Big Mike's Digital Photography Blog

Olympus E-620 vs. Canon G9: shootout!

I previously compared a Canon G9 to an Olympus E-500 DSLR, and the Canon G9 had much greater resolution than the Olympus E-500.

Now that I have a new Olympus E-620 DSLR incorporating Olympus’ latest technology, I was eager to see if Olympus finally made a DSLR that could produce a higher quality image than a Canon G9 point and shoot camera.

The Olympus image was shot at 54mm focal length using the 14-54mm f/2.8-3.5 lens, ISO 200, f/7.1, 1/400 second, and saved in RAW format. The RAW was converted to a DNG file using the Adobe DNG converter, and then opened in Adobe Camera Raw 4.6. I used an unsharp mask to make the image a little sharper.

The Canon image was shot at 22mm focal length, ISO 100, f/5.6, 1/1000 second, and just saved as a JPEG. No unsharp mask is needed because the G9 applies sharpening to the JPEG before saving it—too much sharpening in my opinion.

Canon G9

Olympus E-620

When you compare the images from the two cameras, the E-620 image seems to be exposed an extra 1/3 EV compared to the G9 image. However, based on the camera settings, in which the E-620 has 2/3 higher f/stop, 1 EV higher ISO, and 1 1/3 EV of slower shutter speed, one would expect the E-620 image to be exposed by an extra 1 2/3 EV. There is a 1 1/3 EV discrepancy. In other words, the E-620 is shamefully overrating its ISO compared to the G9. ISO 200 on the E-620 is equivalent to ISO 80 on the G9. Can this really be true?

According to the good folks at DxOMark, the G9’s true measured ISO at ISO 100 is 139. DxOMark hasn’t profiled the E-620, but the E-620 is just the consumer version of the E-30 which DxOMark did test, and DxOMark says that at ISO 200, the true measured ISO of the E-30 is 128. Thus DxOMark does agree with me that the similar E-30 camera is less sensitive at ISO 200 than the G9 at ISO 100. My real world test confirms the DxOMark testing. [HOWEVER, when I did a test at ISO 400, both cameras had the same sensitivity at ISO 400.]

Now let’s compare some 100% crops:

Canon G9

Olympus E-620

Canon G9

Olympus E-620

From looking at the full images you can see that there was slightly more zoom used on the E-620 shot, so on that basis you would expect the E-620 to show slightly more detail. But if you compare the first set of crops, which is from an area near the center of the image, it’s really hard to say if one camera has resolved more detail than the other.

When you compare the second set of crops from an area near the edge of the image, the E-620 beats the G9. The G9 image shows a little bit of chromatic aberration and is slightly softer. But before you proclaim the E-620 the clear winner at the edges, I should point out that on my E-500 camera, this lens showed no CA at the zoom end used to take the above image, but there was quite a bit of CA at the wider end of the lens.

In both sets of crops, the image from the E-620 has more contrast. It’s impossible to determine if that’s the result of bigger pixels, a better lens, the tone curve applied by Adobe Camera Raw, or the fact that the lens on the E-620 had a lens hood.

From a resolution perspective, I call this test even. The 12 MP DSLR resolves the same amount of detail as the 12MP point and shoot camera with a much smaller sensor. The bigger pixels don’t provide a noticeable advantage when it comes to resolution. If there is slightly better image quality from the E-620 (and you need to do some determined pixel peeping to see it), it's probably because the Zuiko 14-54mm lens is slightly better than the lens which comes with the G9.

DYNAMIC RANGE

Because of the bigger pixels, the DSLR is supposed to have greater dynamic range than a point and shoot camera like the G9. Is this the case? Unfortunately, I can’t really see it in the image. You will notice that there are some very dark shadow areas in the lower left side of the image. We can try to bring this up using the Photoshop Shadow/Highlights adjustment for the G9 JPEG, and the Adobe Camera Raw “Fill Light” slider for the E-620 RAW file.

Canon G9

Olympus E-620

It seems to me that the G9 JPEG captured more detail in the shadows compared to the E-620 RAW file which is supposed to have much greater dynamic range. Once again, the bigger pixels of the E-620 were unable to demonstrate an advantage over the smaller pixels of the G9.

My finding of no DR difference is also consistent with the test results at DxOMark. According to DxOMark, at ISO 100 the G9 has a DR of 9.4 EV, and at ISO 200 the Olympus E-30 (which has the same sensor as the E-620) has a DR of 10.07 EV. That’s not a very big difference, and I did expose the E-620 shot by about 1/3 EV higher than the G9 shot. If DxOMark is correct about the Olympus DSLRs having an extra 2/3 EV of DR at these ISO settings, then the extra DR is to be found in the highlights, because I don’t see any extra DR in the shadows.

CONCLUSION

With the E-620, Olympus has finally achieved parity with the Canon G9 point and shoot camera with respect to resolution and overall low-ISO image quality. But there is still no reason to use the E-620 for typical landscape or travel photos taken during daylight hours. The Canon G9 is a lot more convenient to carry around and it has better exposure metering.

Want a second opinion? Read the Canon G10 vs. Hasselblad H2 comparison at Luminous Landscape:

In every case no one could reliably tell the difference between 13X19" prints shot with the $40,000 Hasselblad and Phase One 39 Megapixel back, and the new $500 Canon G10. In the end no one got more than 60% right, and overall the split was about 50 / 50, with no clear differentiator. In other words, no better than chance.

UPDATE

Although I discovered here that the E-620 overrates its ISO, relative to the G9, when the E-620 is at ISO 200 and the G9 at ISO 100, I later experimented with ISO 400 and was surprised to discover that both cameras behave nearly the same at ISO 400 (with respect to creating images with the same apparent exposure). Very strange.

Olympus E-620's secret mirror lockup function

I say that the E-620’s mirror lockup function is a secret because of how difficult it is to find it. I tried to find “mirror lockup” in the index of the (extremely poorly written) instruction manual, but to no avail. Only by searching on the web was I able to discover that the mirror-lockup function is called “ANTI-SHOCK” in the Olympus world. Someone at Olympus thought it was a good idea to change the name from what photographers are used to calling it to some new Olympus-only name. They also thought it was a good idea to spell it out in all capital letters.

Even after you know the correct name, the mirror lockup function continues to be a big secret. In order to turn it on, you have to go into the Custom Menus and change the setting from Off to some time setting (I used the default of two seconds) which is the amount of time between the mirror going up and the shutter triggering. The Custom Menus themselves are sort of a secret, because they also don’t appear unless you enable them.

Once “ANTI-SHOCK” is enabled, you can then access it in the Sequential Shooting menu (which also has the self-timer and remote control options). There’s no reason not to enable “ANTI-SHOCK,” because it’s not always turned on, you just get the option of selecting it in the Sequential Shooting menu. It’s not at all clear to me why, by default, the mirror lockup option is turned off, or why Olympus thinks there’s even a need to turn it off.

Below is a dramatic example of the benefits of mirror lockup. (In case you are wondering, I had IS turned off for both of these photos.)

Without mirror lockup

With mirror lockup

The above examples also demonstrate that a light and inexpensive tripod doesn’t keep your camera perfectly steady when pitted against a slapping mirror.

You should always use mirror lockup when shooting inanimate objects with a tripod, and you should never buy a DSLR without this feature. There are still some entry-level DSLRs on the market which don’t have this feature. Caveat emptor!

Olympus E-620: focus and white balance

Here’s a photo of a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label scotch, taken with the Olympus E-620 camera. The focus is on the label at the bottom of the bottle. The photo was taken with the 50mm f/2.0 lens at f/2.0 and ISO 200.

Compared to the E-500 (see similar photos in my review of the Olympus 50mm f/2.0 lens, the auto white balance is tremendously improved, but the “ESP metering” still underexposes the photo. Yes, I know that there are a lot of white and pale colors in the photo, but “ESP” implies a super-smart automatic exposuring which could figure that out. When I look at the histogram, it’s pretty obvious that the scene is underexposed. Thus the ESP metering on the Olympus E-620 DSLR is not as good as a compact camera like the Canon G9 (see the G9 comparison photo here).

We see, however, the E-620 is able to focus accurately on the label on the bottle. The center autofocus point was pointed at the bottom label, and the AF Sensitivity was set to Small in the Custom Menu. I haven't seen any advice on the web about the benefit of using Small or Normal AF Sensitivity, but I will keep mine set to small so it focuses on what I point the camera at. [UPDATE: I set the AF Sensitivity back to Normal, because with Small sensitivity the camera is more often unable to lock focus, even when outside in bright daylight.]

One thing that stands out in this ISO 200 shot is that there is a surprising amount of noise (the Noise Filter was set to Off) which became even more noticeable after I applied an unsharp mask in Photoshop. In fact, it’s noisier than the Canon G9 at ISO 80. I’m not saying the noise will be noticeable when the picture is reduced to normal print size or web-viewing size, but it’s surprising, nevertheless, in a negative way. Of course, it’s possible that the G9 is applying more noise filtering at the expense of resolution, so very careful pixel peeping will be required to see what’s really going on.

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.

Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 vs. Olympus 50mm f/2.0

In this blog post, I compare the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II to the Olympus Zuiko ED 50mm f/2.0.

But wait, you say. How can I write about the Canon lens if I don’t own it and don’t even own a Canon DSLR? Well luckily for me, both lenses were tested using the same criteria at dpreview.com, so I can use that as a basis for putting my own spin on the difference between these two lenses. Here are the links:

Canon 50mm review
Olympus 50mm review

Also, please refer to my previous blog post where I reviewed the Olympus lens.

PRICE

The Olympus lens sells for $450 while the Canon lens sells for only $110. That’s a huge price difference. Is the Olympus lens worth four times the price? Probably yes as a macro lens, and no as a portrait lens. But we’re just reviewing portrait lenses here.

IMAGE STABILIZATION

A big advantage of the Olympus lens is that it’s image stabilized. This is because all Olympus lenses automatically become image stabilized because Olympus builds image stabilization into the camera bodies. This can make a significant difference when shooting handheld in low light. For example, a shutter speed of 1/40 second is acceptable with respect to subject movement if you are photographing someone who is relatively still, but at this shutter speed you won’t be able to handhold a short telephoto lens without getting a lot of camera shake. But with image stabilization, 1/40 becomes a perfectly handholdable shutter speed.

FOCUSING

I can’t really do any tests because I don’t have a Canon system. Reports from various internet forums is that the Canon 50mm f/1.8 focuses slowly and noisily compared to more modern lenses which have “USM” focusing. But it only costs $110.

Unfortunately, the only Canon APS-C camera with micro focus adjustment is the 50D, so if you buy this for a Canon Rebel, and if for some reason the lens or the camera is out of alignment (in a way that’s correctable with micro focus adjustment), you won’t be able to fix the problem yourself. There's a good chance that Canon won't add this feature to future Rebel cameras because Canon purposely leaves stuff out of the Rebel cameras in order to incentivize people to buy the more expensive xxD cameras.

IMAGE SHARPNESS

When you put a lens designed for 35mm film on an APS-C digital camera, you normally expect to get a lens which doesn’t perform so well. This is because approximately 63% of the imaging circle is being wasted. However, this lens seems to be an exception. On 35mm-sized sensors, the corner softness of this lens is so bad, and affects such a large percentage of the imaging circle, that there is actually an overall improvement when this lens is placed on an APS-C camera because the center of the lens is very sharp.

Based on the dpreview test, wide open this lens gives an acceptable level of performance through most of the central part of the image. In fact, if you cropped the image into a square, the majority of the square would be pretty sharp except for the extreme corners. On the full 3:2 aspect ratio sensor, there is pretty bad corner softness outside the square area, but as long as you keep your main subject within the square, the important part of the image will be sharp enough. If you compose according to the Rule of Thirds, the subject will fall within the square.

In comparison, the Olympus 50mm lens is slightly sharper in the middle when wide open, and the sharpness is maintained through the entire area of the photo including the extreme corners. This is an impressive performance, but it’s not really that important in real life situations where the corner area of the photo will be out of focus anyway because of these lenses’ shallow depth of field when used wide open.

Dpreview also praised the Canon lens for having very little chromatic aberration, which is impressive for a $110 lens. The Olympus also has very little chromatic aberration in the focal plane, but of course that’s what you’d expect for four times the price.

BOKEH

The following image with this lens was taken with the Canon lens at f/1.8:

Source: Elliot Freeman

The main problem with the bokeh is that the circles of light in the out-of-focus areas have slightly hard edges.

The bokeh becomes much worse when the lens is stopped down:

Source: Gwen Harlow

The pentagon shapes are a result of this lens’ cheap 5 blade aperture. You don’t get this problem when the lens is fully open, because the aperture blades are fully retracted from the lens opening. Thus, you are better off using this lens wide open than stopped down a little bit.

A positive point about the Canon lens’ bokeh is that there is hardly any bokeh chromatic aberration, or spherochromatism if you prefer. These are the color fringes which show up on some fast lenses as magenta fringes on high contrast edges in front of the focal plane, and as green fringes on high contrast edges behind the focal plane. Below is a crop from a photo I took with the Olympus lens showing the green fringes:

In case you think this only happens on my camera, here’s a link to a sample photo from the dpreview review of the lens showing purple fringing caused by the spherochromatism in the bokeh: click here.

So my final bokeh conclusion is as follows:

(1) The Olympus lens has much better bokeh when the lenses are stopped down.
(2) Wide open, the Olympus lens has better black and white bokeh, but the Canon lens has better color photo bokeh.
(3) Neither lens has really great bokeh, but the Olympus lens has above average black and white bokeh.

WHICH LENS TO BUY?

If you own an Olympus system, you have to buy the Olympus lens because it doesn’t take Canon lenses. If you own the Canon system, you have a few more choices, but the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 lens is a pretty compelling bargain.

WHICH SYSTEM TO BUY?

The problem with the Olympus system and portrait photography is the lack of fast prime lenses. A Canon DSLR with the Canon 50mm f/1.8 lens is overall a better deal as a portrait camera, given the inexpensiveness of the lens, and the fact that you get a little bit more background blur on the Canon system because the Canon lens is 1/3 of an f-stop faster, and you can get closer to your subject given the slightly wider angle view (50mm is equivalent to an 80mm “full frame” lens on Canons with a 1.6x crop factor, and 100mm on Olympuses with a 2.0x crop factor). It's true that you'll have soft corners using the Canon camera with the 50mm f/1.8 lens, but wide open the corners are usually out of focus anyway so this is usually won't impact the image quality.

Although Canon lacks image stabilization, you do get an entire extra EV of high ISO ability with a Canon camera because Canon image sensors just do a lot better at high ISO, so this makes up for the lack of image stabilization.

If Olympus were to come out with a reasonably priced f/1.4 portrait lens, the advantage would probably go back to Olympus. It’s unlikely that Canon will come out with any new EF-S lenses that will help with portrait photography because, clearly, Canon’s marketing strategy is to make you move up to full frame cameras and “L” lenses so Canon can make a lot more money selling the more expensive equipment. If Canon made its Rebel almost-as-good as a full frame camera with an “L” lens, Canon would lose money! Olympus doesn’t have any other system for you to move up to, so I don’t fully understand why Olympus hasn’t come out with a better selection of fast prime lenses.

Olympus E-500 focuses accurately on test chart

I created a makeshift focus chart in order to try testing my camera’s focusing system again. The following photo is a crop, reduced in size by 50% (along each dimension):

As you can see, focus is pretty much dead-on. Yet clearly, in my original review of the Olympus 50mm f/2.0 lens, the camera front-focused.

My best-guess conclusion is that the lens is in spec, and the Olympus E-500 DSLR focuses well when you point it at black text on a white background, but the autofocus is flaky when pointed at real-world objects like bottles of scotch. I will further guess that maybe the problem is that the center autofocus sensor is much bigger than the label, and is also picking up some of the glass, and the optical properties of the glass are confusing the autofocus.

These tests demonstrate the difficulties of using wide-aperture lenses with autofocus DSLRs.

Olympus E-620 on the way

Placed my order for an Olympus E-620. Ordered it from newegg (no sales tax to NY!). Hopefully it won't suck as bad as the E-500.

Even if I had wanted to buy it in person, no store in NYC has it in stock. What's the deal with that?

Canon G9 vs. Olympus E-500: exposure and white balance

On an internet message board, I was criticized for not fixing the underexposure and white balance of the photo of the bottle of Johnnie Walker used in my review of the 50mm f/2.0 lens, but I did that intentionally to demonstrate the E-500’s lousy light metering. I didn’t write anything about the auto white balance, but yes, it’s also really bad.

So tonight, I set up the same shot, and took the photo with the Canon G9 point and shoot camera.

First, once again, the photo taken with the Olympus E-500:

And below, almost the same scene, with the same incandescent lighting, taken with the Canon G9 set to auto white balance and no exposure compensation:

The Canon G9 clearly metered the shot a lot better. I’d say it’s still a little underexposed, but the G9 wasn’t tricked as much by the white wall. The G9 also handled the white balance a lot better. On the G9, the wall is closer to a neutral color, and I would say it’s veers in the direction of the correct color the way my own eyes perceive it. When I look at that wall, it does seems slightly orangeish to me the way the G9 picked it up, and not at all red the way the E-500 picked it up.

The following photo has nothing to do with white balance or exposure, but it demonstrates the G9's incredible resolution:

Wow, you can read all of the text on the bottle label! The G9 is clearly the camera to use if you want to make really large prints. See my previous comparison in which I demonstrated how much sharper the G9 is compared to the Olympus E-500.

Review of Olympus Zuiko ED 50mm f/2.0 macro lens

Other people have reviewed the Zuiko ED 50mm f/2.0 macro lens with more scientific measuring devices, and they say this is the sharpest lens that Olympus makes. I’m not going to argue with that. I don’t really even know how to test that assertion with my Olympus E-500 DSLR, because as I’ve written before, the Olympus E-500 is not as sharp a camera as a Canon G9 point and shoot.

The reason I bought this lens is to use as a portrait lens. The goal is to obtain a shallow DOF in order to get a pleasing and out-of-focus background. This is the fastest portrait-length lens which Olympus makes, so there isn’t any other choice. Olympus really ought to come out with a f/1.4 lens in a good portrait length, which would be 43mm in order to match the standard 85mm portrait lenses used on full frame cameras. Instead, Olympus just keeps coming out with more zooms covering the same focal lengths.

One of the common complaints about this lens has to do with focusing speed. I find that in decent light, the lens focuses fast enough and I wouldn’t realize that I’m not using one of the several Olympus zoom lenses that I own. However, the focusing is a real train wreck in a dimly lit room if you miss focus, because then the lens takes a long journey throughout the entire focusing spectrum. Even if it doesn't cycle through the whole lens, focusing is still a lot slower indoors, although my camera has this problem with all lenses, so I blame the camera rather than the lens. If you are thinking that this lens will allow your E-500 to see in the dark because of its large aperture, think again. Maybe if you have one of Olympus’ newer pro-level cameras, it will focus better in dim light, but who knows?

Now for some photographic examples.

The first photo is of a building at a distance, shot at f/4.5. The lens performs admirably well in this situation.

Here is a 100% crop of the lower left corner:

Pretty good, I don’t see any chromatic aberrations or obvious corner softness. However, I certainly didn’t buy this lens to take this type of photo, I could have just used the 14-54mm f/2.8-3.5.

Let’s open up the aperture to 2.0 and see what happens:

I focused the camera at the woman’s head.

The background is somewhat out of focus, but not by an extreme amount. Obviously you need a lens with a larger aperture on an Olympus DSLR to get the same shallow depth of field that you would get with a Canon 5D mk II. Unfortunately, Olympus doesn’t make such a lens.

Let’s take some closer looks at this photo:

Notice the red fringing around the tree trunk and the green fringe around the concrete. There is quite a bit of fringing!

Look at all those green fringes around the water in the above crop.

In the photo below, I focused on the tree trunk (and then recomposed):

If the tree trunk were a six foot tall person, that’s about where he would be standing in order for you to get a full length portrait (head to feet) with a little bit of headroom. As you can see, while the background is more out of focus than would be the case if you were using a p&s camera, it’s not quite what you would get from a full frame camera.

The crop above shows more weird green fringing in the bokeh.

In the crop above, we see that the tree leaves in the bokeh turn into little hard-edged circles. That’s generally considered an example of bad bokeh. A lens with good bokeh has a creamy blurriness.

SPHEROCHROMATISM

There is a special term for these color fringes in the bokeh, and it's called spherochromatism. There are green fringes on the distant side of the focal plane, and magenta fringes on the near side of the focal plane. This lens has a really bad case of spherochromatism. Olympus obviously designed this lens to perform really well on test charts (as it's very sharp and there's no chromatic aberration in the focal plane), but has ignored the issue of spherochromatism, which causes really ugly bokeh.

The review at dpreview.com talks about this lens’ “bokeh chromatic aberration at wider apertures.” That’s what the review was talking about, but I completely disagree with the reviewer's take that this problem has a "relatively rarely impact on the normal uses of this lens." I bought the lens to use it wide open to get shallow depth of field, and I think that a lot of people buy this lens for the same purpose.

To be somewhat fair to Olympus, other lenses also have this problem. The dpreview review of the new Pentax 55mm f/1.4 also demonstrates what they call "intense green/magenta bokeh chromatic aberration" at wide apertures.

[At an online forum, a poster complains about the bokeh CA in the Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 lens.]

FOCUS PROBLEMS

Now for the focus test. I set up a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label, and put a piece of standard copier paper with some text on it in front of the bottle. The bottle is approximately 7 and a half feet from the camera. The camera is on a tripod. I pointed the focus point right at the black label in the middle of the bottle. Here’s the full photo:

The photo is underexposed because that’s the crappy light metering on the E-500. White walls always confuse it. I could have set the exposure compensation to +1 EV, but this is a good opportunity to demonstrate an area where the E-500 sucks.

And here’s a crop demonstrating the focus problems:

Looking at the paper, it seems the area of sharpest focus is about 3 inches in front of the bottle.

Bad lens? I’m more inclined to blame the camera, so there’s no point in returning the lens. In fact, I've previously had the impression that my E-500 was front focusing, but it wasn't as big a deal given the wider DOF of my other lenses. The solution is to buy one of the newer Olympus cameras with focus adjustment. Now that they are making cameras with micro focus adjustment, I’d never buy a model that didn’t have it, and this focus test demonstrates why. The work-around for this focus problem is to focus, then move my head forward three inches, and then take the photo. I hope this doesn't make me look like a chicken with a bobbing head.

CONCLUSION

This is an excellent lens for taking pictures of test charts, in fact the best that Olympus makes. But as a real world non-macro lens, it's rather mediocre due to its focusing issues and bad bokeh.

Olympus really needs to come out with a fast lens oriented towards portrait photography. It's hard to believe that after six years of making DSLRs, Olympus still hasn't bothered to make a good portrait lens, even though it has made zillions of zoom lenses. Does Olympus think that people who buy its DSLRs have no interest in portrait photography?

Perhaps Panasonic will come out with a good portrait lens for its new Micro Four Thirds system. Panasonic seems to be avoiding all of the dumb marketing mistakes that Olympus made (and continues to make) with its Four Thirds DSLRs.

And that wraps up my review of the ZD 50mm f/2.0 macro lens. Sorry, no macro shots. If you want lens strictly for macro photography, why not just buy the 35mm f/3.5 for half the price? Although I personally wouldn't bother to buy a lens to do macro photography with my E-500, because the Canon G9 does better macro.

UPDATE

Further focus testing suggests that the lens is fine, but the E-500 has inconsistent autofocus.

UPDATE 2

The lens also focuses accurately on the E-620, using a test chart, no micro-focus adjustment required. But the E-620 still favors front-focusing on real-world three-dimensional targets.

Olympus E-P1 vs. Panasonic G1

I haven’t actually used either camera, but I did look at them at B&H Photo yesterday. As you know, the Olympus E-P1 and the Panasonic G1 are the first two Micro Four Thirds cameras, which use the same size sensors as the full sized Four Thirds cameras, but lack a reflex mirror. The lack of the mirror means smaller and lighter camera and lens designs are possible.

The Panasonic G1 is, unfortunately, a boring looking camera. It could easily be mistaken for a small SLR or a big “super-zoom” P&S camera. There was an Olympus E-520 on display nearby, and the E-520 didn’t really give off the appearance of being a whole lot bigger than the G1.

The Olympus E-P1, on the other hand, is the most beautiful digital camera I’ve ever seen. It has a rangefinder retro look which reminds me of the Contax G2, but it’s a lot smaller and lighter than a Contax G2, and it gives the impression of being a lot smaller than the Panasonic G1.

Are looks alone enough of a reason to buy a camera? Maybe. But the G1 seems like the much more practical and useful of the two cameras. For starters, the G1 comes with an electronic viewfinder which is supposed to be the best EVF ever used in a digital camera, and some people say they like it better than the viewfinders on cheap digital SLRs. The G1 has a higher resolution LCD which moves around—I’ve never had a camera with an LCD which moves around, but there are people who swear by them because they allow you to shoot from a position other than eye level and view what the camera is pointed at without having to put your head and body into an awkward position. Finally, people have been saying great things about the G1’s focusing speed. In contrast, the E-P1 has been criticized for not focusing much faster than a much less expensive small sensor P&S camera. You get all these advantages for about $150 less; the G1 seems to sell for around $650 while the E-P1 costs $800.

The primary advantage the E-P1 has, other than looks and size, is that it has built-in image stabilization. Thus, any lens you stick on an E-P1 will automatically be image stabilized. For example, if you attach a legacy Zuiko Four Thirds lens to the E-P1, it’s image stabilized. If you want to use your Zuiko 50mm F2.0 lens on your G1, then you’d better have a steady hand if you are going to shoot at shutter speeds faster than 1/100 of a second. But if you’re just going to stick to new lenses, then at present there isn’t a whole lot of advantage to the image stabilization. The G1 comes with an image stabilized kit lens, and the only Micro Four Thirds telephoto lens is the image-stabilized Panasonic 45-200mm. The forthcoming 20mm F1.7 lens is wide enough so you wouldn’t gain too much of an advantage if it were image stabilized.

The second benefit of the E-P1 is that reviews seem to indicate it has slightly better high ISO performance compared to the G1. Some early reviews of the G1 said that it wasn’t too good above ISO 1250, but it’s not clear to me if that problem was fixed with firmware upgrades. In any event, even if a camera is theoretically capable of superior low-light performance based on its high ISO capabilities, it still needs to focus. I had this problem with the Canon G9: I was trying to use it to take photos of paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the camera just wouldn’t focus on a painting in a low light situation.

I probably won’t be buying any Micro Four Thirds camera until the 20mm F1.7 lens comes out. And let me explain why I am very excited about this lens. As of now, superior low light performance requires a camera which is big, heavy, and expensive. There is the affordable Sigma 30mm F1.4 lens, but I’ve read horror stories online about focusing problems using that lens. One of the advantages of the G1 is that it uses contrast-detection auto focus which, although slower than phase-detection auto focus, is more reliable because it’s using the actual image sensor to make the focus determination. In traditional SLR systems, everything has to be aligned and manufactured perfectly in order for a lens with a very narrow depth of field to focus accurately.

If the 20mm F1.7 turns out to produce decent image quality when wide open, and if it sells for a reasonable price (I’m hoping that it will sell for the same price as the 45-200mm zoom), I think the G1 or E-P1 with this lens will suddenly be an extremely popular combination and will encourage a lot of serious amateurs and pros to consider buying a Micro Four Thirds as a second camera. For whatever reason, Olympus has decided that the people don’t want fast prime lenses. I hope that Panasonic proves Olympus wrong and sells a lot of 20mm lenses, and that this encourages Panasonic and Olympus to design more fast lenses.