So far, I like it a lot. The camera has some design choices that make it "not for everyone". But for me, the fun level is like back when I first had my Minolta D7; a camera that is small enough to take and takes great pictures, but has enough professional and quirky features to make it fun.
There is a very nice write up on the camera on Imaging-Resource at:
http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/EP1/EP1A.HTM
that gives all the specs and performance.
As I said, it is a quirky camera, but one that is good enough to replace a digital SLR in a lot of cases with a lot smaller footprint. Just touching on some points...
One of the main differences is... there is no flash! Yup, a camera with no built-in flash. There is a standard flash shoe, and you can buy a flash for $100, but there is no built in flash and some people will not be able to get over that. The high ISO performance is good though, as good as my Canon SLR so far. It starts to break down at ISO 1600, and by ISO 6400 is prety horrible. The fact that 200 and 400 and pretty much 800 look good though carries you through a lot of dim light situations where you would have used a flash.
There is no viewfinder! Not optical or EFV. You have to shoot this holding it out and looking at the rear screen... which is what I mostly do these days even on my small cameras that have an optical viewfinder.
The styling is completely "retro". I happen to like it.
Interchangeable lenses. Unlike the D7, you can change lenses, and they are making adapters for other lens systems including Canon. All the advantages of an SLR but without the size.
The kit zoom lens (giving 28 to 90mm) is a bit big, the lens unit is about the size of the unit on the D7. In fact, the entire camera size is similar to the D7. If you took off the D7 lens hood, chopped the EFV and LCD screen bump out off the back, and chopped about 3/4 inch from the height they would be almost identical. You can get a smaller prime lens that is a lot smaller and allows you to jam it in a pocket. I plan to buy an M42 adapter for it, opens up a whole world.
Manual focus ring. Love it. The LCD is far better than the D7 EFV is. Still wish for more resolution, but it is good enough for focus. The camera has a magnify focus area.
The images are really outstanding, once you get the camera adjusted. I like lower contrast and more color and less sharpening than the default settings. I'm really happy with them, and the larger CCD size really helps.
The range of adjustments and the thought that the designers put into this is just tremendous. You name it, it has it. Remember how we used to make our own tone curves for the D7? You can select tone curves right in this camera, inducing an auto mode. Take the white balance for example, there are far more presets, you can set it manually, you can set the color temperature, and you can set the white balance parameters A and G directly; all the bases are covered. Each of the parameters, from the focus mode, to the white balance, to the noise reduction (2 modes) to the image stabilization has over the top adjustments and multiple ways to get into the menus and multiple menu systems to use. You can tell that the designers really love this camera and put their best into it, I had the same feeling with the D7; they really wanted it to succeed.
The camera has a similar philosophy to the D7 as regards noise reduction. I prefer more noise and less smearing in my images and let me fix it myself later if I want to. The trend lately is towards extreme noise reduction and very steep tone curves to hide the noisy shadows and over-sharpening to compensate for the smeared images. While you can set this camera that way if you want to, you don't have to.
It has hot pixel mapout, thank G*d finally.
It has ultrasonic dust cleaning for the CCD.
I keep coming back to the D7, although I have not used mine in years, the fun that I had with that camera has been unmatched. I feel that this is the first camera that I can maybe see as a "replacement" that gives me the same feeling of having complete control and SLR features in a small package. I'm not an Olympus fanboy, this is my first Olympus in fact.
