Olympus E-420 digital SLR

Open up the side panel and you’ll find that the E-420 takes both CompactFlash and xD cards in two separate slots. This gives you extra storage capacity and allows you to transfer images between the two cards if you desire. At the bottom is the battery compartment.

Feature-wise, Olympus has stuffed a lot into the compact E-420, including several auto-focus modes which offer both contrast and phase-detection systems - contrast is the default. The camera provides auto, program AE, aperture priority, shutter priority and manual modes, plus 18 scene modes that include, portrait, night, landscape and sport. Live View lets you use the LCD screen as a viewfinder.

The back of the camera is dominated by a 2.7in LCD screen

There’s a face-detection system, anti-dust sensor and Shadow Adjustment Technology, which is designed to increase detail when your subject is... well... in shadow. The ISO range is 100-1600, the shutter speed varies from 1/4000sec to 60 sec (30 minutes in Bulb mode). In addition, various image tweaking facilities for adjusting the sharpness, contrast and saturation of stills are available too.

You can shoot in both JPEG and RAW file formats (separately or together) with a top resolution of 3648 x 2736 pixels. Colour space options are sRGB and Adobe RGB. Sequential shooting runs at 3.5f/s, and the E-420 will carry on shooting until the card is full, though RAW images are limited to eight frames. There is no movie mode, and image stabilisation is limited to a digital system.

Just a little too small for good handling?

In terms of handling, we found the camera body just a little too small for our large hands. We can see the marketing kudos in claiming to have the world’s smallest DSLR, but in practice it’s not such a great idea. If someone really wants a compact camera, they’re likely to opt for a compact digital.