Olympus Stylus Epic

Such a cool little camera! It's the one I grab whenever I head out the door. My Canon Powershot S60 digi has been sitting, unused, for months. Its image quality can't touch the Epic. True, shooting film is a labor of love, but I really enjoy being able to present shots that don't look like they came from the same digi point n' shoot that everyone and their grandma owns.

I've shot with this camera in all kinds of lighting, with and without flash, and the meter just rocks. The soft fill flash capabilities are nice and have given me very pleasing results on shots that would have been a blown out mess if taken with a digital.

I've read some complaints about the AF system. I haven't had any problems getting the AF to focus on exactly what I want. I know the selling points on the camera state that it can focus on subjects that aren't in the center of the frame, but I want to know exactly where my AF is landing, so I point the crosshairs in the center on my point of focus, lock it in, recompose and shoot. That's how you have to use this camera. It's pretty much fully auto, but you do have to understand how the AF behaves in order to get consistent shots from it. It's not going to know what you want to focus on unless you tell it.

The lens on this camera produces beautiful images full of saturation, contrast and detail. It represents the space around your subjects in a way similar to nice SLR lenses. It's hard to explain but you can see it in the images. They have a certain, very pleasing look. It is tough to get the lens to stop down into the f/8, 11 and 16 range. I'm assuming that might only happen in bright snow or beach conditions with ISO 1600 film. But, for normal shooting, this camera does tend to keep the lens open wide so you can get fast shutter speeds and fewer blurred pictures. The bokeh on the lens is really nice, so I don't mind the shallow DOF.....you just have to know it's going to be there in low to medium lighting conditions and compose accordingly. Shooting fast film in this camera is a good idea for this reason. ISO 400, 800 and 1600 are good places to start.

Get one before they're gone forever.

- Light meter is solid and very smart. How many cameras do you know of that have color meters in them? Handheld color meters are expensive!!! I can't believe they included that technology in this camera.

- Spot metering! Again, I can't believe they put something as cool as spot metering in a point n' shoot. I also can't believe they made activating it such a pain in the butt.

- Lens produces interesting pictures that I think stand out from what is becoming the norm in this digital age of vernacular photography.

- Design and styling is just as sleek as cameras being made today. Like the XA (the camera the Stylus Epic was spawned from) the design of this camera was way ahead of its time when released. Truly timeless lines on this beauty. I fits in your hand so well.

- Weather proof design can take far more moisture than my digi point n' shoot. I just wandered around in the jungles of Puerto Rico for a week with my Epic and the thing didn't miss a shot. In the mist and the rain, shoved in and out of my pocket, the camera rocked.

- Spot metering function is tough to activate in a consistent manner.

- Flash photography with any small camera is tough. The lens and flash are so close together, it's hard to get pleasing results. The Sylus Epic handles the task of mixing flash and ambient light brilliantly and even a blast of full frontal light has a hard time taking away from the images this camera is capable of producing.

- Manual ISO control would have been nice. The auto ISO DX sensor is a geat feature on a fully auto camera like this one, but an override that allows you to adjust the film speed to your liking would have been super cool. I like to shoot my print film one stop overexposed to help keep the shadows from filling in (something especially important when shooting with a contrasty lens) and this is not possible with the Epic unless I want to somehow change the DX barcode on each canister of film I load. So far the meter has really done a great job of keeping the tonality of the images under control, but there are situations where no averaging meter is going to get it right. I guess that's what the spot meter is for, though.

- Olympus stopped making it. A huge weakness!

Nikon L35AF2

Haven't needed to talk to them.

Not as good as an old XA unless you really need the autfocus..a little easier to get perhaps. Exposure programming biased heavily to open aperture, so even with ISO 400 film in low or moderate light DOF is limited. Find an XA in good shape, you'll have more control!

Very good lens (almost as good as an XA!), light weight, spot metering, weather resistant.

Very little exposure control, exposure programming is too shutter-biased, as if you would NEVER use a tripod!

Olympus XA/XA2, Canon Sure Shot Clasic 120, Sure Shot 85, Minolta Freedom Zoom Explorer

Got it from Olympus directly refurbished for under $20! Haven't needed any service since, though.

I have three of these: silver date 10GBP off ebay, silver 'normal' 30GBP new from Dixons and black 'normal' 6GBP off ebay!

These are great when I don't want the bulk of an SLR and associated kit, I normally take two around with me, one with ISO 400 colour print and the other with ISO 400 chromogenic b&w. As mentioned by someone else it will try to maintain a fast shutter speed, using 400 film means the camera is more likely to stop down sooner, giving sharper pictures (b&w enlargements to 10x8 are excellent). Out of interest there's a website somewhere with the program chart for this, it shows that the Olympus will start to stop down sooner than the Yashica T4

The lens is soft wide open but depending on what you're shooting and how big you want to print it doesn't matter too much. I have used TMAX 100 for general night shots where I find a little softness adds to the atmosphere.

Seems to always want to fire the flash, so switch it off when you don't want it, but remember this resets when you close the front. An annoying 'feature' but it's now become routine to switch the flash off when I open the front. The buttons are tiny, but as someone else said it's a tiny camera so they will be...

It's also pretty durable (dropped onto tarmac, just a few scratches) and the rubber gaskets keep out the dust from your pocket as well as the weather!
I.R. focus is accurate (wait for the green light!) and can focus in poor light & on subjects with low contrast.

Of course as it's program only it offers no manual control, but you know that when you buy it. You can always use the spot meter to lock exposure on a suitable midtone if you want (press the flash & timer buttons together to switch to spot.)
The compact Ricoh GR1 series offer exposure comp and aperture priority but cost about ten times as much. Above this you can find the Contax T2/3 and Leica Minilux/CM, but they're even more expensive.
The aperture priority Minox 35 series are something to consider, good lens, but after two cameras and two failures, plus it's clone, the Kiev 35A (R.I.P. - Rest In Pieces) I called it a day, guess they're getting old now.
Don't mention the Lomo LC-A (great lens trapped in an awful body, at least it's value broken is equiv. to a pair of secondhand working mju II/Stylus Epics)

In conclusion: A modern day Trip 35, this camera is ideal for anyone wanting a cheap, tough, easy to use walkabout to cover most situations that won't matter if it breaks or is stolen, but still wants good quality results. The 'program only' even makes a refreshing change from the endless dials, modes and numbers, sometimes it's nice to just point and shoot!

Small, light, tough, cheap and reliable
Spot meter
Weather and dust proof
Fast lens, sharp stopped down
Wide range of shutter speeds 4s - 1/1000s
Wide range of film speeds ISO50-3200 (but in full stops only)

No manual control
Noisy motors
Flash mode resets to auto when you switch the camera off
Tiny buttons (obviously)
Very very hard to open while wearing gloves!

Minox 35 GT, Minox 35 ML, Kiev 35A, Lomo LC-A, Olympus Trip 35, Olympus XA3, Minolta AF-DL, Fujifilm 320ixZ (useless APS)

Not needed

A very nice camera. Many features that i enjoy when i am looking for a camera. I am not such a big photo person though, i wish i was better but this camera is putting me a step forward in having my dreams come true. It has advanced my photography skills and i am glad for that.

This is one amazing camera, tack sharp when it stops down., I really love this camera, but some times its a bit hit and miss, as it too automated. Many film compacts with few exceptions negate there advantages with crappy zoom lenses, so this camera is one so a decent camera with out a zoom lens is a change. Digital SLRs are good but when it come to cameras this size a digital cant come close, and that’s not likely to change any time soon. The reason for this is that the sensors in tiny digital cameras normally measure about 7.2x5.35mm Verses a film compacts full frame 36x24mm. That is a bigger difference than there is between 35mm and 4x5 large format (4x5" has 15x the area of 35mm, 35mm has 22.4x the area of digital compact sensor) That’s the reason why things aren’t likely to change any time soon as getting a large sensor into a tiny camera would be very difficult indeed, and shoving more mega pixels isn’t going to help, I would bet any money that the 4MP Nikon D2H or even the 2.74MP D1H can produce shaper images than any 7MP compact. Olympus seem to have underestimated who would want this camera as it has 200 reviews on phototogaphyreview.com it would seem that it is used by a lot of enthusiasts, so despite what other people have said I am about to criticize it for lack of control. But it still gets a 4 as the image quaility is outstanding! I would definately recomend it to anyone.who wants a high quality camera to carry anywhere with little compramise.

Its quick to work and will focus in almost any light. Sharp. Tiny. No zoom lens means its lens is fast. Spot meeter.

Can’t control it manually, a lot of Modern digital compacts can be controlled manually (like my Fuji F610) This cant. What is even worse is that there does not seem to be any camera this size that does have any manual control, and I doubt that having manual control would have made it much bigger. It’s so automated you can’t even set the ISO manually even if you scratch off the DX coding; it just sets the ISO automatically to 100. I think the reason why Olympus made it so automatic is because they did not realize how popular this would be with enthusiasts, who want manual control. If I want a tiny ultra light camera that I can carry around anywhere and have aperture priority ETC I cant have it least not without breaking the bank, because I don't think any one makes one. The closest I can think of is Olympus's own XA (the origional XA) A slightly longer lens would have been nice as the lens is a prime I think 40 or 45mm would have worked better.

Fuji F610, Olympus XA2