Olympus E-PL1 Performance

The Olympus E-PL1 is somewhat slower than average compared to consumer SLRs and many point & shoot cameras.

Startup and shut-down times are slower than those for most SLRs. The long startup time is likely due to the SSWF cleaning that takes place on power-up. Unfortunately, there is no way to shut that off with firmware V1.0. (We'd prefer to have control over when sensor cleaning takes place, or at least have the camera abort cleaning when the shutter release is pressed.)

Mode switching is also slow, especially Record to Play. Displaying recorded JPEGs is pretty fast though.

The Olympus E-PL1 showed full-autofocus shutter lag (with the subject at a fixed distance) that ranged from 0.950 second at wide angle to 0.886 second at full telephoto when using the 14-42mm L kit lens in Single-area AF mode. This is similar to the E-P2 which ranged from 0.956s to 0.909s , but still slower than most digicams and much slower than SLRs. We also tested AF lag on the E-PL1 with a couple of other M.Zuiko lenses, as the lens can make a big difference in contrast-detect AF speeds. With the 17mm f/2.8 pancake lens, full AF lag improved slightly to 0.858 second, but that's still pretty slow. The good news is that the new 9-18mm lens is much faster than the kit lens, with a full AF lag time of 0.546 second at 18mm. (That lens is too wide for our AF lag test setup at 9mm.) While still slower than most SLRs, the new lens really made quite an improvement in AF speed, making the camera feel much more responsive.

Shutter lag was much better in continuous mode AF, at about 0.293 second, though your subject may not be in focus in this mode. (Release Priority is on by default in this mode.) When manually focused, the E-PL1's lag time drops to 0.202 second, still a bit on the slow side, but fast enough that it won't likely cause you to miss any shots. Oddly, Manual focus lag also varied a lot more that autofocus lag (15% versus 4%). The E-PL1's prefocused lag time of 0.070s is quite fast though, besting some SLRs in its general price range. That's partially because there is no mirror to move out of the way first.

Although full AF shutter lag with the kit lens has improved slightly over the E-P2, it's still one of the weakest points of the Olympus E-PL1 value proposition. However, the new 9-18mm f/4-5.6 lens, which has been optimized for high-speed contrast-AF, focuses much faster. Focus speeds with that lens are only slightly slower than the Panasonic GF1, which managed 0.402 to 0.473 second with its kit lens. That bodes well for future M.Zuiko lenses. Despite the sluggish AF speed with the kit lens, if you can prefocus by half-pressing and holding down the shutter button prior to the shot itself, you'll have no problem capturing critical moments. That's not possible with every subject, but for those that it does work with, the E-PL1 will respond quickly enough.

April 15 Update: We did all of our intial testing with firmware 1.0, however Olympus has just announced firmware updates which the company claims improves AF speed on all PEN series cameras. We were able to rerun some of our E-PL1 AF lag tests with the new beta firmware, so that we could compare the performance to the initial 1.0 firmware. The new results have been added to the table above. As you can see, the new firmware resulted in an 11-14% increase in speed over firmware 1.0 in our tests. That's not a huge difference, but it is always good to speed things up. The new firmware is expected to be available April 22. You can read more about it here.

To minimize the effect of different lens' focusing speed, we test AF-active shutter lag with the lens already set to the correct focal distance. We also use the same Sigma 70mm f/2.8 macro with every camera (on all platforms except Four Thirds/Micro Four Thirds and Nikon consumer models lacking an in-body focus motor), to further reduce variation, and because our tests showed that focus-determination time with this lens was close to the fastest, across multiple camera bodies from different manufacturers. Being an older design with a non-ultrasonic motor, it wouldn't be the fastest at slewing from one focus setting to another, but that's exactly the reason we measure focus determination speed, which is primarily a function of the camera body, vs focus adjustment speed, which is primarily a function of the lens.

Single-shot cycle times are a bit slow, at 1.60 seconds for any quality, however this is an improvement compared to the E-P2's approximately 2 seconds. Continuous mode was similar to the E-P2, at about 3 frames per second no matter what image size or quality before the buffer filled. Buffer depth was also quite good for its class, at 15 frames for large/superfine JPEGs, 10 for RAW and 9 for RAW + large/superfine JPEG, again, about the same as the E-P2. Note that our test target for this was designed to be difficult to compress, so JPEG burst lengths may be longer with simpler subjects. (Particularly in the case of buffer depths, we're careful to test under worst-case conditions.) Flash recycle time isn't bad, but not surprising considering how weak the flash is.

Download speeds were fast, quick enough that you probably won't feel the need for a separate card reader, even with large memory cards. (Note that this test was performed with a SanDisk Extreme III 30 MB/sec SD card: Slower cards would likely show slower transfer times.)

Bottom line, just like the E-P1 and E-P2, the Olympus E-PL1 is a bit of a mixed bag when it comes to performance.  Despite a small improvements over the E-P1 and E-P2, startup time and full autofocus with the kit lens is quite slow, though prefocused shutter lag is very good. Burst speed remains about average, and buffer size is pretty good. If you prefocus, you can capture some action shots, but the E-PL1 is best suited for relatively static subjects.

Battery
Below average battery life, but not atypical of SLR-style cameras operating in Live View mode.

The Olympus E-PL1 uses a custom rechargeable lithium-ion battery pack for power, and comes with both a single battery and charger. The rated 290 shots per charge is a bit lower than the E-P2's 300 shots, and below the capacity of most SLRs and Point & Shoots. But this relatively short battery life isn't atypical of SLR-style cameras being used in Live View mode: Live View operation burns a fair bit of power. We do recommend getting a second battery for your E-PL1 if you plan any extended outings.

The table above shows the number of shots the camera is capable of (on a fully-charged rechargeable battery), based on CIPA battery-life and/or manufacturer standard test conditions.

(Interested readers can find an English translation of the CIPA DC-002 standards document here. (180K PDF document))

Storage
The Olympus E-PL1 accepts SD/SDHC memory cards, and does not ship with a card.

We strongly recommend buying a large capacity SD/SDHC memory card at least a 2GB card, preferably a 4 or 8GB one, to give yourself extra space for extended outings, or when shooting RAW or video files. -- If you're going to shoot much video, you'll definitely want a large, fast card; look for a card with "class 6" speed or better. (Check the shopping link above, memory cards are really cheap these days, so no reason to skimp.)