Some (positive) thoughts about the E-PL7

honeyiscool wrote:

See, I had the E-P5. I just can't take that camera seriously for me. I know it sounds like a minor quibble, but a flash button shouldn't be so easy to trigger. I never had another camera that had its flash pop spontaneously open in my camera bag. Not only once, but many times. Eventually, the flash got mangled as a result. Thankfully, it was within the return window, but I'm not the only person who's complained about this. And speaking of flash, why doesn't it fold back like a GM1 flash?

Hmmmm, never once has that happened to me in the two bags that I use. In fact I use the FL-300R for flash as then I get no lens shadows from the 12-40mm lens. The pop-up is reserved for the rare RC flash efforts. Never have had a false pop-up happen.

The E-PL7 brought just enough improvements to the E-PL5 to make it a truly wonderful camera for me. I never actually used the dual control mode that everyone seems to love so much. It doesn't make intuitive sense to me. If I'm changing the ISO, I like the SCP.

For ISO change I use my MySets on the mode dial, 4 of them for different situations with different ISO settings or ranges. The dials are good, but as noted elsewhere, mine have slowly died so off to hospital next Tuesday to fix them. I rarely SCP dive and ever more rarely Custom Menu dive now.

I did love having the dual dials on the E-P5. Though I only have one dial on the E-PL7, it's enough, since my directional pad is configured to enable quick EC adjustment. Without the rotating directional pad, I am never making adjustments I didn't intend to make, whereas I did that a lot with the E-PL5. Along with the theoretical elimination of shutter shock and all that...

Yes, SS is real and I do notice clearer results from the same 12-40mm lens on E-P5 compared to E-PL5. No side-by-side tests so far to prove it.

Funny about dials, as I grew up on the totally dial-less E-PL1 so tend to head to button presses anyway instead of dials, it's just more positive in action. I could live with the dead E-P5 dials, but warranty needs to do some work so they will come back to life.

I think the E-PL7 is far more than just "a rework to try to appeal to the selfie set."

Yes, that was a bit cruel of me. The Pens are basically an Asian market thing, so that is where they design them for.

I think it's an update that makes the E-PL5 a 2014 body instead of a 2012 body. It's hard to "fix" a camera that didn't have much wrong with it, but it mostly fixes the most glaring issues that I had with the E-PL5 body.

Of course the E-PL7 had to contain the latest firmware and image processing chip, so there are real advances. The E-PL5 was good enough, the E-PL7 and E-P5 are a case of a better good enough.

And looks and holds better, too, by the way.

Funny, I still like the "shorter" E-PL5 with its 16:9 screen that keeps its height down. In my view the button layout of E-PL3/5/6 was the best, the rest (Pen or OM-D) not so good.

As always, everyone is different, so different things suit different folks.

Regards....... Guy