A review of Olympus E620

It has been a week since I upgraded from the Olympus E520 to E620. These are my personal thoughts about the camera, listed in my order of importance, rather than a complete review (like this). The example images (captured by Zuiko 12-60mm) are straight-out from the camera (& resized for Web upload). Use them for your own judgement :)

1. Noise performance

The noise performance is clearly improved over the E520 (as expected for new TruePic3+). It's fine to push the camera to ISO800 now and the photos are quite acceptable even for ISO1600. Note that I hardly use anything more than ISO400 on the E520.

ISO800.
Shaky due to hand held but the colors are still great.

ISO 1600

ISO3200

2. Focus speed and accuracy

Big improvement on my SWD lenses, especially when you try to focus at long focal length. And somehow, I feel that the focus accuracy of E620 is better than E520. IMHO.

3. Image quality

As compared to E520, I think that E620 has more "accurate" White Balance & better dynamic range. The metering tends to "over-expose" a bit, but I guess it's not a big problem.

4. Live View & Image Ratio

E620 allows me to customize the Image Ratio when taking photos using Live View. It does not seem to be an important feature since you can always crop the photo later in post-processing. But in fact, that's the reason I learn to shoot by Live View now. Composition actually changes according to the ratio/the frame that you see (2:3, 4:3 or square 6:6)

5. Art filters

Interesting - but... just for fun :)

Nevertheless, I still like this quote about using camera from Kirk Tuck

Just like a romantic relationship you make excuses for the things you can't change and embrace the things you love.

Happy shooting!

Analox