two-fold: as a good digital snap-shot adjunct to a film R3A and as a platform for using some of the lenses for the film cameras in a different context - in particular low-light social stuff, so that a 80/1.4 equiv becomes a useful thing to have, especially with IS.

I can carry an R3a, three lenses some film and an E-P1 with 17mm and M adaptor with the nappy bag and the kid in a sling. Packing my D200 is a bit more troublesome.

Sure, it's a compromise - I'd prefer an M8.2 - but I can't justify the price.

 

[FrozenInTime]

Ah, ok. I'm curious to find out if one can leave magnify-while-focusing on, focus on the LCD and compose through the optical VF, sort of like a Bessa-T with a very big RF window.

I had a few minutes with a E-P1 today so can confirm that if MF is selected on the camera, once live-view x10 has been selected, it stays up in that mode between shots.
If S-AF+MF is selected the x10 cancels after the shutter is pressed.
I think it will be quite useable in that x10/OVF mode with the 17mm lens.

I briefly tried the ZM18 and M35'lux on the camera but it's was difficult to draw any quality conclusions from a few seconds in a shop.

Jessops in Edinburgh have a pile of zoom kits but no 17mm kits for another 2-3 weeks.
I pre-paid for the 17mm and got one of the launch issue cartridge pens (looked like they had 3 more left).

All uncropped at ISO 1600 ;
Olympus 17mm @f/4

Zeiss ZM18 @f/4

Leica 35'lux ASPH @f/1.4

Leica 35'lux ASPH @f/1.4 (ISO200)
I think they are a lot more interested with the novelty of a real camera, my M6, than the E-P1.
Donald Spence of Olympus took some picture of the E-P1 with ZM18 mounted and said he would e-mail them later.

 

[Pickett Wilson]

Would like to see a file shot at 1600 in bad light. Hard to tell much from what I've seen.

 

[Rayt]

I've just had a chat with a guy who's tested one, works for the London Camera Exchange. He said it's sad, but it's a fairly slow camera to use. By no means as quick as a DSLR, even a medium to budget one. I'm sad now.

If it was a Leica M the spin would be that it slows you down and lets you concentrate on the subject. :angel:

 

[giellaleafapmu]

Interesting thread...

Olympus has been making first class optical and medical instruments for ages and has produced some of the very few lenses which are both relatively cheap and can compete with glasses like Leica's or Zeiss' and people has doubts about their small pancake. It has a line of DSLRs on the market which use sensors of the same size as m4/3's and can compete with all but possibly the most advanced full frame professional cameras and many think this will have a "typical compact digital camera quality"... Someone in an older thread even said that Olympus was going to disappear soon as well as the memory that it ever existed...

Of course, I have not seen the camera so everything could happen for this product but I think the lenses will be as good as their previous creations, the image quality in line with E-3's quality and autofocus will be at least as good as my E-330's (I also have a Fuji S5, a Nikon D300 and I have tried the D700 and the Canon EOS 5D and cannot tell any real difference except for the number of focus spots).

As usual, their prices are high for new cameras but they will go down in a while as they always did (I got my E-330 for some 350US$ with the standard zoom lens and about one year earlier it was almost 1000US$!).

Also their marketing is strange as always but after all they are a microscope and medical equipment company which also makes camera God knows why and whose main market as far as I know is Japan so probably they don't care.

In conclusion, I am not dying to get one of these but when the time will come to find a new body for my 11-22 and 25 pancake lenses I shall definitively consider one of these...even without optical viewfinder!

GLF

 

[Larky]

I've posted another thread regarding this, but after testing one today I was a tad disappointed. The focus was slow and the controls for manual seemed to awkward, too many little buttons and not enough chunky twizel knobs. Why can't somebody make a digital Contax G1? Why must everything be made so complex, who cares about art modes?