Olympus E-620, initial impression

I took my new E-620 camera out of the box, put a 14-54mm lens on it, and the first impression I get from playing around with it is that the camera is doo darn small.

Now I’m not generally in favor of cameras being big and heavy, because a small and light camera is easier to carry around. That’s why I don’t understand the aversion to plastic seen in a lot of camera reviews and in internet forums. If they can make a camera lighter by using quality high-tech plastic that does the same job as metal, then I say use the plastic!

That said, after you put the 14-54mm f/2.8-3.5 lens on any camera, it’s no longer such a small and light camera. The E-500 had a decent sized grip which made the camera easy to hold. To make the E-620 small and cute, the big grip was removed and placed by a pathetically small grip, which makes the camera much less comfortable to hold, and probably harder to hold still. The smaller E-620 also holds a smaller battery which means it will run out of power faster.

The smaller size is definitely a step backwards with respect to usability, without having any practical effect on the camera’s portability.

The cute and tiny size, at the sacrifice of the handgrip and larger battery, demonstrates Olympus’ gimmicky marketing-driven approach to selling cameras instead of actually trying to produce better photographic tools. Another gimmick is the useless "art filters." The R&D required to create the art filters could have gone into programming stuff that would be more useful. (There issue isn’t that there aren’t any real photographic improvements since the E-500, but rather that Olympus could have made a better camera for the same price.)

On the positive side, it seems to focus more confidently in my dimly lit apartment compared to the E-500, even when I point the AF sensor at dark shadowy areas.

Comments

[Lennart]

The size is perfect for me. Not too big, not too small. Obviously, it is a personal thing, so to call the work and thought Olympus put into this camera "gimmicky" because you don't like the size is unfair. I use the large, the tiny, and now I've got exactly what I wanted, a small, portable high quality camera I can take with me, whether for my professional or personal photography.