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Olympus E-1: Digital SLR with an edge

Will the Olympus E-1's all-digital design set a new standard?
  • By Michael J. Mcnamara on December 16, 2008
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Olympus E-1 vs. its competitors

Canon EOS 10D

($1,500 street, body only) Lower cost camera features a higher resolution 6.3MP CMOS sensor, magnesium-alloy panels in body. Extensive lens system includes stabilized zooms and fisheye (all at 1.6X 35mm lens factor). Seven AF-zone system is faster, and images are captured at a 2:3 aspect ratio similar to 35mm film. Pop-up flash, software bundle, and longer-life rechargeable battery are a plus, but camera is missing a true spotmeter, and some wide-angle lenses exhibit light falloff at edges when set to wide apertures.

Nikon D100

($1,700 street, body only) This 6MP DSLR accepts a wide variety of Nikkor lenses (with a 1.5X magnification factor) plus several wide-

angle and tele Digital Nikkor lenses with edge-to-edge sharpness. It also features 28 custom functions, sophisticated metering options, a pop-up flash, a faster AF system, and a bright AF-assist light. However, the D100 has a less rugged polycarbonate body and can only capture up to 6 hi-res JPEG

images at 3 fps. RAW bursts are slower, and RAW conversion software is optional.

Take control of image quality

Olympus was certainly aiming at pros when designing the E-1's image-quality menus. These include advanced settings for image format, color space, sharpness, color saturation, contrast, and white balance. Image formats include RAW, TIFF, and JPEG (with a variety of JPEG compression settings), as well as a RAW plus JPEG mode. The camera lets you edit RAW image files and resave them with new parameters, such as white balance or sharpness. As for color management, there's the choice of sRGB or Adobe RGB 1998 color spaces, as well as nine color-saturation settings. The E-1's white balance controls can be set to auto or any of 12 color temperature settings from 3000-7500K, (and you can then fine-tune each preset).

As for image quality, there's very good news and a tiny bit of bad news. The good news is that the camera captures images with extremely high color accuracy and resolution. And, as promised, images shot at wide angle, using the 14-54mm Zuiko lens at a wide-open aperture, f/2.8, showed no measurable resolution falloff in the corners. Impressive! Contrast was also normal and adjustable, and JPEG artifacts were minimal at the highest-quality settings. Unfortunately, we weren't able to test the camera's RAW image quality, since the software was still under development. And the camera's resolution rating did not equal that of a 6MP SLR, but landed at the high end of 5MP cameras we've tested.

When shooting in low light, you can set the ISO from 100-800 in normal ISO mode, or up to 3200 in ISO-boost mode. With JPEGs shot at ISO 100, the E-1 produces images with low noise levels-nothing to crow about. As with other cameras, noise increases with ISO. At ISO 400, noise was moderate; at 800, unacceptable.

Sum of the parts

The bottom line on the E-1 is that it features many pro qualities, including a rugged construction, accurate metering system, and high burst mode. Pros will also love its edge-to-edge sharpness with all types of lenses, fast FireWire connectivity, and the plethora of image-quality controls. But battery life is limited, and the AF system isn't in the same class as those found on pro competitors such as Nikon's D2h or D1x, or the Canon EOS-1D. The E-1 is therefore more of a challenger to the Nikon D100, Canon EOS 10D, and Fujifilm S2 Pro. Now, if only it had a pop-up flash and the camera system was priced accordingly.

For more info: www.olympusamerica.com; 888-553-4448

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