One thing that occurred to me while I was at Thomson Medical Center the other week waiting for Hannah to pop was how much easier it was to take pictures on the move while balancing the HD digicam using the small Panasonic LZ8 compact camera I bought last year for Ling. The D300 takes amazing pictures, but pulling it out in to take pictures on the move and in an enclosed space seems to scare people who’re not not photographer enthusiasts themselves LOL.
That’s why I still keep a loose eye on new compact cameras that come out so often from the major camera equipment manufacturers. Much of the compact cams that comes out are all shades of about the same color: same feature set, ever-increasing pixel counts, still horrendous noise handling. Basically, not satisfactory.
There are a few exceptions to the rule though: like the Panasonic LX3, Canon G10 and Nikon P6000 – all of which are feature-rich and can shoot in RAW which lets one more effectively deal to some degree noise from low-light photography. All of them still use small sensors though. And there’s the Sigma DP2 which uses a larger sensor but is very expensive.
So I was pleasantly surprised to find out that Olympus has just announced its own compact with a larger sensor, and interchangeable lenses to boot too. The E-P1 ‘Digital Pen’ has just launched, and looks to offer many of the advantages of DSLRs but yet retain its compact size. The thing uses the Micro Four Thirds standard, shoots in RAW and HD movies, and uses discreet lenses – nice!
The E-P1 is not cheap though: it’s getting for a very expensive USD800 with a 14-42mm lens. Street pricing will be lower, but I’m not optimistic by too much. For that kind of money, you could easily just buy a full fledged DSLR.
Still, the camera’s a revolution, and I’ll be keenly waiting to see what Canon and Nikon comes out with to match this.:)
Lengthy initial review from Imaging Resource here.
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