Photo gallery: Olympus E-P2These days you're penalised more often than not for being the first mover with technology. Not even six months after the retro-inspired Micro Four Thirds camera from Olympus, the E-P1, was announced, we've got another contender nipping at its heels in the guise of the E-P2. Essentially, it's the same camera apart from some minor tweaks underneath the chassis and some additional external accoutrements.
The perennial complaint about the E-P1 was its lack of viewfinder and the E-P2 addresses this by having an electronic viewfinder (EVF), but it's not part of the camera body. Instead, it slots into a dedicated position on the hotshoe with a port that Olympus hinted at as having additional uses in the future (can we hear GPS expandability, anyone?).
Speaking of that EVF, it has 100 per cent coverage of the scene and unlike the optical viewfinder that was provided as an optional extra with the E-P1, there is no parallax error so you see exactly what the final image will be. It's also very high resolution, packing 1.44 million dots inside. We had a brief play with the unit at a media briefing and have to say the viewfinder was lovely and sharp, bright too, with a refresh rate of 60 frames per second.
The viewfinder, which comes with the E-P2 in its kit configuration. There are four (yes count them, four) aspherical lenses inside this thing. (Credit: Olympus)
The E-P2 also features two new art filters, bringing the total to eight — the additions are "Diorama" (or tilt-shift) and "Cross Process", the latter of which, we've been told, produces a similar effect to that when cross-processing E-6 slide film in C-41 chemicals.
Apart from what we've listed here, nothing much else has changed with the E-P2 from its predecessor (unless you count the colour, which now shows off the more serious side to the camera being decked out in black). Some of the complaints consumers and reviewers had with the camera, such as AF speed, haven't been significantly improved either. Olympus told us that the algorithm has been tweaked though, so we'll of course reserve judgement for a final review sample.
Olympus has also strengthened the E-P2's appeal to budding videographers, with full manual control in HD movie recording, as well as an external mic adapter that can be attached via the port to allow a stereo microphone (3.5mm) to be used. Olympus is also trading on its heritage in the voice recording industry with extra expandability using a range microphone that can be attached via cable or through the 3.5mm jack.
Announced at the same time as the E-P2 are two new lenses, an M. Zuiko ED 9-18mm f/4-5.6 and an M.Zuiko ED 14-150mm f/4-5.6, scheduled for release in the first half of 2010. Pricing for the E-P2 in its various kit configurations (body only plus EVF, zoom kit plus EVF) have not been announced yet, but the camera will be available from December.
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