Olympus Stylus Epic Review
I immensely enjoyed being able to snap pictures without any thought into camera settings with the Olympus Stylus Epic point and shoot camera. After shooting film cameras for a couple years I am surprised I did not pick up a point and shoot sooner, and wish I would have because the price of the Contax T2 just keeps growing.. The Stylus Epic has some incredible highlight and lowlight retention, and great lowlight abilities with a 2.8 lens for an auto film camera. One of the biggest curves in shooting point-and-shoot compared to manual is not choosing the settings to match the light I want, instead I learn it it best to choose the light the camera will work best in because you have no settings control. I love shooting backlit but found with the Stylus Epic that backlit produces a dark and very muddy photograph, see example below. This camera loves a blue sky and lots of light. I purchased my camera from Film Supply Club and always send my film to Goodman Film Lab for scans.
There are so many pros to this camera and just one con I could find that you can easily learn to live with. Every single time you close and open the camera lens to turn it on and off the flash resets and always begins in the on position. You must then click the flash button on the back of the camera a couple times to turn it off. I found this extremely easy to remember though and was not phased but some may find it a bigger con.
I normally back light my subjects but with the Stylus Epic, having no manual settings control, I quickly learned that front lighting creates the better lighting scenario. In the first back-lit image colors are under saturated and look very dingy, the blues in the sky turn almost grey scale, and all the shadows are very muddy. In the second image blues are bright and colors have true to life saturation and hues.
In my examples below I tested shooting backlit, front lit, into the sun, as the sun was setting, and indoors with decent lighting.
The Olympus Stylus Epic is a great little point-and-shoot film camera that I will be taking on more vacations that I want to unplug from the settings but still capture moments on film.