I buy two or three cameras a year. I hesitated on this camera because it has no image stabilization. But I recently took it to Europe and got great pictures in churches and museums. I set the ISO to 800 and had very sharp handheld pictures. The size is fantastic...very light and small. The live view works great...although the focus is slow. Focus if very fast in non-live view. To learn all the options, you'd have to spend quite a bit of time. But for most uses, you can learn to use the camera in about 5 minutes. Menus are very deep, so some options are difficult to keep track of. But in most competitors at this price level, those deep menued options don't even exist. Highly recommended.

It's my first SLR, and I couldn't be happier with it. I hesitated for a long time because I was worried that I wouldn't take the camera everywhere the way I did with my point and shoot. But it's small, light and just as easy to tote everyplace. The lenses are also much smaller and lighter, but with the same quality shots. And it takes simply beautiful pictures. The price wasn't so high that I had to hock my first born for it either, which was the other barrier holding me back.

I purchased this camera in hopes of replacing my point and shoot. In the past, I have just missed too many shots because my point and shoot was too slow, or because it focused on the wrong object, or just had the wrong exposure. So I was looking for small DSLR, and when this camera came out with the pancake lens, I wanted to give it a try. My personal experience has been with a few different kinds of cameras, Canon A2, Yashica T4, Canon S100, Canon Digital Rebel, and a Minolta G500. I rated this camera as a single unit consisting of the body and the 25mm f/2.8 pancake lens. My tests have taken about 3 weeks and include two family vacations.

Quality of the images (not including user error): 5/5

Ease of Use: 4/5

Feel: 5/5

Live View mode: 2/5

Advanced modes, Manual Mode, and manual focus: 3/5

Fun: 5/5

Ease of use for handing to others: 5/5

Speed of use (not including Live View): 5/5

Overall: 4/5

Strengths:

First off, the camera feels great. Even though it is small, it feels solid, it has a nice smooth shutter with a pleasing sound. The camera feels good in my hands. It feels better than my Digital Rebel. I have had two instances in which someone else dropped the camera from a height of 3 feet, and it has been fine. I have carried it in all kinds of bags with other gear and it appears to be very sturdy.

The quality of the images I get is very good. In day light or normal indoor light, I get great images. The only limit on the quality is the skill of the photographer. I took a number of shots in low light (campfires and candle light), and those pictures look OK but not great. In those conditions I got pictures better than my point and shoot cameras, but not as good as I get with my Digital Rebel with an f/1.4 lens. I am not a professional photographer, so my standards may not be all that high, but I love the pictures I get.

The biggest pleasant surprise of this camera was the Info display. There is an "Info" button that bring us a display showing all of the important settings. And the special part is that you can easily navigate to any setting and change it directly from that mode. I really love this. It makes it very easy to change the metering mode, and to check if I left the camera in any strange mode (IS0 1600, or manual focus mode).

I have also given the camera to my wife and daughters to use. They were able to use it without any problems.

I thought the Auto ISO selection works quite well. It only boosts the ISO when required.

Finally, I find this camera to be lots of fun. I usually find any new camera to be fun, but this one has really captured my imagination. I felt the same way about the Digital Rebel when I first purchased it. I find myself taking it many places and getting lots of good pictures.

Weaknesses and issues:

My main complaint is that the camera is not small enough to replace my point and shoot. This is not a defect, just a realization on my part that the worlds smallest DSLR is not small enough. My next issue is that some pictures do not have the subject in proper focus. This camera makes fewer autofocus mistakes than a point and shoot, but my Digital Rebel does better. I suspect this is a function of the 3 focus points, but I don't know for sure.

I tried to focus the camera manually, but I was not able to reliably get the subject in focus. I am not great at focusing manually, but this camera did not make it easy.

The E420 does have a live view mode, that allows you to compose the picture using the LCD. I was eager to try this, and I found it very disappointing. After pressing the shutter, the camera moves the lens through a wide range of focus points before taking the picture. So the time it takes to the capture the picture is way too long. Sadly, this really defeats my interest in live view. I was able to improve the shot time by changing the auto focus mode, but it's still not fast.

Finally, I have some smaller gripes. None of these is a terrible problem, but they did annoy me. First, Olympus includes an eye piece cover, and they sized it such that it fits into the hot shoe. Sadly, it fails out too easily, and I have almost lost it several times.

Face detection seems like a good idea, but it is slow enough that I do not use it.

After using the camera to take pictures of the stars at night, I mistakenly left the focus mode in manual, and the ISO set to 1600. Sadly, neither of those settings are visible in the view finder so I took quit a few shots that had out of focus subjects and a grainy appearance.

The lens cap must be screwed off. I would prefer one that was removed by a pinch.

Finally, there is one really odd item. The focus ring on the camera is not physically attached to the lens elements. This means that moving the ring does nothing if you are in the fully automatic modes, and it means that you do not get any physical feedback when you have reached the end of the focus range. While this is not a terrible problem, it really seemed weird to me.

So I was deciding between this, the E510/520, Canon's line, and Sony's. The thing about Canon is it's more expensive, even while you get better quality photos. Also, you miss out on the bells and whistles this camera's got, with live view, dust reduction, better kit lens, etc. Sony would have been what I'd gone with, had size not been an issue. For some people, there won't be much of an issue with size, but since I preferred a small camera, the difference was massive; Sony's lines are great, but only because they make their cameras quite a bit large that Olympus's. Also, the E420 has a nice improvement in terms of image quality and noise over the old E410, (which I wouldn't have bought. Image quality was just too poor on that old model) and the E510, and to be honest, the difference between it and Sony becomes negligible in everyday outdoor use and party/occasional indoor use upon close-up inspection. For prints and smaller images, there is no difference in noise, and you can easily compensate for the occasional over/under exposure. Really, for me, I was looking for a camera that could take good pictures, be handy, and come with some nice extras. Olympus met all those brilliantly, as did Sony did minus the 'handy' part. If you're worried about quality, don't worry unless blown-up images are your main concern. Then you might even want to invest more than the E420's price range and get yourself a slightly more expensive SLR altogether. Oh, and I would have loved the E520 (which is not much bigger, all said and done), but it wasn't coming out on time. IS (Image Stabilization) is real handy for night and low-light indoor shots, and if you're in need of a camera for that, go ahead and get the E520, it just wasn't available when I bought the E420. Good buy so far, nice bang/buck!

I have the e-410. The pictures are great. The camera handles well. I like the fact that I can carry it on a shoulder strap all day and not be tried of it. I have large hands, but don't find the camera to be too small for me to handle.

The other reviewer was correct in criticizing the focus assist strobe because it is slow. Turn that feature off and the camera will focus quickly with natural light.