My Thoughts on Olympus PEN E-PL6 (Updated with Sample Pictures)

Hello people, today I want to share my thoughts of my lovely little Olympus E-PL6. I bought the E-PL6 a few months ago as a secondary body for my GX7 and the main function of the camera is to have a secondary lens attached at all times to cover the blind spots of the other lens that's being attached to the GX7.

For example, if I have a 12-35mm on the GX7, I would want to have either a 7-14mm on my E-PL or a 75mm f1.8 depending on what I need. If I have the 17mm on the GX7, I want the E-PL6 to wield the 45mm f1.8. If I have a 14-140mm on the GX7, I would want to have either a 7-14mm or the 100-300mm on the E-PL6. You get the idea.

This is my E-PL6 with all of the lens that I usually attach to it.

Let's start with the basic spec

It is small, basically it is only 10cm wide, 6cm high, and 3cm thick. There's not a whole lot of buttons, it doesn't even come with a dedicated ISO and white balance buttons. There is a rotating dial that you can use to change aperture or shutter speed depending on the mode which then can also be used to adjust exposure compensation. The camera has a detachable extension grip that improves the handling a little bit which I always install on the camera. The shutter button feels a bit loose and you have to really concentrate to feel the half shutter position. However, to make things better, you can enable the Super Control Panel from the menu and you can quick access the settings that you need to change without going to the menu.

The E-PL6 with the 75mm f1.8 to cover mid telephoto portrait.

The screen is a bit old-res and outdated for a 2014 camera. It can be tilted 180 degree upward and 45 degree downward, but it can't be flipped. But it is enough for me to chimp on a picture to check for focus and motion blur.

Image quality wise, it has the same sensor as the one in OM-D E-M5, so basically you have the same top notch MFT image quality from the flagship camera. It is sharp and it offers plenty of dynamic range, but it isn't as clean as my GX7 on high ISOs. It has the in body stabilizer like every other Olympus MFTs but it's a bit crippled; I think it only improves your shutter speed for a stop or two stops, so it's not really like the one in the flagship OM-Ds.

The E-PL6 with the Panny 14-42mm II as a general purpose lens

Initially, not that impressive except for the image quality

The E-PL6 itself wasn't intended to be my main camera and I don't need it to have a spectacular level of performance. I didn't have the intention to bring it out on its own when I want to photograph something. For that, I thought I would always bring the GX7 as I trusted it to be the camera that can handle itself nicely.....until few months of using both the cameras together.

Surprisingly, the E-PL6 stood up its ground and it changed my mind

Yes, it doesn't offer the best control for manual settings, it doesn't offer the fastest autofocus(it hunts the focus badly at low light), it doesn't give the cleanest high ISO performance. Heck, even the handling is a bit too fiddly for my hands because it lacks the grip of bigger camera. But after a few times carrying it on a few casual trips and using it by itself without the GX7, it somehow managed to impress me!

The E-PL6 with 17mm f2.8 for ultimate compactness.

First, the small size makes it easier for me to carry it all day as it is smaller than my GX7. For non serious stuffs, I usually attach the 17mm f2.8 pancake to the E-PL6 and slip it to my cargo pocket on my short pants. At this point, I enabled the "Super Control Panel", set the Fn button to ISO button, put the camera on aperture priority, and shoot away. I can now bring this camera anywhere with me and extract good quality images when I need it to.

The camera bonds very well with normal sized or pancake sized prime lenses but it's no slouch when paired with bigger zooms too. The camera wields the 7-14mm wide angle lens very well and it is about the perfect match in terms of size and ease of handling. Even the mighty 75mm f1.8 bonds really well with E-PL6! There are times when I am crazy enough to put the 100-300mm and it can still be handled; but be very careful as now the lens gets heavy, you have to pay attention and hold the lens too with your left hand, otherwise you can hurt your right hand from the unbalanced weight distribution.

With 45mm f1.8 for general portrait.

I have survived many days without the GX7 and using the E-PL6 as my main camera, even for serious photograph needs. The layout of the camera forces you to think simple and be straight forward. It's limiting and frustrating sometimes, but it makes you approach photography with a sense of minimalism.

With 25mm f1.8 for tight walk-around lens.

There was one time when my only kit consisted of only an E-PL6 as my main camera, a 17mm f1.8 and a 45mm f1.8; it was during a travel which means I couldn't access my other gears. I left my GX7 at home, and carry no other lens. Heck, I didn't even carry an extra battery nor an extra SD card for the E-PL6! But to my surprise, it made me think and concentrate before I shoot and I pick my shots carefully. I survived and I was quite happy with the quality of the photos that the E-PL6 spits out to my computer. A healthy restriction can make you experience photography in a better way, I guess.

And that brings us to the conclusion

The E-PL6 is a good camera and it's a bit underrated by the other big guns in MFT world. It handles almost anything quite nicely and you can definitely use it as a main camera when you need it. After a few months using it, I am very confident that the E-PL6 will continue to deliver great results in any circumstance that demands specific photography needs from it. Sure, there are many flaws as I explained above and those flaws may cause you to miss a shot, but for what it can do and for the price, the E-PL6 fits my needs and it is the best bang for the buck camera ever!

With 17mm f1.8 for a wide walk-around lens

As of now, the price of E-PL6 slowly drops as the E-PL7 is already present in the market. Many people will ask if they should buy/upgrade to the E-PL7. My answers: if you already have an E-PL5 or an E-PL6 then don't buy E-PL7. If you own anything older than E-PL5 or if you are looking for a new small camera with interchangeable lens, then you should consider E-PL 5 or E-PL6 if you want cheaper price, but consider E-PL7 if you need the front wheel for better manual control.

With Panny 7-14mm to cover ultra wide shots.

For me personally, I will keep the E-PL6 for a long time until there comes the time when I need to upgrade it to a significantly more enhanced camera with much better IQ.

That's it for now, folks. I hope you enjoyed this post, cheers and God bless you :)

Here's some sample images taken using the Olympus E-PL6:

The E-PL6 wields the Panasonic 7-14mm with no problem. 

The 7-14mm does make it a bit too front heavy for the E-PL6 but not too much.

Again with the Panasonic 7-14mm.

Also with the 7-14mm

This was using Olympus 45mm f1.8

The 45mm f1.8 is the best matching lens for the E-PL6.

With the 7-14mm again.

Taken with Olympus 17mm f1.8. Also one of the best matching lens for E-PL6.

7-14mm again.

7-14mm again.

With the 75mm f1.8.

I think this was 25mm f1.8 if I'm not mistaken.

45mm and E-PL6 is the best!

Again 45mm.

Again 7-14mm

Again 45mm.

Big Result in Small Package: Olympus M. Zuiko 45mm f/1.8

Hello everyone, I want to share a little bit of my experience on Olympus 45mm f1.8 lens that I love so much. I primarily want a light and portable lens that can cover a mild telephoto focal length with large aperture for shallow depth of field and low light performance. This lens is the answer.

I mainly use this lens for portrait that requires a bit of reach. But this lens doesn't only do portraits; it excels on other things such as tight landscape, street photography, architectural photography, close ups, and many other genres of photography. At this focal length, the depth of field produced by the lens is already quite thin for my taste and you can get some serious creamy bokeh from this lens without putting too much effort.

Let's dive in, what's good from this lens?

Technically speaking, the 45mm covers an equivalent of 90mm in full frame term, which is in the range of the sweet spot of many portrait lens such as 85mm, 90mm, and 105mm. On full frame terms, those lenses that I mentioned will definitely be big, heavy, and expensive. The opposite is true in the Micro Four Thirds world; the Olympus 45mm f1.8 is one of the lenses that embodied the "Spirit of MFT" in which the lens is small, very compact, lightweight, and not terribly expensive, but it delivers sharp image quality, punchy contrast, good autofocus performance, and adequate build quality.

This is one of the smaller lenses available for Micro Four Thirds. You can carry this lens inside your jeans pocket or jacket pocket and take it out only when you need it! It's not a pancake or anything like that, but still it is very small and surprisingly can always be carried in your camera bag without taking any space significantly. Combined with a small body like an E-PL6, you will pack a big picture in a small overall package.

Talking about image quality, it is just as sharp as you can get for a lens at this category. At f1.8 it is already sharp, stop it down to f2.0 it is a bit better, stop it down further to f2.8 and it is at its maximum performance. Take it down further to f4.0 and the sharpness improves only slightly from f2.8. I use this lens without hesitation at f2.0 most of the time and I know that I can extract a beautiful picture out of the lens.

I tested the hell out of this lens by shooting all kinds of tree leaves and branches from all sorts of distances and I can't seem to find any chromatic aberration in this lens at all aperture setting. I was not expecting it to be this good! Even the mighty 75mm f1.8 has chromatic aberration and this lens easily put that monster down to shame in the chromatic aberration department.

Autofocus is fast and instantaneous, just like the 75mm f1.8, the 17mm f1.8, 25mm f1.8, Panasonic 12-35mm f2.8, Panasonic 14-140mm, and many others. In fact, there are only 1 lens that has slow autofocus in the Micro Four Thirds department and that is the Panasonic 100-300mm.

Price wise, it's definitely less than US$400.00 which is crazy cheap for a lens that is 90mm in full frame term. You can definitely go to a more pricey option in this category by choosing the 42.5mm f1.2 by Leica Panasonic if you really need f1.2.

A couple of note that you should know...

Though this lens is already classified as a mild telephoto lens, the lens proved to be more flexible compared to a more serious telephoto prime such as the 75mm f1.8. However, please note that this lens doesn't focus as close as the 17mm or the 25mm. In fact, it won't do any good for any kind of macro photography unless you have a specific lens attachment for macro or similar device.

Also please note that this isn't the best lens for headshot although you can do it with this lens and get a good compression(heck, I sometimes even do headshot using the 25mm). I would suggest at least 60mm focal length in MFT for headshot as the compression starts to really help to flatter the image significantly.

Final thoughts

This is one of those "must have" lenses in the MFT world. I personally love this lens and I use it a lot for different purposes and this lens never fails to deliver the best result for a mild telephoto work. If you need a mild telephoto lens for your kit, then look no further.

Here are some of my sample shots

Bokeh is excellent!

Again, the bokeh doesn't show any lemon shapes or hexagons, it's just rounded circular bokeh that we all adore.

See how sharp the lens is!

Again, you can see how the lens managed to produce sharp results

This lens can do wonders in low light situation

This is not the most perfect composition but you get the idea of what the lens can do.

Taken during an indoor low light action show

Street photography? No problem!

Candid photo? No problem!

This is the ideal lens for this kind of portrait

I hope this post will help you to decide whether the 45mm f1.8 is the right lens for you or not. Thanks for reading and God bless you! :)

Dat Sharpness Doe: Olympus 75mm f1.8

I just got a sweet deal on a used Olympus 75mm f1.8 which I've been considering as a serious headshot/portrait lens. The focal length of this lens is quite useful to compress the picture and smash the whole thing to look more interesting and flattering especially when shooting a person's face and thus will help me achieve better portrait result.

When it comes to portrait, the ideal focal length is a mild telephoto focal length between 85mm and 200mm in full frame terms; this prime lens is the equivalent of 150mm full frame which sits right in the ideal focal length range. Coupled with a nerve-wrecking f1.8 aperture, this is ideal to get either low light performance or a super shallow depth of field.

The lens itself isn't lightweight; it is at least as heavy as my old Tamron 17-50mm f2.8 non VC but it is not as large. It is as big as my 14-140mm f3.5-5.6 lens though. For Micro Four Thirds standard, this is big. But for APS-C standard, this is just as big as a standard kit lens.

A warning when using a lens of this focal length: shutter speed matters! You have to get at least 1/200s without stabilization to make your picture sharp. With my E-PL6 in body stabilizer, I can shoot sharp at 1/60s but lower than that is pretty much hit and miss.

What's so special about this lens?

The sharpness is OFF THE CHARTS!!! Shoot wide open, and the picture is already sharp. Stop down to f2.8 and it will reveal the smallest detail possible from a picture. Stop down to f4 for it's maximum possible sharpness but even at f1.8 the sharpness is already crazy enough!

Talking about the bokeh, this lens will give the most bokeh for your money. It has a crazy shallow depth of field due to it's focal length(even in Micro Four Thirds environment) and you should treat this shallow depth of field carefully to your advantage. I find that shooting short range portrait using this lens will require me to stop down to f2.8 to get a person's facial feature sharp from the front of the head at least to the ears. F1.8 is a bit too unwieldy to use when shooting portrait, unless your subject is far away from you.

You can read full detail of the lens on so many different websites who did some lab tests for this lens, but for real world usage this is definitely an ultra sharp lens that you can use at large aperture with ease.

The build quality of this lens is also top notch! It's all metal and the focusing ring is very smooth and just nicely dampened a little bit. It doesn't come with a lens hood and if you care about lens flare or protecting your lens, you should find either the Olympus one or the cheap third party one.

People seemed to love talking about the "color rendering" of this lens so much. I don't get it, I don't find that it produces different looking colors when compared to the other lens shooting more or less the same scene. I don't seem to notice anything about the color anyway but let me assure you that the contrast level is at least top notch! I can notice the contrast level because I used to have a lens that doesn't have a good contrast when I was still shooting Canon.

What do I need to know before I buy this lens?

Be mindful, 150mm is not a general use focal length, you might not going to use this lens frequently for your photography. 150mm is neither long or short; it's definitely not a wildlife lens and it's not short enough to get environmental photo without stepping back very far from the subject. Think carefully before purchasing this baby because the price isn't cheap and you only get one focal length. If you are specifically looking for a portrait or a headshot lens, definitely this is the right one for you. If you are looking to shoot general photography stuff or even street photography, I don't really think this is the right lens. You will be better served with something more flexible such as the Panasonic 35-100mm f2.8, or the Olympus 45mm f1.8, or similar lens.

Also, one thing that bothers me is the amount of chromatic aberration produced by this lens. I don't know if mine is a defective one or if it's simply just the case with every 75mm f1.8. The chromatic aberration doesn't go away even at f4. I have to stop it down to f5.6 for the fringing to completely disappear which is kinda sucks. The good news is that the chromatic aberration is easily removable using Lightroom or similar software.

In summary

Buy this lens if you are doing portrait or low light mild telephoto stuff. Don't buy this lens if you are doing wildlife, it is not long enough. Also for street photography, the 45mm will be easier to wield than this lens unless you are doing specific thing with your photo that requires a longer focal length. If you want a more flexible lens, get the 35-100mm f2.8 or similar lens.

Here are some example of pictures that you can expect to get using this lens:

This was shot at f1.8. Very sharp! See that bokeh?

The compression makes everything look flat and pressed. Good for portrait stuff

See those individual hair? That's the sharpness level that you can expect from this lens.

Very useful at low light to get reasonable mild telephoto street photo.

Get closer to your subject than the 45mm f1.8.

Headshot using this lens gives a very flattering result!

I hope this post helps you to decide whether this lens is the right one for you or not. Thank you and God bless you :)