Hi,
i also upgraded from the e-420 to e-3. It's seems that when i go out to events -- it gives me much more confidence to use :) And the pictures are better also!
I was in the same boat earlier last year choosing between d700 and e-3 but when push comes to shove and I had to calculate the amount of money I needed to accumulate to purchase a "pro-spec" line up of lenses. wow... Olympus by far is value for money. It gives me fast lenses at an affordable...
I experience the same problem with my e-420 -- even with the 12-60 attached. I found that the best solution is to use the focus assist -- the red light on the fl-36/fl-50 :)
I'm not sure if this is the case, but i agree that the e-5xx tends to oversharpen. I tend to get halos more when i use the unmask filter in PS when i use the e-5xx rather than the e-3 :) and i agree that i like the colors of the e-3 more
I have both the e-520 and the e-3 and i experienced the same thing -- my jpeg in the e-520 has more "punch". But in fairness to the e-3's Raw, i feel that i can draw more from the RAW file to make it punchier in Lightroom =)