First photos with E-P1

[AJShepherd]

I'd made the big mistake of attending the London launch do at Jessops last week, and once I'd had a bit of a play with an E-P1 went and bought one.

I didn't get much chance to use it at the weekend, but just sat and read the manual. It's got a lot more features than any camera I've had before, and a lot of them I'll never probably use. These 'Art Filters' for example.

Admittedly, for that shot it kind of works, but if you shoot RAW and you suddenly feel the need to apply an effect like that or ther others to your shot you can do it through the provided software anyway and you've not screwed up the original image. Even then, I suspect I'll hardly ever use them.

To tell the truth, I'm most likely to stick it in aperture priority mode and leave it there. But as I plan to use some of my Voigtlander lenses on there, that's fine.
(I'm waiting to find out what adaptors are OK)

I do like the big settings display - two button pushes and it shows you all the settings and lets you quickly navigate around them without having to delve down through menus. That's a real time saver.

Anyway, Monday I had the day off so decided to hit the beach and enjoy the sea breeze. It was a very hot very bright sunny day, but the display fared reasonably well - much more readable under those conditions than the display on my Sigma DP-1 had been under similar conditions.
It was usable. What viewfinderless cameras need is a pop out hood like you get on top of a TLR...!

Level indicators - Fantastic! Slanty horizons are my bane and it's surprising how much my idea of 'level' and the camera's idea were different. The camera was right though.

All in all, I'm very happy with it, and I'm looking forward to trying my voigtlander lenses on it once I get hold of an adaptor. That'll give me a nice range without carting round a bagful.

Although my best picture of the day I think is this one:-


which I just think is wonderfully evocative.

 

[capitalK]

That's great. I got to play with one at Henry's in Toronto a few days ago but I walked out of the store empty-handed. They didn't have stock and I'm crying poor.

If I was going to buy a new digital right now this would probably be it.

 

[rover]

Please give us a user review of the camera's performance. How is the AF? It seems from other statements I have read the LCD is fine for manual focusing. Do you agree?

Thanks for sharing.

 

[back alley]

rover is chomping at the bit... 😉

 

[AJShepherd]

The AF is fine. Seems just as fast as I remember my old Canon EOS400. If you leave it on a full search range it does tend to focus on exactly the point you don't want it to, but it's easy to select your focus point and half-press the shutter release then reframe the picture, and I did that a lot.
Alternatively you can press the 'Info' button to highlight the focus point and then move it around, but I found it easier just to prefocus and reframe.

The only problem I had was when the focus point was over a fairly even toned area and it just hunted focus, so I had to aim at something with more detail then reframe.

It's much faster than my Sigma DP1!

I tried manual focus with the kit zoom and it seemed easy enough. This shot was focused manually, as I wanted to focus on the sign.
As soon as you turn the focus ring (and you can set the direction you want the ring to work in) it zooms in so you get a good view, and it was easy to find the focus point then.

 

[BillBingham2]

.....and you can set the direction you want the ring to work in.....

Very cool design!

B2 (;->

 

[squirrel$$$bandit]

How is manual focus in bright sunlight? Can you still see the screen?

 

[Kevin]

If you want a bellows-type screen hood there might be a 3" version coming soon:
http://www.screen-shade.com/standardshades.html

Of course with the shade extended you cannot view the screen from an angle!

 

[Avotius]

im sure this is a in depth setting but can you turn off the manual focus zoom so it does not automatically zoom in when the ring is rotated?

Also good to hear the AF is not monstrously slow, did you happen to see anything that looked like a depth of field chart for hyperfocal shooting?

Also what do you think about the shutter noise? More electronic like a 400D or more clacking like a......film slr I guess.

 

[Kevin]

This little expensive beast has face-detection, correct? Does that feature also work with manual focus lenses??

For example, if you mount a manual focus lens and slowly turn it while pointing the cam towards a scene with people in it, do little green boxes dynamically pop on and off around the faces on the display?

 

[AJShepherd]

Mabelsound: I was shooting in bright sunlight when I did the manual focus.

Avotius: I'm not sure whether you can or not. I'll check it out later. No depth of field chart and to tell the truth I didn't experiment with manual focus enough to check if the depth of field was noticable when I was focussing.
Shutter noise is very quiet and sounds mechanical (i.e. not a beep like you get on some compacts), quite rangefinder-like. Quieter than my voigtlander R3A.

Kevin: Not tried the face detection, or manual lenses. I suspect though it's more an autofocus feature of the m4/3 and adaptor+4/3 lenses. I'm hoping someone out there will write about the use of manual lenses as I've got some I'd like to use.

 

[Avotius]

I can maybe answer Kevin's question from my using of the G1. No it does not, in fact the first time I saw face detection was when I had the kit lens on and the mode dial set to auto. Actually I think face detection could be a handy tool if you take a lot of pictures of people like I do! But then again I am lazy to learn such features and go with what I know, the single center point.

 

[Kevin]

Maybe the implementations are different on these two cams?
What about animal faces? Will face-detection work there as well, in autofocus?

 

[Avotius]

Maybe the implementations are different on these two cams?
What about animal faces? Will face-detection work there as well, in autofocus?

Maybe, I am only speaking on experience with the G1.

And thank you very much for giving camera companies their next slew of crappy features. Animal face detection, animal face priority, bird face detection, dog face detection, fish face detection, celebrity face detection...😉

 

[Kevin]

Celebrity face detection won't work in practice because in real life celebrity faces are usually quite different than their retouched photographs. Moreover, celebrities usually wear dark sunglasses in public, making their faces look more like animal faces to any such animal face detection software 😉.

 

[rover]

rover is chomping at the bit... 😉

Maybe.....😎

I want to be informed I guess by people who actually are using the camera rather than by speculation or reviewers who are shooting walls or test charts not using the camera to take photographs.

 

[BillBingham2]

Maybe.....😎

I want to be .....using the camera to take photographs.

What you need to do is take a day trip into the City and get your hands on one for a few hours outside.

B2 (;->

 

[AJShepherd]

Kevin: Face detection still works in manual focus mode, so I'd guess it may also show the boxes round faces with a manual focus lens. Although I suspect you were having a laugh with the whole animal face detection bit...! It's only a matter of time and feature creep.
(As an aside, iPhoto has a face detection system so you can catalogue your pictures by the people in them. It also appears to recognise bottles of beer...!)

Avotius: You can turn off the 'Focus Assist' so it doesn't zoom in when you turn the focus ring. You do have to delve into the menus for that, and it's in the part of the menu system which is not enabled by default.
(I think the idea is to keep the menus simpler for people upgrading from a compact, but still have more complex options available for people who are more used to complicated cameras!)
You can also 'zoom in' manually with a few button pushes (no menu delving) which will be handy for manual focus lenses.

I've not tried shooting at a whole range of ISO settings yet, I need to do some indoor shooting and see what I get and what's acceptable.
I've also not played much with the movie settings.

 

[Sam N]

Kevin: Face detection still works in manual focus mode, so I'd guess it may also show the boxes round faces with a manual focus lens.

Auto magnification when manually focusing works when in manual focus mode but not with manual-focus lenses... so we can't assume face-detection will work... but it would be nice.

 

[squirrel$$$bandit]

Auto magnification when manually focusing works when in manual focus mode but not with manual-focus lenses... so we can't assume face-detection will work... but it would be nice.

If auto magnification doesn't work with manual focus, ie. adapted, lenses, then forget it! This is a major perk on the G1, correct?