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Photos:
Olympus E-PL2

For its E-PL2, Olympus makes some design and feature enhancements, as well as performance tweaks, to its PEN E-PL1 Micro Four Thirds camera. The result is a noticeably better camera, delivering better photo quality and an improved shooting experience than its predecessor. The most obvious functional differences to this consumer-focused interchangeable-lens camera (ILC) include a larger LCD, multiple variations for some of the Art Filters, support for the new accessory connector and redesign of the buttons. It also supports an extra stop of sensitivity, up to ISO 6400.

While ISO 6400 may be mostly unusable–typical of most consumer cameras, the top ISO sensitivity is more of a marketing feature than a real tool–the E-PL2 has a very nice noise profile. It’s not quite as good as the Sony Alpha NEX-5, but that seems to be because the lower-resolution images lose sharpness more quickly rather than higher noise incidence. You can shoot pretty comfortably up through ISO 800; at ISO 1600 things start to soften and detail starts to degrade; color artifacts become readily apparent at ISO 3200. Nor does it clip the shadows as much as a lot of other cameras at higher ISO sensitivities.

Olympus E-PL2 photo samples

Overall, the E-PL2 delivers very nice photo quality, in cases noticeably better than the E-PL1. Olympus seems to have tweaked its default noise reduction parameters: you lose a little sharpness, but the results look more natural. As long as you don’t have small details in the image, photos shot even at ISO 3200 can be quite usable. The color rendition remains excellent–what little color I could find in the February NYC landscape–and it seems as if the metering has been improved to produce slightly brighter exposures under similar lighting conditions.

The video quality remains satisfactory, but not great; there are a decent set of manual controls for shooting movies, as well as Art Filter support, but there’s considerable rolling shutter wobble in all but stationary scenes. The kit comes bundled with a new version of the 14-42mm lens, dubbed MSC, that’s designed to operate more quietly when shooting video–it doesn’t use any fancy new technologies, just internal focus. And it is quieter. But the continuous autofocus is only a bit less inconsistent than the system of older lens and PEN cameras, with a tendency to continue hunting even on stationary subjects. The lens has a bayonet mount on the front as well for filters and add-ons; Olympus will be adding a line of these types of accessories.

The performance improvement was one of the E-PL2′s nicest surprises, especially given how little the inner hardware has changed. Though I still wouldn’t say the camera’s fast, Olympus has brought its autofocus speed up to where it should be; unfortunately, the image processing still bogs it down somewhat, keeping shot-to-shot times in passable-but-annoying territory. It’s relatively zippy on start-up–0.8 second to power on, focus and shoot–and its shot lag of 0.4 second in bright light and 0.7 second in dim brings it right into line with the faster cameras in its class. But while it’s faster than previous PEN models at firing two sequential shots, its 1.3-second shot-to-shot time (1.7 seconds with flash) is still on the high side. And despite a respectable 3.1fps burst rate, the autofocus system hasn’t improved enough to keep up satisfactorily with a moving subject.

The LCD is a nice upgrade from the earlier models, bright and crisp, and much nicer for manual focusing.

 
Olympus E-PL1
Olympus E-PL2
Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF2
Samsung NX100
Sensor (effective resolution)
12.3-megapixel Live MOS
12.3-megapixel Live MOS
12.1-megapixel Live MOS
14.6-megapixel CMOS
17.3mm x 13mm 17.3mm x 13mm 17.3mm x 13mm 23.4mm x 15.6mm Sensitivity range ISO 100 – ISO 3200 ISO 100 – ISO 6400 ISO 100 – ISO 6400 ISO 100 – ISO 3200/6400 (expanded)
Focal-length multiplier
2x
2x
2x
1.5x
Continuous shooting
3.0 fps
n/a
3.0 fps
n/a
3.2fps
unlimited JPEG/7 raw
3.0 fps
10 JPEG/ 3 raw
Viewfinder
(effective magnification)

Optional plug-in articulating EVF
1,440,000 dots
0.58x
Optional plug-in articulating EVF
1,440,000 dots
0.58x
Optional Electronic
n/a
Optional plug-in EVF
201,000 dots
0.55x
Autofocus
11-area contrast AF
11-area contrast AF
23-area contrast AF
15-point contrast AF
Metering
324 area
324 area
144 zone
247 segment
Shutter
60-1/2000 sec; bulb to 30 minutes
60-1/2000 sec; bulb to 30 minutes
60-1/4000 sec; bulb to 4 minutes
30-1/4000 sec.; bulb to 8 minutes
Flash Yes Yes Yes Add-on only LCD
2.7-inch fixed
230,000 dots
3-inch fixed
460,000 dots
3-inch fixed touch screen
460,000 dots
3-inch fixed AMOLED
921,000 dots
Image stabilization Sensor shift Sensor shift Optical Optical Video (max resolution at 30fps)
720p Motion JPEG AVI
720p Motion JPEG AVI
1080/60i/50i @ 17, 13 Mbps
720/60p @17, 13 Mbps AVCHD or Motion JPEG QuickTime MOV
720p H.264 MPEG-4
Audio Mono; Mic input Mono; Mic input Stereo Mono Battery life (CIPA rating)
290 shots
n/a
300 shots
420 shots
Dimensions (WHD, inches)
4.5 x 2.8 x 1.6
4.5 x 2.8 x 1.6
4.4 x 2.7 x 1.3
4.7 x 2.8 x 1.4
Weight (ounces)
12.4
12.4
11
11 (est)
Mfr. Price $449.99 (body only) n/a $499.95 (body only, est) n/a $499.99 (with 14-42mm f3.5-5.6 lens) $599.99 (with 14-42mm II lens) $599.95 (with 14-42mm f3.5-5.6 lens) $499.99 (est, with 20-50mm f3.5-5.6 i-Function lens) $699.00 (with 14-42mm and 40-150mm lenses) $799.99 (with 14-42mm and 40-150mm lenses) n/a $599.00 (with 50-200mm lens)   $899.99 (with 14-150mm lens) n/a $699.95 (with 14mm f2.5 lens) n/a Ship date March 2010 January 2011 January 2011 October 2010

The body design and shape is fundamentally the same as the E-PL1, but I like the E-PL2′s all black a little better than the black with silver of its predecessor. It’s still very well built and sturdy, and it managed to survive an accidental fall off my desk. There’s one oddity, however; equipped with the 14-42mm msc kit lens, the body overbalances and wobbles in a Weebles kind of way. Not a problem, but a little disconcerting when you put it down.

Its fundamental layout remains unchanged. The top dial includes typical manual, semimanual, and preset automatic modes as well as a dedicated movie mode and Art Filters. Olympus’ Live Guide, which appears in automatic, provides a user-friendly adjustment interface and shooting tips; it now works with video. I really like that you don’t have to be in movie mode to record. The company has expanded its Art Filters to accommodate more variations on each filter. There’s also a new Art Frame that you can add in-camera as well as overlay two filters. Real-time Art Filter preview processing can be burdensome for the camera–display refresh slows down to a crawl–so Olympus added a second display mode for Art Filters that provide a lower-quality preview. That ratchets up their usefulness quite a bit.

For shooting, Olympus changed the large buttons and four-way-navigation keys to smaller buttons and a dial for navigation. It looks a lot nicer and I like the dial, but the buttons may be small for some people. The movie record button is also recessed a bit more, to prevent accidental operation.

This newer generation model also supports the more recent version of the accessory connector for an add-on EVF, the new PEN Pal Bluetooth module and the antenna-like macro light. There’s also a ton of advanced features in the camera, but you have to read the manual and you must turn on the double-secret menu system to know some of them exist. For instance, it’s now more flexible for HDR shooting, with up to a seven-frame bracket (though there’s no full stop option). Every button on the camera can be redefined. You can hardwire in an exposure shift for each metering mode independently, specify how long many of the adjustment control displays persist, and add copyright information. There are also four slots for saving custom settings, but accessing them seems to be a pretty clunky process as far as I can tell; you can map one to the Fn button, but to use any other but the mapped default you have to go into the menu system. The one feature that would be nice to have is time lapse. (For a full account of the E-PL2′s features and operation, download the PDF manual.)

Conclusion
A notable update over the E-PL1, the Olympus PEN E-PL2 delivers better photo quality and performance, as well as a nice shooting experience. But while I’d definitely recommend it to people who want to upgrade from a point-and-shoot to get better overall (and especially low-light) photo quality, it remains a little too sluggish to recommend for shooting active kids and pets.

Shooting speed (in seconds)
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)

Time to first shot  

Raw shot-to-shot time  

Typical shot-to-shot time  

Shutter lag (dim)  

Shutter lag (typical)  

Hide Review

Photos:
Olympus E-PL2

For its E-PL2, Olympus makes some design and feature enhancements, as well as performance tweaks, to its PEN E-PL1 Micro Four Thirds camera. The result is a noticeably better camera, delivering better photo quality and an improved shooting experience than its predecessor. The most obvious functional differences to this consumer-focused interchangeable-lens camera (ILC) include a larger LCD, multiple variations for some of the Art Filters, support for the new accessory connector and redesign of the buttons. It also supports an extra stop of sensitivity, up to ISO 6400.

While ISO 6400 may be mostly unusable–typical of most consumer cameras, the top ISO sensitivity is more of a marketing feature than a real tool–the E-PL2 has a very nice noise profile. It’s not quite as good as the Sony Alpha NEX-5, but that seems to be because the lower-resolution images lose sharpness more quickly rather than higher noise incidence. You can shoot pretty comfortably up through ISO 800; at ISO 1600 things start to soften and detail starts to degrade; color artifacts become readily apparent at ISO 3200. Nor does it clip the shadows as much as a lot of other cameras at higher ISO sensitivities.

Olympus E-PL2 photo samples

Overall, the E-PL2 delivers very nice photo quality, in cases noticeably better than the E-PL1. Olympus seems to have tweaked its default noise reduction parameters: you lose a little sharpness, but the results look more natural. As long as you don’t have small details in the image, photos shot even at ISO 3200 can be quite usable. The color rendition remains excellent–what little color I could find in the February NYC landscape–and it seems as if the metering has been improved to produce slightly brighter exposures under similar lighting conditions.

The video quality remains satisfactory, but not great; there are a decent set of manual controls for shooting movies, as well as Art Filter support, but there’s considerable rolling shutter wobble in all but stationary scenes. The kit comes bundled with a new version of the 14-42mm lens, dubbed MSC, that’s designed to operate more quietly when shooting video–it doesn’t use any fancy new technologies, just internal focus. And it is quieter. But the continuous autofocus is only a bit less inconsistent than the system of older lens and PEN cameras, with a tendency to continue hunting even on stationary subjects. The lens has a bayonet mount on the front as well for filters and add-ons; Olympus will be adding a line of these types of accessories.

The performance improvement was one of the E-PL2′s nicest surprises, especially given how little the inner hardware has changed. Though I still wouldn’t say the camera’s fast, Olympus has brought its autofocus speed up to where it should be; unfortunately, the image processing still bogs it down somewhat, keeping shot-to-shot times in passable-but-annoying territory. It’s relatively zippy on start-up–0.8 second to power on, focus and shoot–and its shot lag of 0.4 second in bright light and 0.7 second in dim brings it right into line with the faster cameras in its class. But while it’s faster than previous PEN models at firing two sequential shots, its 1.3-second shot-to-shot time (1.7 seconds with flash) is still on the high side. And despite a respectable 3.1fps burst rate, the autofocus system hasn’t improved enough to keep up satisfactorily with a moving subject.

The LCD is a nice upgrade from the earlier models, bright and crisp, and much nicer for manual focusing.

 
Olympus E-PL1
Olympus E-PL2
Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF2
Samsung NX100
Sensor (effective resolution)
12.3-megapixel Live MOS
12.3-megapixel Live MOS
12.1-megapixel Live MOS
14.6-megapixel CMOS
17.3mm x 13mm 17.3mm x 13mm 17.3mm x 13mm 23.4mm x 15.6mm Sensitivity range ISO 100 – ISO 3200 ISO 100 – ISO 6400 ISO 100 – ISO 6400 ISO 100 – ISO 3200/6400 (expanded)
Focal-length multiplier
2x
2x
2x
1.5x
Continuous shooting
3.0 fps
n/a
3.0 fps
n/a
3.2fps
unlimited JPEG/7 raw
3.0 fps
10 JPEG/ 3 raw
Viewfinder
(effective magnification)

Optional plug-in articulating EVF
1,440,000 dots
0.58x
Optional plug-in articulating EVF
1,440,000 dots
0.58x
Optional Electronic
n/a
Optional plug-in EVF
201,000 dots
0.55x
Autofocus
11-area contrast AF
11-area contrast AF
23-area contrast AF
15-point contrast AF
Metering
324 area
324 area
144 zone
247 segment
Shutter
60-1/2000 sec; bulb to 30 minutes
60-1/2000 sec; bulb to 30 minutes
60-1/4000 sec; bulb to 4 minutes
30-1/4000 sec.; bulb to 8 minutes
Flash Yes Yes Yes Add-on only LCD
2.7-inch fixed
230,000 dots
3-inch fixed
460,000 dots
3-inch fixed touch screen
460,000 dots
3-inch fixed AMOLED
921,000 dots
Image stabilization Sensor shift Sensor shift Optical Optical Video (max resolution at 30fps)
720p Motion JPEG AVI
720p Motion JPEG AVI
1080/60i/50i @ 17, 13 Mbps
720/60p @17, 13 Mbps AVCHD or Motion JPEG QuickTime MOV
720p H.264 MPEG-4
Audio Mono; Mic input Mono; Mic input Stereo Mono Battery life (CIPA rating)
290 shots
n/a
300 shots
420 shots
Dimensions (WHD, inches)
4.5 x 2.8 x 1.6
4.5 x 2.8 x 1.6
4.4 x 2.7 x 1.3
4.7 x 2.8 x 1.4
Weight (ounces)
12.4
12.4
11
11 (est)
Mfr. Price $449.99 (body only) n/a $499.95 (body only, est) n/a $499.99 (with 14-42mm f3.5-5.6 lens) $599.99 (with 14-42mm II lens) $599.95 (with 14-42mm f3.5-5.6 lens) $499.99 (est, with 20-50mm f3.5-5.6 i-Function lens) $699.00 (with 14-42mm and 40-150mm lenses) $799.99 (with 14-42mm and 40-150mm lenses) n/a $599.00 (with 50-200mm lens)   $899.99 (with 14-150mm lens) n/a $699.95 (with 14mm f2.5 lens) n/a Ship date March 2010 January 2011 January 2011 October 2010

The body design and shape is fundamentally the same as the E-PL1, but I like the E-PL2′s all black a little better than the black with silver of its predecessor. It’s still very well built and sturdy, and it managed to survive an accidental fall off my desk. There’s one oddity, however; equipped with the 14-42mm msc kit lens, the body overbalances and wobbles in a Weebles kind of way. Not a problem, but a little disconcerting when you put it down.

Its fundamental layout remains unchanged. The top dial includes typical manual, semimanual, and preset automatic modes as well as a dedicated movie mode and Art Filters. Olympus’ Live Guide, which appears in automatic, provides a user-friendly adjustment interface and shooting tips; it now works with video. I really like that you don’t have to be in movie mode to record. The company has expanded its Art Filters to accommodate more variations on each filter. There’s also a new Art Frame that you can add in-camera as well as overlay two filters. Real-time Art Filter preview processing can be burdensome for the camera–display refresh slows down to a crawl–so Olympus added a second display mode for Art Filters that provide a lower-quality preview. That ratchets up their usefulness quite a bit.

For shooting, Olympus changed the large buttons and four-way-navigation keys to smaller buttons and a dial for navigation. It looks a lot nicer and I like the dial, but the buttons may be small for some people. The movie record button is also recessed a bit more, to prevent accidental operation.

This newer generation model also supports the more recent version of the accessory connector for an add-on EVF, the new PEN Pal Bluetooth module and the antenna-like macro light. There’s also a ton of advanced features in the camera, but you have to read the manual and you must turn on the double-secret menu system to know some of them exist. For instance, it’s now more flexible for HDR shooting, with up to a seven-frame bracket. Every button on the camera can be redefined. You can hardwire in an exposure shift for each metering mode independently, specify how long many of the adjustment control displays persist, and add copyright information. There are also four slots for saving custom settings, but accessing them seems to be a pretty clunky process as far as I can tell; you can map one to the Fn button, but to use any other but the mapped default you have to go into the menu system. The one feature that would be nice to have is time lapse. (For a full account of the E-PL2′s features and operation, download the PDF manual.)

Conclusion
A notable update over the E-PL1, the Olympus PEN E-PL2 delivers better photo quality and performance, as well as a nice shooting experience. But while I’d definitely recommend it to people who want to upgrade from a point-and-shoot to get better overall (and especially low-light) photo quality, it remains a little too sluggish to recommend for shooting active kids and pets.

Shooting speed (in seconds)
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)

Time to first shot  

Raw shot-to-shot time  

Typical shot-to-shot time  

Shutter lag (dim)  

Shutter lag (typical)  

Hide Review

Photos:
Olympus E-PL2

For its E-PL2, Olympus makes some design and feature enhancements, as well as performance tweaks, to its PEN E-PL1 Micro Four Thirds camera. The result is a noticeably better camera, delivering better photo quality and an improved shooting experience than its predecessor. The most obvious functional differences to this consumer-focused interchangeable-lens camera (ILC) include a larger LCD, multiple variations for some of the Art Filters, support for the new accessory connector and redesign of the buttons. It also supports an extra stop of sensitivity, up to ISO 6400.

While ISO 6400 may be mostly unusable–typical of most consumer cameras, the top ISO sensitivity is more of a marketing feature than a real tool–the E-PL2 has a very nice noise profile. It’s not quite as good as the Sony Alpha NEX-5, but that seems to be because the lower-resolution images lose sharpness more quickly rather than higher noise incidence. You can shoot pretty comfortably up through ISO 800; at ISO 1600 things start to soften and detail starts to degrade; color artifacts become readily apparent at ISO 3200. Nor does it clip the shadows as much as a lot of other cameras at higher ISO sensitivities.

Olympus E-PL2 photo samples

Overall, the E-PL2 delivers very nice photo quality, in cases noticeably better than the E-PL1. Olympus seems to have tweaked its default noise reduction parameters: you lose a little sharpness, but the results look more natural. As long as you don’t have small details in the image, photos shot even at ISO 3200 can be quite usable. The color rendition remains excellent–what little color I could find in the February NYC landscape–and it seems as if the metering has been improved to produce slightly brighter exposures under similar lighting conditions.

The video quality remains satisfactory, but not great; there are a decent set of manual controls for shooting movies, as well as Art Filter support, but there’s considerable rolling shutter wobble in all but stationary scenes. The kit comes bundled with a new version of the 14-42mm lens, dubbed MSC, that’s designed to operate more quietly when shooting video–it doesn’t use any fancy new technologies, just internal focus. And it is quieter. But the continuous autofocus is only a bit less inconsistent than the system of older lens and PEN cameras, with a tendency to continue hunting even on stationary subjects. The lens has a bayonet mount on the front as well for filters and add-ons; Olympus will be adding a line of these types of accessories.

The performance improvement was one of the E-PL2′s nicest surprises, especially given how little the inner hardware has changed. Though I still wouldn’t say the camera’s fast, Olympus has brought its autofocus speed up to where it should be; unfortunately, the image processing still bogs it down somewhat, keeping shot-to-shot times in passable-but-annoying territory. It’s relatively zippy on start-up–0.8 second to power on, focus and shoot–and its shot lag of 0.4 second in bright light and 0.7 second in dim brings it right into line with the faster cameras in its class. But while it’s faster than previous PEN models at firing two sequential shots, its 1.3-second shot-to-shot time (1.7 seconds with flash) is still on the high side. And despite a respectable 3.1fps burst rate, the autofocus system hasn’t improved enough to keep up satisfactorily with a moving subject.

The LCD is a nice upgrade from the earlier models, bright and crisp, and much nicer for manual focusing.

 
Olympus E-PL1
Olympus E-PL2
Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF2
Samsung NX100
Sensor (effective resolution)
12.3-megapixel Live MOS
12.3-megapixel Live MOS
12.1-megapixel Live MOS
14.6-megapixel CMOS
17.3mm x 13mm 17.3mm x 13mm 17.3mm x 13mm 23.4mm x 15.6mm Sensitivity range ISO 100 – ISO 3200 ISO 100 – ISO 6400 ISO 100 – ISO 6400 ISO 100 – ISO 3200/6400 (expanded)
Focal-length multiplier
2x
2x
2x
1.5x
Continuous shooting
3.0 fps
n/a
3.0 fps
n/a
3.2fps
unlimited JPEG/7 raw
3.0 fps
10 JPEG/ 3 raw
Viewfinder
(effective magnification)

Optional plug-in articulating EVF
1,440,000 dots
0.58x
Optional plug-in articulating EVF
1,440,000 dots
0.58x
Optional Electronic
n/a
Optional plug-in EVF
201,000 dots
0.55x
Autofocus
11-area contrast AF
11-area contrast AF
23-area contrast AF
15-point contrast AF
Metering
324 area
324 area
144 zone
247 segment
Shutter
60-1/2000 sec; bulb to 30 minutes
60-1/2000 sec; bulb to 30 minutes
60-1/4000 sec; bulb to 4 minutes
30-1/4000 sec.; bulb to 8 minutes
Flash Yes Yes Yes Add-on only LCD
2.7-inch fixed
230,000 dots
3-inch fixed
460,000 dots
3-inch fixed touch screen
460,000 dots
3-inch fixed AMOLED
921,000 dots
Image stabilization Sensor shift Sensor shift Optical Optical Video (max resolution at 30fps)
720p Motion JPEG AVI
720p Motion JPEG AVI
1080/60i/50i @ 17, 13 Mbps
720/60p @17, 13 Mbps AVCHD or Motion JPEG QuickTime MOV
720p H.264 MPEG-4
Audio Mono; Mic input Mono; Mic input Stereo Mono Battery life (CIPA rating)
290 shots
n/a
300 shots
420 shots
Dimensions (WHD, inches)
4.5 x 2.8 x 1.6
4.5 x 2.8 x 1.6
4.4 x 2.7 x 1.3
4.7 x 2.8 x 1.4
Weight (ounces)
12.4
12.4
11
11 (est)
Mfr. Price $449.99 (body only) n/a $499.95 (body only, est) n/a $499.99 (with 14-42mm f3.5-5.6 lens) $599.99 (with 14-42mm II lens) $599.95 (with 14-42mm f3.5-5.6 lens) $499.99 (est, with 20-50mm f3.5-5.6 i-Function lens) $699.00 (with 14-42mm and 40-150mm lenses) $799.99 (with 14-42mm and 40-150mm lenses) n/a $599.00 (with 50-200mm lens)   $899.99 (with 14-150mm lens) n/a $699.95 (with 14mm f2.5 lens) n/a Ship date March 2010 January 2011 January 2011 October 2010

The body design and shape is fundamentally the same as the E-PL1, but I like the E-PL2′s all black a little better than the black with silver of its predecessor. It’s still very well built and sturdy, and it managed to survive an accidental fall off my desk. There’s one oddity, however; equipped with the 14-42mm msc kit lens, the body overbalances and wobbles in a Weebles kind of way. Not a problem, but a little disconcerting when you put it down.

Its fundamental layout remains unchanged. The top dial includes typical manual, semimanual, and preset automatic modes as well as a dedicated movie mode and Art Filters. Olympus’ Live Guide, which appears in automatic, provides a user-friendly adjustment interface and shooting tips; it now works with video. I really like that you don’t have to be in movie mode to record. The company has expanded its Art Filters to accommodate more variations on each filter. There’s also a new Art Frame that you can add in-camera as well as overlay two filters. Real-time Art Filter preview processing can be burdensome for the camera–display refresh slows down to a crawl–so Olympus added a second display mode for Art Filters that provide a lower-quality preview. That ratchets up their usefulness quite a bit.

For shooting, Olympus changed the large buttons and four-way-navigation keys to smaller buttons and a dial for navigation. It looks a lot nicer and I like the dial, but the buttons may be small for some people. The movie record button is also recessed a bit more, to prevent accidental operation.

This newer generation model also supports the more recent version of the accessory connector for an add-on EVF, the new PEN Pal Bluetooth module and the antenna-like macro light. There’s also a ton of advanced features in the camera, but you have to read the manual and you must turn on the double-secret menu system to know some of them exist. For instance, it’s now more flexible for HDR shooting, with up to a seven-frame bracket. Every button on the camera can be redefined. You can hardwire in an exposure shift for each metering mode independently, specify how long many of the adjustment control displays persist, and add copyright information. There are also four slots for saving custom settings, but accessing them seems to be a pretty clunky process as far as I can tell; you can map one to the Fn button, but to use any other but the mapped default you have to go into the menu system. The one feature that would be nice to have is time lapse. (For a full account of the E-PL2′s features and operation, download the PDF manual.)

Conclusion
A notable update over the E-PL1, the Olympus PEN E-PL2 delivers better photo quality and performance, as well as a nice shooting experience. But while I’d definitely recommend it to people who want to upgrade from a point-and-shoot to get better overall (and especially low-light) photo quality, it remains a little too sluggish to recommend for shooting active kids and pets.

Shooting speed (in seconds)
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)

Time to first shot  

Raw shot-to-shot time  

Typical shot-to-shot time  

Shutter lag (dim)  

Shutter lag (typical)  

Hide Review

By Stephanie Hayes, Times Staff Writer

In Print: Thursday, March 3, 2011

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PLANT CITY

Saturday night, just past 11 at Big Dog’s Patio. It’s casting light on the sleepy downtown, nestled between some benches made of train wheels and a shop that sells honey.

A sign says everyone is welcome, and it’s evident. White, black, Latino. Girls in tight jeans, guys in camouflage. Mohawks, Nikes, khakis, cowboy hats. Everyone relates around a beer. They grind to a song by a rapper from Riverview, some 20 miles away. They sit at the bar, cigarette slumped in their worn fingers.

A tall, glorious woman in a pink miniskirt bounces up to the bar. She orders gin and pineapple, and she calls the bartender “sweetie.”

What is there to do around here? I ask.

“The Strawberry Festival!” she shouts over the beats.

Besides that, though.

She dabs sweat from her head, whips her hair and grabs her plastic cup.

“This is about it.”

What is this place, really?

• • •

Plant City rests along Interstate 4 between Tampa and tourist mecca Orlando. Some 30,000 people live within 22 miles, many of them for their whole lives. Plant City doesn’t have tall buildings, beaches, roadside bungee jumping or $15 Mickey Mouse ears.

It has strawberries.

The red jewels ooze from every pore of this place, on crystallized tank tops, on business signs, on antique gravy boats in dusty shops. The winter strawberry capital of the world, Plant City has hosted an annual festival to honor the industry since 1930.

There is a parade, farm animals, a pageant of pretty girls who serve as small-town royalty. This year’s queen, Victoria Watkins, works at the local Beef ‘O’ Brady’s.

While the festival still thrives on pulled-pork and shortcake, it has decades of Nashville savvy, booking major country acts like Lady Antebellum and Bill Ray Cyrus. The festival attracts more than 500,000 people every year.

There is slow cultural change, too. This year’s strawberry court includes an African-American girl, only the second in history.

That push and pull is the engine of Plant City, always moving forward yet staying put. There’s a Chili’s, a Dunkin’ Donuts, grocery stores and dollar stores, even a Starbucks. There is the elegant Keel and Curley Winery, where you can pick blueberries and get married. There are tiny diners and farms and trailers, big-wheel trucks rolling past Southern tea rooms.

But is there life after the Strawberry Festival? Or is Plant City a roadside curiosity that ends with the harvest?

• • •

The waiter sets down the steak.

It’s a glistening slab of bovine with mashed potatoes and onion straws. Portions like this don’t happen in big cities. It’s part of the $65 dinner show. Drinks are extra.

The Red Rose Inn and Suites beckons from the highway, just when you think the world’s gone flat. The hotel ballroom drips in emerald velvet and golden lamp light. Each toilet in the ladies room looks up to a chandelier. It has an odd mystery, like if left untended, it could be the Haunted Mansion, or The Shining, or Hotel California.

Evelyn Madonia, the redhead mascot with painted lips and satin gloves, goes on television to advertise the place. People vaguely familiar with the Red Rose Inn call her “that lady from those commercials.” She and her husband invested millions in the formerly rundown motel, and their pride — or at least hers — is inescapable.

Her face is everywhere. The room key. The housekeeping form. The sign on the highway.

People from Ocala and Lakeland and Clearwater flock every weekend to shows at the Red Rose Inn. It’s all oldies, apple pie and doo-wop, rhythm and blues and a dash of Neil Diamond.

Our show is so booked, my boyfriend and I have to sit with several strangers. Like a wedding or a cruise.

Singer P.J. Leary croons from the stage. Crazy for feeling so lonely, crazy for feeling so blue.

“Oooh, this is when you really start to live,” says Charlie Johnson, swaying through the music like it’s airborne syrup. He saws into his steak. “Young people today, they don’t appreciate the oldies.”

Charlie and his wife, Darlene, have come from Lakeland to see this show. Darlene, who refuses to dress like she’s 58, has on a short skirt, a sparkling red jacket and plastic heels that light up when she walks.

She lives simply, she says, like most people here. She cleans floors at a sandwich plant. She is a grandmother. She loves her bonfire and Riunite wine. She went to the Strawberry Festival every year as a little girl.

“I loved to walk through where they sell all the crafts,” she says. “My dad always told my mom to meet him at the steamed corn stand.”

The Van-Dells, a trio of older men in letter sweaters, sing Americana ear candy and crack harmless jokes. The crowd, nibbling on chocolate mousse and strawberries, is transfixed. When the band plays Dixie, people stand, applaud and thrust their arms victoriously in the air. When one of the Van-Dells hikes his Looney Toons boxers and makes a “pants on the ground” reference, the place howls.

Charlie and Darlene run to the front of the ballroom and dance like teenagers.

The Red Rose Inn is couched by the highway and a train that blares through town at all hours.

Sleeping is interesting.

The opulence of the ballroom is forgotten inside our $99 double room, which feels like an afterthought. We’ve been downgraded without a price adjustment because we booked the room online and they were full.

“You can call the website,” the receptionist says, flanked by Gone With the Wind paintings, wrought iron roses and ceramic conquistadors.

We leave and find Baker’s St. Cafe, a tiny diner at a fork in the road. We order biscuits and gravy. The waiters pull cartons of strawberries from behind the register for special customers. Signs on the wall say “American as apple pie,” and “Mom’s Diner.” There are a couple of old racially charged tin syrup ads, too.

Judy Smith, our waiter, knows everyone who comes through. She is 60 now, waiting tables since age 18.

“You don’t have a lot of places like this anymore,” she says. “I know everyone’s order.”

Judy suggests we visit a mural downtown. I laugh that a mural could be considered an activity, but later that day I see a woman sitting on a bench staring at it.

• • •

We head a mile up the road to the Parkesdale Farm, founded by strawberry grower Roy Parke in the 1950s. It’s bustling with folks buying purple onions, grapefruits, strawberry plants and souvenirs. Trampled strawberry stems are smashed into the dirt. The line for shortcake and milkshakes winds into the parking lot. A sign reads kindly, “Cell phones off would be nice.”

The Garden of Eatin’ is Parkesdale’s food court, a picnic shelter shellacked in red tinsel, strawberry kitsch and massive framed pictures of the Parke family with George H.W. Bush and Jeb Bush. A water-pocked piece of paper tacked to a bulletin board invites guests to check in on Foursquare.

A big strawberry chair sits center, with a row of plastic crowns. It’s really for kids.

I finish my strawberry shake, the best I’ve ever tasted. I pick a gold crown and perch in the belly of the berry. I survey the place, feeling just a tad special.

• • •

Up the road and under the interstate, there’s a big Tyrannosaurus rex.

Dinosaur World was named one of the Top 5 Tackiest Tourist Traps by cable network TLC. More than 100,000 people come here each year. For $12.75, you can pose inside a dinosaur head and meet 150 foamy prehistoric pals.

Drive down to Disney’s T-Rex Café, and there’s a moving dinosaur roaring at tourists between bites of Brachiosaurus Bruschetta. But here, there is no food, no animation, no sound effects. You can bring your dog and buy a Coke from a machine.

The dinosaurs are almost charmingly underwhelming. Spanish moss hangs in the mouths. Glass eyes have popped off. Replica fossils sit among potted ferns. In the carnivore section the dinosaurs eat each other by the jugular. It feels like a metaphor for this place, swamped on all sides by encroaching predators of modern life.

Dinosaur World plans to double in size by the fall, adding a dinosaur playground, indoor museum and gift shop. At the arched entrance, pterodactyls will soar through the sky.

• • •

In town on Washington’s Birthday, it’s ghostlike. Only half the shops are open.

The dress store, glimmering with poofy pageant gowns, is closed. The Plant City Photo Archives is closed. The Plant City Welcome Center is closed.

A woman pops into an antiques store. Where can her elderly father get a cup of coffee? The coffee shop is closed.

“I’m surprised,” says the shop owner. “It’s a busy day for us in town.”

Outside, there is nearly no one.

We buy a $4 Superman comic from the 1970s. The owner is delighted, sliding the bills into the drawer. It could be her only sale for the day. We ponder how the Strawberry Festival, with its studded country rock stars and gluttonous fair food and theme T-shirts, is vital to this sleepy place. For many reasons.

We walk past Big Dog’s Patio. It’s empty, but the nighttime hours are posted on the door.

They close, it says, when the last person leaves.

Stephanie Hayes can be reached at shayes@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8857.

If you go | Plant City

Red Rose Inn Suites
2011 N Wheeler St.;
(813) 752-3141.

The hotel has about 260 rooms, a five-star restaurant and a swimming pool with a giant strawberry inlaid in tile. For details and reservations for the inn, dining room and ballroom, go to redroseinnandsuites.com.

Keel and Curley Winery
5210 W Thonotosassa Road;
(813) 752-9100.

Wine tasting and gift shop hours are 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday-Thursday, 10 a.m. to midnight Friday and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday. Wine tastings are $5. keelandcurleywinery.com

Dinosaur World
5145 Harvey Tew Road;
(813) 717-9865.

Open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily. Tickets are $12.75, $9.75 for children, $10.75 for seniors.
Pets on leashes welcome. dinosaurworld.com

Parkesdale Farm Market
3702 W Baker St.; (813) 754-2704.

9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday, May through September. 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. seven days a week in October through April. Closed the first two weeks of August. parkesdale.com

Baker’s St. Cafe
1801 W Baker St.; (813) 717-9785

7 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday.

Florida Strawberry Festival

It’s Plant City’s time to shine with its annual festival packed with strawberry shortcake and top-notch music. There’s also a midway, food, pageant, racing pigs, a lumberjack show and the Rock-It the 9-foot-tall country/hip-hop playing Robot.

Hours: The fest opens at noon today and runs through March 13. It opens at 10 a.m. Saturday and Sunday.

Admission: $10, $5 ages 6-12. Today is Ride-A-Thon Day. Purchase a wristband for $19 and ride most rides from 3-11 p.m. only. On Saturday, all kids through 12th grade are admitted free. For daily wristband specials, see www.flstrawberryfestival.com.

Where: Strawberry Festival grounds, 303 N Lemon St., Plant City. (813) 752-9194.

. For the music lineup, see Page 28.

[Last modified: Mar 02, 2011 03:30 AM]

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« Casa Bonita: He Dove To Forget | Main

U.S. May Lose Friendship Monument to Mexico

February 28, 2011

In what would turn out to be a small victory for our southern neighbor, the U.S. may soon abandon its border-straddling “Friendship Monument” to Mexico in Border Field State Park, San Diego.

The obelisk was raised by the U.S. in 1851 to celebrate Mexico’s loss of California in the Mexican-American War. It wasn’t until 1971 that it was officially re-branded the “Friendship Monument” by First Lady Pat Nixon, even though by then it had been bisected by an unfriendly border fence. Still, tourists from both countries could walk up to the fence, read half of the words on the east and west sides of monument (trying to guess the rest), and exchange pleasantries with people on the other side.

That changed in 2009. The U.S. Border Patrol built a second, bigger fence on our side of the border with a little door. Now people who want to see the monument — or chat with Mexicans — are let through into a little holding pen on the other side of the big fence. They can no longer get close enough to touch the Friendship Monument, but at least they can get within a couple of feet of it.

Maybe not for much longer. This summer the Border Patrol reportedly plans to build yet another fence, replacing the old, Friendship-bisecting barrier with a new one several feet north. It will be completely on U.S. soil, so it can be repaired without technically crossing into Mexico, and it will have mesh so fine that no contraband can pass through. Even snapshots of the Friendship Monument — abandoned on the Tijuana side — will probably be impossible. And at that point who would care anyway?

The Border Patrol needs to rethink this. Maybe it could built a plexiglass airlock around the monument, like one of those grab-as-many-dollars-as-you-can booths, and charge a couple of bucks for admission. When the door to America is open, the door to Mexico is locked, and vice-versa. The symbolism may not be great, and our friendship with Mexico may be strained, but that’s no reason to throw away our Friendship Monument.

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Trunkation Nation

One of the few segments of point-and-shoots that’s growing is megazooms, a category that Panasonic pretty much started. Now all manufacturers have them, though, so trying to stand out isn’t easy. So for the Lumix DMC-ZS10, the update to 2010′s ZS7, Panasonic did what most manufacturers do: made the lens wider and longer, kept the body size the same, and packed in a ton of features.

The basic specs include a 24mm-equivalent wide-angle lens with a 16x zoom (with nano coating to reduce ghosting and flare), a 3-inch, 460K-dot resolution touch-screen LCD, and a 14-megapixel MOS sensor. The sensor is the same type that’s found in its top full-size megazoom, the FZ100, and it’s paired with Panasonic’s Venus Engine FHD processor. This combo allows for high-speed burst shooting–full resolution at 10 frames per second–and full HD movie capture in AVCHD format among other things.

For all its features, though, its photo quality is no better or worse than other recent high-end Panasonic point-and-shoots I’ve tested. Like those cameras, whether you’ll like the photo quality from the ZS10 comes down to how you’ll use the photos and how much cropping and enlarging you hope to do.

With plenty of light, the camera can turn out very good photos, if a little soft. When viewed at full size, there is noise present even at ISO 100. The higher the ISO, the more noise you’ll see and the softer your photos get. Yellow blotching from noise is a particular problem with Panasonic’s JPEG processing and it’s present in varying degrees through its ISO range. It’s most visible at ISO 1,600, which pretty much makes that ISO unusable. Panasonic seems to correct for the blotches at ISO 400, but in the process destroys fine detail and makes subjects look smeary. In the end, the ZS10 is best suited for outdoor use or indoors if brightly lit. Photos at or below ISO 200 can stand up to some cropping or larger prints, but low-light photos are best left for small prints and Web use. And unfortunately, with no option for raw capture, you’re stuck with Panasonic’s image processing.

Sample photos:
Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS10

While there is little sign of pincushioning when the lens is extended, the wide end of the lens shows some barrel distortion. The lens has good center sharpness and is reasonably consistent edge to edge. Fringing in high-contrast areas can be a bit of an issue for the ZS10. Mainly, it’s more than I’m used to seeing from a Panasonic camera, but still average for this class of camera.

Color and exposure is very good from the ZS10 up to ISO 400. Subjects appear natural, bright, and pretty accurate. Plus, there are a number of ways to tweak your color results. White-balance presets are good for the most part; however, the auto white balance is not good indoors. Unfortunately, you’re stuck with that setting if you’re using Intelligent Auto. Whenever possible, use the presets or take a manual reading, which is really easy to do.

Lastly, though the sensor is 15 megapixels, the camera only uses 14 megapixels, making it possible to have four aspect ratios–16:9, 3:2, 4:3, and 1.1–with the same angle of view across the entire zoom range of the lens.

As for movie quality, its AVCHD clips are sharp with good exposure and color and some of the smoothest motion I’ve seen from a point-and-shoot. Low-light recording suffers from the same noise problems as in photos. The zoom does operate while recording, but its movement is picked up by the stereo mic. If you are recording in a very quiet environment, you will hear it in your movies, but otherwise it’s difficult to hear. The camera also has an option for continuous AF for movies, which performed very well, as did its wind noise filter. Also, the ZS10 can capture 3.5-megapixel photos while shooting video as well as extract single frames for photos when in Playback mode.

As Panasonic’s highest-end compact megazoom, there is no shortage of shooting options. For automatic shooting there is the company’s Intelligent Auto that combines an ever-growing number of technologies to get the best results. Overall, it works very well, but photos can end up appearing overprocessed when viewed at full size. There are 29 scene modes for those times when you want to get specific with your auto shooting or get creative and you can store two favorites to MySCN spots on the mode dial. For the most part they are the ones you’d find on any point-and-shoot, but there are a few artistic ones like High Dynamic and Pinhole as well as a Handheld Night Shot that takes 10 pictures in a row and then combines them into one to reduce motion blur and noise. The down side is that it only works if your subject is stationary. There is an Underwater mode as well, but you’ll need a casing if you want to get it wet–the ZS10 is not waterproof in any way. Lastly, many of the scene modes are available for movies, too, giving you a little more freedom to experiment.

For those who like to take more control, the ZS10 does offer aperture-priority, shutter-priority, and manual shooting modes. Apertures are f3.3-6.3 wide and 5.9-6.3 telephoto. Shutter speeds go from 60 seconds to 1/4,000 second. To use them, you press the Exposure button on back, and change the settings with the directional pad. (A thumb dial would’ve been nice, but space is already pretty tight.) There is also a Custom spot on the mode dial for setting up three custom setting configurations. There’s a Program mode, too, should you want to adjust things like ISO, white balance, and exposure compensation (not done with the Exposure button, mind you, but the directional pad), but not worry about shutter speed and aperture settings.

If you shoot a lot of moving subjects, namely children, pets, and sports, the ZS10′s multiple burst shooting options give you a lot of flexibility and a fighting chance of getting a good photo. Its fastest burst modes–40 and 60 frames per second–are at reduced resolutions, but Panasonic packed in three at full resolution. There’s one that captures up to 15 shots at 10fps, but that sets focus, exposure, and white balance with the first shot. What’s better are the 2fps and 5fps options that set those things with each shot so you’re able to get a subject moving moderately fast in focus and properly exposed. However, in our lab tests the 5fps setting averaged 3.2fps.

Other aspects of its shooting performance are excellent as well and significantly faster than its predecessor. Shutter lag is low at 0.4 second and 0.7 second in bright and dim lighting, respectively. From shot-to-shot without the flash you’re waiting only 1.1 seconds; adding the flash drags that time to just 1.4 seconds. It’s time from off to first shot is 1.9 seconds.

The high-speed shooting also gets you 3D photos. The ZS10 fires off 20 shots as you move the camera horizontally across a scene and then picks the two best for overlaying to create a 3D MPO file that can be played back on 3D-enabled TVs, computers, and photo frames. The results are good, but your subject has to be motionless as does everything in the scene. Any movement really kills the effect. It’s a nice extra to play with, but not a must-have mode.

The appearance of the ZS10 doesn’t change much from its predecessor, the ZS7. Its weight and size are approximately the same, remaining remarkably compact for its features and wide-angle lens with 16x zoom (that’s wider and longer than its predecessor). Though it’s a tight fit in a pants pocket, the ZS10 easily fits in an average jacket pocket or small handbag. The body–available in black, brown, silver, blue, and red versions–has a nice, solid feel to it with a comfortable grip on the right side.

The 3-inch touch screen on the back looks good and gets reasonably bright, though it gets reflective in direct sunlight, so you may struggle occasionally to see what you’re shooting. Also, Panasonic didn’t do much with the touch screen, only using it for a handful of functions. For example, you can use it to focus and shoot photos by tapping on your subject, but menu navigation is primarily done with the directional pad. In playback you can use it to flip through your shots, but you can’t do any editing or drawing or writing on photos. It just seems that if you’re going to be paying for a touch screen, you should get more use out of it.

One of the main attractions of the ZS10 is the built-in GPS. Using it is fairly simple, and the process has been streamlined from the ZS7 thanks to a dedicated spot in the menu system. Once you’ve turned on the receiver–it can be done from the Q.Menu or main menu–you can have the camera retrieve the information for your current location. In tests this took anywhere from less than a minute to several minutes depending on how much open sky was above me. Once locked, the ZS10 can display country, state, city, and landmark information and continues to update itself every minute. You can then go into the GPS Area Select menus and pick the correct information for your location. For example, if you’re standing in the middle of New York, it could quite possibly have a couple pages of landmarks to pick from. Also, you can choose to limit what area information is attached, in case you only want the name of the city for instance. The area information covers 173 countries or regions for all over the world and more than half a million landmarks in 73 countries or regions.

For everyday shooting, attaching GPS information is probably not that exciting. But, if you do a lot of traveling, hiking, or other activity where you might want to remember where you were, then it’s a great feature to have. Longitude and latitude is seamlessly added to the EXIF data and, again, you can have the camera include country, city, state, and landmarks.

There’s an option to record AVCHD movies with GPS data as well. The location information can be viewed when videos are played back on a computer using the bundled software or directly from the camera. Unless you simply must have the information, you’ll probably want to stick with the non-GPS AVCHD format option.

One last thing regarding the GPS: once you’ve turned it on, the receiver stays on until you turn it off, 2 hours have passed since it’s refreshed its position, or after 3 hours of the camera being off. So even if you shut off the camera, it’ll continue to update its location every 15 minutes. This is fine if you’re shooting for an extended period of time, but it’ll eventually run down your battery. If you want the GPS to turn off when you shut the camera off, you must select the Airplane mode option from the camera’s menu. This is all explained in the manual, but battery life is something to keep in mind with features like GPS.

In fact, battery life with the ZS10 is an issue in general. With the GPS, touch screen, zoom, burst shooting, and HD movie capture there’s a lot here to drain its small rechargeable battery. Even without all those things, the camera’s battery life is pretty short. I strongly recommend picking up an extra battery if you’re going to be traveling with the ZS10 or even just out for a day of shooting.

Conclusion
The cost of the Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS10 goes primarily to its abundant feature set. That fortunately includes some very fast shooting performance and a nice zoom lens in a pocketable body. It’s not unreasonable to expect excellent photos, too, for its price, but the fact is the ZS10 is still a point-and-shoot with a sensor no bigger than you’d find in a smaller, less feature-laden camera. If you’re after awesome low-light photos or need to regularly make large prints, you probably shouldn’t consider this camera. But if most of your photos are for sharing online and 8×10 prints or smaller, the ZS10 is a very good option. Especially if you want something that can double as a pocket video camera.

Shooting speed (in seconds)
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)

Time to first shot  

Typical shot-to-shot time  

Shutter lag (dim)  

Shutter lag (typical)  

Find out more about how we test digital cameras.

Hide Review

One of the few segments of point-and-shoots that’s growing is megazooms, a category that Panasonic pretty much started. Now all manufacturers have them, though, so trying to stand out isn’t easy. So for the Lumix DMC-ZS10, the update to 2010′s ZS7, Panasonic did what most manufacturers do: made the lens wider and longer, kept the body size the same, and packed in a ton of features.

The basic specs include a 24mm-equivalent wide-angle lens with a 16x zoom (with nano coating to reduce ghosting and flare), a 3-inch, 460K-dot resolution touch-screen LCD, and a 14-megapixel MOS sensor. The sensor is the same type that’s found in its top full-size megazoom, the FZ100, and it’s paired with Panasonic’s Venus Engine FHD processor. This combo allows for high-speed burst shooting–full resolution at 10 frames per second–and full HD movie capture in AVCHD format among other things.

For all its features, though, its photo quality is no better or worse than other recent high-end Panasonic point-and-shoots I’ve tested. Like those cameras, whether you’ll like the photo quality from the ZS10 comes down to how you’ll use the photos and how much cropping and enlarging you hope to do.

With plenty of light, the camera can turn out very good photos, if a little soft. When viewed at full size, there is noise present even at ISO 100. The higher the ISO, the more noise you’ll see and the softer your photos get. Yellow blotching from noise is a particular problem with Panasonic’s JPEG processing and it’s present in varying degrees through its ISO range. It’s most visible at ISO 1,600, which pretty much makes that ISO unusable. Panasonic seems to correct for the blotches at ISO 400, but in the process destroys fine detail and makes subjects look smeary. In the end, the ZS10 is best suited for outdoor use or indoors if brightly lit. Photos at or below ISO 200 can stand up to some cropping or larger prints, but low-light photos are best left for small prints and Web use. And unfortunately, with no option for raw capture, you’re stuck with Panasonic’s image processing.

Sample photos:
Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS10

While there is little sign of pincushioning when the lens is extended, the wide end of the lens shows some barrel distortion. The lens has good center sharpness and is reasonably consistent edge to edge. Fringing in high-contrast areas can be a bit of an issue for the ZS10. Mainly, it’s more than I’m used to seeing from a Panasonic camera, but still average for this class of camera.

Color and exposure is very good from the ZS10 up to ISO 400. Subjects appear natural, bright, and pretty accurate. Plus, there are a number of ways to tweak your color results. White-balance presets are good for the most part; however, the auto white balance is not good indoors. Unfortunately, you’re stuck with that setting if you’re using Intelligent Auto. Whenever possible, use the presets or take a manual reading, which is really easy to do.

Lastly, though the sensor is 15 megapixels, the camera only uses 14 megapixels, making it possible to have four aspect ratios–16:9, 3:2, 4:3, and 1.1–with the same angle of view across the entire zoom range of the lens.

As for movie quality, its AVCHD clips are sharp with good exposure and color and some of the smoothest motion I’ve seen from a point-and-shoot. Low-light recording suffers from the same noise problems as in photos. The zoom does operate while recording, but its movement is picked up by the stereo mic. If you are recording in a very quiet environment, you will hear it in your movies, but otherwise it’s difficult to hear. The camera also has an option for continuous AF for movies, which performed very well, as did its wind noise filter. Also, the ZS10 can capture 3.5-megapixel photos while shooting video as well as extract single frames for photos when in Playback mode.

As Panasonic’s highest-end compact megazoom, there is no shortage of shooting options. For automatic shooting there is the company’s Intelligent Auto that combines an ever-growing number of technologies to get the best results. Overall, it works very well, but photos can end up appearing overprocessed when viewed at full size. There are 29 scene modes for those times when you want to get specific with your auto shooting or get creative and you can store two favorites to MySCN spots on the mode dial. For the most part they are the ones you’d find on any point-and-shoot, but there are a few artistic ones like High Dynamic and Pinhole as well as a Handheld Night Shot that takes 10 pictures in a row and then combines them into one to reduce motion blur and noise. The down side is that it only works if your subject is stationary. There is an Underwater mode as well, but you’ll need a casing if you want to get it wet–the ZS10 is not waterproof in any way. Lastly, many of the scene modes are available for movies, too, giving you a little more freedom to experiment.

For those who like to take more control, the ZS10 does offer aperture-priority, shutter-priority, and manual shooting modes. Apertures are f3.3-6.3 wide and 5.9-6.3 telephoto. Shutter speeds go from 60 seconds to 1/4,000 second. To use them, you press the Exposure button on back, and change the settings with the directional pad. (A thumb dial would’ve been nice, but space is already pretty tight.) There is also a Custom spot on the mode dial for setting up three custom setting configurations. There’s a Program mode, too, should you want to adjust things like ISO, white balance, and exposure compensation (not done with the Exposure button, mind you, but the directional pad), but not worry about shutter speed and aperture settings.

If you shoot a lot of moving subjects, namely children, pets, and sports, the ZS10′s multiple burst shooting options give you a lot of flexibility and a fighting chance of getting a good photo. Its fastest burst modes–40 and 60 frames per second–are at reduced resolutions, but Panasonic packed in three at full resolution. There’s one that captures up to 15 shots at 10fps, but that sets focus, exposure, and white balance with the first shot. What’s better are the 2fps and 5fps options that set those things with each shot so you’re able to get a subject moving moderately fast in focus and properly exposed. However, in our lab tests the 5fps setting averaged 3.2fps.

Other aspects of its shooting performance are excellent as well and significantly faster than its predecessor. Shutter lag is low at 0.4 second and 0.7 second in bright and dim lighting, respectively. From shot-to-shot without the flash you’re waiting only 1.1 seconds; adding the flash drags that time to just 1.4 seconds. It’s time from off to first shot is 1.9 seconds.

The high-speed shooting also gets you 3D photos. The ZS10 fires off 20 shots as you move the camera horizontally across a scene and then picks the two best for overlaying to create a 3D MPO file that can be played back on 3D-enabled TVs, computers, and photo frames. The results are good, but your subject has to be motionless as does everything in the scene. Any movement really kills the effect. It’s a nice extra to play with, but not a must-have mode.

The appearance of the ZS10 doesn’t change much from its predecessor, the ZS7. Its weight and size are approximately the same, remaining remarkably compact for its features and wide-angle lens with 16x zoom (that’s wider and longer than its predecessor). Though it’s a tight fit in a pants pocket, the ZS10 easily fits in an average jacket pocket or small handbag. The body–available in black, brown, silver, blue, and red versions–has a nice, solid feel to it with a comfortable grip on the right side.

The 3-inch touch screen on the back looks good and gets reasonably bright, though it gets reflective in direct sunlight, so you may struggle occasionally to see what you’re shooting. Also, Panasonic didn’t do much with the touch screen, only using it for a handful of functions. For example, you can use it to focus and shoot photos by tapping on your subject, but menu navigation is primarily done with the directional pad. In playback you can use it to flip through your shots, but you can’t do any editing or drawing or writing on photos. It just seems that if you’re going to be paying for a touch screen, you should get more use out of it.

One of the main attractions of the ZS10 is the built-in GPS. Using it is fairly simple, and the process has been streamlined from the ZS7 thanks to a dedicated spot in the menu system. Once you’ve turned on the receiver–it can be done from the Q.Menu or main menu–you can have the camera retrieve the information for your current location. In tests this took anywhere from less than a minute to several minutes depending on how much open sky was above me. Once locked, the ZS10 can display country, state, city, and landmark information and continues to update itself every minute. You can then go into the GPS Area Select menus and pick the correct information for your location. For example, if you’re standing in the middle of New York, it could quite possibly have a couple pages of landmarks to pick from. Also, you can choose to limit what area information is attached, in case you only want the name of the city for instance. The area information covers 173 countries or regions for all over the world and more than half a million landmarks in 73 countries or regions.

For everyday shooting, attaching GPS information is probably not that exciting. But, if you do a lot of traveling, hiking, or other activity where you might want to remember where you were, then it’s a great feature to have. Longitude and latitude is seamlessly added to the EXIF data and, again, you can have the camera include country, city, state, and landmarks.

There’s an option to record AVCHD movies with GPS data as well. The location information can be viewed when videos are played back on a computer using the bundled software or directly from the camera. Unless you simply must have the information, you’ll probably want to stick with the non-GPS AVCHD format option.

One last thing regarding the GPS: once you’ve turned it on, the receiver stays on until you turn it off, 2 hours have passed since it’s refreshed its position, or after 3 hours of the camera being off. So even if you shut off the camera, it’ll continue to update its location every 15 minutes. This is fine if you’re shooting for an extended period of time, but it’ll eventually run down your battery. If you want the GPS to turn off when you shut the camera off, you must select the Airplane mode option from the camera’s menu. This is all explained in the manual, but battery life is something to keep in mind with features like GPS.

In fact, battery life with the ZS10 is an issue in general. With the GPS, touch screen, zoom, burst shooting, and HD movie capture there’s a lot here to drain its small rechargeable battery. Even without all those things, the camera’s battery life is pretty short. I strongly recommend picking up an extra battery if you’re going to be traveling with the ZS10 or even just out for a day of shooting.

Conclusion
The cost of the Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS10 goes primarily to its abundant feature set. That fortunately includes some very fast shooting performance and a nice zoom lens in a pocketable body. It’s not unreasonable to expect excellent photos, too, for its price, but the fact is the ZS10 is still a point-and-shoot with a sensor no bigger than you’d find in a smaller, less feature-laden camera. If you’re after awesome low-light photos or need to regularly make large prints, you probably shouldn’t consider this camera. But if most of your photos are for sharing online and 8×10 prints or smaller, the ZS10 is a very good option. Especially if you want something that can double as a pocket video camera.

Shooting speed (in seconds)
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)

Time to first shot  

Typical shot-to-shot time  

Shutter lag (dim)  

Shutter lag (typical)  

Find out more about how we test digital cameras.

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The LG HBM-235 doesn’t have that many features. You get the usual answering, ending, and rejecting calls, and there’s also last-number redial, call-waiting support, auto reconnect, battery status alert, and the ability to transfer calls from the headset to the phone and vice versa. For such a cheap headset, we’re happy to see that the HBM-235 has multipoint, which lets it connect to two devices simultaneously.

We paired the LG HBM-235 with the Apple iPhone 4. Call quality was acceptable at best, but that’s normal for such an affordable headset. Callers sounded all right, with decent clarity and volume. However, we detected quite a bit of static hiss on our end. Callers also had no problems hearing us, as long as we were in a relatively quiet environment. The HBM-235 doesn’t perform very well in environments with even the slightest bit of noise. For example, we tried it out in the CNET office, and callers could clearly detect the clacking of keyboards in the background. Callers also said our voice quality was rather harsh, hollow, and not as natural as they would have liked.

The HBM-235 has a rated battery life of 8 hours of talk time and 12.5 days of standby time.

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