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Olympus Evolt E420 10MP Digital SLR Camera (Body Only)
From Olympus
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Average customer review:

Customer Reviews

I’ve fallen in love.
I have fallen in love with the Olympus E-420 and the two prime lenses, the 25mm pancake and the 50mm f2.0. After many years of photography, going all the way back to the sixties, my nostalgia for certain elements of the old ways has been satisfied by this camera. The compact size, the light weight, the prime lenses, the high quality and the ability to shoot with the feeling that the camera and I are one — all are quite wonderful.
The pancake lens is so comfortable and convenient, I am quite willing to overcome its lack of perfection — it’s more than good enough. And the 50mm is for me the sharpest lens, with some of the most beautiful images that I have had in many yearsOlympus Evolt E420 10MP Digital SLR Camera with 25mm f/2.8 Pancake Zuiko Lens.
And, peculiarly, I am thrilled that this camera focuses so dependably. I’ve used lots of Nikons and Canons. In recent years, I’ve suffered a lot from erratic focusing, mostly with the Canon DSLRs. The confidence I feel with the e-420 makes shooting a real pleasure.

I love my E420, but it does have a few issues
I purchased this camera in hopes of replacing my point and shoot. In the past, I have just missed too many shots because my point and shoot was too slow, or because it focused on the wrong object, or just had the wrong exposure. So I was looking for small DSLR, and when this camera came out with the pancake lens, I wanted to give it a try. My personal experience has been with a few different kinds of cameras, Canon A2, Yashica T4, Canon S100, Canon Digital Rebel, and a Minolta G500. I rated this camera as a single unit consisting of the body and the 25mm f/2.8 pancake lens. My tests have taken about 3 weeks and include two family vacations.

Quality of the images (not including user error): 5/5
Ease of Use: 4/5
Feel: 5/5
Live View mode: 2/5
Advanced modes, Manual Mode, and manual focus: 3/5
Fun: 5/5
Ease of use for handing to others: 5/5
Speed of use (not including Live View): 5/5
Overall: 4/5

Strengths:
First off, the camera feels great. Even though it is small, it feels solid, it has a nice smooth shutter with a pleasing sound. The camera feels good in my hands. It feels better than my Digital Rebel. I have had two instances in which someone else dropped the camera from a height of 3 feet, and it has been fine. I have carried it in all kinds of bags with other gear and it appears to be very sturdy.
The quality of the images I get is very good. In day light or normal indoor light, I get great images. The only limit on the quality is the skill of the photographer. I took a number of shots in low light (campfires and candle light), and those pictures look OK but not great. In those conditions I got pictures better than my point and shoot cameras, but not as good as I get with my Digital Rebel with an f/1.4 lens. I am not a professional photographer, so my standards may not be all that high, but I love the pictures I get.
The biggest pleasant surprise of this camera was the Info display. There is an “Info” button that bring us a display showing all of the important settings. And the special part is that you can easily navigate to any setting and change it directly from that mode. I really love this. It makes it very easy to change the metering mode, and to check if I left the camera in any strange mode (IS0 1600, or manual focus mode).
I have also given the camera to my wife and daughters to use. They were able to use it without any problems.
I thought the Auto ISO selection works quite well. It only boosts the ISO when required.
Finally, I find this camera to be lots of fun. I usually find any new camera to be fun, but this one has really captured my imagination. I felt the same way about the Digital Rebel when I first purchased it. I find myself taking it many places and getting lots of good pictures.

Weaknesses and issues:
My main complaint is that the camera is not small enough to replace my point and shoot. This is not a defect, just a realization on my part that the worlds smallest DSLR is not small enough. My next issue is that some pictures do not have the subject in proper focus. This camera makes fewer autofocus mistakes than a point and shoot, but my Digital Rebel does better. I suspect this is a function of the 3 focus points, but I don’t know for sure.
I tried to focus the camera manually, but I was not able to reliably get the subject in focus. I am not great at focusing manually, but this camera did not make it easy.
The E420 does have a live view mode, that allows you to compose the picture using the LCD. I was eager to try this, and I found it very disappointing. After pressing the shutter, the camera moves the lens through a wide range of focus points before taking the picture. So the time it takes to the capture the picture is way too long. Sadly, this really defeats my interest in live view. I was able to improve the shot time by changing the auto focus mode, but it’s still not fast.
Finally, I have some smaller gripes. None of these is a terrible problem, but they did annoy me. First, Olympus includes an eye piece cover, and they sized it such that it fits into the hot shoe. Sadly, it fails out too easily, and I have almost lost it several times.
I like to capture images in RAW mode, but neither iPhoto nor Aperture can read the RAW images from this camera.
Face detection seems like a good idea, but it is slow enough that I do not use it.
After using the camera to take pictures of the stars at night, I mistakenly left the focus mode in manual, and the ISO set to 1600. Sadly, neither of those settings are visible in the view finder so I took quit a few shots that had out of focus subjects and a grainy appearance.
The lens cap must be screwed off. I would prefer one that was removed by a pinch.
Finally, there is one really odd item. The focus ring on the camera is not physically attached to the lens elements. This means that moving the ring does nothing if you are in the fully automatic modes, and it means that you do not get any physical feedback when you have reached the end of the focus range. While this is not a terrible problem, it really seemed weird to me.

Wonderful ‘pocketable’ dSLR
I have used nearly every OLYMPUS dSLR (exception being the E-300 & E-400). I use the Olympus E-3 for my paid work and find it a superb camera. But like many of you, I want a camera with SLR quality to carry around minus the weight of my workhorse E-3. Enter the E-420, an absolute jewel of a camera whose IQ is top notch especially when compared to its market segment (Canon Rebels, Nikon D40/D60/D80, Pentax K200D, etc.). The gradation is fantastic, rivaling even my E-3. And coupling this, the world’s smallest dSLR body with the new Pancake lens (25mm f/2.8, equivalant to 50mm in Full Frame) and you have a near ‘pocketable’ (depends on the size of the pocket) dSLR capable of taking phenomenal photos. Now, is it a world beater? No. But it isn’t meant to be. It is meant for folks who want SMALL, but for whom Image Quality MATTERS. And here, it scores a perfect 10 (or 5 STARS in this case). As to the negative comment about focus points (you want 51 focus points, go spend 5K on the Nikon D3… truly a great camera, but marketed to a different segment of shutterbugs). And I have no idea what the reviewer was talking about poor performance in low light (this is much more of a lens issue on any camera), all I can say is NONSENSE. It does fine. No better and certainly no worse than any of the other 20+ dSLRs I’ve shot with. In fact, I used it as a 2nd camera during a 50th wedding anniversary party I was hired to shoot. Used it Indoors. It did great. I got great photos and the client doesn’t know what came out of the E-3 or the E-420. The images are that good. So if you want ‘pocketable’, but you do want to compromise on Image Quality, then go ahead and pick this baby up. The likelihood of Buyer’s Remorse is far smaller than this camera. After that, You just do one thing more. …Enjoy.