Over the next few days I’ll be using the Olympus PEN EP-2 in more “real world” situations than I have been able to of late, but you do learn a fair amount about how a camera works by carrying it around and photographing the things and the people around you.

One thing that I had already observed, but the EP-2 reinforces it, is that while I wish the 17mm f/2.8 pancake lens had a larger aperture, it is a sharp little lens, with well-controlled (minimal) chromatic aberration.  I’ve been known to borrow this lens and use it on my Lumix G1.  (Panasonic makes a 20mm f/1.7 pancake, but they want $400 US at the time of this post, which I feel is cost-prohibitive at this time.)

So far, the highest ISO I’ve used is 800, which is about as high as I ever put my Lumix G1.  That said, a number of people have been asking about its high ISO performance, and I will endeavor to find out in the coming days.  The camera can allegedly be set up to ISO 6400, but I am skeptical about the quality that could be yielded at such a speed.  Another reason for not going higher is that the camera has built-in image stabilization.  This means that I often have no worries going down to 1/30 sec. for a photograph of a person (as seen above and below), or even longer shutter speeds for pictorial and landscape settings.