Enticing the Light » Cameras

Review – Panasonic G2, Part 1: Introduction and Using the Camera

Miserere — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 04:15:47 +0000

by Miserere

Note: The camera and accessories tested in this review were loaned to EtL by B&H Photo & Video store. To thank them for their generosity and allow us to receive more products for review, please consider purchasing your camera equipment through our affiliate B&H link (also found on the right sidebar). Thanks!

The Start of an Era

January 2009. That was the month the first micro-4/3 camera went on sale: The Panasonic G1 [cue ominous music]. Its DSLR exterior belied the revolution within, for this was the first advanced digital camera to feature a large sensor but do away with the mirror-box and prism of traditional SLRs, thus allowing the designers to build a smaller camera without sacrificing IQ. According to interviews at the time, Panasonic decided to follow the external DSLR shape because research showed that buyers would prefer the familiar shape. I don’t know if they did or not, but what followed in the next few months is a marketing department’s wet dream, as G1 cameras flew off shelves the World over, spurred on by a cottage industry of adapters that had people attaching just about any lens ever produced on the G1. To many film-era Leica users it must have felt like Heaven, as they were now able to mount their tiny S and M mount lenses on a digital body without having to shell out many thousands of dollars/pounds/yens for a Leica M8 or M8.2.

Thus began The Era of MILC.

A short 18 months later, Panasonic are back with the G2, which looks very much like the G1, and makes me think the marketing department at Panasonic sent the engineering department a memo saying don’t fix it if it ain’t broken!. The main changes are the addition of video (in the form of 720 HD, with an onboard mono mic and external stereo connector), a touch-sensitive rear screen, focus mode dial and the control wheel having been moved to the rear of the camera (and it’s now also clickable like a button). On the inside there is the usual “new image processing engine!” that all manufacturers are forced to say when they deliver a new camera (is it a law?) but they’ve basically kept everything the same, which is not a dig on Panasonic considering how well the G1 worked. they’ve also bungled in a new kit lens, which is now 3mm shorter on the long end (42mm vs 45mm), but is smaller and lighter. I’ll take small and lighter any day of the week (and twice on Sundays).

Panasonic G2 Main Specifications

Sensor: 12MP Live MOS (2x crop factor)
Sensor dimensions: 18 x 13.5 mm (3:4 aspect ratio, other ratios available as in-camera crops)
Shutter speeds: 1/4000s — 60s (1/160s max. flash sync. speed)
3fps max. shooting speed
RAW shooting (Panasonic’s propriety RAW (yes, *.raw!))
Rear screen: Full swivel 3.0″ (3:2 aspect ratio) touch-sensitive TFT LCD, 460k pixels
Electronic viewfinder: LCD 1.44k 100% coverage, 1.4x magnification
ISO range: 100 — 6400
Built-in flash
Hotshoe
No in-body stabilisation (optical stabilisation available on select lenses)
720 HD video
SD/SDHC/SDXC card
Weight: 428g/15.1oz (body, battery and SD card), 590g/20.9oz (with 18-55mm lens)
Dimensions: 124mm x 84mm x 57mm (4.9″ x 3.3″ x 2.2″), not counting the protruding EVF, 74mm (2.9″) deep counting the EVF

What’s in the Box

G2 with 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 OIS lens
Li-ion battery DMW-BLB13PP (7.2V, 1250mAh)
Li-ion battery charger DE-A49
USB and video cables
Shoulder strap
Lens hood and pouch
Shoulder strap
Plastic stylus
4 Instruction manuals (one for each of English, Spanish, French and Portuguese languages)
Warranty card


Click on the thumbnails to see larger.

A Warning about This Review

The G2 offers a number of “intelligent” options in both movie and still mode (turned on by the press of the iA button, read all about it here), where the camera guesses what you’re up to and modifies your settings accordingly. I did not go through every possible scenario testing how well this worked; I simply used the camera as I generally would any other camera and relied on my intelligence to use the appropriate settings. That said, I will mention that you can set the mode dial to SCENE, press the iA button and not have to worry about anything on the camera ever again. This will appeal to many who know nothing about Photography and are thus scared of the big bad DSLRs, and it’s iA functionality that Panasonic will use to sell this camera to those people. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that, but I don’t think my readership is composed of these inexperienced shooters, so I focused on using the camera as an advanced amateur would.

So to finish up with my warning, I do want to make clear that this is a great camera for beginners who don’t have a clue about what they’re doing, because they can start using it straight away in iA Mode and, if they choose to learn and grow into Photography, they’ll have a very complex camera available to them that they’ll find almost impossible to outgrow.

Direct Access Buttons

If you want more buttons and levers, buy a spaceship.

This camera is a smorgasbord of direct access buttons, levers and other little things that go click. Like I said earlier, you can see many of your shoot settings just by looking down at the camera, which I find immensely helpful. Below is a table with the major functions you might expect to change most often and how you access them on the G2. The camera offers a customisable button labelled Fn (see table below for functions you can assign to it) but there is also a quick menu button, aptly called Q. MENU that accesses a large number of functions and which always returns to the last one you used, even after turning the camera off. I had it set to metering mode.

**How functions and settings are accessed on the Panasonic G2**
Function	Dial	Button	Option for Fn Button	Diving Menu
Aperture	X
Shutter Speed	X
ISO		X
Metering Mode			X
Focus Mode	X
EV Comp.	X^*
Exposure and/or Focus Lock		X
White Balance		X
Drive Mode	X
Self timer	X
Movie Mode		X^**
DoF Preview		X
LCD/EVF Switch		X
Focus Point Placement			X
Film Mode		X
JPEG Quality			X
File Type			X
AF Area/Type	X
Flash		X
White Balance		X
Display Info Type		X
Optical Stabilisation (if not on lens)				X
AF Priority				X
Bracketing	X
AF Lamp On/Off				X
Sensor Cleaning (if not set for startup)				X
iResolution			X
iExposure			X
Aspect Ratio			X
Ex. Opt. Zoom (digital zoom)			X
Guide Lines			X
Rec Area			X
Shots or Rec Time Remaining			X
^Accessed by clicking on the rear wheel dial first. ^*Also a Mode on the main dial.

Autofocus

The G1 was already noted by reviewers to be a fast autofocuser, pretty much single-handedly destroying the myth that contrast-detect autofocusing is inherently slower than phase-detect. It’s only slower when done wrong, and Panasonic figured out how to do it right. Not having used a G1 I cannot compare, but I can say that the G2 seems to focus as fast as my DSLR (sorry, no nerdy tests were conducted to prove this, I was too busy taking photos), and that’s fast enough for me. This is AFS I’m talking about; AFC is a different game, and this is where phase-detect always wins because it knows whether the subject is moving towards or away from the camera. As contrast-detect systems go, AFC is OK. I fully expect this to be the next area engineers will work on to improve contrast-detect AF systems.

Within either AFS or AFC you can choose 4 different modes to select the focus area:

Single point: There are 4 different sizes to choose for the AF area (all square) and it that can be placed almost anywhere on the FoV, either with the touchpad arrows or with your finger on the screen. When focus is achieved the square turns green.
Auto: The camera chooses what it wants to focus on and lets you know by placing a green rectangle (not square!) over it briefly.
Tracking point: You choose a subject, half press the shutter button and the camera locks onto it and follows it as it moves across the FoV (or it stays stationary and you move the camera). Nice theory, but when I used to try tracking cyclists from across the road it failed miserably. It’s useful for focusing on a flower, for example, and then changing the composition while maintaining focus on the flower. The same use could be made with portraits, but for that see below.
Face detection: Works well and is useful for street shooting, not just portraiture. It will also pick up furry faces, to the joy of cat photographer Flickr over. I haven’t tested it on fish, so if you do, please let me know how it turns out. There is a limit to how small a face can be within the frame; as long as the face takes up at least 1/108^th of the frame, the camera can detect it. I didn’t just make that number up, I actually tested it. In this mode the camera starts looking for faces within the frame without you having to press anything and marks them with a yellow square. When you half press the shutter release it will focus on the faces and the square of the most important face in focus turns green while the rest remain white. You can also register up to 6 faces that the camera will remember and will give focus priority to whenever it sees them in the frame. I kid you not.

Shutter Lag

As I’ve done before, I checked for lag between Life (an event seen directly by my eyes) and the shutter, and lag between an image on the LCD/EVF and the shutter. I’m happy to report that I found a consistent lag in all three cases and it was under 200ms.

EVF and Manual Focus

There is a myth floating around that EVFs are terrible to focus with, and you might even lose your eye if you use one. At the very least you’ll go blind. Turns out none of this is true, so please tell all your buddies at the local camera club that EVFs are good, m’kay? Tell ‘em Uncle Miz said so. Why the preamble? Because EVFs actually help you to better focus manually, acting like the old fashioned microprisms did on manual focus SLRs, except that instead of having the microprism as a collar in the center of the viewfinder, now your whole viewfinder is fill of microprisms. Add to that the fact that you can magnify the view of almost any part of the frame and you’ve got yourself a very precise focusing system. To magnify the view you turn the focus ring on the lens, which activates the manual focus functions; the initial magnification is 5x, which can become 10x at the turn of the wheel dial (or pressing the soft button on the screen). My only gripe is that sometimes I would prefer to have no magnification, but the only way to achieve this is by going to page 3 of the Custom menu and selecting OFF for the MF ASSIST option—hardly a solution when you need it in a hurry.

Another thing this EVF has going for it is size, as it’s noticeably larger than any APS-C camera’s OVF I know of. It doesn’t follow quick-moving objects as well as it should, but I’m confident that faster refresh rates in the future will make EVFs acceptable to even diehard old-schoolers. The EVF on the G2 is strongly marching in that direction.

The EVF turns on automatically when you raise the camera to your eye, a feature that works very well and quickly.

EVF Blackout

EVF’s are much maligned because of their long blackouts after taking a shot, typically lasting more than the blackout caused by the mirror in an SLR. I ran some tests with a stopwatch taking a photo, then taking another the moment the blackout was over. The average time difference on the stopwatch was 0.7s, which is black out time plus my reaction time. Even if we assume I’m really quick and have a reaction time of 0.1s, that gives us a worst-case scenario for black out of 0.6s. If that seems long, you can make it even shorter by half-pressing the shutter release button which brings the EVF image back about 0.2s faster, making the blackout last around 0.4s. Whether this is a good value or not will depend on what you shoot, but I suspect it will be a non issue for most people. Better news still, I performed the tests shooting RAW, whose larger files take longer to dump to card than JPEGs, so you might even get a shorter blackout if you shoot JPEG. Try it at home and let me know!

In case it needs saying, I had auto review turned off.

Rear Screen

The large 3 inch rear screen dominates the back of the camera...	...but it can be stored away for protection or to use only the EVF.

Behold the dream of a CSI agent.

First of all, let me get this over with: The touch screen feature? It’s a gimmick. I tried to like it and find it useful, but I didn’t find anything I couldn’t do better and/or quicker with the 4-way keys. Plus, I always ended up with finger marks on the screen which are annoying in bright light. I use a touch screen phone and and happy with it, but it just doesn’t make sense on the camera. Plus, I had to use my left hand, which meant I had to move it from its position under the camera, pick around with my finger, then put it back. I just found it a lot easier to use my thumb.

Moving on, the screen is crisp, bright and full of good information if you so wish, including a histogram that you can place anywhere on the screen (the one time using my finger was nice). There’s not much else I can say, really. It just works!

Thanks to its swivelling capabilities it can be turned facing inwards, thus protecting the screen. When in this position it is turned off (naturally) and you can use the camera like a regular DSLR composing through the EVF only. In this case, the EVF remains turned off until you put it to your eye. Nice.

Live View Ramping

This is something I find annoying. The LCD and EVF both tend to keep a constant brightness no matter what the prevailing light or your shooting settings are. What this means is that if you’re not paying attention to the histogram you can frame a shot and find out when you replay it that it’s over or under exposed; you’ll be annoyed because in live view it looked fine. When focusing manually in low light, ramping (turning up the gain of the sensor) can be useful to make a dark scene brighter in the finder/LCD, but in most situations it is not; that’s my opinion at least. The easy thing to do would be to make this a custom option and please everyone.

Auto ISO

Argh! What an annoyance! By default the highest ISO available in Auto ISO is 400. You have to go into page 3 of the REC menu and into item ISO LIMIT SET to change this. Here’s the kicker, by default it is set to OFF…which I thought meant ‘no limit on ISO’, but no, apparently in Pannyspeak it means ‘ISO 400′. The options for this item are OFF, 200, 400, 800 and 1600, which means that in Auto ISO you will never be able to shoot at 3200 or 6400. I’m still scratching my head over this.

Menus

There are lots of them, and I didn’t always find things where I expected them to be, but this is no different to any other camera. On the plus side, the abundant menus and submenus mean the camera is highly customisable and offers some obscure yet useful features like the ability to turn off noise reduction for long exposures (astro photographers will like this) or pixel refresh, a function that looks for dead pixels and maps them out.

The Kit Lens

Panasonic rolled out a new kit lens for the G2, which is smaller and lighter that the previous version. It is a 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 OIS, meaning it’s optically stabilised. There are reviews elsewhere on the net about this lens, so I’ll just say I found it good and usable, not to mention light. It does have a plastic mount (which is becoming endemic to kit lenses) but in the weeks I had it it didn’t seem to become an issue. As for the optical stabilisation, in a quick test I carried out I found I gained about 3-3.5 stops of shutter speed, and this was shooting via the rear LCD—I might have been able to gain another stop using the EVF.

Shooting with the Panasonic G2

It always makes me smile when I can look down at a camera and see right away what my settings are. The G2 doesn’t have a top LCD, but there are so many hard switches that most of what I need to know is there, and it’s quick to change, even when the camera is off! When I first picked up the camera I was not blown away by its ergonomics, and after many weeks of shooting with it, I’m still not. I don’t like the deep grip (many love it, so seek a second opinion) and the cool-looking matte finish is a bit slippery and marks easily with finger/nose grease. My final gripe about the ergonomics is the strap lug on the right-hand side, which digs into my forefinger joint where in joins the hand. Not that there’s any way to solve this as you cannot move it anywhere else that would not get in the way. The only solution I see is for Panasonic to not use a lug, but a simple slot.

Leaving the ergonomics behind, let’s concentrate on using it to take photos. Because of all the quick access buttons, dials and levers, changing settings on the fly is quick and easy…once you’ve memorised where everything is! The camera is responsive and I never felt like it was holding me back, but I sometimes missed shots because I had to stop and think about where a setting was. This is definitely a camera with a steeper-than-usual learning curve for the advanced photographer, but the rewards are plentiful once you’ve mastered its controls and are worth the effort. The shutter release button has a slightly spongy first-stage press, but the second stage is firm so accidental photos are unlikely to happen. This philosophy of hard, firm buttons permeates the rest of the camera, making unwanted changes of settings very difficult. Even the power switch is designed in such a way that it’s easy to quickly flip it with the thumb to turn the camera on, but a bit tricky to turn it off, practically guaranteeing you’ll never turn it off accidentally. The mode dial doesn’t have a lock but is also firm and requires commitment to turn.

There was a large crowd in front of me, but I was able to compose and shoot over their heads.
Panasonic G2 + 14-42mm kit lens. Shot taken at 42mm, 1/320s, f/5.6, ISO 125.
Click for full-size out-of-camera JPEG.

I found that the full swivel screen made the G2 incredibly useful for street photography, as I could use the camera at belly level and look down to take photographs. This seemed to make people not realise I was photographing. And not just from the belly, but you can also shoot at right angles, not to mention the obvious above-head shooting allowing you to frame shots even if there is a crowd in front of you (or a brick wall). I think more and more cameras are going to be coming out with swivel screens. Did I mention how much I liked it? Now when I pick up a camera with a fixed screen I feel like something is missing.

My main gripe with this camera was the aforementioned LCD/EVF ramping, making it almost imperative to have the histogram display turned on all the time. Before I became used to this problem (yes, I find it a problem) I under or overexposed a few photos. It didn’t help that I was using the Samsung NX10 (my review here) during the same period of time, and the Sammy doesn’t ramp.

To end on a positive note, I’ll say that despite its very few shortcomings, the G2 is a well-thought-out camera built with the photographer in mind. Not just any photographer, but every photographer, making it a great camera for both the starting shutterbug and the seasoned shooter.

Some Sample Images

Straight from the JPEG engine, shot in ‘Vibrant’ color mode. Click for full size (12MP) so you can pixel peep all you want. Those shot at 20mm were done so with the 20mm f/1.7, the rest were with the kit zoom.

42mm, 1/80s, f/10, ISO 200. Taken at a right angle, I saw the little boy running towards me and closed down the aperture to get a slow enough shutter speed to blur him; I didn't have time to change the ISO to 100.	20mm, 1/15s, f/2.8, ISO 800. 4^th of July fireworks, with the camera on a minitripod I had to keep from toppling over.
20mm, 1/80s, f/2, ISO 640. Earlier on the 4^th of July, people hanging out in the street waiting to see the fireworks.	14mm, 1/250s, f/9, ISO 100. I love the brooding sky in this picture, which the G2 did a good job of rendering and metering—center-weighted and no exposure comp.

Please consider purchasing the Panasonic G2 from B&H. We’ll get a small commission (at no extra cost to you) and you’ll get our eternal gratitude. It’s one of the ways we keep this site running!

Note: Links in this article might be to one of our affiliate stores. Purchases made from our affiliates through these links will benefit Enticing the Light at no extra cost to you.

Review – Pentax K-x Part 3: Conclusions

Peter Zack — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 04:05:43 +0000

by Peter Zack

In the 2nd section we had a more detailed look at the features and performance of the Pentax K-x. In this final part, we’ll offer some conclusions about the camera. I’d like to mention that if you use one of the affiliate links at the bottom of the article to purchase from one of our site supporters, it helps us keep the site running and we greatly appreciate your help. There’s no cost to you!

I waited a bit to post this section because I really wanted to use the camera a lot before giving some final thoughts. I’ve used it for fun and for some weddings, shooting over 5000 frames. I wouldn’t use this as a primary camera in that roll but it served a purpose. It clearly can track a moving object in low light (or any light) better than previous models. It also offers much better images at ISO 1600 and 3200 in poor light. ISO 6400 is decent and usable for less critical photos but maybe not for photos that will be enlarged a lot or sold. I will say though in reasonable to good light, the images are quite clean and even ISO 12,800 is very usable. Overall there’s no banding and chroma noise is fairly well controlled. Luminescence noise is fairly fine grained and not too objectionable.

We often measure image results at high ISO’s in poor light. You may want to use your camera in good light for greater DoF (small apertures), say for macro shooting. Or to capture fast action shots. In light like this, ISO 6400 is very good and ISO 12,800 is also very usable.

**Pentax K-x High ISO Test Images**

ISO 12,800	ISO 6400

Below are links to several additional test images.
This set of test images are in good diffused sunlight.

ISO 100
ISO 400
ISO 800
ISO 1600
ISO 3200
ISO 6400
ISO 12,800

This set of test images are in darker conditions.
ISO 100
ISO 1600
ISO 3200
ISO 6400
ISO 12,800

Exposure:

Is generally very good. The camera does have a tendency to clip highlights in bright scenes and high contrast situations. With many cameras I’ve tested or shot with, this seems to be the normal metering setup when the manufacturer wants to promote good high ISO abilities. A slightly overexposed image in low light at ISO1600 > will have a lot less noise. So consider a scene with someone wearing a white shirt and black pants in direct sun. If you used multi-point metering, the shirt is going to loose some detail and be partly blown out. In situations where this could happen, I found setting the Ev comp at -1/3 was a good way to go. Otherwise I found the metering to be very good and gave results that need very little adjusting.

Nit Picks:

Overall my only complaints are the SR (anti-shake). This is a minor one and mostly just getting used to the camera. It seems to lock on slower and you have to watch the icon in the display more. Once engaged, it works well with some limits. It’s not as good as other Pentax models, so don’t count on getting motion free shots at very slow shutter speeds. I first thought there was something wrong with the camera I had. I was getting the occasional soft or blurry image. It’s more a combination of the 2 items, not waiting long enough and expecting the 3-4 stops a body like the K-7 or K20D can offer. It’s more like 2 stops in my opinion.

Personal note: The comment above begs a comment on anti shake systems though. Even though I know better, I’ve gotten lazy with how I shoot and handle a camera, pushing shots to shutter speeds that are too slow. Not using a tripod or camera support when it’s really required, not holding the camera in a good technical way. They are great assistants but not a panacea. Good shooting techniques will always improve your (and mine) shots. So getting used to this camera’s slightly different SR was a good reminder to be more careful.

My other complaint is the memory card, Format feature in the menu. As a matter of routine, I’ll download anything on the memory cards after each shoot. Then return the card to the camera. Double check the card in the camera for files and the new images that were put on the storage hard drive. Once done, I’ll format the card in the camera for the next shoot. To me the format feature is important to avoid corrupted files. It should not be done with the computer but with the camera. It takes 12 button pushes or turns of the e-dial to complete this process. Format is on the 4th page of the 3rd menu and the 5th item on that page. This is a setting that should not be buried in the menus. Otherwise the menu layout is good and well laid out.

Video:

I never really talked about video. It records at 1280×720 pixels at a cinematic 24 frames per second. Limited to a max of 4GB clips at 5.8 MB/sec (720p), 1.7 MB/sec (VGA). I assume they limited the length (approx 11 minutes) to avoid the sensor heating up too much. I took several videos of varying length and had no issues with sensor heat. It does a fine job and produces a good ‘consumer quality’ HD video. The microphone is very sensitive and you have to be careful when handling the body, you’ll pick up clicks and bumps when moving the body around. otherwise the sound quality is fairly good for a small in camera mic. I do wish there was some way to plug in even a mono mic. I think that’s a missing feature that should have been added. Then again, this is an entry level camera even if it can play well against the big boys.

Starting the video mode is a bit ‘clunky’ (normal with DSLR’s) with the camera focusing the scene and flipping the mirror up and down, then up again ready to shoot. It takes about 3-4 seconds to get started the first time. Having aperture control is nice on a DSLR for video though. using a wide angled lens and stopped down a bit, you may not need to focus manually much. Focusing with the screen isn’t second nature but possible. It exposes well but a touch slow to adjust when transitioning from a bright to darker situation. SR is a great addition to DSLR video and I found it really made a difference when walking around. Not quite a steady-cam but with good technique, you can move around and get nice jitter free results. Overall a fun feature and well implemented.

Bulb Setting:

One other note that is a little quirky. When you look at the mode dial (seen in part 1 of this review), there is no “B” setting. At first I thought this was a strange oversight. Maybe they just didn’t have enough room on the dial for the extra setting but it’s there. Put the camera in manual mode and turn the shutter speed down past 30 seconds. A great big “Bulb” will show up on the rear LCD. You will also notice that the ISO stops at 1600. They have limited the bulb setting to a max of ISO1600. It’s not an issue because most people that will use this setting will most likely put the camera at ISO100 for the cleanest images. You certainly don’t want noise in your star trails.

Conclusions:

I compared the camera to other Pentax models and a Nikon D40. It’s a very capable camera. Much better high ISO ability than the D40 and faster focus. Much easier menus and faster to make adjustments to common critical settings. In fact I’ve come to like the fast access to the settings found with the Info button. You can very quickly change things like focus tracking, etc. The control pad buttons allow nearly instant changes to ISO, AF points etc.

If you read comments on this body, the most common complaint seems to be the lack of AF points. As described earlier, the screen scribe marks to show you where the AF points are in a general way. I found that this worked just fine. It was easy to use both the center point and the other side points. I found that I rarely missed the focus. The only time this might be tough to use is in very dimly lit conditions where even seeing the scribe marks on the screen will be tough to see, because they are fine and black. I don’t think this is a serious issue but would have liked to have at least the center AF point light up in the viewfinder.

Given the price point, this camera deserves the high praise and “class leading” designation most reviews have stated. Image quality is very good with well metered and exposed images. Good dynamic range and naturally rendered colour. Very fast focus lock that tracks well. Video quality is very good and a nice additional feature. Having the various scene settings, allows the point and shoot users to easily move up with familiar features. Then plenty of choices for creative control mode settings. Very good detail at high ISO’s to 3200. Quite usable at 6400 and even 12,800.

It’s a nicely constructed body with a good solid feel and a very small size. For it’s very small size, it has just the right number of ‘hard’ buttons, a good LCD and an impressive feature set. Ergonomics are generally good and with the exception of missing the DOF as a hard button and the green button being a little awkward for a larger hand, it’s easy to hold and adjust the controls. The viewfinder is nice and bright. Overall the camera responds quickly. Also with 4.7 Fps and good tracking AF, you can capture most fast moving situations quite easily. At the price point and feature set, this is probably the camera to beat against it’s competition and should be given serious consideration in the sub $700 price range.

Pros and Cons

Cons:

Green Button difficult to activate for bigger hands.
No AF LED’s in veiwfinder.
Menu resets to first page on exit and should reopen on last page viewed.
SD Card format feature buried too deep in the menu.
Should have accessory grip available as an option even if only for spares storage.
Bright or direct sun makes viewing VF data difficult. Data display could be brighter
Mode dial detents need to be more defined or add K-7 lock to avoid accidental changes
Optical preview should be seperate button and not menu driven
AF in Live View a bit slow and not well suited for faster moving subjects.(but they all are)
ISO limits in video may result in underexposed videos
High contrast scenes may show some blown portions (clipping)
Auto White Balance good but not always accurate in mixed light.
No HDMI-connector

Pros:

Very good and easily understood manual. Although it could use a better index.
Easy user interface and menus
Simple and straightforward button layout
Fast shutter mechanism and excellent Fps.
Very good AF in most light sources.
AWB is greatly improved over previous models. Very good adjustments with indoor light
Good detail and color in still images. Good quality 720p video output.
Good image quality in low light, very good retention of fine detail at high ISOs
Solid feel and build quality, quick and responsive operation
11-point AF system with flexible AF-point selection
Improved and reliable flash exposure
Very good battery life with quality batteries
Good viewfinder and easily readable LCD in most light (except noted above).
Good white balance options and wide adjustability.
Distortion and chromatic aberration correction for selected DA lenses.
Choice of Raw formats (DNG, PEF)
Digital filters, in-camera editing and HDR
In body anti-shake that works with legacy lenses (although not to the level of K-7)
Value for the bargain price.

Cheers and good shooting. –Peter Zack

Purchase the Pentax K-x from Amazon.com
Purchase the Pentax K-x from Amazon.co.uk
Purchase the Pentax K-x from B&H
Purchase the Pentax K-x from Adorama

Note: Links in this article might be to one of our affiliate stores. Purchases made from our affiliates through these links will benefit Enticing the Light at no extra cost to you.

Review – Samsung NX10, Part 2: Using the Camera

Miserere — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 17:30:44 +0000

Size comparison: Samsung NX10 vs Olympus E-PL1.

by Miserere

⇐ Part 1: First Impressions

Samsung NX10 New Firmware: v1.15

On May 20^th, when I was nearly finished with writing this article, Samsung released an update to the original firmware. You can find it here, under the ‘DOWNLOAD’ tab, then scroll down to ‘FIRMWARE’. You’ll have to enter your camera’s serial number before you can download it. Instructions in English of how to update the firmware are given here.

The Shooting Experience

While the Olympus E-PL1 forced me to think ahead and plan what settings I would be shooting with, the Samsung NX10 is the complete opposite. Thanks to its many direct access buttons I can quickly change many parameters almost on the fly. The finger wheel also makes adjusting the aperture (in Av) or shutter speed (in Tv) easy as pie. Manual mode requires holding down the EV comp. button and moving the wheel to change aperture; the wheel by itself controls shutter speed. It’s also very comfortable to hold and carry around; I haven’t attached a shoulder strap to it as it’s easier and more convenient to just use a wrist strap borrowed from my P&S.

I thought I’d mention this comfort issue upfront and get it off my chest. The Olympus E-PL1 was much more comfortable to carry around than my DSLR, but I lost some functionality. With the NX10 I have the same ease of transport as with the E-PL1, while losing practically no DSLR features.

Is That a Mini DSLR in My Pocket, or Am I Just Happy to Be Taking Photos?

One thing that separates the expensive cameras from the cheaper entry-level ones is the number of functions accessible without menu diving. Following is a table of the main camera settings one is likely to play with on a regular basis, indicating in each case how they are accessed on the NX10:

**How functions and settings are accessed on the Samsung NX10**
Function	Button/Dial	Fn Menu	Diving Menu
Aperture	X
Shutter Speed	X
ISO	X
Metering Mode	X
AF Mode	X
EV Comp.	X
Exposure and/or Focus Lock	X
White Balance	X
Drive Mode	X
DoF Preview	X
Focus Point Placement	X
Picture Wizard	X
File Size		X
File Type		X
AF Area		X
Flash		X
Colour Space		X
Smart Range		X
Optical Stabilisation (if not on lens)		X
AF Priority			X
Bracketing	X
AF Lamp On/Off			X
Sensor Cleaning (if not set for startup)			X

As you can tell from this table, you have direct and easy access to many parameters, just like you would on most DSLRs. To end this section I’ll mention the ON/OFF switch, which is located as a ring around the shutter release button, making it accessible and quick to use. It’s got a solid detent and I’ve yet to turn the camera on or off by accident; it’s much better than the button found on most P&S’s (or the inconveniently placed lever on some DSLRs—yes Canon, I’m looking at you).

Speed in Usage

The camera is very responsive while shooting, it is less so while playing back what you just shot. If you have autoreview enabled, the photo you just took will show up immediately; if you don’t have it enabled, and hit the review button after you’ve taken the shot, you’ll have to wait until the camera has finished copying the data to card before it will show it. And like I said in Part 1, the camera is slow writing to card and/or has a small buffer. This will be less of a problem if you shoot JPEGs, but can be annoying if you shoot RAW or RAW+JPEG. Either way, you’re only going to get 3fps for the first second, then it slows down to tortoise pace. Not a problem for me because I never shoot at maximum fps, but the number-crunching photographers out have been warned.

Other than these issues caused by the small buffer, the camera is responsive and moves through menus and options as fast as you can press buttons. And because of all the external buttons, it’s fast to change most immediately needed settings like EV Comp., aperture, shutter speed, AF point position, etc.

The Strange Case of the Shutter Lag that Wasn’t, Part 2

In Part 1 I mentioned how I thought there was some shutter lag because of the sound the shutter made, but after some testing I found there wasn’t. Well, it turns out I was wrong, and right. Bear with me. After some weeks of shooting I found myself confused because I could swear I had missed certain shots due to shutter lag. Let me explain that I am very aware of when I release the shutter when doing street photography, waiting for the perfect moment to do so. Capturing a brief, fleeting instant is very important to me. With my DSLR I am generally on the money, but I found some photographs taken with the NX10 were off; to be more precise, they were late, never early.

Instead of using a stopwatch, I decided to run a test on the street. I positioned myself perpendicular to a road where cars pass by at around 30mph. In front of me on the opposite side of the street was a sign, whose pole I used for this test. First I used the screen to take a photo of a few cars just as they passed in front of the pole, then I held the camera at waist level and did the same but looking directly at the cars. Browsing through the pictures cleared everything up.

This is what’s happening, as far as I can tell: Light is hitting the sensor all the time, forming an image; the image you see on the screen is the product of processing the electrical signals detected by the sensor, and this processing takes time. How long? I don’t know for sure, but I do know we want it to be very, very short, of the order of milliseconds, because we want as little delay as possible between real life, and life on the rear screen. When you press the shutter release on the Samsung NX10, you don’t record the image that’s on the screen at that moment, but rather the image that’s hitting the sensor at that moment. If the image processing time is short, there will be practically no difference between the two, but the processing time on the NX10 is long enough that there is a difference. Not much, but enough for me to have lost some photos because I took them an instant too late when judging the moment by the screen. The reason I was getting some photos right on time was because I do a lot of shooting from the hip, judging the moment to release the shutter with my own eyes, not using the camera’s screen.

Decisive Moment shot. 55mm, 1/400s, f/6.3, ISO 100

How will this affect you? I don’t know. For still subjects, it’s no big deal; even for moving people it’s generally not a problem, and I’ve captured plenty of smiles and facial expressions without any issues. But when I know I have a split second to take a shot, I look directly at my subject, not at the screen. Hopefully Samsung will speed up image processing in the next iteration of this camera, and might even be able to do it via a firmware upgrade. For a real-world case study, see the photo on the right (click for larger); I knew the dog would be jumping off the pier and was ready with the camera prefocused and the shot framed. When the dog jumped I was watching the scene on the rear screen and still managed to get him in mid air. I should have followed my own advice and looked past the camera at the scene directly, but the outcome was still what I wanted: The dog in mid-air trying to grab the frisbee.

EVF Blackout

After taking a photograph the image has to be transferred from the sensor to the camera buffer, then written to the card. During the readout process the sensor cannot also capture a new image (at least not at full resolution, which is why video is relatively low definition). During this time when the sensor isn’t capturing anything the EVF (and rear screen) will be black, hence the term ‘blackout’. The quicker the camera and sensor are to read out images, the shorter the blackout. In the case of the NX10, the blackout is rather long, like 1.5s long. If you tend to take photos in groups of one, like I do, this isn’t such a big deal, but it does bring the apparent performance of the camera down.

AMOLED Screen

Coming off the Olympus E-PL1 (review) this is like a breath of fresh air. The AMOLED is big, bright and beautiful, not to mention crisp. This type of display (Active-Matrix Organic Light-Emitting Liode) has several advantages over traditional LCDs: Thinner, lighter, stronger, much lower power consumption, faster refresh rates, and offering better image quality. They’re even cheaper! At least in small sizes, but the next few years will see the appearance of AMOLED TVs, which will be even thinner than the thinnest flat TVs around today. AMOLED screens can even be flexible, so the applications are limitless. Before you doze off, I’ll finish this section by pointing out that Samsung is heavily invested in the development of AMOLED technology, which it began using on its mobile phones, and plans to use on tablet PCs (now that there are touch-sensitive AMOLED surfaces) and TVs.

Now to the part you’re interested in: performance. The AMOLED screen has an extremely wide angle of view (practically 180°), and neither colour nor contrast shift with viewing angle. It’s also bright and works well in sunshine. For those of you who shoot while wearing polarised glasses, the good news is that it’s not polarised like camera LCDs typically are (the image “disappears” if you rotate the LCD to take a vertical photo), but rather each RGB colour pixel has a different polarisation, so as you turn the display the hue changes, but the display never disappears. If you never shoot with polarised glasses, forget I even mentioned this.

In short: The screen is a joy to use and top of its class.

EVF

The electronic viewfinder pales in comparison to the AMOLED screen, despite it being quite decent for an EVF. It’s not as large as that in the Panasonic G2, but not as minuscule as those found in bridge cameras. It does suffer from colour shifts every now and again; on the bright side the refresh rate is high so there is no banding when panning the camera. The information displayed in the EVF mirrors that of the LCD, including optional grid lines and live histogram, with the only difference being everything is larger, thus taking up more screen space—if I’m using the EVF frequently, I’ll set the info display to empty (only the focus zone appears). Shooting mode, aperture, shutter speed, EV comp, number of remaining shots and battery level are always displayed, but below the frame so they don’t take space away from your field of view.

Auto ISO

First of all, it’s not available in Manual mode! Samsung, please enable this with a firmware upgrade. Second of all, it’s very optimistic, and in low light I often found myself with blurry photos because when using Av the camera would select too slow a shutter speed. The lens has optical stabilisation, and I have steady hands, yet the shutter speed chosen was still too low (because the ISO was too low). Now I only shoot Auto ISO in Tv so I can set an appropriate shutter speed. If shooting Av I’ll just set the ISO manually.

Next ISO issue: You can only set it in full stop increments! So that’s 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600 and 3200. I’m not kidding. I thought only cameras from 4 years ago worked like this. Another firmware fix for Samsung’s list. And it’s not like the camera isn’t capable of 1/2 or 1/3 stop increments, because in Auto ISO it will use intermediate values—this is a bad programming issue.

Auto White Balance

I had written a couple of unhappy paragraphs here, but before going to press Samsung released firmware v1.15, and one of the issues they addressed was Auto WB. I am now happy to report that Auto WB works very well. The issues with the original firmware were mainly in tungsten light, the bane of all digital cameras, but now images come out with a slight yellow tinge to add character and let you know the light was warm, but not enough to make you grimace.

Menus

Instead of scrolling vertically through endless pages, Samsung has adopted a horizontal style, so there are 3 “camera” menus, 1 “user” menu and 3 “settings” menus. Each menu takes up 1 screen with a maximum of 6 items. To change menus you use the left/right keys and to select an item within each menu you use the up/down. To change an item you press OK and to go back you press MENU. It’s easy and quick, and thanks to the many-pixeled AMOLED screen, all labels are very easy to read.

If you’ve done you math, you will have figured out that there are 7 menu screens with a maximum of 6 items each, totalling 42 possible settings to change (at most). That’s not a lot! The Olympus E-PL1 probably had that many options in its first screen alone. The exact number is actually 37 settings. I don’t know if Samsung were trying to keep it simple (reeeeeeal simple) or if they just got bored of programming the menus, but either way they need to get back to work and add more settings with a firmware upgrade. Maybe they can add them to an “advanced” menu that only appears if you set it up to, so as not to frighten newbies, but there are functions missing on this camera that need to be addressed and will need menu entries for that.

Battery Life

Sorry people, but I don’t have a number for you; what I can say is that it’s shorter than I would like. It hasn’t lasted me a full day of shooting on the few occasions I’ve had that much time, so make sure you purchase an extra battery when you buy this camera.

Scene Modes

As an advanced photographer (if you don’t mind me calling myself that) I cringe at the thought of scene modes, but as a camera reviewer, I understand their need. There is a segment of the camera buying population (a large segment) that have no interest in learning anything about photography and want every camera to work as a point and shoot. To those people God gave scene modes. Let’s see how Samsung has integrated them into the NX10.

The Mode dial includes the requisite PASM and video modes, plus Night, Portrait and Landscape modes, on top of which there are the SCENE and SMART modes. In every mode but SMART, you can shoot in RAW, which is nice. In SMART mode, as you might guess, the camera will attempt to guess what you’re shooting and apply appropriate settings. The SCENE mode lets you choose from a number of different scene modes accessed via the Fn button; the scenes available are: Beauty Shot (portrait), Children, Close Up, Text, Sunset, Dawn (because it’s so different to Sunset), Backlight (first time I think I’ve seen this one), Fireworks, and Beach and Snow (you only get both in Antarctica!). When choosing a mode some limitations are placed on certain settings, while others are chosen for you. For example, in Children or Portrait mode the only autofocus setting available is face detection. In Close Up mode there is no face detection available…and strangely enough there is no flash available either! On the other hand, Backlight will pop the flash up automatically. I’m thinking there should be a Stadium scene that prohibits flash, that way we could avoid all those people who use their flashes when shooting a sports pitch from the stands in automatic mode.

A last note: In most scene modes the camera automatically adjusts its focus as you move it around, like many P&S’s do; when you half-press the shutter it will still autofocus, but I suspect it prefocuses in order to speed up picture taking.

Exposure

Consistently good! If and when I use EV comp it’s for artistic purposes or to control for backlighting. I suppose the camera could be a bit smarter with backlighting, but I almost always use center-weighted metering and instinctively add EV compensation in those situations, so I haven’t tested how well (or poorly) the camera deals with backlighting in matrix metering mode. In any case, having a live histogram available in both rear screen and EVF means there’s no excuse for messing up the exposure.

The Kit Lens

Currently in the United States the only lens available for the NX10 is the 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 with optical stabilisation. Not a bad lens at all, and balances OK on the camera for two-hand operation, but makes the combination feel a bit lens-heavy when shooting with one hand. The inner barrel of the lens extends while zooming to the long end and the rubber-ribbed zoom ring gets a bit tight when it reaches 35mm. The focus ring doesn’t turn during autofocus, but to use it to focus manually you need to engage the AF/MF switch on the lens. I’ll add that the feel of the focus ring is like plastic turning on plastic; there is none of that nice feel the Olympus micro-4/3 lenses have. The front element of the lens doesn’t rotate during zooming or focusing, which is handy when using polarizing filters. The lens also has a stabilisation switch, should you wish to disengage this function.

Manual Focus

I will slap Samsung on the wrist for this. When focusing manually the screen will show a magnified view of the scene; the problem is that it’s only a 2x magnification, which might be fine at longer focal lengths but is woefully insufficient when shooting wide angle if your subject is further than a few feet away. Just like the Olympus micro-4/3 cameras do, there needs to be a selectable option of magnifications. Since Samsung is starting from scratch, I would suggest the following: 2x, 5x, 10x and 15x. As of mid May 2010, firmware v1.15 is available, which allows magnification with any lens mounted via an adapter (although I have not been able to test this because I haven’t received the adapter yet).

Autofocus

55mm, f/5.6, 1/400s, ISO 400

I think Samsung scored big in this department, and I hope the autofocus engineers get a nice Christmas bonus this year. How quick is the autofocus? Faster than a speeding squirrel! See the photo on the right; this little fellow jumped into the path at the park, I knelt down and was able to autofocus and take the shot before he ran away. He was still for just an instant, then he was gone, leaving me impressed that I got the shot once it came up on the rear screen.

22mm, f/5.6, 1/50s, ISO 100

I tried out AF-C (continuous autofocus) on moving traffic standing next to a busy street. I tracked cyclists as they approached me and try to snap them as they passed by me; this way the AF-C would have to keep focus from 20m or so down to 3-4m. If we ignore the way too slow shutter speed (that’s user error), the AF-C worked very well; not as good as a high-end AF-C on a Canon DSLR, but far and away better than the Olympus E-PL1.

55mm, f/5.6, 1/125s, ISO 200

How about the accuracy of the focusing area? Samsung allows you to choose from 4 different sizes (all of them square), with the smallest being truly spot-focusing. You can see in the photo of the baseball player through the wire fence that the camera locked on the player, not the fence. I took a few shots, with my methodology being to first focus on the fence, then focus on the player to take the shot. Every time the camera locked on the player without hesitation, showing how accurate the focusing area is.

18mm, f/8, 1/180s, ISO 100

My last comment on the autofocus is about the location of the focusing square. You can move the square almost anywhere on the screen (the extreme edges are excluded) which makes composition so much easier, especially with still subjects. Although given how quickly you can access the AF area location function (press the OK button and then use the arrows to move it around, or press the green button to return it to the center), you can, with some practice, use it on non-stationary subjects too. In the flower photo I noticed the fly as it landed, then quickly moved the AF area so it was on the fly with the composition I wanted, and then I took the shot with a narrow DoF and without the need to focus then recompose. Not only does focus+recompose take time, it will most likely lead to focusing errors when focusing on subjects that are close to the camera.

The Form Factor

It looks like a miniature DSLR, why? I don’t know. DSLRs look the way they look because there is a big prism above the mirror that’s between the lens and the sensor; that prism, and its associated viewfinder are the hump on top of DSLRs—form follows function. MILCs (Mirrorless Interchangeable Lens Cameras) don’t have prisms, or mirrors, so why give them the same shape as a camera that does? And why does the viewfinder have to be on top of the lens? If it’s an EVF it can be anywhere, like somewhere ergonomically more efficient…the left-hand side of the camera! Whether you’re a right- or left-eyed photographer, the far left is a better place for it. It wasn’t until I took up photography that I began to think of nose reduction surgery, and if I ever thought rangefinders were attractive it’s because their viewfinders are where they ought to be: IN THE TOP-LEFT CORNER.

Real World Shooting™

The NX10 does not get in the way, and it’s a pleasure to shoot with. Yes, I’m annoyed by the lack of 1/3 stop steps in manual ISO setting and a few other things, but in general I find myself enjoying the shooting experience a great deal. For street photography it surpasses my DSLR by far, and I don’t know how I’ll be able to go back to it. While the NX10 doesn’t have a swivelling screen, the wide angle of view of the AMOLED means I can still compose with the screen almost edge on, which is something I do a lot—with my DSLR I have to guess where I’m pointing, but with this camera I know fairly accurately where that is. Also, thanks to its light weight and small size, it makes shooting at awkward angles a lot easier, and that’s something I do a lot too.

With my DSLR I use a lot of manual focusing, simply because most scenes are here and gone and there’s no time to autofocus. With the NX10′s fast autofocus and easily selectable AF area I find myself using autofocus a lot more. And not only is it fast, it’s accurate. Even the AF-C mode is usable (unlike on the Olympus E-PL1), although it’s still not as good as on most DSLRs. All in all, the autofocus on the NX10 gets an A+ from me.

Another thing that makes shooting easier and quicker is all the direct access buttons on the camera body. Being able to access ISO, AF mode, metering mode and AF point location immediately (and set EV comp with the finger dial) makes a difference when scene you’re shooting changes quickly and you want the camera to respond just as fast.

In case you can’t tell, I’m liking the NX10 a lot. But is the image quality up to the level of its ergonomics? Find out in Part 3!

Please consider purchasing the Samsung NX10 from B&H. We’ll get a small commission and you’ll get our eternal gratitude.

Note: Links in this article might be to one of our affiliate stores. Purchases made from our affiliates through these links will benefit Enticing the Light at no extra cost to you.

Review – Samsung NX10, Part 1: First Impressions

Miserere — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 11:00:12 +0000

by Miserere

Introduction

When Panolympus announced in late 2008 the upcoming release of their first micro 4/3 cameras, Samsung stood up at the back of the assembly hall and, while jumping up and down waving their hand frantically, shouted ME TOO, ME TOO! Nobody really paid any attention, and why would they? Samsung made TVs, washing machines, microwave ovens…and yeah, P&S cameras. Oh, sure, they had a line of DSLR cameras and lenses, but these were juat rebadged Pentaxes (with Samsung firmware and image engine). OK, so they did design a 14MP APS-C CMOS sensor for the Pentax K20D (and Samsung GX-20) and then redesigned it to allow video for the Pentax K-7….but other than that, what have they ever done for Photography? Nothing.

Then at PMA 2009 Samsung said Oy, ‘ave a look at my li’l camera, guv’nor, innit cute? (no, I don’t know why a Korean company would speak with a cockney accent, but it’s my blog and my medication and I can combine them as I see fit). If you followed my PMA 2009 link and read it, you saw that what I was most excited about was precisely Samsung’s NX (as it was then called). This wasn’t just any old MILC (Mirrorless Interchangeable Lens Camera), but one with an APS-C sensor (which I remind you covers 50% more area than 4/3). But still, all we got were photos and no real specs, which made most think Samsung was playing desperate catch-up but had nothing substantial to back up the hype. If talk is cheap, then Samsung must’ve bought it wholesale because Samsung CEO Sang-jin Park went on record as saying (emphasis mine):

We estimate that the hybrid digital camera market will be over 20% of the global digital still camera market by 2012. With the release of the NX Series, a digital camera that combines the strengths of a DSLR and compact digital camera, Samsung Digital Imaging will become a global leader in the new hybrid digital camera market and achieve the company’s goal to become the global leader in the digital camera market by 2012.

This means that what’s sitting on the table next to my computer right now, the NX10, is Samsung’s first major weapon deployed as part of its plan for World Domination.

And I thought it was just another camera…

Samsung NX10 Main Specifications

Sensor: 14.0MP APS-C CMOS (1.53x crop factor)
CMOS dimensions: 23.4mm x 15.6mm (3:2 aspect ratio)
Kit lens: 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6
Shutter speeds: 1/4000s — 30s (1/180s max. flash sync. speed)
3fps max. shooting speed
RAW shooting (Samsung’s propriety SRW)
Rear Screen: 3.0″ Active Matrix OLED (AMOLED), 614k pixels
Electronic Viewfinder: VGA 921k pixels, 100% coverage, 0.86x magnification
ISO range: 100 — 3200
Built-in flash
Hotshoe
No in-body stabilisation (optical stabilisation available on select lenses)
720 HD video
SD/SDHC card
Rechargeable Li-ion battery
Weight: 409g/14.4oz (body, battery and SD card), 608g/21.4oz (with 18-55mm lens)
Dimensions: 123mm × 87mm × 40mm (4.8″ x 3.4″ x 1.6″)

What’s in the Box

NX10 with 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 lens
Lens hood
Li-ion battery BP1310 (7.4V, 1300mAh)
Li-ion battery charger BC1310.
USB cable
Shoulder strap
Software CD-ROM
Instruction manual
Warranty card

Ergonomics

Talk about lasting first impressions. I held it in my hand as I was taking it out of the box and immediately felt comfortable with it. The kit lens makes it ever so slightly front heavy, but with the upcoming 30mm f/2 pancake I can imagine it being perfect. The body though, oh my, what a joy to hold; it feels great in my hands. As an aside, I went to a local camera store today to chat to the local street shooters that congregate there on Saturday mornings, and when I passed it on to the first guy for him to take a look, it took him less than 1 second to exclaim (in a loud voice) wow, this camera is so comfortable! They all loved its ergonomics, but understand that these are guys that like rangefinders and other small street cameras. If you like a big hunk of camera than can double as an industrial doorstop, then this isn’t the camera for you. On the other hand, if you’re like me and appreciate light, compact cameras that can be carried in a coat pocket, then you owe it to yourself to check out the NX10 at your local store. To hold it is to love it.

Buttons and Dials

If the E-PL1 was a bit light on direct access buttons, the NX10 is the opposite. Here is a list of functions accessible via a single button (or alternatively, parameters that are changed by depressing a button and using the dial wheel): ISO, White Balance, Metering, AF Mode, Exposure and/or Focus Lock, Exposure Compensation, Drive Mode, DoF Preview, focus point placement and Picture Wizard. That’s 10 (ten!) functions. Add to that the dial wheel that controls aperture or shutter speed (in Av or Tv), and you have 11 parameters that you can either change instantly or access with the press of a button. There is also a DISP (Display) button that cycles through different levels of overlay information on the LCD, and a Fn (Function) button that accesses a larger menu with the following settings: MP count and ratio (3:2 or 16:9), File type, AF single/multipoint/face-detect, Flash, Colour Space, Smart Range and Optical Stabilisation. There is also a “green” button (reminiscent of Pentax’s) that returns (some) settings to their default values—very handy when you’re in a hurry and want to return your AF point to the center.

The Strange Case of the Shutter Lag that Wasn’t

In my second day of using the camera I became convinced that there was a P&S type shutter lag, based mostly on the sound of the shutter. When I got home I took a stopwatch and proceeded to photograph it every 5s for a minute. Conclusion: There is not significant shutter lag. I guess it’s just how the shutter sounds, but I found it confusing to begin with. Now, after a week shooting the camera, I don’t notice it anymore.

Autofocus Speed

One word: Fast. Noticeably faster than the E-PL1. I think it’s actually faster than my Pentax DSLR! I can’t wait to try it out with the 30mm f/2, because if it’s that fast with the kit lens, it must be even faster with the pancake. It’s also accurate.

General Usage Speed

I’ve turned off the automatic sensor cleaning at power up, and as a consequence the camera turns on almost instantaneously. Note that in their Timings section, DPR state You cannot turn off the sensor cleaning, which adds substantially to this startup time; this is not true, you can turn it off (and run it whenever you want via the appropriate menu). Where it is slow is after taking a shot, taking longer than the E-PL1 to write the file to card. Please Samsung, give the camera a bigger buffer! Granted, I’m shooting RAW+JPEG with 14.6MP files; speed would be improved shooting just RAW or JPEG. Fortunately, the camera doesn’t freeze up and you can still use the LCD and take shots while it’s writing to card.

While the specs say frame rate is 3fps, this is only true for the first second! After that it’s more like 0.5-1fps depending on file type. Don’t buy this camera if you’re planning on shooting high-speed professional sports. I don’t shoot anything requiring high FPS so this limitation hasn’t caused me any problems, but a larger buffer would solve both this and the

Out-of-Camera JPEGs

I don’t like them, they’re too cold. I’m still messing around with the image controls to find the settings I’d be satisfied with. This doesn’t worry me because I normally shoot RAW, but JPEG shooters will have to play with the saturation, contrast, and tone sliders to find their desired combination. Samsung helps with different presets (stored under the menu item called Picture Wizard) such as Standard, Vivid, Cool, Landscape, Portrait, Classic, Retro, Calm, Forest and Unicorn. OK, so I made that last one up, but seriously, there is a Forest setting—apparently it’s Little Red Riding Hood’s favourite. All of them can be further tweaked with sliders controlling Colour, Saturation, Sharpness and Contrast; each slider has 9 positions. Furthermore, you can start from scratch and define up to 3 custom profiles.

The Kit Lens

Samsung NX, Olympus m4/3 and Pentax DA kit lenses.

I never expect too much from kit lenses, so I’m easy to please as long as they don’t suck too much. I don’t think this kit lens is quite as good as the Olympus 14-42mm in the corners, but it’s very usable and probably worth owning for those times when you want the flexibility of a zoom. To the right you can see how it compares in size with the Olympus (which offers a bit more range at the long end, I should say) and the Pentax kit lens (of identical specs). For some reason, the Samsung has a 58mm filter size while the Pentax is 52mm. While the Olympus looks a lot smaller, remember that you need to extend it when shooting. Click here to see these lenses at their maximum extension.

Electronic Viewfinder

This is my first encounter with a good EVF and I was looking forward to it. I’m pleased with it, and am happy it’s a giant leap when compared to the EVFs on bridge cameras which I’ve used in the past. While its resolution is slightly lower than that of the Panasonic G1 (or GH1 and G2, which all share the same EVF), it’s a bit larger in size and easy to see even with glasses. Using it to manually focus in indoor tungsten lighting was quite easy, which is all I need from a viewfinder.

While we’re not at the stage where an EVF can best an OVF in every situation, I give it 1-2 years before we get there.

Samasung’s RAW Files

The World needs another RAW format like it needs another camera mount. Lo and behold, Samsung have seen fit to give us both. This is somewhat surprising given that their DSLRs use the open DNG format as their RAW format. In any case, using ACR 5.7 I was able to open up the .SRW files from the NX10, although the camera profile tab said “Beta”.

I’ve been shooting RAW+JPEG, as I do with all review cameras so I can show direct-from-camera images. And I’ll leave you with one such image, an example of what I do for you, my dear reader. It’s hard work reviewing a camera, but I get up at the crack of dawn so I can bring you quality prose…and images such as this one, taken from the hip barely stopping enough time for the shutter to do its job. I’ll catch you in Part 2 of this ongoing 3-part review.

Part 2: Using the Camera ⇒

Please consider purchasing the Samsung NX10 from B&H. We’ll get a small commission and you’ll get our eternal gratitude.

Note: Links in this article might be to one of our affiliate stores. Purchases made from our affiliates through these links will benefit Enticing the Light at no extra cost to you.

Review – Pentax K-x Part 2: Features, Menus, Ergonomics

Peter Zack — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 20:03:09 +0000

by Peter Zack

In the first section we had a quick look at the primary features most shooters look at first. In this section, we’ll have a closer look at setting up the Pentax K-x and using it. Since receiving the camera, I’ve taken about 1000 shots. Some keepers and many test images. This is giving me a fairly good impression of what a new user will experience.

Display Information

You have 2 ways to see critical shooting information. First, through the viewfinder you have all the basics there:

Scribed marks that show the AF points approximately and help with rule of 3rds and keeping an image straight.
Spot metering and center point focus circle
Flash status
Auto Picture settings. I’d like to see the user settings here as well. So you know if you are in P mode or Av etc.
SR (anti shake) status
Shutter speed
F stop
Focus confirmation
Number of recordable image (how much you can cram on the SD card and EV Compensation value
Focus Mode. This is a little odd. It shows you if the camera is set to MF but not AF.S or AF.C and I think this would be a good idea.
AE lock.

K-x simulated AF points. Red indicating center point, blue indicating the remaining 10 available.

The display is good and tells you mostly what you need to know at any moment. The only thing I found and this seems a bit too common, is it could be brighter on sunny days. I see this in other models and brands as well, in bright sunlight, the display is tough to see at times. Otherwise the image in the veiwfinder is very bright for a penta-mirror design (96% 0.85x) and is surprisingly comparable to penta-prism finders. The veiwfinder also has dioptre correction (-2.5 – +1.5). The following comment can also be applied to most models and brands. I wish the eye cups supplied would stick out more and still give the same view of the screen. The human face has a nose and mine touches the screen with my eye to the VF.

Rear LCD Screen, Info and Menus

The second information screen is the rear LCD. It is a TFT, 2.7 inch with approx. 230,000 pixels. Beside showing the photos and being used for Live View, the screen displays 3 different information panels. 1) exposure information (status screen), 2) Info button adjustments and 3) Menus. My other bodies have top screens as well and they are valuable for night shooting or indoors when the light is poor. They are handy on a tripod as well if the camera is down low. I thought I’d really miss this screen but the K-x rear screen’s GUI (graphical user interface) is very good. Like any new layout, it will take a few minutes to get used to but it becomes intuitive very quickly.

This is a nit-pic but the menu has multiple tabs and each tab has several pages. I would like it if the menu would go back to the last page you viewed if it’s turned off accidentally or in time out mode. For example, if you are adjusting something and hit the wrong button that takes you out of the menu, I’d like to be able to hit the menu button again and have the page I was last viewing, reappear. As it is now, it begins back at the first tab and first page.

K-x rear LCD Status screen. Click to enlarge.

1) The “status” screen comes up when you turn the camera on and displays all the information above and several other settings. The control buttons are displayed and show the white balance setting, drive mode (single, continuous etc), flash, ISO and focus point. Also displayed is the file type, File size, Shooting mode, EV comp graph, shutter speed, aperture, shot counter and custom image. One feature I really like about this screen is the white balance setting is displayed at a glance and you can see which mode you are in. How many times have you had the camera set for indoor light. Then taken outside pictures after wards that came out blue because you forgot to check the white balance. With a touch of the correct button, you can adjust each of these settings very quickly.

K-x rear LCD Info screen. Click to enlarge.

2) The Info button gets you into some similar settings and a few others. In RAW or RAW + mode the following extra settings are shown: metering mode, highlight correction, shadow correction. In Jpeg mode also added are: cross processing, digital filters, HDR capture, distortion correction and lateral CA correction. The last 2 only work on selected Pentax brand lenses. Both screen versions have a button to change the file recording type. Again this is an easy screen to make some of the adjustments you will do less often. The display makes sense and at the top, whatever item you want to adjust is briefly described.

Some of the menu adjusments on the Pentax K-x

3) Finally is the menu. This is so detailed, I’m not going to go into it in depth. It contains 4 sub menus and each one has from 1 to 4 pages. About a quarter of the manual is dedicated to adjusting the various menu items. Most of these settings you will not use that often. This is more for initial setup of the camera to your liking. Notable feature adjustments you might go in to change are D-range (Dynamic range enhancement on or off), Jpeg file quality, Multi exposure, Dust removal and dust alert and Green button adjustments (assigning what the button does).

The most important sub menu is the Custom setting. It allows you to set up the camera in ways that suit your shooting style. For example, EV steps, expanded sensitivity, high ISO NR and so on. Each of these settings has several choices to set the camera up just the way you want. In total there are 22 adjustments and if you really mess it up, there’s a default reset button to start over again.

Before we leave the menu features, I’d like to note the manual itself. 315 pages and very well written. We are used to Asian to English translating in many of these manuals that don’t quite make sense. This one reads easily and you can figure out most info quickly. I hope that holds true for other languages.

I’d like everyone who decides to buy this camera to read the pages on the histogram. It’s a good clear explanation about an often confusing subject. But, yes there’s always a but the index isn’t that great. For example, Custom Images makes significant adjustments to the Jpeg files. Look under Jpeg and you won’t find that listed. For those unfamiliar with Pentax terms, this could be frustrating. Indexes should have every significant item that the manual discusses and this index is missing some items.

Ergonomics.

The camera, at first glance seems too small. Especially for a larger man’s hand. But the body shape works very well. In fact I used the camera outside for about 5 hours on April 11th with shooting gloves on (actually they are Motocross gloves that are perfect for colder days) and really had not issue changing settings and using the camera. Button placement is fairly good and changing settings is rapid once you get used to the interface (which won’t take long). One noticeable improvement over the K-7 is the SD card slot. With the K-7, removing the card is a little difficult as it’s too close to the open cover. On this body, the SD card is easy to remove and replace. Seems simple but if the card fills up just before your son blows the candles out on the cake, fumbling with an SD card will be frustrating. Another interesting improvement is the camera does not shut down when changing cards.

Mode Select Dial

Push the center button in on the mode dial of the Pentax K-7 to change settings.

The K-x's mode select dial would be better with the lock button found on the K-7

One disadvantage over the K-7 is the locking mode dial. The K-7 is slightly older (only by a few months) but incorporates a push button that locks the mode dial in place. I think it’s a great feature and I was surprised that the K-x was missing this feature. I don’t baby my gear. It’s well cared for but well used also. So when I’m out shooting, the camera will be over the shoulder and rarely in a bag. Lenses are in a Lowepro street and field waist belt. I found that the mode dial could be too easily and accidentally changed. The mode setting detents are not stiff enough to hold the setting in place if the body rubs up against your jacket the wrong way. So some care is needed to double check the mode setting is still where you had it last. It seems an odd omission from this body.

Just in case you don't have a clue

Give me AV or give me death

I just wanted to see if you were still awake! Normally, I’ll shoot in Av mode or Manual mode. So all the Point and Shoot camera type mode settings are a waste, or so I thought. There might be occasions where the experienced shooter will use a few of these modes. Let’s say you are shooting landscapes in Av mode and something happens nearby that requires fast reaction times. You have the AF set to “S” and need “C” (continuous) to track something moving. Then you want high speed shooting instead of single shot. Well instead of taking a minute to change these and other settings, quickly flip the mode to sports (looks like a runner on the dial) and you are in the high speed mode in a split second. It might mean the difference between getting the shots or missing them. Second advantage is for the novice shooter. They may be familiar with what a Point and Shoot camera offers and this camera can do the same thing. So while you are learning all the features of an SLR, you can always fall back to the mode settings you may already understand.

Green Button

The only button I find a little hard to use is the Green button. For shooters of other brands, this button isn’t common. Pentax decided years ago to have this button reset the exposure settings to normal (program line) if you mess up the exposure settings. It’s also used to take a meter reading in manual mode (M). So in M you want the camera to set the aperture and shutter speed to match the meter reading. Push the green button and the settings are adjusted. With this body, the Green button can perform the function described above but also do a number of other functions in various modes. So you might assign the button to be optical preview or custom image in a particular mode.

As a note, I wish the optical preview was somewhere else on the body. Possibly as a seperate button in another spot. The green button as an exposure ‘reset’ that is it’s best use in my opinion. That means you have to go into the menu to use the optical preview if you have the button programmed for some other function. For some shooters, this could be a limitation, having to choose which way the button works. Particularly macro shooters and those that relish Bokeh (which to some, is nearly a religion). The positive is there’s another way around this, sort of. Using the live view can give you a look at the scene if you have a second to use it. But this is cumbersome at times.

Also, the Green button is in an awkward placement for my hands. It’s too close to the right edge of the body. If I was designing the body, I would have put the button on the side of the flash/prism housing directly opposite the shutter button. Even small hands could easily have the index finger reach the button.

One item of note. After shooting with the camera for nearly a month now, I’ve come to like the rear LCD a lot more. As mentioned before, in bright sunlight, the data in the viewfinder can be tough to see. This is true with many brands and models. With the data all on the LCD, even in the brightest sun, you can see your settings very quickly. A nice backup feature when required.

Playback and Info button

The playback button of course allows you to review your images. In combination with the info button you can assess your shots with 4 different information screens. First is just the image filling the screen. You can use the rear E-dial to magnify the image up to 16x. Next push of the info button adds the basic shooting data to the bottom of the screen. In this screen you can push the down arrow to make adjustments to the image (see the next paragraph). 3rd has the histogram added and the last button push brings up a thumbnail image and all the relevant shooting settings.

Push the down button on the control pad (green arrow) to access the develop settings.

With the screen shot above, there is a little green indicator in the lower right corner. Push the control pad down button. This opens up a range of in camera editing possibilities. Note; only image rotation can be done on RAW files. The editing features are rotation, various digital filters, downsizing a RAW file, cropping, slideshow, printing options and a few viewing options. The first time shooter might use these from time to time or when away from home. But I see these as mostly gimmicks that are better done on a computer with proper editing software, such as our list of: freeware editing software.

Performance.
I’m not a technical tester. I could set up a mic, record frame rates, get out the stopwatch to record power on etc. But there are much better reviews of this elsewhere. This being a user review, the camera is very fast. Power off to taking a first shot is nearly instant (under a second) and the frame rate seems to live up to spec at 4.7 fps. The only limit being the buffer filling up rather quickly. AF speed and low light AF are very good an a noticeable improvement from the K20D. In fact in very low light, I could focus, shoot then refocus, shoot 2-3 times in the same amount of time it took the K20D to focus one shot. To be fair, the light was so bad in this little test, you would never use either camera without a flash. The point being, in low light, this camera can lock focus very accurately and quickly.

If you’ve got kids and want to chase them around the rec room, I think this camera will do a very good job. I’m not going to comment too much on SR. The anti shake system (SR) with Pentax DSLR’s is built into the current bodies. They claim upwards of 4 stops improvement. Any test is very subjective and is so dependent on your physical fitness, controlling your breathing, how windy it is, are you on stable ground etc, that I see test shots as a little pointless. I’ve taken sharp shots at 1/8th of a second without difficulty on a 50mm lens. I think it’s safe to say that almost any user can get a 2 stop advantage and someone with very good technique can get upwards of the claimed 4 stops.[1] The big plus with in body SR vs the lens type is every lens you buy or own will get the benefit which includes older legacy glass still readily available on the used market.

The only other feature to mention is the pop up flash. In my experience, they are all pretty similar across brands. Good for 12 feet or so and you’ll only use it in a pinch or around the house. It does offer AF assist in low light but I don’t normally use this feature. It offers some good features and can operate as a wireless controller with the correct off camera flash. Otherwise for serious flash use, you’re going to add an accessory flash.

Size comparison
It’s a small camera and the benchmark camera I’ve been using to test the K-x against is the Pentax K20D. In the final section we’ll also use the Nikon D40 as a comparison camera.
Here’s a view of the size vs the K20D

Some sample images

So here’s a few sample shots with the K-x vs the K20D. The lenses used were; K20D and DA*16-50mm f2.8. On the Kx was the Tamron 28-75mm f2.8 XR Di IF. Both excellent lenses that can render very similar and high quality images. I would have switched lenses back and forth but it was a very windy day and dust on the sensor is always a consideration. All shots were hand held and as close as possible to the same FOV. They are converted in ACR default settings straight from the RAW image with no enhancements. All images shot in Av mode and using center weighted metering. With Av mode I let the camera select the shutter speed. ISO was 200 with DR on in all shots.

Click on the thumbnails for a larger version. For even larger, click the image a second time for even bigger.

K-x f10, 50mm 1/500th K20D f10, 1/400th 50mm

K-x f10, 1/1250th 38mm K20D f10, 1/1250th 39mm

What you will notice with the next shot, is the Pentax metering setup. Pentax has always set the exposure toward slightly under-exposed. The thinking is to preserve the highlights. If you look at the image on the left, it’s straight from the camera. The whites have detail and very little signs of being blown out. The darker areas are slightly underexposed. Most of us will use some form of software to edit photos and it’s much easier to enhance dark areas of a shot. If the whites are blown out, you’ve lost all the data and can’t fix the image.

The shot on the right below is the auto exposure setting in ACR, which added +1EV (1 stop). But if you look at that adjustment, the white spray now has blown out areas that have lost all detail. I’d much rather take the first version and use a little shadow recovery and keep the whites as they were shot. The same goes for the lighthouse images above.

K-x f22, ISO 200 1/125th 38mm ACR auto adjust of exposure +1 added

AFc tracking the bird Same image at 100% crop

Can you see the bird? 100% crop. Focus was on the bird (note motion blur in the background)

K-x Showing the very good Dynamic range between dark and white sections of a scene.

ISO 3200 f5.6 1/40th 50mm

So you be the judge from the shots above. As I mentioned, Pentax under-exposes around 1/2 a stop in most cases. Sometimes as much as a full stop. With software you can lighten the dark areas of a tough scene and save whites from blowing out. This is also dependent on the scene, metering mode and where the meter reading is taken from.

The final shot can show how well the camera can shoot in tough light (a single CFL bulb) at ISO 3200. I used the camera to do a little shooting at a wedding. The camera performed well, focused in low light accurately and provided well detailed high ISO shots (3200 and 6400). There was a big improvement over the K20D in tracking moving subjects and getting a sharp image. I can’t share the work with you here, so you’ll have to take my word on that with the one sample image above.

Part 2 final thoughts

A few comments to end Part 2 of this review; I feel the button layout and body feel is excellent with the exception of my note above on the Green button. In part 1, I was wishing for a grip and I still think that should be available, I like the body feel, the more I shoot with it. There’s a lot to be said for a small and light camera that makes you “want” to carry it everywhere. Image quality is excellent and is very close to the much more expensive K20D and K-7 models at the upper end of the line. For the price, this is a camera that is hard to overlook.

Also a note for those that have never shot with in body anti shake (SR), you may notice a faint ‘clunk’ when the camera is off. The sensor floats on a magnetic chassis and can move a little within it’s limits. It’s normal for SR.

Stay tuned for the final section and conclusions.

Cheers and good shooting. –Peter Zack

Part 3 of this review can be found here: K-x review conclusions.

Purchase the Pentax K-x from Amazon.com
Purchase the Pentax K-x from Amazon.co.uk
Purchase the Pentax K-x from B&H
Purchase the Pentax K-x from Adorama

Note: Links in this article might be to one of our affiliate stores. Purchases made from our affiliates through these links will benefit Enticing the Light at no extra cost to you.

Footnote:
[1] one of the ‘rules’ in photography was to shoot your focal range or as close to it as possible. So if the lens was 50mm, the minimum shutter speed is 1/60th, if the lens was 300mm then shoot at 1/250th and up. As an example, if you got a 4 stop advantage on a 50mm lens, you (in theory) could get a shot as sharp as shooting 1/60th without SR or a tripod. 4 stops = 1/8th (1 stop table: 1/60th, 1/30th, 1/15th, 1/8th, 1/4th etc.)

Samsung NX10 Arrives at EtL Headquarters

Miserere — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 16:23:32 +0000

by Miserere

Samsung NX10 vs Olympus E-PL1 (excuse the crappy BlackBerry photo).

Look who just arrived at EtL HQ! I believe I’m one of the first people in the US to receive a final production model of the Samsung NX10 (courtesy of the good folk at B&H), and despite the bad weather forecast for my area this weekend, I’m going to do my best to get out there and give this guy a good initial test run. Expect my initial impressions soon.

In the photo the NX10 sits next to the Olympus E-PL1 (see review here), who should be shipping home very soon. I’m glad I was able to get them together to compare sizes side by side. The NX10 is not that much bigger, despite the larger LCD and fixed EVF, and feels about the same weight. I can tell you right away the NX10 is comfortable to hold. Because of my point of view and wideangle lens on the BlackBerry Storm the NX10 appears much larger in the above photo. I’ll take better ones this evening.

Sadly, I haven’t received the Samsung 30mm f/2 pancake lens, which I really want to try out. It isn’t even listed on the B&H website, so they may not get it in stock before my review is done. That would be a shame!

Stay tuned for more over the weekend or early next week.

Note: Links in this article might be to one of our affiliate stores. Purchases made from our affiliates through these links will benefit Enticing the Light at no extra cost to you.

Review – Olympus Pen E-PL1, Part 2: Using the Camera

Miserere — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 13:01:10 +0000

Olympus Pen E-PL1 with Novoflex and Pentax 31mm Ltd.

by Miserere

⇐ Part 1: First Impressions

Menus

My first test with a new digital camera is to see if I can set it up without reading the manual. If I can’t do that, it means the engineers have failed. I’m happy to report Olympus employs some good engineers for their menu system, as I was able to navigate and menu dive, exploring all the settings and adjusting parameters to my needs. Shallow diving, I should say; while all settings seem to be there, I get the feeling everything is very close in button presses, with no endless menus that you keep scrolling down through. I liked the menu system and found it very neat and tidy.

While shooting, just about every immediate parameter is available for change by pressing the START/OK button at the center of the 4-way control dial, much in the same way as you find in a P&S. Don’t put it down because of this—it’s a good thing. Being able to quickly access AF mode, WB, metering mode, or even flash EV comp is valuable in my book. I hope more camera brands start doing this. The parameters appear vertically on the right side of the screen, while the values available for the selected parameter are spread horizontally at the bottom; both have semi-transparent backgrounds. Once you’ve made the adjustment, tap the START/OK button and you’re ready to shoot.

Buttons, Oh Magic Buttons

Backside of the Olympus Pen E-PL1.
(Photo courtesy of Olympus.)

Photographers love buttons and knobs; the problem is we can’t agree on what functions those buttons and knobs should perform, or where they should be. With that in mind, these are my opinions on the buttons that grace the E-PL1. Let’s start with the first button you’ll press: ON/OFF. It is recessed, which will help from accidentally turning the camera off while you’re shooting, or on while it’s in a bag. I would have preferred a switch, but at least they thought about how to make a good ON/OFF button. The second most important button is the shutter release, which is adequately dampened and located in a comfortable position, close (but not too close) to the ON/OFF. The third item located on top of the camera is the mode dial, which is one tough cookie to turn; on the up side you’re unlikely to find the camera on a different mode when you pull it out of the bag.

On the back we have a typical 4-way + center collection of 5 buttons. While shooting UP accesses EV comp, DOWN drive mode and timer, RIGHT the flash settings and LEFT the AF point choice. Like I mentioned in the previous section, the center START/OK button accesses shoot settings.

To the left and up of these buttons are 3 vertically aligned buttons that, from top to bottom, are PLAY, MENU and INFO. The first two should be obvious; the INFO button cycles through different display looks for the LCD: no info (just battery life shows up for a few seconds when you turn the camera on); a lot of info (shutter speed, aperture, EV comp, ISO, focus/exposure/file/etc/etc mode…); less info and a live histogram. I prefer this third option. In all but the no info the chosen AF point (or rather, square) is overlaid as a thin, grey square, which can be difficult to see in bright light. If using spot metering, the actual area used by the spot meter is demarcated by a circle—very nice.

To the left and down of the 4-way control is the RUBBISH button. Or TRASH, if you’re from the left side of the Atlantic.

At the top of the rear side of the E-PL1 are 3 buttons that held a lot of promise, but ended up letting me down. But first let’s focus on the good things: There is a direct video record button which new parents will probably love. As a stills photographer, I hated it because it’s in a perfect position to just press it, for the hell of it. It’s also squishy and feels completely different to the rest. Such a fun button to press…so many inadvertent videos shot… So what’s the plus side, you ask? The good people at Olympus let you customise it and assign it to another function…within limits (see table below). The other two buttons are ubiquitous on P&Ss and function in a similar function here when in playback mode; in shooting mode the one with the little magnifying glass magnifies a section (any section) of the scene 7x, 10x or 14x. This is very useful for manual focusing. The one that interests me most is the Fn button, which can also be customised…but again, only to a point. See the table below for the options available to these buttons.

**Functions assignable to the Fn and Rec buttons on the Olympus E-PL1**
Home position of AF area mode
Manual focusing
RAW+JPEG
Test picture (without saving)
Custom user camera setting
Fish buttons (for when used with underwater casing)
AEL/AFL
Rec
LCD ON/OFF
OFF (no function)
Face detect
DoF preview
One touch white balance

Do you see anything missing? How about ISO, or AF? Boo, Olympus, boooo, boo. I hope they add these options with a firmware update. As it is I currently have the Fn button to ‘LCD OFF’ and the Rec button to ‘Manual focus’. Switching to manual focus via the Rec button is my workaround to decouple AF from the shutter release button when needed.

UPDATE: Thanks to a comment by Omgreo, we now have a way to properly decouple AF from the shutter release button: You first have to go into the advanced (two gears) menu and in the Button tab, go into the AEL/AFL option. For S-AF set it to Mode 3. Then assign AEL/AFL to either Fn or Rec. This would work best for me, as on my DSLR I have AF assigned to a button on the rear of the camera and find this works well for my needs. It’s good to have well-informed readers on our site.

Shooting Speed

Not much to say here, just some numbers for you to look at. I’ll point out, in case you’re a bit sleepy, that FPS is influenced by the ISO in use, showing that some noise reduction is going on at ISOs somewhere above 800 that’s taking up time. Note also how this process gets more intensive the higher the ISO. Following is a table summarising my measurements, obtained by recording the camera firing in continuous mode through software that shows the waveform, allowing precise time measurements to be made. Battery was fully charged.

**Olympus E-PL1 shooting speed with 4GB SDHC Class 4 card**
Shooting Mode	Burst FPS ISO: 800, 1600, 3200	Num. of Shots ISO: 800, 1600, 3200	Subsequent FPS ISO: 800, 1600, 3200
JPEG (LF)	3.0	14, 14, 9	1.8, 1.8, 0.9
RAW	3.0	10, 10, 9	0.7, 0.6, 0.5
RAW + JPEG (LF)	3.0	9, 9, 8	1.4, 0.7, 0.3

Shooting Modes

It’s a busy mode dial, with the typical PASM + Scene modes, Art filters, video and special to Olympus, the iAUTO. All modes work as you would expect, with M being nice in that Olympus allows for auto ISO (once you allow it in one of the menus); sadly, once ISO reaches 100, if the scene is too bright for the aperture and shutter speed you’ve selected, you’re screwed and your picture will be overexposed. This is such a simple problem to fix with a few lines of code, that it really annoys me when I encounter it on a camera (it’s not just Olympus who’s at fault). This is one of those red flags that tells you in no unclear terms that no photographers were involved in the designing of this camera; not in any serious way. Sigh…

But let’s move on… Shooting in any mode is straight forward, with easy intuitive ways to change shooting parameters. Note that I didn’t say “fast”; you have to use the 4-way controller for aperture, shutter and EV comp., which is not as fast as with the dedicated controllers on the E-P1 and E-P2. That said, most of the time I didn’t miss this immediacy, and in some ways I benefited from it by thinking and being prepared ahead of time. For example, if I turned into a street that was in the shade I would open up the aperture and maybe up the ISO a stop; I’d do the opposite when walking out into bright sun. In a strange way, this little camera has made me question how I shoot—a very unexpected result of this review.

Art Filters

Don’t knock ‘em till you’ve tried ‘em. There 6 available are summarised in the table below. They are applied in real time to the LCD so you can see a preview of what the image will look like. But then for some reason the camera processes the image for a few seconds after you take the picture, so the preview must only be performed on the 231k binned version, which explains why it takes longer to do the same for the full 12MP image.

Olympus E-PL1 sample using the diorama Art Filter.

**Art filters available on the Olympus E-PL1**
Art Filter	Translation
Pop Art	Seems to give everything a wacky colour.
Soft Focus	Remember those wedding photos from the 70′s that looked so dreamy you fell asleep looking at them? Well they’re back.
Grainy Film	I love this one. High contrast, grainy B&W…makes me want to find a dark alley and a red-lipped femme fatale who needs a case solved.
Pin Hole	Heavy vignetting and slight softness for that classic pinhole camera look. Best used with small apertures for maximum DoF.
Diorama	Another favourite of mine. Shoot a normal scene from high above and make it look like a miniature model.
Gentle Sepia	Super suave silky smooth sepia. If it were toilet paper, it’d be the expensive velvet type on the top shelf.

iAUTO

iAUTO is Olympus’s attempt at making photography technique simple for the masses (where the “i” in iAUTO stands for “idiot”, apparently). I use the word “attempt” because, well, they didn’t quite get there, bless their little hearts. Let me explain what I’m talking about. When you set the camera to iAUTO you lose access to many of your standard settings like aperture, shutter speed, etc. You can change the drive mode, select focus points, and switch between auto flash or flash off, but that’s it. When you press START/OK you are now shown a range of options for your photo that use “plain English” instead of that undecipherable photographic lingo. Here’s a list of what you can do:

**Olympus E-PL1 iAUTO modes deciphered**
Name	More options	What it does
Change color saturation	No	Changes color saturation
Change color image	None	hanges white balance to make photo warmer or cooler
Change brightness	Individually darken/brighten dark and/or bright areas	Plays with ISO and/or aperture to change image brightness, with some postprocessing involved (there must be!) to selectively deal with shadow and highlight areas
Blur background	Nada	Widens aperture to lessen DoF
Express motions	Nope	Slows down shutter speed.
Shooting tips	Nah	Provides short blurbs on how to best shoot kids, pets, flowers, and food, and tips for framing.

I loved reading the shooting tips, where Olympus regales us with haiku-like poetry such as this:

Shade of cloud or parasol
makes shadow of
flowers softer.

All joking aside, I do think the novice who cares about improving their photography can learn something from these haiku-sized nuggets of wisdom, but a good introductory book would go a lot further.

But the reason I complained at the beginning of this section about Olympus not quite succeeding with their iAUTO mode is because all the changes I listed in the table above are mutually exclusive, meaning: You can pick only one. What happens if you want to make your image brighter and increase your DoF and make it warmer? Then you’ll need to go beyond iAUTO. Maybe this is Olympus’s way of nudging you off the branch so you can learn to fly on your own.

That LCD

The LCD on the Digital Pen family has received the brunt of criticisms levied against the trio of cameras. While the E-P1 and E-P2 have 3″ LCDs, the E-PL1′s screen is slightly smaller at 2.7″; either way they all sport 231k resolution, which is low by today’s standards. After almost 3 weeks and several GB of shooting, I no longer notice the LCD and can look right through it, so to speak. But I do admit that the first impression was not good and I can imagine people not buying the camera because of it. To those people I say: Give it a chance.

Despite the lowish resolution, I still found it easy to focus manually, which is great for macro work where one tends to set the lens to closest focus distance and then move the camera back and forth to focus. In this fashion I obtained more keepers than I do with my DSLR and optical viewfinder, which has convinced me that the next DSLR I purchase must have live view. Shooting with my arm extended above my head was also easier, despite the LCD not being articulated due to the screen’s large viewing angle, which gave me enough detail to make out my composition and where my focus square was located. Which brings us to our next section.

Power Consumption

I never depleted the battery in one day to figure out if it lasts as long as the specs say, so I can’t comment. One thing I did to save battery is make one of the custom buttons an LCD OFF/ON switch, so while I was walking with the camera the LCD would be off and I’d turn it on when I saw a photographic opportunity. LCDs are battery hogs, so I’m sure this practice prolongs battery life. I would like to have seen an option to set an auto LCD off time; I would choose maybe 10s. The only option I found was to choose sleep time from 1, 3, 5, 10 minutes, or never. There is also an option to dim the LCD backlight after 8s, 30s, 1 minute, or never; this should be a “turn off” option, not “dim”. In the camera’s vein of never-ending customisation, you can choose how early or late it will warn you of low battery.

Flash

Some people seem to have an aversion to flashes on small cameras, but I think they’re a good investment in space. The E-PL1′s flash in particular is very nice; it pops up quite high, you have to release it manually (I hate flashes that pop up on their own), it’s off to one side (the further away to the side of the lens a flash is, the less red-eye syndrome you’ll encounter) and is reasonably powerful. Best of all, it’s highly customisable (as you might have expected). These are the modes available: Auto, Redeye, Fill In, Flash Off, Red-Eye Slow, Slow, Slow2 (2^nd curtain), Full, 1/4, 1/16, 1/64. How’s that for choice? You can even choose from two different spellings of red eye. But that’s not all; these are the flash modes, accessed quickly by hitting the right arrow button I should add, but then you also have the flash EV comp, which is one of the options accessed through START/OK. Here you are able to fine tune the flash power in 1/3 stops (or 1/2 or 1/1 stops if that’s how you set the camera up) from -3 stops to +3; that’s more than my DSLR allows! I know it’s only a guide number of 7m at ISO 100 (apparently 10m at ISO 200), but you can always mount a bigger flash on the hotshoe if you really need it, and unlike the S90, you can use the onboard flash to wirelessly control up to 3 sets of Olympus’s flashes.

One final thing I like about the flash is that due to its design you can use your left forefinger to easily point it upwards, providing instant bounce flash. It would be great if some smart engineer at Olympus found a way to make it stay pointing up. True, this isn’t the most powerful flash, but with the appropriate ISO you can bounce it and make it effective. In fact, stay tuned, this evening I’ll take some pics of my darkened living room so you can see what I’m talking about.

Focusing

In tight competition with the LCD for “most hated feature” on the E-P1 and E-P2 was the AF, which has been called glacial, sluggish and unusable; many early buyers returned their cameras because of it. Are my standards so, so low? I didn’t find the AF unusable with either of the two lenses I tired (the kit 14-45mm f/3.5-5.6 and the pancake 17mm f/2.8) . No, it’s not lightning fast (it’s not a Canon 1D mk IV with 24-70mm f/2.8L), but it’s entirely usable and I have many photos attesting to it. Having said that, I can imagine a few cases where it’s not ideal: Sports, kids, F1 racing… But then many DSLRs struggle with these focusing situations too. At the end of the day this is a contrast detect AF system that is still not at the level of the phase detect systems used in DSLRs; but it’s not glacial either.

Where the AF does suck is in continuous mode. There is no smart algorithm here figuring out how your subject is moving (away from or towards us), instead the lens focuses in-and-out in rapid succession, continuously, in order to capture the subject in focus at some point during its (the lens’s) little in-and-out trips. This system is both rudimentary and inefficient, and I hope there are some engineers at Olympus working overtime to provide an upgrade via firmware soon.

The other good idea turned bad is AF tracking. The idea is as follows: You select a region on the LCD where your subject is, then you half-press the shutter release and the camera autofocuses on the subject; when the subject moves, the AF square region follows it across the LCD, or keeps track of it if you move your camera with the subject. It’s also useful for when your subject is motionless but you want to reframe the shot yet still keep the subject in focus (macros, portraits…). It works best with objects that don’t move too fast; it seemed to track cyclists fine, but struggled with cars unless they were sufficiently far away that they filled the AF square region. Sadly, and here comes the bad part, it is unusable on most moving subjects because it suffers from severe shutter lag; I didn’t measure it, but at least 0.5s, making it almost useless. As a reframe while keeping your imobile subject in focus tool, it’s great, and a very useful tool at that, but it’s a shame it can’t be used with birds in flight, moving athletes, cars, etc.

One “trick” mode that does come in handy is face detection. Instead of selecting a focus point, you let the camera search for a face amongst all of them, and in bright light it’s successful most of the time. In low light, not so much. Still, a very useful feature for us people shooters, especially if you’re shooting from the hip or pretending to look the other way. Verdict: Face detection is not a gimmick!

Finally, I’ll talk about the focus points. They are 11 squares arranged in 3 adjacent rows, with the middle row having 5 and the top and bottom having 3. You can choose a single square, or all of them. It would have been useful if you could select a whole row or column; I wonder why they didn’t think about this. It would also be useful if you could define the size of the square, because as they are now they are quite large and make it impossible to focus securely on the eye of your subject if taking a full head shot.

Real World Shooting™

Olympus E-PL1 with 17mm f/2.8 pancake lens. This gentleman never noticed me taking this photo despite how close I was. Olympus E-PL1 with 17mm f/2.8 pancake lens. A quick shot in a rare traffic gap. Click for bigger-than-usual version. Olympus E-PL1 + kit lens + lost hub cap = cool photo opportunity.

Given all the criticisms levied against this poor camera across the internets you’d think it’s impossible to take a photo with it. In fact, the opposite is true, and I have some very nice images to boot. After a little over 3 weeks of using it almost daily I’m beginning to get the hang of it, which is sad because I have to return it shortly. Now don’t think there is a steep learning curve to using the camera, because I found it very intuitive and easy to shoot with. However, for some of my work shooting street scenes I need very quick reflexes to set the camera and shoot without thinking about it. This takes training, and having been shooting with a DSLR for almost 3 years I have certain habits engrained, which makes shooting an LCD camera more work to adjust to.

My slowness to learn new tricks notwithstanding, I had no issues when photographing anything calm, and while my reflexes were lacking for some of my street photography, the camera did provide me with new ways of shooting. One of the problems candid street photographers have is being noticed, and nothing screams PHOTOGRAPHER like a big DSLR being lifted to your face. With the E-PL1 in my hand, however, nobody paid attention to me; I was just another tourist. With live view and a wide angle I was able to take photos without people noticing, even when I was less than a meter away. And the shutter, while louder than I expected, is quieter than the shutter plus mirror slap in my DSLR and is easily drowned by ambient noise in most crowds and streets. And when people did notice me pointing the camera in their general direction, they reacted differently than when the same happens when I have a DSLR in my hands. Most of the time they would apologise for getting in the way of my shot and move on—with my DSLR I often get suspicious looks and “are you a professional photographer?” questions.

The responsiveness of the camera is at DSLR levels (apart from the aforementioned continuous AF and tracking issues). I have it set to take the photo no matter what, and every time I pressed the shutter button it instantly took the photo. I didn’t find myself missing many more shots than I do with my DSLR, and when I did, it more due to my unfamiliarity with the camera than anything else. Live view has opened up a wealth of oportunities for taking photos I wouldn’t think of with my DSLR; case in point is the photo to the right, so easy to compose and take with the E-PL1.

Using Non-μ4/3 Lenses

One of the reasons the micro 4/3 cameras have been so successful is because of all the lenses from other brands that you can attach to them via an adapter. This opens up the potential market for these cameras to shooters from any brand. But not all lenses were made equal, and it’s rangefinder lenses in the Leica M mount that best fit on these bodies due to their small size and short registration distance. Nevertheless, I went ahead and used some of my Pentax K mount lenses with a Novoflex adapter when I wanted more reach and/or a larger aperture (see photo at top of article). I found some interesting things: Good lenses, like those from the Pentax Limited line, performed well, but some other lenses that work well on my 10.4MP APS-C DSLR performed poorly on the E-PL1. I suspect the sensor may be packing its pixels too tightly and taxing those particular lenses. This raises the question of whether or not I’ll be able to use these lenses on a higher pixel count DSLR if I ever upgrade.

Bob, a staple of Bromfield Camera in Boston. Taken with the Olympus E-PL1 and Pentax 77mm f/1.8 Ltd.
Converted to B&W in Photoshop.

Bear in mind that mounting any non-4/3 lens on a micro 4/3 camera means you lose all automation, so you have to perform both focusing and diaphragm close down. Or you can be like me and just shoot wide open all the time, this way you just have to concentrate on focusing. Which, to my suprise and happiness, was extremely easy on the big LCD screen, and could be made even easier (or at least precise) by pressing the magnification button, which magnifies a user-defined section of the LCD 7x, 10x or 14x. I wish there were an option for 4x, as more often than not 7x was too much for hand-holding with lenses longer than 50mm or so (but great for macro on a tripod). On the other hand, 7x or 10x magnification is very useful when manually focusing wideangles. Most of the time I just used the LCD without any magnification and my success rate was much higher than with my DSLR and viewfinder focusing (with the same lenses). In low light, the LCD will brighten up allowing for even easier focusing.

Exposure

I’ll keep it short: Exposures are perfect. I use mostly center-weighted, but matrix metering worked well too. I was very impressed with the metering in just about every situation I encountered. If I ever used EV comp it was for artistic purposes.

Exposure often gives DSLR users headaches when they MacGyver a foreign lens onto their camera. No issues to report with the E-PL1. Yep, that’s it: Exposure was consistent with all third party lenses I tried, at any aperture. The joys of on-the-sensor metering, I suppose.

Here’s a tip of the hat to Olympus: If you’re not happy with the exposure, you can set a general exposure shift of up to ±1 EV (in 1/6 EV steps) for each of the main metering methods (matrix, center-weighted and spot) independently.

Conclusion

The Olympus E-PL1 is an easy to use camera that can work equally well in the hands of an inexperienced novice, as in those of a seasoned shooter. If you leave it alone, use the camera defaults and shoot in Program mode, you’ll get great pictures. If you want to customise the hell out of it to set everything to your liking, you can do that too, and you’ll get even greater pictures…or maybe not, but at least you’ll have fun customising the many option Olympus gives you.

Stay tuned for the Part 3, where I’ll be looking at the camera’s IQ, because you wouldn’t buy a camera that took bad pictures, would you?

Please consider purchasing the Olympus Pen E-PL1 from B&H. We’ll get a small commission and you’ll get our eternal gratitude

Note: Links in this article might be to one of our affiliate stores. Purchases made from our affiliates through these links will benefit Enticing the Light at no extra cost to you.

Review – Olympus Pen E-PL1, Part 1: First Impressions

Miserere — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 04:47:31 +0000

by Miserere

Introduction

To many photographers Olympus has always felt like a second tier photography system since they adopted the 4/3 standard in 2002, due to the sensor’s small size and generous 2x crop factor with respect to 24x36mm (full-frame) sensors. Despite these apparent limitations, Olympus has garnered a loyal following who appreciate smaller cameras and lenses that are just as well spec’d as the competition’s larger DSLRs.

But Olympus had more up its sleeve, and in 2008, together with long-time 4/3 partner Panasonic, they announced a new format: the μ4/3 (micro 4/3). The idea is simple: Take a 4/3 sensor and place it in a camera without a mirror. The size advantages are clear—without a mirror-box in the camera, the lens can be mounted closer to the sensor and the body made thinner. Removing the mirror also means there is no need for a pentaprism or pentamirror, so the height of the camera can also be reduced.

Panasonic led the way by releasing the immediately popular G1 in November 2008. Olympus lagged behind but eventually released the Pen E-P1 in July 2009 to an anticipating crowd (with my thumbs up). While the E-P1 received mixed reviews (which is typical of any product that has been awaited for so long), it proved Olympus’s approach to the micro 4/3 concept could work. You see, while Panasonic’s G1 and its decendants looked like little DSLRs, the E-P1 looked more like a P&S, and Olympus based its ad campaign (and indeed, actual design) around a classic half-frame film camera, the Olympus Pen F. The waters hadn’t even calmed down when Olympus launched its second micro 4/3 camera, the E-P2, in December of the same year. Perhaps the biggest difference in this new camera was the incorporation of a data port below the flash hot shoe to allow the attachment of an electronic viewfinder, the VF-2.

This rather long-winded introduction brings us to the camera I’ll be discussing today, the third and latest member of the digital PEN family, the E-PL1, released earlier this month. If you’re wondering what the “L” is for, it stands for “light”, but while it’s the cheapest of the three, it’s unclear that it’s light in any way. In fact, many E-P1 and E-P2 owners have expressed their discontent with Olympus’s decision to release such a great “cheap” option.

The E-PL1 comes in 3 colours: black, blue, and the one I tested, champagne. For some reason, it comes bundled with a black kit lens that seems out of place with the body; it should have come with the silver kit lens. The pancake 17mm f/2.8 lens (which I also received) is a much better match.

What’s in the Box

E-PL1 with 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 lens
Li-ion battery BLS-1 (8.4V, 1080mAh)
Li-ion battery charger BCS-1
USB/Video multi cable
Shoulder strap
Software CD-ROM
Instruction manual
Warranty card

Olympus E-PL1 Main Specifications

Below I list the main specs for the E-PL1, but I’m also listing the specs for its sister cameras, the E-P1 and E-P2 so you can better appreciate the differences and similarities.

Feature	E-PL1	E-P1	E-P2
List price (with kit lens in USA)	$599	$799	$1099 *
Sensor	12.3MP Live MOS (2x crop factor)
Sensor dimensions	18 x 13.5 mm (3:4 aspect ratio)
LCD size	2.7"	3.0"	3.0"
LCD resolution (pixels)	230 k
Burst rate (fps)	3.0	2.5	2.5
Maximum shutter speed (secs)	1/2000	1/4000	1/4000
Maximum ISO	3200	6400	6400
Built-in flash	Yes	No	No
Flash sync speed (secs)	1/160	1/180	1/180
Control wheels	No	Yes	Yes
Dedicated movie recording button	Yes	No	No
AF tracking	Yes	No	Yes
Electronic level	No	Yes	Yes
Live Guide feature	Yes	No	No
Art filters	5	6	8
iEnhance Picture Mode	Yes	No	Yes
Movie mode sound	Mono	Stereo	Stereo
Manual controls in movie mode	Yes	No	Yes
Accessory port for EVF/mic	Yes	No	Yes
Wired remote supported	No	Yes	Yes
Underwater case available	Yes	No	No
Battery life (CIPA standard)	290 shots	300 shots
Dimensions (W x H x D)	11.4x7x4 cm 4.5×2.8×1.6 in.	12x7x3.5 cm 4.7×2.8×1.4 in.
Weight	296 g / 10.4 oz	335 g / 11.8 oz
* Includes VF-2 electronic viewfinder worth $250.

As you can see, the E-PL1 offers some useful features not present in one or both of its predecessors, like the dedicated movie record button, EVF (electronic viewfinder) port, flash or AF tracking. The most glaring “light” features (with respect to the other two) are lower max. ISO, slower max. shutter speed and lack of control wheels/dials. While the seasoned shooter might complain, the target audience of this camera (entry-level buyers moving up from a P&S for better IQ) are unlikely to notice, let alone complain. I think Olympus cut corners in the right places.

Holding the Camera

This is one solid piece of photographic equipment; it might be encased in aluminum, but this thing is dense and sturdy. It does not feel cheap. As you can see in the photo to the right (courtesy of David Parsons), it is a lot smaller than a DSLR, especially with the pancake 17mm f/2.8 lens, and while larger than a P&S, its low volume brings it closer to that form factor than a DSLR. And I mean that as a compliment. It felt so much smaller than a DSLR that instead of using the provided shoulder strap, I took the wrist strap from my P&S and looped it around one of the strap lugs. It’s light enough that you can have it dangling from your wrist while you walk and it won’t dig into your skin. It has a small rubberised grip on the front and I find the camera very comfortable to hold and shoot with, either with a viewfinder or using the rear LCD. Below is a picture taken side by side with the Canon S90 (read my review here). As you can see, the body of the E-PL1 isn’t that much larger than the S90.

Olympus Pen E-PL1 vs Canon S90

Shooting with the Olympus E-PL1

After using the camera sporadically during two days, I went out last Saturday for a walk around Boston. I shoot mostly in Av, and while a control wheel such as that on the E-P1 and E-P2 would have been nice, the truth is I didn’t have that much of an issue using the 4-way controller to change shot settings. If you’re in M mode and need to quickly change all your settings, then yes, you’ll be in a jam, but walking around the city in Av I realised that I rarely change aperture and I cared about focusing and shutter responsiveness much more. Autofocus seems better than other P&Ss I’ve tried, and not much slower than most DSLRs I’ve shot with. Maybe I’m not very demanding, but I found AF was not an issue. Shutter lag is non-existent, on par with my DSLR.

Composing on the LCD wasn’t as bad as I expected given the camera’s small size; while I wouldn’t like shooting this way with a DSLR, it was OK with the E-PL1; and I say this as someone who enjoys looking through a good viewfinder. The biggest surprise of all, was using manual focus: It’s a lot easier on the LCD that it is with an optical VF on a DSLR. Thinking about it a bit, this is why I was surprised: My previous manual focusing on LCD experience came from P&Ss with their tiny sensors and almost infinite DoF, but the 4/3 format has a much narrower DoF than a typical P&S (due to its much larger sensor), making manual focusing…almost a pleasure. I wish I could have tested the VF-2 to compare, as I’ve heard it offers a similar focusing experience, but sadly B&H were out of stock. I’ll be sure to test it with the next micro 4/3 camera is released.

This brings me to the LCD screen. While a bit smaller than that of the E-P1 and E-P2, it still sports the same resolution (230k pixels). Olympus have given many reasons for using this screen, but the truth is, it looks bad on such a nice camera. 230k just doesn’t cut it on a $600 camera, and I’m sure Olympus will lose sales of these cameras because of it; when a P&S user comes into a store and turns them on, they’ll wonder why their $250 P&S has a better LCD screen and then move on to the next camera, throwing the digital Pen over his shoulder. When viewing images in playback, it’s not that bad, but when using Live View the low resolution is evident. I”m not saying it’s useless (it clearly isn’t!), but I am saying it is sub-par and not up to the quality level displayed by the rest of the camera.

The Kit Lens

Olympus Pen E-PL1 with flash popped and kit lens extended

Kit lenses don’t have a great reputation, and often for a reason, so I was not expecting anything from Olympus’s M.Zuiko 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 zoom lens. But again, I was surprised. First, it’s tiny, about the size of a screw-focus 50mm f/1.8; second, it’s light, as in, put it in your pocket and forget it’s there, light; third, the IQ is pretty damn good. Really? Yeah, really! I initially thought I wouldn’t use it much, or at all, but I ended up mounting it when I wanted more reach than the 17mm prime would give me. No brick wall tests so far, but it’s good enough that I can imagine many casual shooters not needing to buy more lenses for a while, if ever.

The main reason for its feather-like qualities is the use of plastic almost everywhere, including the mount. It also has a retractable barrel that you have to manually extend when you want to use the lens, which just about doubles its length. Zooming feel is a bit uneven throughout the range but the focus ring, being focus-by-wire, is butter smooth.

My Impression So Far

This is a very good camera. I had many reservations about the micro 4/3 format, but was curious to try it out and see (touch) for myself. I’m glad I did because I am tearing down preconceptions I had about these cameras, and having fun while doing it. The camera is easy to use and gives great results, which makes for an enjoyable shooting experience. One thing that caught my eye early on was the generous dynamic range of the sensor, which is strange because according to DxO Mark the Olympus E-P2 (they haven’t added the E-PL1 yet) has 1 stop less dynamic range than my current DSLR. I’ll have to run some side-by-side tests before I say more about this.

Stay tuned for the next chapter in this multi-part review, where I’ll be talking at length about shooting with the E-PL1 and the features it offers the photographer. Until then, here are some quick shots, JPEGS straight from the camera downsized in Photoshop. Top two are with the 17mm f/2.8, bottom two with the kit lens. EXIF is intact so check out the settings if you like. And click for larger size, of course.

Part 2: Using the Camera ⇒

Please consider purchasing the Olympus Pen E-PL1 from B&H. We’ll get a small commission and you’ll get our eternal gratitude

Note: Links in this article might be to one of our affiliate stores. Purchases made from our affiliates through these links will benefit Enticing the Light at no extra cost to you.

Review – Pentax K-x Part 1: First Look

Peter Zack — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 11:00:11 +0000

Pentax K-X shown with FA50mm f1.4 lens which is not included in the kit. Battery for size reference.

by Peter Zack

As a very active shooter I’m always looking at new gear to see what’s happening with all brands. I was also looking for a camera that could serve a few different uses: 1) I wanted something small that my wife would enjoy because my regular camera bodies are far too big and heavy for her to take any interest—she’s wanted to learn how to use a DSLR but these cameras have stopped her cold. 2) A camera that was even better in low light than my existing gear and could take the same lenses as it could serve as a supplement to my primary bodies. 3) A travel and “pocket” DSLR for vacations or days when I don’t want to lug the big body around.

This review will be in parts and the next section will be more of a hands-on user report, my impressions of what the camera is like to use in the real world. As time passes, I may add some further thoughts to the following sections. The review is not meant to be hyper technical; you can find those types of reviews elsewhere on the web, but hopefully this will be more of what an everyday user might need to know when considering the purchase of a Pentax K-x or any other entry price point camera model.

This body seemed to fit the bill on paper for what I personally wanted. So lets have a closer look and see how it does.

What's in the box. Body cap installed.

What’s in the Box

Hot Shoe cover Fx
Eyecup Fq
Body mount cover
USB cable I-USB7 (not shown but included)
Black and Red Strap 0-ST53
Software on CD S-SW99
4 AA batteries (mine had 4 Energizer Ultimate Lithiums)
Owners Manual 0PKX00101/Eng (or your home country language)

Note: Missing is the viewfinder cover that is in the box with upper-end models from Pentax. This is useful for long exposures to prevent light leaks. I think it should be part of the kit.

Camera Specifications

Summary of the highlights:

12.4 megapixel CMOS sensor
High resolution 12.4 megapixel CMOS image sensor features sensor-shift Shake Reduction for stabilized image and video capture up to 4 stops max.
2.7 inch LCD with Live View and Face Detection
Large 2.7 inch LCD features Live View with contrast, phase difference, and Face Detection autofocus (up to 16 faces).
720p HD Video
Capture widescreen HD video in full 720p resolution (1280×720) at 24 FPS cinematic frame rate, using any PENTAX 35mm lens.
Compact Body
Highly compact DSLR body design allows for 1 handed operation and comfort when traveling.
Auto Picture and Scene Modes
Powerful automatic modes, including PENTAX Auto Picture and scene modes, ensure the perfect shot in any situation, while helping new photographers learn DSLR photography.
Creative Processing and Filter Modes
Creative processing and filter modes produce high quality finished images, while offering the ability to explore artistic freedom through unique special effects.
HDR Image Capture
True HDR image capture blends 3 bracketed images into a single picture with outstanding shadow, highlight, and midrange detail.
4.7 Frames per Second
Fast 4.7 FPS capture speed and 1/6000 second maximum shutter speeds are possible with the PENTAX PRIME II image processing engine.
11 Point Wide Angle Focus
Responsive 11 point wide angle SAFOX VIII autofocus system focuses quickly and accurately, and can easily track moving subjects.
AA Batteries
Capture up to 1900 shots with universally available, easy-to-find AA lithium batteries (also compatible with AA NiMH rechargeable and alkaline batteries).
Dimensions (W x H x D)
approx. 122.5 x 91.5 x 67.5 mm (4.8 x 3.6 x 2.7 inches).
Weight
approx. 515g (18.2 oz.) without battery or SD memory card.
approx. 580g (20.5oz.) loaded and ready with lithium batteries and SD memory card.
approx. 615g (21.7oz.) loaded and ready with alkaline batteries and SD memory card.

First Impressions

Even before the camera arrived, I was wishing for a grip accessory. I have big hands and also often shoot in portrait mode, so it would be a nice option. In all fairness, that’s not the intended market Pentax was directing this camera at; people considering this camera want it light and easy to carry. This body certainly fits that niche and adding a grip would defeat the purpose of a small and light camera. Having it now in my hands, portrait shooting is quite comfortable. The body is remarkably small and easy to use in either shooting mode.

It would still be nice to have this accessory as an option, even if it provided no electrical connections and served as a storage compartment for a set of spare batteries, IR remote and SD card.

Price

The first thing to consider for any camera purchase is budget and price. This camera comes in various forms: You can buy a body alone at places like B&H and Amazon for approx $559.00 and a few different kit versions for not much more with a couple of lens options. Lenses like the DA-L 18-55mm, DA-L 50-200mm and DA-L 55-300mm are available. Also the camera is available in various colours. At the time of this writing, it can be purchased in white, red, navy blue and standard black outside Japan, although I hear other colours may become available in Europe. In Japan you can pick from 100 different combinations.

The Menu button on right will access this screen. You use the 4 buttons around the OK button to navigate and change settings.

Ease of Use

As soon as the camera arrived I wanted to see how easy it would be for a first time user to navigate the menus and set it up to use. So like my friend Miserere, I purposefully left the manual in the box. There are 4 sections in the menu for setup, each containing several ‘pages’. In 15 minutes I had the camera working just the way I’d like. It’s very customizable like its higher end siblings. I think the first time user to Pentax will find the camera easy to use and the menus quite straight forward. There’s lots in there to customize the setup as well and for an “entry level model” it’s going to offer a lot to most photographers.

Clearly this camera has inherited many features and advancements from its big brother, the K-7, a semi-pro spec’d camera body. Things like HDR (3 image bracketed capture combined in camera), 720p HD video recording at 24 frames/sec, creative digital filters (JPEGs only), color profile micro-adjustments, lens correction options (Lateral CA and Distortion correction ), D-range adjustments for shadow and highlight tone curve, and so on. A few of the most noticeable features it does not share with the K-7 are the Stereo Mic plug, HDMI jack, Remote Plug, weather-sealed body and top panel LCD. In the latter case everything is either available on the rear LCD (230,000 dots) or the viewfinder. I should note that you can adjust the font size for easier viewing. This is a great feature I haven’t seen on many other models and a welcome addition. It has an increased frame rate from the earlier K-m and K200D models, now reaching 4.7 frames per second for approx. 17 JPEG frames in the buffer until the memory clears to the SD card. The only limitation is the buffer will fill fairly quickly and seems a bit small for a high fps camera. Of all the cameras I’ve looked at in this class, the K-x has the highest frame rate.

HDR is a nice additional feature that we will explore more in part 2 but this feature works by combining 3 images that can be bracketed by 3Ev. So you can take an underexposed image, a normal exposure and a slightly over exposed image and the camera will combine them to increase the dynamic range. For those who have never tried this (previously only available in software after you take the shots), it will allow you to better capture tough scenes, situations where the sky is bright and the foreground subject is dark. HDR will help preserve the sky and lighten the foreground. To some it may seem to produce an unnatural image or be a gimmick better done in software, but others will like it and find uses for it.

The camera takes 4 AA sized batteries. Note the gold-plated contacts, which is a nice touch; most electronics that cost as much or more use cheaper Nickel-plated contacts.

AA Batteries are another interesting choice. This has been a common feature of entry level Pentax models for a long time. The higher end models take dedicated rechargeable batteries. Although I like the dedicated versions, the AA choice makes sense. This camera is directed at the first time shooter and photographer on a budget. So you could spend $40-50.00 for a spare battery (like most more expensive cameras offer) or get an extra set of top quality rechargeable AA’s (Nm-HH, 640 shots) for your new K-x at less than half this price, and these are easily replaced when needed. On vacation or away from home, even a set of good quality Alkalines can do in a pinch (210 shots), although they will give you far fewer shots (Lithium’s would be preferred and provide a whopping 1900+ images). But that beats missing Grandma’s 90th birthday party because you forgot to charge the battery last night.

High ISO

In this section you’ll see a few quick sample shots at ISO 6400 and 12,800, all taken in poor light. Click on the thumbnails for a larger version.

The very first thing I wanted to test was the claims of better high ISO shooting. From my initial observations, the camera does seem to perform well at higher ISOs. It does a very good job at 3200, easily usable shots at 6400 and passable at 12,800 depending on the shooting scene. Although at this setting I would have to be somewhat desperate to be taking critical photos. My estimate that seems to be backed up by tests elsewhere is that the camera is at least one stop better than a K20D or K-7 and really more like 2 stops better at 6400. There certainly is grain at higher ISOs but it appears more manageable and there are only a few signs of banding, so using a de-noise program to clean up the image will yield good results. Images like this have a grain that would make good black and white conversions with “film-like” grain. We’ll test this much more in the coming sections and conduct some comparisons vs. the K20D.


ISO12,800	ISO12,800	Crop

Autofocus Speed and Accuracy

The second thing I wanted to test was AF (auto focus). Was it faster to lock on? Could it track better than previous models? The answer is a clear yes. I went out and played in traffic using the DA*16-50mm f/2.8. Tracking cars moving from about 10 meters at approx 60kph (37mph) was almost fluid with the SDM lens. With a screwdrive lens (in-body motor) you could hear the micro adjustments constantly adjusting to the moving subject. I would pick a car at my far left and pan/track it till it was straight in front of me and take the shot. After about 45 shots like this I missed 2. Although I didn’t try as many coming directly at me or driving straight away, the few I tried provided similar results. It would seem in this area, the Pentax K-x is a big improvement over previous models. Compared to a Nikon D300S I tried recently, it might not be quite as fast in locking focus, but not far off in a much lower priced camera.

Low light focus was strong in the high ISO shots above and there was very little hunting unless the scene had very little contrast. Generally you will find the focusing accurate and fast with very few missed shots. I’ll try to do some sports shooting shortly and see how well it performs in what can be the toughest situations. The only limitation I see here is the lack of AF points in the veiwfinder. There are 11 AF points but Pentax has chosen to not illuminate them in the display, reportedly to keep the camera smaller and costs down. Most shooters I speak to use the center point anyway and the camera has an etched pair of semi circles right in the center of the viewfinder. Line up your subject in that spot and focusing is not an issue. Although I prefer having the AF points light up, after approx 500 shots, this has not been an issue.

In this shot the focus was on the tip of the branch and I was able to shoot nearly wide open to limit the depth of field and get a sharp branch tip. Click on image for a larger size.

ISO 200 f/4 1/500s Heavily cropped. Don't let the bland colour fool you. It's March in Canada. Plus I had the EV set to +0.7 from some earlier tests. Oops.

This wraps up our first look at the Pentax K-x. We’ll go into much more detail on the features and performance in the next sections. In the final part of this review series I will report after using this camera to take some shots at a wedding, which is one of the toughest lighting situations facing any photographer and their gear.

While you are waiting for the next section, you can have a look at a comparison of several models in the same entry-level DSLR class reported in AlphaMountWorld.com. Also see how the camera compares to some of the best DSLRs available today in the DxO K-x rank. DxO extensively tests each camera and you’ll see the Pentax K-x comes in at 19^th in the top 100. Only 2 cameras with an APS-C (cropped) sensors came in higher, all the rest in the top 20 are either 24x36mm (Full Frame) or Medium format sensors.

Without going into great detail, DxO designs (among other software tools) digital RAW converters that are fine-tuned and optimized for your particular camera. They need to know your camera’s abilities and limits as well or better than the engineers that designed it. From their web site: Perfect photos with no optical flaws. Automatically correct distortion, vignetting, lack of sharpness, chromatic aberrations and colored fringes. Color and detail at the highest ISO settings, push your camera up to two stops above its limits.

We appreciate the support of our readers, and if you choose to purchase through our links to B&H, Amazon and Adorama, you help us keep EtL going. Plus, it’s at no extra cost to you when using these links!

Cheers and good shooting –Peter Zack

Part 2 of this review can be found here: K-x review continues.

Purchase the Pentax K-x from Amazon.com
Purchase the Pentax K-x from Amazon.co.uk
Purchase the Pentax K-x from B&H
Purchase the Pentax K-x from Adorama

Note: Links in this article might be to one of our affiliate stores. Purchases made from our affiliates through these links will benefit Enticing the Light at no extra cost to you.

Some Canon S90 Sample Shots

Miserere — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 05:15:32 +0000

by Miserere

As some of you may have noticed, I bought a Canon S90 a couple of months ago and have been putting it through its paces during this time. While the reviews showed photos taken mostly for the purposes of testing the camera, the fact is I bought the S90 to take real photographs with.

Below I’m posting some “real” photos for your enjoyment (click for larger versions). If you would like to see more, you can check out my Canon S90 Gallery.

When I view these photos, varied in style as they are, I see a clear similarity between them: The only reason they exist is because I had the camera in my pocket. For only two of them did I also have my DSLR with me, but packed away in my backpack, whence it was unlikely to come out to take either of those two photos. So thanks to my new pocketcam, I have a handful of photos I wouldn’t otherwise have taken. No, the S90 isn’t perfect, but it’s proving to be extremely useful nonetheless, proving once again that, more often than not, the best camera is the one you have with you.

Note: Links in this article might be to one of our affiliate stores. Purchases made from our affiliates through these links will benefit Enticing the Light at no extra cost to you.