e_dawg
11-30-2007, 11:31 PM
This thread details my thought process on buying an E-510.
http://www.dcresource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=35142
Below is a review after getting the camera:
The "fruit" came in the mail Friday and I've been playing with it this weekend. It's like I bought myself an early xmas present ;)
So far so good. Here's a preliminary user review for those of you (cv) considering Olympus:
Noise and Dynamic Range
The drawback of having a smaller sensor (noise) is as expected :( I was hoping those reports of more noise and less dynamic range were wrong (because there were so many glowing reports that refuted these negatives), but they were right to a certain extent. It's not as bad as some people reported (imaging-resource.com is unusually negative with the E-510, given that they rarely give a negative review of anything they review), but it's there.
Depending on how you manage contrast, exposure bias, tone, WB, NR, and sharpness, there is between 0.5-1.0 less stop of sensitivity available for the same amount of noise and detail retention and about half a stop less range with the highlights. Ultimately, at low ISOs, there's about half a stop less DR (limited mainly by highlight range), and at high ISOs, there's about 0.5-1.0 stop less DR than the Nikons (limited mainly by sensor noise).
I found the best setting for detail retention vs noise is to turn the noise filter off, sharpness to -2, shoot in RAW + JPEG, and do NR in Noise Ninja if necessary and USM at the end.
Exposure and tone
I find the exposure to be a little less reliable and consistent than the Nikons overall. Like the D40/80, it can blow the highlights, but I don't think it is as consistent at doing so.
The default contrast and tone curve is too steep. Specifically, it keeps the shadows and lower midtones low to mask noise like the Fuji F10/11/30/31/40 P&S models do. The result is that the images look surprisingly noise free, sharp, and contrasty out of the box. But if you really want to get it right and prop up the upper shadows and lower midtones to extract detail and smooth out the tone curve, this will bring out the noise as well.
I have taken to setting the contrast at -2 in-camera and shoot in RAW to compensate for this (settings default to automatically read from the camera in the RAW converter, so it's easier this way... JPEGs look better too).
AF
The 3-point AF has been panned by some reviewers as being slow and struggles in low light, and limited by its 3-point system.
Personally, I do find it a bit slow, but only in low light where it does a bit compared to the D40/80. The difference is small. I bet if slightly faster lenses than the kit lenses were used, this would not be a problem.
As for only 3 points, it wasn't a limitation for me with the D40 and it isn't on the E-510.
The AF assist is annoying because a weaker version of the red-eye reduction flash burst is used instead of an AF lamp. I guess it's stronger and more effective than an AF lamp, but it's definitely more annoying.
The kit lenses are acceptably fast and quiet when focusing. You would be forgiven if you were to mistake them for USM/SWM/HSM lenses.
I imagine the SWD lenses would be an improvement on the kit lens AF in terms of speed and silence, but not nearly as much as it would be on the E-3.
Colour, WB
The auto WB seems decent; haven't done enough testing with it yet to see if it's as good as the Nikons. Really cool feature is that you can assign the Fn button to set a custom WB on the fly. Just hold it down and press the shutter while aiming at a white or grey object. You can also select the actual colour temperature by rotating the dial (3700K, etc.). I find these two features quick, convenient, and better implemented than on the Nikons.
Flash
Come on, do I even have to spell it out here? Of course the Nikons are better. And no CLS unless you get the E-3 and the new R-type wireless flashes.
Red-Eye reduction is always annoying, but using the pre-flash is more annoying than the AF assist light.
LCD display, Live view
Not a big fan of Live view, but I can see situations in which it would be useful. When it was introduced, it was unique, especially with full-time unlimited operation. You can preview WB, exposure, and other image settings before you take the shot. I especially like the ability to display a live histogram so you can check shadow and highlight clipping and under/over exposure BEFORE taking the shot. LV is also good for MF, etc. But generally, this is not something I normally use.
The display itself is a little disappointing in its colour and gamma accuracy. The gamut is a little narrow and the colours look a little pale. Things tend to look a little dark compared to the bright, contrasty, and saturated Nikon LCDs.
Image review is pretty good with the dial acting as a quick and convenient way of controlling the zoom and the multi-direction pad moving the image around. Definitely better than the Fuji S5 Pro and a little faster than the Nikons to move around in (I find moving left/right/up/down on the Nikons to be a little slow). Like the ability to blink areas of clipped shadows as well as highlights (Nikons only show highlights), but find that it takes longer to cycle through the display styles before getting back to just the picture.
Image Stabilization
One of the main reasons to buy an E-510 over and E-410, it does a good job overall. I would put its average level of effectiveness at about 2-3 stops.
Handheld, I have been able to take sharp pics at 1/6 a second at f = 30 mm (60 mm @ 35FF equiv), 1/8 sec at f = 60 mm (120 @ 35eq), and have been able to use 1/20 to 1/30 with f = 150 mm (300 @ 35eq) with success (3.5-4 stops max).
Compared to Nikon VR, it is similar, but VR II has a clear one-stop edge. Using the 18-200/VR, I can get sharp pics at 200 mm with a shutter speed of 1/15 sec.
Overall, it is comparable in effectiveness to the older VR lenses.
Optics - 2 lens kit
This kit is a bargain. The 14-42/3.5-5.6 (28-84 @ 35 mm equiv) and 40-150/3.5-5.6 (80-300 @ 35eq) are normally $250 and $280 each, respectively, if you buy them separately. They are both amazingly light and compact, yet feel well constructed. Zoom ring is nicely dampened and you don't have too much of that wobbly rattling plastic feel most kit lenses have.
Except for the barrel distortion of the 14-42 at the wide end, it's a decent lens. Nothing spectacular, just a solid lens, and good for a kit lens.
The 40-150 is a gem. It's surprisingly quite sharp throughout most of its range, getting a bit softer at the long end but still better than lenses like the 50-200/VR and 70-300/VR at their long ends. Very impressive for a kit lens.
This is where you see the advantage of the Four-Thirds system -- small, light lenses with lots of range and excellent optical quality.
Naturally, it would be nice if they were faster, especially the 40-150 at the long end. However, this is true of all mainstream consumer zooms, and the lens would double or triple in size, weight, and cost.
Conclusion
The E-510 + 2 lens kit is an excellent value for a 10 MP image stabilized camera with a ton of features and 2 excellent lenses. Its 4/3 sensor is both a blessing and a curse with excellent compact lenses but a slightly noisier sensor that has a bit less dynamic range.
Overall it is not as good a performer as its Nikon and Canon 10 MP equivalents, but it's not as expensive as them either and it is smaller and lighter due to the 4/3 lenses. Performance and feature-wise, I would compare it to the D40 much more than the D80.
It is my hope that it will replace my Nikon/Fuji setup as a lighter and more compact travel system, and that's what I would recommend it to for to others. I have the 12-60/2.8-3.5 on order (24-120 @ 35eq or 16-80 @ APS-C 1.5x) to be my single-lens walkaround / vacation solution. If I needed more reach, I would take the small and sharp 40-150/3.5-5.6 with me too.
http://www.dcresource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=35142
Below is a review after getting the camera:
The "fruit" came in the mail Friday and I've been playing with it this weekend. It's like I bought myself an early xmas present ;)
So far so good. Here's a preliminary user review for those of you (cv) considering Olympus:
Noise and Dynamic Range
The drawback of having a smaller sensor (noise) is as expected :( I was hoping those reports of more noise and less dynamic range were wrong (because there were so many glowing reports that refuted these negatives), but they were right to a certain extent. It's not as bad as some people reported (imaging-resource.com is unusually negative with the E-510, given that they rarely give a negative review of anything they review), but it's there.
Depending on how you manage contrast, exposure bias, tone, WB, NR, and sharpness, there is between 0.5-1.0 less stop of sensitivity available for the same amount of noise and detail retention and about half a stop less range with the highlights. Ultimately, at low ISOs, there's about half a stop less DR (limited mainly by highlight range), and at high ISOs, there's about 0.5-1.0 stop less DR than the Nikons (limited mainly by sensor noise).
I found the best setting for detail retention vs noise is to turn the noise filter off, sharpness to -2, shoot in RAW + JPEG, and do NR in Noise Ninja if necessary and USM at the end.
Exposure and tone
I find the exposure to be a little less reliable and consistent than the Nikons overall. Like the D40/80, it can blow the highlights, but I don't think it is as consistent at doing so.
The default contrast and tone curve is too steep. Specifically, it keeps the shadows and lower midtones low to mask noise like the Fuji F10/11/30/31/40 P&S models do. The result is that the images look surprisingly noise free, sharp, and contrasty out of the box. But if you really want to get it right and prop up the upper shadows and lower midtones to extract detail and smooth out the tone curve, this will bring out the noise as well.
I have taken to setting the contrast at -2 in-camera and shoot in RAW to compensate for this (settings default to automatically read from the camera in the RAW converter, so it's easier this way... JPEGs look better too).
AF
The 3-point AF has been panned by some reviewers as being slow and struggles in low light, and limited by its 3-point system.
Personally, I do find it a bit slow, but only in low light where it does a bit compared to the D40/80. The difference is small. I bet if slightly faster lenses than the kit lenses were used, this would not be a problem.
As for only 3 points, it wasn't a limitation for me with the D40 and it isn't on the E-510.
The AF assist is annoying because a weaker version of the red-eye reduction flash burst is used instead of an AF lamp. I guess it's stronger and more effective than an AF lamp, but it's definitely more annoying.
The kit lenses are acceptably fast and quiet when focusing. You would be forgiven if you were to mistake them for USM/SWM/HSM lenses.
I imagine the SWD lenses would be an improvement on the kit lens AF in terms of speed and silence, but not nearly as much as it would be on the E-3.
Colour, WB
The auto WB seems decent; haven't done enough testing with it yet to see if it's as good as the Nikons. Really cool feature is that you can assign the Fn button to set a custom WB on the fly. Just hold it down and press the shutter while aiming at a white or grey object. You can also select the actual colour temperature by rotating the dial (3700K, etc.). I find these two features quick, convenient, and better implemented than on the Nikons.
Flash
Come on, do I even have to spell it out here? Of course the Nikons are better. And no CLS unless you get the E-3 and the new R-type wireless flashes.
Red-Eye reduction is always annoying, but using the pre-flash is more annoying than the AF assist light.
LCD display, Live view
Not a big fan of Live view, but I can see situations in which it would be useful. When it was introduced, it was unique, especially with full-time unlimited operation. You can preview WB, exposure, and other image settings before you take the shot. I especially like the ability to display a live histogram so you can check shadow and highlight clipping and under/over exposure BEFORE taking the shot. LV is also good for MF, etc. But generally, this is not something I normally use.
The display itself is a little disappointing in its colour and gamma accuracy. The gamut is a little narrow and the colours look a little pale. Things tend to look a little dark compared to the bright, contrasty, and saturated Nikon LCDs.
Image review is pretty good with the dial acting as a quick and convenient way of controlling the zoom and the multi-direction pad moving the image around. Definitely better than the Fuji S5 Pro and a little faster than the Nikons to move around in (I find moving left/right/up/down on the Nikons to be a little slow). Like the ability to blink areas of clipped shadows as well as highlights (Nikons only show highlights), but find that it takes longer to cycle through the display styles before getting back to just the picture.
Image Stabilization
One of the main reasons to buy an E-510 over and E-410, it does a good job overall. I would put its average level of effectiveness at about 2-3 stops.
Handheld, I have been able to take sharp pics at 1/6 a second at f = 30 mm (60 mm @ 35FF equiv), 1/8 sec at f = 60 mm (120 @ 35eq), and have been able to use 1/20 to 1/30 with f = 150 mm (300 @ 35eq) with success (3.5-4 stops max).
Compared to Nikon VR, it is similar, but VR II has a clear one-stop edge. Using the 18-200/VR, I can get sharp pics at 200 mm with a shutter speed of 1/15 sec.
Overall, it is comparable in effectiveness to the older VR lenses.
Optics - 2 lens kit
This kit is a bargain. The 14-42/3.5-5.6 (28-84 @ 35 mm equiv) and 40-150/3.5-5.6 (80-300 @ 35eq) are normally $250 and $280 each, respectively, if you buy them separately. They are both amazingly light and compact, yet feel well constructed. Zoom ring is nicely dampened and you don't have too much of that wobbly rattling plastic feel most kit lenses have.
Except for the barrel distortion of the 14-42 at the wide end, it's a decent lens. Nothing spectacular, just a solid lens, and good for a kit lens.
The 40-150 is a gem. It's surprisingly quite sharp throughout most of its range, getting a bit softer at the long end but still better than lenses like the 50-200/VR and 70-300/VR at their long ends. Very impressive for a kit lens.
This is where you see the advantage of the Four-Thirds system -- small, light lenses with lots of range and excellent optical quality.
Naturally, it would be nice if they were faster, especially the 40-150 at the long end. However, this is true of all mainstream consumer zooms, and the lens would double or triple in size, weight, and cost.
Conclusion
The E-510 + 2 lens kit is an excellent value for a 10 MP image stabilized camera with a ton of features and 2 excellent lenses. Its 4/3 sensor is both a blessing and a curse with excellent compact lenses but a slightly noisier sensor that has a bit less dynamic range.
Overall it is not as good a performer as its Nikon and Canon 10 MP equivalents, but it's not as expensive as them either and it is smaller and lighter due to the 4/3 lenses. Performance and feature-wise, I would compare it to the D40 much more than the D80.
It is my hope that it will replace my Nikon/Fuji setup as a lighter and more compact travel system, and that's what I would recommend it to for to others. I have the 12-60/2.8-3.5 on order (24-120 @ 35eq or 16-80 @ APS-C 1.5x) to be my single-lens walkaround / vacation solution. If I needed more reach, I would take the small and sharp 40-150/3.5-5.6 with me too.