Olympus E-P3 review: Olympus E-P3

I really wanted to love this camera. I mean, really. Olympus' PEN line has frequently delivered great photo quality in well-designed cameras, albeit with poor performance. But Olympus worked hard on shooting speed, and I figured that if it was fixed, all would be right with the world. But while the company handily achieved the performance goals in the PEN E-P3, while maintaining its design and features strengths, it seems to have taken a step back on photo and video quality. I don't think there's anything wrong with the camera that can't be fixed by a firmware update, but for its high price I expect better photo quality out of the box.

Olympus developed a new sensor for the E-P3 and its latest siblings, ostensibly to achieve higher ISO sensitivities, among other things. Yes, it now goes up to 12,800--but you'll never want to use it at that level. Without the ability to view the raw files, it's hard to make a judgment about the camera's optimal noise level, and the E-P3 complicates it by defaulting to what I think is an overly aggressive noise reduction setting for the JPEGs. The midrange ISO sensitivities of our lab shots look a little better than in shots taken in the field, but I generally wouldn't shoot JPEG beyond ISO 200 with this camera on standard noise reduction, and guesstimate not beyond ISO 800 for raw. You can see the detail start to degrade between ISO 400 and 800, and can spot the color noise at ISO 1600. My out-of-the-box shots at ISO 400 were horribly disappointing, especially given that I shot them with the expensive new 12mm lens.

But scaling back the noise reduction to low--or even off--produces much better results. The photos are grainier, but it's not an unattractive look and preserves a lot more detail. I suspect that shooting raw and processing with better noise-reduction software will gain you at least a stop of latitude of grain.

Like the noise reduction, the default sharpening seems a bit aggressive to me; it's sharper than I'd like unless I were going straight to print. It's a very consumer look that doesn't belong in a camera of this class. You can scale that back as well, however. The E-P3's color rendering looks quite accurate and pleasantly saturated. It helps that the camera defaults to a neutral image style. By default, the camera seems to underexpose a bit.

A combination of its tendency to underexpose and a flash without a lot of throw (despite a guide number typical for its class) results in very nicely exposed close-up flash shots. Olympus includes a couple of useful flash options: you can opt to keep a warm white balance when shooting with flash in auto WB and you can set it specifically to change to flash WB when using flash.

However, Olympus takes a serious misstep when it comes to video. While it ups to full HD, and offers a full set of manual exposure capabilities as well as support for all the art filters in video, the quality is terrible because of egregious rolling shutter (wobbling) that appears with the slightest camera movement. (Subject to correction: I was operating without a manual.) With this camera, Olympus introduced pixel-binning technology--in this case, combining multiple rows and columns to achieve "better" results (possibly to compensate for the fact that the AVCHD video is interlaced?)--to the video processing. It's a technique that's usually used to increase low-light sensitivity for stills, and I suspect it's the culprit, exacerbating the normal tendency of the sensor to rolling- shutter artifacts. I think it might be firmware fixable.

	Olympus E-PL1	Olympus E-PL2	Olympus E-P1	Olympus E-P2	Olympus E-P3
Sensor (effective resolution)	12.3-megapixel Live MOS	12.3-megapixel Live MOS	12.3-megapixel Live MOS	12.3-megapixel Live MOS	12.3-megapixel Live MOS
	17.3mm x 13mm	17.3mm x 13mm	17.3mm x 13mm	17.3mm x 13mm	17.3mm x 13mm
Focal-length multiplier	2.0x	2.0x	2.0x	2.0x	2.0x
Imaging engine version	TruePic V	TruePic V	TruePic V	TruePic V	TruePic VI
Sensitivity range	ISO 200 - ISO 3200	ISO 200 - ISO 6400	ISO 100 - ISO 6400	ISO 100 - ISO 6400	ISO 200 - ISO 12,800
Continuous shooting	3.0 fps 18 (LN) JPEG/10 raw	3.0 fps 17 (LN) JPEG/10 raw	3.0 fps 12 (LN) JPEG/10 raw	3.0 fps 12 (LN) JPEG/10 raw	3.0 fps unlimited (LN) JPEG/17 raw
Viewfinder magnification/ effective magnification	Optional plug-in articulating EVF 1,440,000 dots 0.58x	Optional plug-in articulating EVF 1,440,000 dots 0.58x	None	Optional plug-in articulating EVF 1,440,000 dots 0.58x	Optional plug-in articulating EVF 1,440,000 dots 0.58x
Autofocus	11-area contrast AF	11-area contrast AF	11-area contrast AF	11-area contrast AF	35-area contrast AF
Shutter speed	60-1/2000 sec; bulb to 30 minutes	60-1/4000 sec; bulb to 30 minutes	60-1/4000 sec; bulb to 30 minutes	60-1/4000 sec; bulb to 30 minutes	60-1/4000 sec; bulb to 30 minutes
Metering	324 area	324 area	324 area	324 area	324 area
Flash	Yes	Yes	No	No	Yes
Image stabilization	Sensor shift	Sensor shift	Sensor shift	Sensor shift	Sensor shift
Video	720/30p Motion JPEG AVI	720/30p Motion JPEG AVI	720/30p Motion JPEG AVI	720/30p Motion JPEG AVI	1080/60i AVCHD @ 20, 17Mbps; 720/60p @ 13Mbps
Maximum HD clip length	2GB/7 minutes	2GB/7 minutes	2GB/7 minutes	2GB/7 minutes	4GB/29 minutes
Audio	Mono	Mono; mic input	Stereo	Stereo	Stereo; mic input
LCD size	2.7-inch fixed 230,000 dots	3-inch fixed 460,000 dots	3-inch fixed 230,000 dots	3-inch fixed 230,000 dots	3-inch fixed OLED 614,000 dots
Battery life (CIPA rating)	290 shots	280 shots	300 shots	300 shots	330 shots
Dimensions (inches, WHD)	4.5 x 2.8 x 1.6	4.5 x 2.8 x 1.6	4.7 x 2.8 x 1.4	4.7 x 2.8 x 1.4	4.8 x 2.7 x 1.4
Body operating weight (ounces)	12.5	12.7	13.9	13.5	13.0
Mfr. Price	$449.99 (est, body only)	n/a	$449.99 (body only)	n/a	n/a
	$499.99 (with 14-42mm f3.5-5.6 msc lens)	$599.99 (with 14-42mm f3.5-5.6 msc II lens)	$499.99 (with 14-42mm f3.5-5.6 msc lens)	$799.99 (with 14-42mm f3.5-5.6 msc II lens)	$899.99 (with 14-42mm f3.5-5.6 msc II lens)
	$699.99 (with 14-42mm and 40-150mm lenses)	$799.99 (with 14-42mm II and 40-150mm lenses)	n/a	n/a	$899.99 (with 17mm f2.8 lens)
Ship date	March 2010	January 2011	July 2009	December 2009	August 2011

One way in which the E-P3 unambiguously outdoes its predecessors is performance. The improvement stems from two main enhancements: a new autofocus system with more AF points, which like Panasonic's Light Speed drives the sensor at 120 frames per second while focusing for faster feedback, and increased parallel processing. This overcomes two of the biggest bottlenecks in everyday shooting performance. Olympus dubs the scheme "FAST" for "Frequency Acceleration Sensor Technology."

As a result, the PEN series has gone from sluggish to one of the fastest in its competitive class--faster overall than all other mirrorless ILCs, about the same as Sony's fixed-mirror SLTs, and just a bit slower than comparably priced dSLRs like the Nikon D5100 and Canon EOS Rebel T3i. It powers on and shoots in 0.6 second, with an excellent shot lag of 0.3 second in good light and 0.6 second in dim. Shot-to-shot time typically runs 0.7 second (JPEG) to 0.8 second (raw), and enabling flash adds about a second to that.

The only aspect in which the E-P3 lags in the field--and even the E-P2--is for continuous shooting, which runs about 3fps. However, this isn't a camera you buy for shooting action that way; none of the compact-ish models are.

If you're planning to upgrade from an older model or cross-grade from a Panasonic, keep in mind that your old lenses will require a (free) firmware upgrade in order to take advantage of these performance enhancements. And it's well worth it--when switching to the older 17mm f2.8 it reverted to its irritating hunting behavior. In a better-late-than-never move, the updated AF system also includes an AF illuminator, which also helps with low-light focusing. I've always liked Olympus' dSLR autofocus implementations, and it adds one of my favorite features to the E-P3: selectable groups of AF areas. There's also tracking AF, which works well, if not perfectly.