Gadgetory

Olympus's latest update to its mid-range pen line is the EPL 7 an attractive full-featured interchangeable lens model that should appeal to people looking for a more flexible alternative to an advanced compact I'm Lori groanin and this is the olympus pen ep-1 at $700 with a 4/3 sized sensor the EPL 7 competes more with advanced compacts in the same price range than it does with DSLRs and their larger sensors and larger bodies it's relatively small with a nice retro design and some nice features and a lot of control flexibility the most novel aspect of the design is the flip down LCD for selfies and groupies by constructing it to flip down olympus didn't need to sacrifice the available tilting angles like some cameras with the flip up displays have to like the rest of the pen line BPL 7 lakhs of viewfinder plus it still has no built-in flash and instead ships with one that fits into the hot shoe it also has the pen shallow grip which is OK with small light lenses but not up to the heavier glass overall the camera should be easy enough to learn and use for anyone who's used a camera before but there's still the gotcha of the hidden menu that you have to reveal in order to change a lot of the settings its performance is pretty good but it doesn't grab and lock focused fast enough to get quickly moving subjects you know like a squirrel as for photo quality it's good certainly as good as an advanced compact but it's not great like the aps-c based interchangeable lens models you can get decent JPEGs as high as iso 1600 and i did manage to get some usable ones only for viewing scale down at settings as high as ISO 25600 but in pretty dim conditions the tonal range overall is pretty narrow though and has a tendency to blow out highlights a lot more than I'd like and shooting rod doesn't seem to help that the movies aren't as good as I like either and they have lots of edge artifacts and noise at mid-range sensitivities but they really should be fine for people used to cell phone and cheap point-and-shoot quality video with the flexibility of interchangeable lenses cameras an attractive alternative to an advanced compact though the latter does tend to come with much better lenses than the kit lens you get for the money of the EPL 7