Ooh, pretty
I rode the fence for a few days on this, probably bugging the crap out of Denise with my back-and-forth. I had almost decided that it wasn’t a good value proposition at MSRP despite my heart really wanting one when I saw on a forum I frequent that somebody was selling one practically brand new but with the optional flash and a 2GB SD card for the same price as I would pay for one new without the flash and SD card. Plus I could expedite shipping for cheaper than I could with the online stores. You had me at “bargain”.
The E-P1 + 17mm f/2.8 “pancake” lens is as beautiful a combo as it looks in pictures. The brushed metal body of the E-P1 is real metal, not a faux finish plastic. The 17mm casing is plastic but it seems sturdy enough and matches the body nicely. I also have the 14-42mm kit lens, but it’s not nearly as exciting.
Top view
Look at how thin that lens is! This combo is definitely jacket-pocket and cargo-pants-pocket pocketable. No digital camera with interchangeable lenses comes close to the pocketability of the E-P1 + pancake lens.
With optional flash
The optional FL-14 flash is equally stylish and a good fit despite some limitations like no high speed sync and no swivel/tilt to bounce the flash off the ceiling. The FL-36 and up take care of those issues, but they’re way too big and bulky for this camera, which to me defeats the purpose of going small in the first place. If I need a huge flash on my camera for the best flash quality I’ll grab my DSLR while I’m at it.
I’ve been playing with the E-P1 for the last few hours and I’ll have some impressions to share in the next few days. For now the short of it is that I’m totally digging it. Functions nicely, limitations haven’t limited me so far, and image quality is very good.