Olympus E-P2 Compact System Camera (14-42mm lens & VF-2 electronic viewfinder) Black

Product Information

Olympus recommends using a Class 6 SD card or faster to support HD movies; you can see two examples of the HD movie mode below using the 14-42mm f3. i-Enhance is the first entry in the E-P2’s list of Picture Modes, although Natural, the third option, remains the default for the camera when set to PASM. We've provided some Olympus RAW (ORF) samples for you to download (thumbnail images shown below are not 100% representative). The crop on the right is a tiny bit soft, but just about acceptable, which means that in our tests the E-PL2 manages between two and three stops of image stabilization.

Up to and including ISO 400 it's a clean bill of health, with noise creeping into shadow areas at ISO 800 and extending across the entirety of the image at ISO 1600.

With 460 thousand pixels the E-PL2’s 3 inch LCD screen provides a crisp clear image on which to compose and frame subjects.

Like relationships can, this one hit a rocky patch last Christmas with a series of bafflingly Zen UK TV ads (‘camera chow, picture wow', ‘hurty thing' anyone? You’re looking at about approximately 1MB per second of footage in the HD mode, with each clip limited to a maximum file size of 2GB; Olympus estimates this will get you around seven minutes of HD footage or 14 minutes in the VGA mode. This in turn delivers the miniaturisation effect much-loved by owners of exotic tilt / shift lenses.You can see two examples of the HD movie mode below using the 17mm pancake lens; the first clip was handheld and in fully automatic with stabilisation enabled. There's some slight barrel distortion visible when shooting at maximum wideangle on the provided lens, but again this isn't to an unacceptable degree.

Handling wise it still resembles a foreshortened Olympus E-Series DSLR with esoteric yet fun features such as the Art Filter in-camera digital effects, and less esoteric but very useful in-body sensor shift image stabilisation. The E-P2 was a slight reworking of the E-P1, doing little more than adding the ability to use the excellent VF-2 electronic viewfinder, and could still be a slightly slow and awkward camera to actually use. Editor's note: Olympus must have been listening, as they launched the cheaper E-PL1 complete with built-in flash yesterday! Both the E-P2 and E-P1 share exactly the same controls, so for full details, see our Olympus E-P1 review. Gripped in the palm, the immediate impression is that, in its black incarnation, the E-P2 looks closer to the more conventionally styled and modernistic GF1 from Panasonic - also available in black.lens and the built-in stabilisation of the Olympus bodies make them the ultimate low-light combination in the Micro Four Thirds world.

Locating this help in the iAuto mode is a smart move as it makes the E-PL2 a more attractive and less intimidating prospect for novices upgrading from compacts, but keeps it out of the way of advanced users more likely to be using the PASM modes. To put that into context, Canon’s high end PowerShot G12 compact weighs 401g, albeit featuring a built-in 5x zoom. The Olympus E-P2 is the second Micro Four Thirds camera from Olympus, following last Summer's launch of the popular E-P1 model.

Like that model, the E-P2 is equipped with a decent-sized screen at 3in, but one with a disappointingly average 230k resolution. This is just a small subset of the information that’s available, the manual shows that there are no fewer than 34 info icons available, though obviously not all are displayed at one.