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Who needs a zoom? Focusing to 14 inches is accurate and sharp. You do have to get close to your subjects, though--mind the bees. Film is Ektachrome Elite II 50. |
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As with the original Stylus, the camera snaps on when you slide open the clamshell cover fully. Controls, kept to the bare necessities, take up two buttons on the back of the camera. While small, the buttons can be operated fairly easily with a forthright press of the thumb rather than a delicate poke with a fingernail or ballpoint.
The Epic's exposure-mode button cycles from plain-vanilla all-auto to all-auto with anti-redeye (yes, the 16-burst disco pre-flash of Olympus lore), to flash off, to flash on, to night flash (speeds can drop to 4 sec rather than about 1/60 sec), to night flash with anti-redeye. These modes will stay put while shooting; when shut down, the camera will revert to all-auto but maintain the anti-redeye setting where you left it last. The second button activates the self-timer and the remote-release receptor. Self-timer will cancel after one shot, but you can make as many remote-control shots as you want once you activate the receptor. After sitting idle for 20 minutes, the remote-release receptor will shut off automatically. |
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Wait hold on, there's one more control lurking there. If you press the two control buttons simultaneousy, you get combined spotmeter and central spot AF. It's a real nice touch to have this feature--particularly for noodgy slide and T-Max shooters--but c'mon, Olympus, could you have made access to it any more obscure?
It takes but very light force on the shutter button to lock AF and meter, and shutter release requires just slightly more trip force. You'll take a few more pictures than you wanted in the early going, but we don't consider that a drawback; we prefer the Epic's commendably fast firing to the often excruciating time lag of some other cameras.
The lens, by the way, stays fully retracted right up to the moment of firing; it snaps into firing position just before the shot, then snaps back. The Epic thus remains one of the few point-and-shoots that can be slipped into a shirt pocket while ready to fire. And you'll want to keep it ready to fire. We have, over the years, made no secret of our fundamental prejudice in favor of small single-focal-length point-and-shoots, and the Epic certainly reinforces that bias. It's fast on focus and firing, has no unnecessary fripperies, and has evolved, well-thought-out operation.
The multibeam focusing proved accurate and reliable; particularly impressive were shots at minimum focusing distance on slow (ISO 50) slide film, a combination that produces considerably less depth of field than usual conditions.
Speaking of depth of field, Olympus appears to have used an exposure program that favors wider apertures; with a top shutter speed of 1/1000 sec, the Epic will, with all but the fastest films, go more toward fast shutter speeds than smaller apertures. This makes sense; the overwhelming cause of unsharpness in P/S shots is subject or camera movement, so if you have a camera that favors faster shutter speeds (and can handle the needed focusing precision), a greater percentage of sharp shots should result.
If you try to focus too close, the Epic will lock up the shutter; the focusing default at other distances is infinity. One situation that can be a problem is taking a shot through glass; as the Epic does not have an infinity lock, this isn't really recommended, although we found we could get a focused shot by moving right up to the window.