Olympus E-620

The E-620 is a feature rich yet compact DSLR, nearer Olympus' pro-sumer E30 than similar sibling, the E-520.

The E-620 is the latest addition to Olympus’ E-series of D-SLRs and sits above the bulkier E-520 and below the E-30, with which it shares many features, including the 12.3MP Live-MOS sensor.

Olympus' claim that this is the "smallest DSLR on the market with built-in image stabilisation and a portable creative studio (as of February 2009)" grabs at a “selling” headline but it’s hard to put your finger on exactly which market this camera caters to. The E-520 (and the smaller E-420) will remain on sale alongside the new model with the E-620 offering similar specification to the E-30 but build and styling akin to the E-520.

The E-620 offers some of the features of the E-30, including the fun-to-use Art Filters that effectively allow you to apply image editing software style effects to images, more on which later. There's a fully customisable – though complex to use – 7-point AF system that can be tailored to specific lenses and the way they behave. The AF set up is not straightforward but is a powerful tool for fine focus control and for use with specific optics and how you want them to behave, increasing AF sensitivity for example.

The E-620's 7-zone AF includes five, central, cross-type AF sensors – they're sensitive in both the vertical and horizontal planes – greatly improving AF accuracy for complex or cluttered scenes and lower contrast subjects. In low light, however, the AF struggles a bit particularly as the AF assist lamp, as with other E-series models, built into the pop up flash unit and can struggle to get bite quickly enough.

Other key kit includes a respectable maximum shutter speed range of 1/4000th sec (the E-30’s top speed (with which this camera shares many features) is 1/8000th sec) with a reduced top flash sync speed of 1/180th sec over the E-30's 1/250th sec flash sync.

In terms of controls, the camera has a single control dial is well placed for your right thumb, and although on first assessment, the camera’s overall control layout might look a tad complicated, the apparent complexity is mitigated somewhat by Olympus' Super Control Panel (SCP). Here the 2.7-inch HyperCrystal III (Live View enabled) screen can be used as a direct control point for most of the major camera settings.

The excellent SCP system allows a single push of the camera's OK button to access almost any key camera adjustment, from white balance and ISO to metering modes and image size and quality. Almost everything that would normally require time spent delving into menus is available direct from the back of the camera.

Other buttons provide one push access to kit such as focus point selection (and tuning), the superb built-in image stabilisation (IS) or "Supersonic Wave Drive IS" in four flavours: off, IS 1, IS 2 and IS 3 providing horizontal, vertical and both horizontal and vertical stabilisation, respectively. You get around three to four stops of advantage, at a push. The IS system can be tuned for specific lens focal lengths (and for each IS 1, 2 or 3 mode) with a quick press of the exposure compensation button. The in-body IS also means you get what is recognised as the best dust reduction system available to a DSLR to date.

Other features include the new, Olympus TruePix III+ image processor, which helps provide excellent colour and detail in the shots, provides fast processing of up to 4fps (for five RAW shots) at top speed, and shading compensation. TruePix III+ also deals very well with noise, often an issue for earlier E-series models at higher sensitivities.

Detail is well conserved providing a more natural film grain “look” to the shots but with a much improved noise reduction performance overall. However, highlights in JPEG images loose detail too quickly, though you can claw this back from the RAWs.

A big plus for the E-620 is its Free-angle screen, an articulated, multi-angle LCD that can flip around, out and forward as well as be spun, “closed” for protection. The LiveMOS sensor, almost certainly the same technology found in the E-30, provides excellent Live View, the Free-angle LCD means hard to compose scenes become much easier to handle. Live View focusing is sometimes problematic since the AF actually takes place after the shutter buttons pressed, so you cannot lock focus and recompose for example.

Another slight worry is the subtly blurred viewfinder, no matter what I did with the dioptre control; I could not get a satisfyingly sharp view. However, it is an otherwise improved viewfinder over the E-520, the info display has been moved and runs across the bottom, it’s brighter and has a larger screen area. You get a 95% field of view (100% in Live View) with better magnification of 0.96x (the E-520 had a 0.92x magnification).

Wireless flash control is built-in – with compatible flash units such as the Olympus FL-36R – in up to three groups, flash creativity and flexibility is excellent and like the E-30, the E-620 has Olympus’ new creative Art Filters. These provide specific image settings, Grainy Film, Light Tone, Pin Hole Camera and Pop Art for example. While these produce images that are processed JPEG files, because you can shoot JPEG and RAW simultaneously, you get an unprocessed version of the image as well, in case the Filter effect is not to your liking. Art Filters are fun to use and provide a fast way to experiment with different image “looks” without needing to play with a photo-editing program on PC.

My favourite filter is Grainy Film, which can provide some interesting results. The Pop Art filter is good too but the Pin Hole effect I found too subtle for my tastes, but that’s the point surely? This is a camera about creative options and it has plenty on hand that’s for sure.

The E-620, although apparently complex in both features and controls, both are consistent with other models in the E-series, despite apparent complexity you can quickly get to grips with the E-620, particularly with kit such as Live View and playback quickly activated from direct buttons, backed up by the Super Control Panel and direct access for metering, ISO, AF and white balance.

A “Fn” (function) button, can help too as it can be assigned controls such as depth of field preview, Live Preview, One Touch white balance, Face AF activation, for example, or you can press and hold the Fn button to access any previously stored My Mode settings. My Modes provide a fast way to set and save preferred camera settings enabling fast switching between preferred or optimum settings for a specific subject type, such as portraits.

The large top plate mode dial is the entry for main creative modes: P, A, S and Manual modes as well as the automated scene modes such as macro and landscape modes. The Art Filters and Auto modes are found here, it’s a shame the dial does not continuously rotate, I often turned the dial the wrong way and had to turn back again, however this is a minor frustration that greater familiarity with the machine will overcome.

Build is very good thanks to glass fibre reinforced plastic bodywork; the camera feels rigid and strong, though it lacks the environmental seals that feature on the E-3, but at this price, something had to give. Some features I’m very impressed with include the 49-zone metering system, which includes the shadow and highlight optimised spot meter settings, which give a massive amount of control over any subject and how you meter it.

The variety of aspect ratios you can shoot impress too, there’s “normal” 4:3 ratio as well as 6:6, 16:9 and 3:2 ratios to tinker with. JPEG images are cropped accordingly for each of these but RAWS remain untouched but the top resolution (4032x3024-pixels) is only available in the 4:3 ratio.

Ratio changes are only visible when in Live View mode however; the pentamirror viewfinder is not cropped, which is slightly disappointing but perhaps not a surprise at this level.

The first thing to say about image quality is the focusing and metering are very good, the level of controllability and neat handling means, on both fronts, it allows you to quickly get to grips with most scenes. A slight metering grumble is in evaluative metering, it tended to be conservative, underexposing slightly around half a stop. Unsurprisingly, given the E-620’s features, each metering option (spot, evaluative, etc.,) can be “shifted” to compensate, so even that’s covered within menus. Switch to centre-weighted metering and it provided a better balance for most subjects (at the default setting).

Focusing can be coupled to a manual focus override to manually focus alongside the AF via an electronic linkage so it only works with the camera turned on so despite the Live View AF issues mentioned earlier, overall AF control is excellent particularly with that manual focus back up.

White balance control is good, especially under mixed lighting and because there’s a one-touch manual control (via the Fn button) fine tuning WB is fast and easy with WB bracketing held in reserve as well. Sensitivity settings range from ISO100 to 3200 with an auto mode and while image noise is well controlled, the bias seemingly on detail rather than total noise reduction, noise becomes noticeable above ISO 1250, but is well controlled up to that point.

The noise reduction setting, at the default level, works well particularly compared to the E-520 and while ISO 3200 does offer up noise challenges it has that film grain-ish quality, so arguable less intrusive and certainly my preference to having to much detail smoother away by over processing.

Images are very slightly soft at the default setting but, of course, sharpness and contrast and saturation are all adjustable within the camera, so you can tailor the lot to a preferred setting. Overall then, the E-620 is an accomplished and very advanced piece of kit at a very nice price. It will sit well either in the hand of a novice snapper or more enthusiast user. Its svelte lines make it a great choice for those traveling and not wanting a bulky DSLR body and yet that same smallness does not mean compromises in terms of the feature set and creative potential.

Final Verdict This much spec, for this price, what more could you ask for at this level? A cracking little camera. OVERALL

Doug Harman has over 19 year's experience as a journalist, writer, photographer, and digital camera and technology tester. He has written extensively for a multitude of digital photography magazines and websites, and he's also the author of two books.