Highly Recommended
|
|
|||
|
Highly Recommended
Reviewed:
Jun 2008
|
Like its predecessor (the E-410), the Olympus E-420 offers a lot of camera in an incredibly compact format (it's currently the lightest and smallest DSLR on the market) - especially when paired with the Zuiko 25mm pancake lens launched at the same time. It's a fairly conservative upgrade, bringing improvements to the live view autofocus system, a slightly larger screen and an improved hand grip (plus a handful of other minor feature enhancements), but that's because there was little that needed changing. The slightly underwhelming image quality and tiny viewfinder - and lack of image stabilization - are the price you pay to have such a small camera, but it's an acceptable compromise for such an appealing - and suprisingly feature-packed - package.
| Quick links: | Announcement | Review | Sample gallery 1 | Sample gallery 2 | Forum |
| Announced: | Mar 5, 2008 |
|
Average rating:
4.57
|
|
Opinion: Great camera. Love the Live Preview. Now I can take pictures of my dog from his
level.
Problems: None.
Opinion: I got this camera for on 22 April 2008 in Guangzhou, China. It had been on the street for perhaps a week or so before I bought it. The bottom of the camera said "MADE IN CHINA". I got the kit lens of 14-42. It cost 4650 Chinese dollars, worked out to be around 664 USD, which seems to be more expensive than buying it in the States. Anyway, I got a not-so-well-built camera bag and a RM-2 remote control for free.
I've been using it for some times and it hasn't really live up to my full expectation, to be honest. Perhaps I was expecting a 5.0 score kinda camera for my money?! I wasn't entirely sure.
I believe many of the fine opinion could have been traced back to the review of E-410. I'm not going to reiterate them again with my less-refined wordings here. The fine point that I might add is that I'm a 183cm tall man with a relatively large hand. The relatively tiny hand grip wasn't that bad. I went to a photo trip with another friend of mine who got a brand new Nikon D60 with a bigger and seemingly more ergonomically sensible grip. I tried that and it certainly feels great and more grippy. But then, again, the E-420 hand gripping part of the camera is rubber covered with leather texture so it's actually quite hard to slip off my three fingers allowing my thumbs and index fingers to freely "roam" the controls.
Also, the zooming of the kit lens seems to be fairly responsive cuz the degree of the ring doesn't have to be swing as much as the kit lens on the Nikon D60 with the similar spec..
The remote control was absolute fun to play with. Take a look at the following picture than you'd see my right hand holding the remote activating the shuttle at the moment I felt fit! I am definitely going to get a tripod for it so that I can make use of the remote to get even more fun more often out of it!
http://ericlam.smugmug.com/gallery/3248703_BBPQ3#285204653_ra4jc
http://ericlam.smugmug.com/photos/285204653_ra4jc-M.jpg
Problems: My wife note that the "disk is read-writing" lamp on the back of the camera is very annoying cuz it's too bright and flashes.
I'm still not too used to the ON/OFF placement. I'd have preferred the Nikon D60 ON/OFF button.
The things that hunts my feeling the most so far is that the default zero level saturation is not "saturated" enough. I'm not sure if its just my eyes or it's the fault of the camera makers who set the default level too low. The picture that you sees here have the saturation level set up as zero ( http://ericlam.smugmug.com/gallery/3248703_BBPQ3#285283741_DQTVd ) and the picture that you see here is set as +2 ( http://ericlam.smugmug.com/gallery/3248703_BBPQ3#288226172_gcvsg ) which I'd tend to think to be a proper default saturation level.
The zero saturation level just felt too plain even pale!
Perhaps I was simple so got used to the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX01 that I used previously that I cannot align my eye sight to accept what's normal saturation level provided by Olympus E-420 ?
Adobe Camera Raw 4.1.1 updated in recent days and it still hasn't covered E-420 yet. I'm anxiously waiting for it cuz I don't think the free software that comes with the camera Olympus Master 2 is efficient enough to process the raw photos.
I was so used to the "Big, bright, high resolution screen" as the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX01 has I'm having tons of difficulty accepting the mediocre E-420 LCD although it's 2.7" and the FX01 was only 2.5".
My friend who had the Nikon D60 had a much better LCD than mine. The playback was like a breeze on Nikon D60 and it's comparatively like waiting forever for the E-420 to load the next!
The playback is so slow that it takes the fun of reviewing the pictures taken on site and deleting the bad ones off away!!! I didn't expect such a poor playback performance out of my ~600 USD expense.
Well, well. Since the fun parts that I mentioned above were not relevant to the effectiveness of E-420 taking great pictures, I'm gonna stop weaning like my baby daughter now. Just hope this review may help potential buyers make a more informed decision.
Opinion: Excellent little camera with a great feature set that consistently produces great images provided that:
1) You stick to low ISO (100 or 200).
2) You are careful framing with the tiny viewfinder.
For the size and the money, there's nothing else like it.
Opinion: Small and surprisingly easy to use. Love the form factor and the Image Quality is clearly Olympus. It is a great backup camera.
Reviews and specs
|
Galleries
|
Challenges
|
 | 22.3 megapixels 3.2" screen Full frame sensor |
