fbpx
Cameras

Field Review: Olympus EPL-2 (Day 2)

Chris Gampat
No Comments
02/25/2011
3 Mins read
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

In Day 1, I got my hands dirty with the EPL-2. For the most part, it is so far living up to my expectations. The EPL-2 and I went along the street of NYC and into cafes with my friend Sal from Geek.com. And for once, I shot nothing else but JPEGs. Keep in mind that this review is being done in the viewpoint of a professional looking for a small, carry-around camera. So why JPEGs then? Less work in the end, that’s why!

Gear Used

Olympus EPL-2

Olympus 17mm f/2.8 Lens

Image Quality


Olympus seems to have done some serious tweaking with their white balance system this time around. With the Olympus E-5 that we reviewed (and that would have won our shootout) the color balance shifted heavily towards the bluer end of things. This time around, the colors captured were very true to life. I was pleasantly shocked.

In fact, these colors are perhaps the truest to life that I’ve ever seen captured straight out of camera as a JPEG.

When I was hanging out in the basement of a cafe trying to get some freelance writing work done for Digital Camera Review, I played with the EPL-2 a bit and photographed my food. The colors seen in the photo above are very true to how it actually looked down there in the dark and dim basement.

Even this photo of Sal was captured very accurately.

Now, would I necessarily want it to look this way? I’m not quite sure. These weren’t shot in RAW, so I can’t test the dynamic range, but the color depth is once again very good. Hopefully, Olympus has improved the dynamic range in their sensors.

When out and about in the Lower East Side, the white balance once again didn’t fail. It was set to Auto and all of these photos were shot in Aperture priority. To be fair, it was a fairly bleak day.

Hell, it started to snow a bit actually.

With that, there really isn’t much else to say where the photos can’t speak for themselves.

As a semi-professional looking for a camera to deliver great images, the EPL-2 didn’t fail at all with the JPEGs. However, I know that there are times that I would like to shoot RAW images and if the camera has a RAW shoot mode, it should be totally utilized.

And it will be. Coming soon, we will do a better analysis of the dynamic range, RAW files, features, ISO noise, etc. However, I’m actually quite satisfied with the output considering I wasn’t shooting seriously.

With this said, I should also mention that my boss just went on vacation and shot all JPEGs with his Canon 40D. If you’re going on vacation and only want to shoot JPEGs, then the Olympus EPL-2 seems like a great choice. Also please see my guide to photographing NYC for tourists.

Please Support The Phoblographer

We love to bring you guys the latest and greatest news and gear related stuff. However, we can’t keep doing that unless we have your continued support. If you would like to purchase any of the items mentioned, please do so by clicking our links first and then purchasing the items as we then get a small portion of the sale to help run the website.

Also, please follow us on Facebook, Flickr and Twitter.

cafe dynamic range EPL-2 image quality jpeg lower east side nyc olympus white balance
Shares
Written by

Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.
You might also like
Chris Gampat The Phoblographer Sigma 35mm f1.4 product shots (3 of 7)ISO 2001-60 sec at f - 16
Lenses

Review: Sigma 35mm f1.4 DG HSM (Canon EF)

7 Mins read
01/21/2013

A while back, we completed our first impressions of the Sigma 35mm f1.4 EX; and the lens swayed me to switch over my entire system to Sigma. We’ve taken a little longer with the review than other publications have for a very good reason. First off, we sent the lens to Sigma to ensure that it was properly calibrated. The results that we were getting were stellar; but perhaps there was some magic in the elements that we weren’t totally seeing. The lens came back in a matter of two days: which tells me that everything was stellar and working fine.