Olympus has just announced a new entry level Four Thirds dSLR which has nearly all the features of the superb E-620 that you need but at $US100 cheaper price point – which in my mind makes it the best entry level dSLR on the market – assuming you don’t need non-AF movies.

It seems the only features you miss out on compared to the E-620 are a few creative art filters (you still get 3 of the fun ones – pop art, soft focus and pin hole), illuminated buttons, and the ability to change image aspect ratio (but this was via cropping anyway, unlike the GH-1’s aspect ratio functionality).

New features include the Live thumbnail preview button which was first shown on the E-P1, and which allows you to preview the effects of various settings such as white balance on the LCD screen before taking the shot.

Thus for $US600 you get a great compact dSLR with in-body image stabilisation which will work on all lenses, and a very nice flip out, swivel LCD screen and up to 4fps burst rate, and one of the nice Olympus kit lenses, in this case, the 14-42mm f/3.5 lens which gives 35mm coverage of 28-84mm, and don’t forget, perhaps the best in-camera jpeg processing engine on the market which gives arguably the best looking jpegs straight from the camera – at the end of the day, most users of entry level dslrs will be relying on the camera to make jpegs rather than process RAW files – and this camera is one of the best for doing that (assuming Olympus hasn’t changed their TruePic III+ engine).

Finally, Olympus have some of the best lenses available specifically designed for a cropped sensor dSLR rather than forcing you to go to lenses optimised for full frame cameras for the high quality, wide aperture lenses as Canon and Nikon do.