It’s hard to write a camera test report without a lab like dpreview.com or writing skills like passionate photographer Robin Wong. But what I can do is to give you some first hand information from the point of view of an E-1, E-300, E-510 (I sold it already) and E-P1 user. First the new E-5 is very solid, as good as E-1 if not better. It’s heavier, larger, but also easy to handle.
All the controls are easy to access, and the control menu is no stranger to users from E-510 and E-P1. The 10 art filters are very useful, especially I don’t like to post-process the photos to get the same effect (but as we all Olympus camera owners know, we don’t need to post-process the photos because the JPEG engine is so good).
However, the major breakthrough is the sharpness of the photos, it’s unreal from a camera with “only” 12 Megapixels. I now truly believe 12 Megapixels is all I need but not 20 Megapixels, really. Here are some test pictures I took yesterday, all with the Zuiko 50mm F/2.0 lens.