Olympus Evolt E420 10MP Digital SLR Camera ...- User Rating: 
Summary for Olympus Evolt E420 10MP Digital SLR Camera ...- Excellent Camera
Notes on Olympus Evolt E420 10MP Digital SLR Camera ...- I buy two or three cameras a year. I hesitated on this camera because it has no image stabilization. But I recently took it to Europe and got great pictures in churches and museums. I set the ISO to 800 and had very sharp handheld pictures. The size is fantastic...very light and small. The live view works great...although the focus is slow. Focus if very fast in non-live view. To learn all the options, you'd have to spend quite a bit of time. But for most uses, you can learn to use the camera in about 5 minutes. Menus are very deep, so some options are difficult to keep track of. But in most competitors at this price level, those deep menued options don't even exist. Highly recommended.
Olympus Evolt E420 10MP Digital SLR Camera ...- User Rating: 
Summary for Olympus Evolt E420 10MP Digital SLR Camera ...- A lovely camera, surprisingly small!
Notes on Olympus Evolt E420 10MP Digital SLR Camera ...- I've had this camera for a couple of months now and I am nothing short of satisfied with this camera's look, feel, size and quality. For starters, this camera is really small! I always knew that it was touted as the world's smallest, but it really is that tiny! If used along with the pancake lens, this camera can be carried around all day in your jacket/coat pocket and will make an excellent tool for street photography. I also own an E-510 and other than the missing IS, I would say this camera has improved a lot over the E-x10 series.
For starters, the JPEG engine and the new sensor are a noticeable improvement and this shows in the image quality. The camera also has a much better dynamic range and doesn't clip highlights like the E-510, which makes it very easy to use. The auto WB isn't as accurate as the E-510 though and it does have a tendency to make colors a little warmer, but this still looks really nice and isn't really a problem.
Noise is also very well controlled and even at ISO 1600, the noise is very fine grained and not intrusive as such.
In response to the other poster, the AF speed on this camera is plenty fast and extremely accurate and doesn't lack anywhere. The live view with face detection is an excellent feature when clicking group pictures or handing the camera to someone else to take pictures. Contrast-detect AF is slightly slow, but works as intended and is also quite accurate (not as accurate as TTL phase detect AF).
Overall, for the price, this is an excellent package and great value for money. This camera is also the ideal camera if you want something you can carry around everywhere without compromising on image quality. I highly recommend this camera.
Olympus Evolt E420 10MP Digital SLR Camera ...- User Rating: Summary for Olympus Evolt E420 10MP Digital SLR Camera ...- My first SLR
Notes on Olympus Evolt E420 10MP Digital SLR Camera ...- It's my first SLR, and I couldn't be happier with it. I hesitated for a long time because I was worried that I wouldn't take the camera everywhere the way I did with my point and shoot. But it's small, light and just as easy to tote everyplace. The lenses are also much smaller and lighter, but with the same quality shots. And it takes simply beautiful pictures. The price wasn't so high that I had to hock my first born for it either, which was the other barrier holding me back.
Olympus Evolt E420 10MP Digital SLR Camera ...- User Rating: Summary for Olympus Evolt E420 10MP Digital SLR Camera ...- I've fallen in love.
Notes on Olympus Evolt E420 10MP Digital SLR Camera ...- 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.
Olympus Evolt E420 10MP Digital SLR Camera ...- User Rating: Summary for Olympus Evolt E420 10MP Digital SLR Camera ...- I love my E420, but it does have a few issues
Notes on Olympus Evolt E420 10MP Digital SLR Camera ...- 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.
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.
