List Price: $1,099.99
Sale Price: $444.78
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If you're a camera enthusiast taking pictures of vacations, pets and kids' birthday parties and willing to spend a few extra bucks on your gear, this camera is a marvel. (The video it shoots is so good that several filmmakers have made films with the E-P2 as their only camera). At its tiny size, which is comparable to high-end P&S cameras, you can't beat it. Good image stabilization, decent resolution at 12+ MP, good low-light performance, a growing range of decent interchangeable micro 4/3rds lenses. In general, the image quality is closer to a low-end DSLR than a high-end P&S if you factor in the lenses that the low-end DSLR shooter is going to purchase. The small size spares you a lot of the misery of taking a decent photographic outfit through the gauntlet of modern air travel. If you want to take decent flash pictures, you can get into the rather silly situation of using an on-camera flash unit that's bigger than the camera itself, but even that can be more convenient than dragging around a full-size black-brick SLR setup.
Note on image quality: you clearly cannot expect a camera like this to match the image quality of a high-end professional DSLR with a $3,000 lens attached to it. But you definitely can compare this camera to a low-end DSLR with its bundled el-cheapo kit lens. Given the choice between the E-P2 and the low=end DSLR, I would go for the E-P2 for convenience reasons. If on the other hand you're planning to build up a collection of top-quality lenses, then this camera is not a candidate.
My particular E-P2 tends to over-expose a little, but if you shoot RAW that's not always a bad thing. If you're into tweaking parameters, there's pretty complete manual control over everything in addition to a million geeky bells & whistles like reliable face-detection focus.
In general, I've found myself driving to the airport with this camera in my bag and my much fancier DSLR sitting at home recently, quite a few times. Broad generalizations are dangerous, but my feeling after decades of photography with film and then digital is that this camera or its successor would make a lot of amateur photographers happier than the low-end DSLR they've had their eye on. At this point it may cost a few extra bucks, but it takes great pictures, has a lot of features, and is feather-light and fits anywhere.
Highly recommended for anyone who needs a small, reasonably priced camera that takes excellent pictures and video. In my opinion, greatly preferable to an entry-level DSLR with a bundled kit lens--and worth the few extra bucks.
But this technology changes so fast that reviews like this are worth what you pay for them.
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