The Olympus E-620 is not just a very good DSLR, it is an excellent value with an outstanding and complete feature set. Image noise is a good as we have seen from Four-Thirds cameras and very close to recent rivals using APS size sensors. This can be compensated easily by bright Olympus lenses which often have wider apertures than comparable lenses made for larger-sensor cameras.

 

The Olympus E-620 is very compact by DSLR-standards. It is the smallest DSLR to feature built-in stabilization. It may be that the price to pay is a cramped design and low battery-life, but that is easily an acceptable compromise for having such a feature set. The main downside would be a tiny viewfinder that makes manual focusing difficult.

 

Interestingly Olympus has nearly the same feature-set in 3 sizes, the E-620, the much larger E-3 and the compact non-DLSR Micro-Four-Thirds E-P1. If size matters, then you've got choice here. The E-3 features a viewfinder with 100% coverage and the E-P1 has no viewfinder at all.

 

Rivals from other makes include the Canon Rebel XSi, the Pentax K200D and the Nikon D60. The K200D is the only weather-sealed camera here with a relatively large viewfinder and built-in stabilization. The XSi and D60 lack image-stabilization but show very low noise at high-ISO. The XSi also features the best live-view implementation out there.