Olympus E-420 in my hands

[tspore]

Hey All,
I am going to start working on doing a write up on the E-420 and the Pancake, but I will post some stuff as I get it. Really a very nice little camera. It is firmware version 1.0, so I can post pictures. But I am impressed. The LCD is great when viewing. The live view is improved & I really love the 25mm lens. I will have Casey most of the night, but I will try to post what I have from this evening tomorrow morningish (Not to early though)

[joan55]

Yippee! Can't wait to see the goods from that pancake. Thanks, Tony.

[tspore]

Ok,
Here is what I am going to do with the E-420 - I will shoot all jpeg's plus I will switch it to my normal settings. All in all this camera is very nice little SLR.
Here are the first 2 shots. ISO 1600 - Probably had the noise filter on a bit high for my taste.

Click for a larger version. Also here is the original.
EXIF

Here is a shot ISO 100 - with the FL36 bouncing off the celling.

Click for larger or here for 100%.
EXIF

The camera & Lens looks very good. Ok more tomorrow.
Gallery here -
http://43photo.smugmug.com/gallery/4...joZB#268386320

[JeffCharles]

I am not a fanatic about noise, but the dark areas in some of the ISO 100 shots in the gallery do not look good. For example, look at the filing cabinet in the first picture. Also, look at the wall above the man's head on the right side of the first picture.

Jeff

[joan55]

Looks GREAT to me! Adorable kids, Tony. The baby portrait at ISO 1600, wow, love how fine the 'grain' is. What a little treasure, so cute!

Can't wait to see more and hear your thoughts as you continue testing it.

[tspore]

I am not a fanatic about noise, but the dark areas in some of the ISO 100 shots in the gallery do not look good. For example, look at the filing cabinet in the first picture. Also, look at the wall above the man's head on the right side of the first picture.

Jeff

I know why their is the noise - The auto gradation is on. So as it boost's the shadows the noise is introduced.

I found it odd that the bounce shots with my FL-36 are all about 1 stop under exposed, I am assuming that the it is because I didn't use a flip it as I usually do. - I also use a FL-50 so it is a different flash than normal for me.

[Johannes]

Tony, tell us more about the pancake please ........

[er1kksen]

My main concern is whether or not the image quality is on par or similar to what we've been seeing out of the E-3. I don't consider the E-410 to be a big enough upgrade from my E-330, but if the E-420 matches the E-3, I would consider that worthwhile...

[martin kimeldorf]

The kid is great...he appears to enjoy his ISO
And brother exposure seems enthralled
clear a depth of character
likely inherited
bravo
on Casey.

[finemom]

They both look like you Tony, precious little boys.

[tspore]

My kids are a lot of fun. Casey is already doing great.
Here are a couple from Today. Time was 4 PM before I got out to take a few photos. So this is my 80 Degree HARSH sun shots.

Original EXIF
Not bad dynamic range for middle of the day - All these shots are Straight out of the camera - Shot in Aperture mode, Auto ISO, Gradiation Auto, +1 sharpening.


Original EXIF
Once again quite impressed with the dynamic range.

Cody and Grandpa

Original EXIF


Some High ISO shots - Noise filter on Low

ISO 400 Original EXIF


ISO 800 Original EXIF


ISO 1600 Original EXIF


OK I am on baby duty again tonight, so I doubt that I will have time to post more. Once I get a chance - Probably monday I will do some real comparisons between E-3, E-410, & E-420.

Impressive DR, and high ISO.

[marcof]

Call me stupid, but at first glance the images look much better than the E3 images. Somehow I get this "E1" feeling from them, while the E3, 410, 510 images look more bland.

[drdeo]

Looks like a really good cam!
One thing I noticed on the ISO 1600 image is that when pixel peeping on it the noise structure is really pleasing to me, feels almost like the structure of a canvas for a painting and thus the picture get the feeling of a (very detailed) painting, anyone here getting the same feeling?
/Kristofer

[er1kksen]

This seems much better than my E330 at high ISO.

[tspore]

I don't know if I can call it better than the E-3, I have been shooting with the auto Gradation, I also haven't taken it off Auto WB, nor the 25mm off the camera. On the E-420 I think I like +1 sharpening. I am trying to use it as the primary customer, as a point and shoot replacement. But really it is a nice secondary camera.

I really will try to setup and take formal photos of them, but that is a sweet little lens.
I will definitely want to buy a hood, if it isn't too big. I don't usually like to run around with lens caps, nor do I usually wear a jacket. So it really isn't a pocketable camera (Though I can force it into my pocket)
The screw on cap makes since not much on the front to grab on, and I would imagine a pinch cap would come off all to often.

Well today, I have my mother and father coming in, so I am going to take them and Cody on the train. I will take the kit lenses, 25mm, and the 420 with me.

[jaeae]

Call me stupid, but at first glance the images look much better than the E3 images. Somehow I get this "E1" feeling from them, while the E3, 410, 510 images look more bland.

Might be the new auto gradiation and lens combination that makes the colours..? In my opinion too the above images look excellent

Sometimes it's so easy to look at some image and instantly know what camera it was taken with. Too many times when I've seen some especially nice colored images, they were taken with Nikon D40 (don't kill me ). I liked the punchy "kodak" Oly colours very much, but now when I've been shooting with the E-410 I've started to lean towards Oly's revised image processing.. it's a superb combination of very natural yet still crisp colours. Maybe the blandness takes a bit getting used to.

[Riley]

great stuff Tony
dont forget to let us know if some more primes are about to appear in the pattern

[cosmonaut]

Please. A picture of the 420 next to the 510 for comparision if you get a chance. Thanks

[tspore]

Hey Cosmo, Just checking email, busy family day. Anyhow, I don't have any E-5xx series cameras to compare with. I only borrowed a E-510 from Olympus for a couple weeks last summer. I will see if I can get my hands on one for the afternoon sometime this week.
The above shots are all with the 25mm lens, but really nothing super about them, just old Jpeg's straight out of camera, I will upload a few more tonight I hope.

[nomix]

One thing I'm a bit interested in is the AF. How is it, compared to i.e. the earlier E-410 and E-510?

Do you notice any improvements?

Thanks for the samples.

Regards,
Simon

[tspore]

I need to play with the camera a lot more, before I want to talk about the quality of the sensor. Right now just doing snap shots. This evening I was playing with some shots with the camera. Right now not enough time to do much more. But its a very cool camera.
25mm with the E-3




you kind of loose the lens within the camera


(The E-420 and the E-3)



The E-420 with the 12-60mm. - I really like that lens. Anyhow, can't wait till I get the 14-35mm for this camera Any how, I will take one with the 35-100 on it.... LOL





Ok a few more here.

[cyclone13]

The E-420 vs. E3 picture is great lol

I don't know but I, for one, am not happy at all to see how much noise the 420 is pumping out at even ISO 400. I was hoping that this round of cameras/sensors from Olympus would bring a one stop increase in ISO noise improvement but it looks like that is not the case. 400 has noticable noise even when viewed at a reduced image size (wood/wine in bottom left corner gets the worst of it). ISO 800 has very visable noise in the wooden wine shelves when viewed at a low image size, and 1600 ISO is unusable for anthing but snapshots and heavy NR use for me.

The one consistent problem with these 3 test shots of the wine is that the 420 seems to do terrible with shadow noise (also does poorly with the shadows in the baby picture too). More so than a lot of the current competition. I don't know if this is because of the auto gradiant setting or what have you but the issue remains that noise is an issue at even ISO 400 straight out of the camera (frame should be almost completely clean of noise at ISO 400). If you are going to be printing larger than 8x10 at above ISO 400 then it looks like some serious NR is going to be needed to knock out the shadow/underexpose noise. This is very depressing to see as I was hoping/expecting to see Olympus raise the noise bar and make 1600 usable for 8x10 prints without much or any NR. But with the amount of chroma(bleh) and luma that I'm seeing in the shadows this isnt even close to a reality.

[ckrueger]

Tony, thanks for posting as you go! It seems by the hand signal Casey is flashing that he can tell the difference between the 410 and 420.

How does the E-420's grip feel compared to the E-410? It looks like it has a more prominent grip ridge than the E-410, but it's hard to tell from pictures.

The 25/2.8 looks decent optically. Sharpness doesn't look like it will win any awards, but it certainly doesn't look bad. The corners look typically-Four Thirds--no noticeable reduction in sharpness and no smearing even wide open. There's definitely some fringing in the corners, but it looks manageable. I'm a bit surprised to see so much blooming in the center of the frame on the bicycle pics... looks like this camera/lens is one you'll have to be careful not to feed any massively-overexposed highlights.

How noisy is the 25/2.8's AF? SWD-like? Moderate like the kit lenses? Or one of those evil Dremel tool wanna-bes?

Is the focus a mechanical linkage, or focus-by-wire? If it's mechanical, what does the focus ring do when it hits infinity or close? Continue turning at increased friction? Stop turning? Sorry if these seem like silly questions... I find focus-by-wire rings like the 14-42 make street shooting a pain because you can't preset focus blind. Having hard or soft stops makes it easy to crank it to infinity, then back it off a quarter-turn, for example.

Do you notice much difference in image quality as you stop down?

[sven]

Remember he has been using the Auto Gradation setting, which will bring up shadow noise as it attempts to increase DR. This setting can be very useful, but you cannot judge general noise characteristics when using it.

[say123]

Remember he has been using the Auto Gradation setting, which will bring up shadow noise as it attempts to increase DR. This setting can be very useful, but you cannot judge general noise characteristics when using it.

there is a no clearly 'off' option for auto grad. my understanding is that 'normal' option is off?