On my first stint with the Olympus E-P1, I find myself in situations where I have to shoot concerts and events. That means I had to shoot in low-light and high ISO most of the time. I know and many other Four Thirds critics that this is Olympus’ Achilles Heel. First off, this is not meant to be an extensive field test review but practical and real world use of the camera on what possibly most people would use every day.
Getting to Know the PEN controls
I only had a night to get familiar with the controls of the camera as I got the Twin Lens Kit test unit the day before I leave. I didn’t bother to bring the Manual with me as I know I have no time to read so I’ll just have to explore by myself.
Honestly at first when I was going to try to shoot, I had this initial tendency to put the camera up to my eye-level then I remembered – there’s no viewfinder. I had to get a little used to that as Olympus left out the viewfinder to keep the size small and also to make it appealing to the compact point & shooters looking to upgrade on an advanced camera. There’s an optional viewfinder that comes along with the 17mm f2.8 pancake, but I seldom use it yet even with the pancake attached.
Being an Olympus user, I was confident that I could easily adapt to the menu system. As with any new cameras, I had to get familiar with the controls of E-P1 first. I like the embedded Mode dial on the upper left then on the top right is the power button which has a nice neon glow when powered up. Beside it are the Shutter Release Button and the AE Compensation button. At the back there are a slew more direct buttons which some are customizable. There are also two more control dials here. The Vertical Dial close to the thumb rest is used as the main exposure control like aperture and shutter speed. Then there’s the Rotating Dial just outside the 4-way pad holding the OK button. The Rotating Dial can also control exposure and be customized as well in use aside from navigating the Menus.
Also Olympus introduced a new Menu System similar to compacts when you click OK button. I got confused at first on finding my way around but once I got used to the controls it’s already second nature. Clicking INFO while on the new Menu systems also brings up the Super Control Panel which is a great comfort as well to Olympus DSLR users. Clicking the INFO will make you switch from either the default Compact Menu or the Super Control Panel.
All in all, I find the controls and handling workable once I got familiar with it. While I still have to dig deep into the menu when trying to change like the Noise Filter settings, but it’s not something I do often. I only wish the Rotating Dial on the control pad was a little tighter. I find myself accidentally changing the Exposure Compensation settings a few times. Or is it only this test unit that has loose rotating dial? I have to check.
Getting the Right Focus
When I got the Olympus E-P1, I already braced myself on its whopping snail-pace speed focus as I’ve been reading about a lot. I made sure I updated the Firmware to 1.1 on the body and lenses to get that supposed 30-40% improvement on auto focus speed. Now on initial use from my flight to Manila to our Hotel in Singapore, I find the Autofocus Speed just right and acceptable. I find that that those claiming that the Autofocus is sluggish even after the firmware update is exaggerating. Honestly it’s not a speed demon but neither is it a turtle walk, on a regular use it’s quite snappy.
On the Concerts I shot, both at the F1 Rocks and at a Benefit Concert. I have the 14-42mm kit attached and had to bump up my ISO between 800-1600 with Image Stabilization On. I was on a position neither too far nor close from the stage and use the 14-42mm to zoom in. Remember that the zoom kit is only f3.5 on wide and goes down to f5.6 on zoom so I had to compensate with high ISO.
I found that on the duration of my shoot in the ratio of 10, there are 2-3 attempts where it would hunt and loose focus. Then again, lighting condition changes a lot but the camera best focuses when it can detect some highlights in the scene. On some instances, the eleven-point autofocus doesn’t focus on the areas I want. On those instances, I switch to one point focus and move them around on where I want to focus, much like how I do as well on my E-3 DSLR.
High ISO and Low-Light Image Quality
First-off, with shutter speeds ranging from 1/10th – 1/125th, the large movements in a concert scene and using my camera handheld, I’m not really expecting to get a lot of razor sharp shots here. My aim is to capture the mood and the energy of the concert and while I have a few unfocused shots there is a lot which I find that shows good details and acceptable sharpness.
I’m happy to say that the new TruePic V processing engine Olympus developed does wonders in noise control on high ISOs compared to its former engine. I am basing this on the Out-of-camera JPGs and looking at the RAW files on Olympus Studio. On the E-3, I’m hesitant to use 1600-3200 because they exhibit banding, especially when shooting low lights and night scenes. But with the E-P1, with Noise Filter set at Standard when shooting these concerts the ISO 800-1600 is fairly clean with a nice grainy quality to the noise. There is still some loss on details on the 1600-3200 but banding is non-existent. I know it’s not yet in par with the noise control Nikon does but I think it’s not too far apart.
Shooting Video of the Performances
It is on the E-P1 where Olympus first showed their video capture capabilities on their cameras. The Olympus E-P1 has an HD Video (High Definition capture at 720p) and an SD Video (Standard Capture at 640×480) in 30fps. There’s a built-in Microphone to capture audio at PCM 44.1kHz Stereo. The video output format is on AVI motion jpeg. The camera can record at limits of 2 gig which is about 8min on HD.
Black Eyed Peas Boom Boom Pow Olympus E-P1 HD 720p from Ferdz Decena on Vimeo.
Since I have limited storage I only capture selected performances in different concerts. There are instances when the focus is on the foreground and not on the main subject which is a user error not on the camera. But in my opinion, having tried video recording on other portable devices, I find that the video quality of the E-P1 very good. The colors and sharpness and frame rate is very good. It may look a little grainy and soft on computer playback but I tried it on an HDTV and it looks a lot better.
Beyonce Crazy In Love Olympus E-P1 SD Video from Ferdz Decena on Vimeo.
Audio quality capture is excellent despite having a built-in microphone. I compared my captures to my friends who shot the concert using a FLIP HD and their audio receiver is messy and couldn’t handle the bass feedback well but the Olympus E-P1 did a good job here. I guess they adapted their voice recorder technology here.
I think the one downside on the video capture is the compression file size. The resulting file size takes up a lot of space for only a short time of recording.
Julianne performs Grateful Olympus E-P1 Hd 480p from Ferdz Decena on Vimeo.
A Camera for Shooting Concerts and Events?
As of now, it worked fairly well on stills and does a lot better on video capture. But with the kit I have like the 14-42mm, there’s a lot of compromise and adjustments. I wish I had a Four Thirds adaptor so I could try my other lenses with wider apertures but as of now, I don’t expect great results with this setup. It’s capable yes, but I’m betting with better lenses it could do better.
For full resolution out-of-camera JPGs check our my Olympus E-P1 Sample set at Flickr
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