Low-light performance isn’t as strong as we’d like, however, often yielding lots of noise in images above 6400. White balance is hit-and-miss, with colours often warmer than they should be.
Video performance can also be choppy if you capture movies in any of the arty modes. It’s not just a problem with capture, either, with playback showing any video shot under an “Art” mode running at a much slower frame rate than a regular video.
There are some annoying bugs too. While we don’t have a problem with custom colour settings being applied to every mode, there should be an option to switch these off from the controls whenever you like. This means you could set the camera to shoot in black and white while on manual, and find the same black and white settings in one of the scene modes – such as fireworks – with no way of switching back to colour quickly.
The lithium-ion battery isn’t the best we’ve experienced, lasting through only 30 minutes of night shooting (around 200 images) and some video capture. We’d recommend buying an extra battery or two for your kit.
Conclusion
The E-P3 is an appealing camera in looks and functionality. The built-in flash is a welcome addition, and the bright touchscreen is nicely responsive. We especially liked the range of creative modes on offer, but were disappointed by battery life and the camera’s low-light performance.
We’re not quite sure if it’s the best Olympus ever, but the E-P3 definitely manages to be a strong product that competes well with digital SLRs.
