In black it's not a bad looking little camera, although I think the E-P2 is still better looking. One design improvement I am glad they made was recessing the hot shoe. The hot shoe on the E-P2 sits way too high up, so when you mount the view finder into it looks like it doesn't belong. They fixed that on the E-PL1.



Via: http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/EPL1/EPL1A.HTM

Maybe the green light won't appear on any other Olympus Micro Four Thirds camera anymore.

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 What in the world makes them think the world only wants zooms

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Thanks for this post. I fully agree!

1/2000? That doesn't make sense.

I don't think 1/2000 shutter is too bad for the target audience. Only one stop from the typical 1/4000 of a low end DSLR. About the only time I enter that region is shooting a big aperture lens wide open in bright sunlight, and that's where NDs come in anyway.

The only other possible reason for wanting faster would be stopping motion, but I don't think most people who consider this type of camera would be seriously wanting that.

Also I don't think the ISO3200 limit is a problem either, since the quality takes a more noticeable dive at 6400 over 3200 than lower on the E-P1 (assuming they're using the same sensor?).

There are many times where I've used 1/4000 sec though. Don't know if I would like this.

Well, that might depend on how you look at it. I think that Olympus wanted to make a pure point and shoot here. They know though that there are a lot of people that feature shop and look at tables of camera comparisons for features that they will never actually use. Those are the people that don't know what an f/stop or ISO is, or  when to use a fast shutter or when backlighting is a problem, but they think that they might get into photography some day... I know quite a few of these. So they threw ever possible feature in there, such as manual control, and a flash, so that it's "in there" but not necessarily easy to use or particularly useful. It's just marketing. The fact that someone might see this camera as more than a point and shoot is exactly what they want from a marketing perspective, especially for the micro 4/3 market where people might be sort of "moving up" from point and shoot, although it is not really competition for something like the E-P1/2 when it comes to manual control if you need that. It is definitely competition if "point and shoot" is your style though, and I'll admit that is how most of my shots are taken. Just knowing that you "could" access some manual controls if you had to makes the camera more appealing to a lot of people. That's what they are trying to do here.