First thoughts on the E-P3

I didn't sleep well Sunday night, so I was a bit groggy Monday. But the UPS tracking site said that it was due, so I kept an eye on it. And when I'm tired, my sense of humor is more bizarre than usual. My wife promised to bail me out if I threatened the driver with physical violence for not delivering my camera.

Had I thought this through, I would have probably paid for faster shipping.

I don't have too much to show just yet, because I haven't had enough time to really play with it to take polished shots.

I left the strap and grip in the box. I'm too used to cameras built before somebody invented a grip for the right hand and I got an OP/TECH wrist strap instead of a neck strap.

They aren't kidding about the focusing being rapid. In fact, the entire user experience feels wickedly speedy. The live-view display feels more like a ground glass on a medium format camera than any digital camera I've ever played with.
It really benefits from a real pancake lens. Take the lens off and it isn't especially larger than my G7. But with the lens mounted, even collapsed, it still feels a bit big.
I'm not the best person to talk about low-noise performance, but I do kinda feel like it's kinda nice in low-light situations. I remember ISO 3200 on 3-4 year old dSLRs being far more obnoxiously noisy than ISO 12,800 on the E-P3. It's not something you'd blow up to 11x14 and be super-proud of, but I was surprised at how well the noise-reduction reduces the noise and doesn't smear the heck out of the image.
Most things are where I expect them to be in the UI. There are a few rough spots here and there, but nothing that gets in the way of usability. There are a lot of time-saving features like customizable buttons and mysets and the ability to remove all of the cloying toy features that I still need to investigate. I did figure out how to turn on the Super Control mode, which really streamlines the user interface.

Comments

I still need to verify how it works with my strobist setup and try out the video. Also, I need to work out a RAW workflow. My G7 didn't shoot RAW (one of the few major flaws) and Photoshop has not yet been updated to support the EP-3's RAW format, so I can't start comparing tools.