Review Date: November 15, 2011
Category: Beginner to Serious Amateur
Olympus E-PL3
Photoxels Gold Award – Interchangeable Lens Camera
HANDLING & FEEL
Lightning-fast. It’s a new Olympus with performance that is nothing like on past cameras. Everything on this camera is refreshingly fast and responsive. If you appreciate being quick on the draw, the Olympus E-PL3 will delight as one of the fastest interchangeable lens camera on the market.
The Olympus E-PL3, also known as the PEN Lite, comes standard with the M.ZUIKO DIGITAL 14-42mm II R F3.5(W)-F5.6(T) kit lens which is collapsible and a good starting lens with 3x optical zoom. The starting focal length is a wide-angle 28mm (equiv.) and the 84mm (equiv.) medium tele makes the E-PL3 a nice camera for street photography. Of course, as an Interchangeable Lens Camera, the E-PL3 accepts a growing number of Four Thirds lenses as well as lenses from other lens manufacturers with the appropriate adapter.
The front of the camera is clean, with the Self-timer lamp/AF illuminator and the Lens Release Button on the right. Some reviewers miss a handgrip but I found the clean lines refreshing and did not find the camera slippery. A curved thumb rest at the back provides a “thumb grip.”
There is no built-in flash nor viewfinder. However, an external clip-on flash FL-LM1 is included as standard accessory and it slides onto the hot shoe and into the Accessory port. You lift it up to turn it on, but unfortunately you cannot bounce the light. It is good enough for fill-in and can even wirelessly trigger the optional Olympus speedlights.
Olympus E-PL3 Top View
The top of the camera has the Power ON/OFF Button, a very sensitive Shutter Release Button, Mode Dial, Hot Shoe, Stereo Microphone (on each side of the Hot Shoe), and Speaker.
The camera will not turn on if the kit lens is in the collapsed position, with an error message on the LCD advising you that “The lens is locked. Please extend the lens.” Just twist the lens anticlockwise to extend it and until you hear a click. The Power button glows with a nice blue light to indicate it is ON. Note that the camera does not turn on if you simply extend the lens; you need to do both. Also note that for Playback, you don’t need to extend the lens but do need to turn the camera on.
Startup is fast at less than 1 sec. (from Power ON to LCD ready for capture, i.e. time-to-first-shot), assuming you have already extended the lens. Shot to shot times is about 0.7 sec. (14 shots in 10 sec. in M mode, 1/125sec.) in LF or RAW. You can take one shot after another, as fast as your finger can click the shutter.
At Image Quality = Large Fine, a 12.3MP JPEG image is compressed down to anywhere between 4MB and 6MB. A RAW image occupies about 10 to 13MB.
I find the Shutter Release Button has a very nice clickability to it but is very sensitive with a too short half press. It is too easy to take a shot when all you want to do is to half press the shutter to lock focus. On the positive side, it makes for a fast perfect-for-street-shooting camera.
In good lighting, there is no practical shutter lag and AF is lightning-fast. In low lighting, AF is also fast but may require up to 1 sec. to lock focus, depending on the contrast of the subject. However, it all just feels very fast overall.
The Mode dial has iAuto, PASM, Movie, SCN, and ART. You invoke Program Shift and/or Exposure Compensation by pressing the UP ARROW. Then use UP and DOWN to program shift or LEFT and RIGHT to dial in an exposure compensation. The Mode Dial can be conveniently rotated freely in any direction. The Arrow Pad doubles as a Control Dial.
Olympus E-PL3 Back View
On the back of the camera, there is a 3.0-in. LCD (460k-dot) that is tiltable up and down. However, the LCD’s 16:9 orientation means that when you view a 4:3 orientation, the whole 3.0-in. is not used and in effect you only have a 2.5-in. LCD for that orientation. The E-PL3 could increase the size of the LCD vertically but would have to trade physical buttons for their virtual touch screen counterparts. The E-PL3’s LCD is not touch screen.
Along the top of the LCD, are (from right to left) the dedicated Movie button, Enlarge button, customizable Fn button, Accessory port, Erase button and Playback button.
Along the right side of the LCD are the Info button, Arrow Pad and MENU button.
Arrow Pad: UP = Exposure Compensation. RIGHT = Flash. DOWN = Sequential (Continuous), Self-timer. LEFT = AF Area.
Once set, the Exposure Compensation Indicator conveniently stays displayed on screen until it is reset to “0” so don’t forget to do that. Note that the exposure compensation value selected is retained even when the camera is turned off (so remember to reset to “0” after using it or the next time you turn the camera on, your shots may be over- or under-exposed.) Note also that, if you set Live View Boost ON [MENU – Custom Menu – Disp/Remote/PC – Live View Boost – ON], the screen is always bright and brightness does not increase or decrease to reflect the value you dial in.
You can display a Live Histogram [MENU – Custom Menu – Disp/Remote/PC – Info Settings – LV-info – Histogram – ON] and/or Grid [MENU – Custom Menu – Disp/Remote/PC – Info Settings – LV-info – Displayed Grid – Select one of 4 grid types] but not both at the same time. You can also choose to display Highlight&Shadow [MENU – Custom Menu – Disp/Remote/PC – Info Settings – LV-info – Highlight&Shadow – ON].
Olympus E-PL3 Tiltable LCD
The LCD screen resolution has been upgraded to 460k-dot. In low light, the screen gains up very well though it reverts to a lower refresh rate and is too pixelated to help tell when manual focus is achieved. Manual Focus itself is quite nice with the screen zoomed in and the first fly-by-wire manual focus ring that is as responsive as a real [mechanical] manual focus ring. You can zoom and either set continuous focus on or manually focus during movie recording. Unfortunately, you’ll hear the continuous focus sound.
I like AF Target [LEFT ARROW] that gives 7×5 = 35 focus points. Unfortunately these avoid a large swatch of the screen edges and there’s also no quick way to return to center AF point.
You can customize the OK button to either pop-up a Quick Menu (Live Control) or a Super Control Panel (SCP). To set up for a Quick Menu: [MENU – Custom Menu – Disp/Remote/PC – Control Settings – P/A/S/M – Live Control – ON]. To set up for a Super Control Panel: [MENU – Custom Menu – Disp/Remote/PC – Control Settings – P/A/S/M – SCP – ON]. Note that if you set both to ON, the Live Control takes precedence.
You can pretty much customize the E-PL3 to the way you want it to work. There are lots of customization available, more than anyone would ever use in my opinion, as though the menu designer wanted to make all possible options available — just for the heck of it. So, take the time to delve into the Instruction Manual and customize the camera to the [idiosyncratic] way you prefer.
TIP: There are in fact 4 customizable buttons: besides the Fn button, you can also customize the One-button Movie record button, the RIGHT arrow and the DOWN arrow. [MENU – Custom Menu – Button/Dial – Button Function – customize one of the 4 buttons or all 4 buttons]
TIP: The Erase button can be customized to delete a picture immediately [MENU – Custom Menu – Record/Erase – Quick Erase – ON]. This can be a convenient and quick way for experienced photographers to review a picture on the LCD screen and then delete it with one button press. It can also be extremely dangerous for those who are trigger happy: press this button inadvertently and the picture you are looking at is forever gone. Use with extreme caution.
I find the menu structure can be quite confusing to navigate, even for an advanced user. It is not apparent which option will eventually lead to the function you want to set and you can spend a frustrating time finding what you want to customize. Keep the Instruction Manual close at hand.
The Fn and Close up Playback buttons are in the traditional space reserved for a zoom toggle button on compact cameras. They serve the traditional purpose of looking at thumbnails or enlarging your picture in Playback mode.
Olympus E-PL3 Tiltable LCD
I love a tiltable LCD and consider it a minimum on any serious camera these days. Those who take lots of pictures in the portrait format would of course prefer a fully articulated LCD.
Olympus E-PL3 Optional Live-Finder
Just below the hot shoe is the Accessory port that accepts the detachable high resolution (1440k-dot) VF-2 live-finder which rotates up 90 degrees (useful when shooting subjects from challenging angles) and the new SEMA-1 external microphone adapter for enhanced audio capture. The optional viewfinder comes in handy since the LCD tends to be difficult to view in bright sunlight.
The hinged Connector Cover (on the right side) does not open up wide, so you have to struggle a bit to plug in the USB cable or HDMI connector. The Battery/Card door is at the bottom and the battery has a latch to keep it from accidentally falling. The tripod socket at the bottom is metal and is not inline with the lens; you won’t be able to change battery or memory card when the camera is on a tripod.
Included in the box is a rechargeable Li-ion battery BLS1 that can take about 300 shots (CIPA standard) on a fresh charge. A Battery Charger BCS-1 recharges a depleted battery in a long 3 hours 30 min.
The Olympus E-PL3 accepts the SD, SDHC, SDXC and Eye-Fi memory cards.
Overall, the build quality is very good. Some may miss a handgrip. The Olympus E-PL3 handles well and, once customized to your liking, you’ll find it operates with minimum or no frustration.
Next: Olympus E-PL3 User’s Experience