Olympus E-PL5 and PT-EP10

Dan Bolt · Issue 71, Mar/Apr 2013 · pp. 46–50

Products mentioned: Olympus E-PL5, Olympus PT-EP10, Olympus E-PL1, Olympus O-MD, Olympus 60mm macro, Olympus 14-42mm kit lens, Panasonic 45mm macro, Panasonic 8mm fisheye, Subsee +5 diopter, Sandisk Extreme UHS-I SD card, Nauticam housing

And so it came to pass that almost two years to the day since I first got hold of my faithful Olympus E-PL1, that my chums at CamerasUnderwater thrust into my eager hands the Olympus PT-EP10 housing for the newly arrived E-PL5 PEN camera. As we all know, two years in the real world might as well be two light- years in the digital imaging world with the latest batch of class-leading cameras being hugely more capable photo taking devices than models only a generations or two older. The same is true of the E-PL5, as after the launch Olympus’s much lauded O-MD camera at roughly twice the price of the next best PEN camera there was a real gap opening up not only in terms of performance but in quality and expectation of the PEN line of cameras too. While the O-MD has seen a large uptake amongst underwater photographers, thanks in part to Nauticam releasing a housing mere milliseconds after the…