Olympus E-P1 RAW Image Quality (Low-ISO)

Olympus E-P1 RAW Image Quality (Low-ISO) Compared to The Olympus E-30

Test setup:

The E-P1 used was a presentation model with firmware level 1.0, said to be pre-production.

Both cameras were shot with the Leica Summilux 25mm 1:1.4, hand-held but supported, at ISO 100, f/8 and 1/320 s.

The E-P1's RAW file was patched to identify the camera as the E-30, too, in order to make the RAW converter accept the file and force it to use the same profile as for the E-30.

Both RAW files were then developed with Silkypix Developer Studio 3 using default parameters except for 'Sharpness' (45/85/90/Pure detail), 'Noise reduction', which was effectively turned off (0/0/0/100/0), and 'Demosaic sharp' (50), and CA correction for the lens.. (Side note: my impression is that in addition to whatever difference these results may or may not show, in contrast to the E-30, 'Demosaic sharp' can be significantly increased for the E-P1 without risking sharpening artifacts.) The RAW files were developed to TIFF and crops were taken and saved as minimally compressed JPEGs.

This is the complete field of fiew:

And here are the crops:

E-P1

E-30

This is a crop of an underexposed area, brightened by +3 EV:

E-P1

E-30

Conclusion: The E-P1, which basically uses the same sensor chip as the E-30, is (if only just) slightly sharper than the E-30, and it shows noticeably less noise at ISO 100, while delivering near-identical images otherwise, when developing RAWs using identical parameters. So whatever differences the out-of-camera JPEGs show (which are, as other reports have shown, even more significant), there already are some differences in the sensor itself. Not all image quality improvements come from the new JPEG engine alone.

If we take into account that the E-P1 RAW can probably use a higher 'Demosaic sharp' setting and can be more intensely sharpened through the standard sharpness settings, too, before noise becomes too much, there will probably be a significant sharpness advantage over the E-30 (looking at it on pixel level, and whatever it will mean for the usual applications).

RS 01-Jul-09