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| Pro Caliber: The new Olympus E-3 is a giant leap forward from the older Olympus E-1, and boasts a better-sealed body, 10.1MP Live MOS sensor with live preview, pop-up flash, swiveling 2.5-inch LCD, and super-fast AF system. Click photo for more images including comparisons between the E-3 and E-1. |
Olympus has announced the long-awaited successor to its E-1 camera. The new flagship model of the company's line of digital SLRs, the 10.1-megapixel E-3, promises to outdo its predecessor with significantly faster autofocus performance, a larger viewfinder, and live LCD viewing, while retaining the Four-Thirds format that makes it compatible with existing lenses from Olympus and other Four-Thirds optics makers. Equipped with an articulating 230,000-dot, 2.5-inch Live View LCD with a 170-degree viewing angle, the E-3 also offers a pentaprism eyepiece viewfinder that shows 100 percent of the image frame at 1.15x magnification. The LCD has a dedicated luminance sensor that allows it to automatically adjust the screen brightness in response to ambient light changes. The E-3 offers dual CompactFlash and xD-Picture Card slots, with support for fast UDMA CF cards.
Built for professional use, the E-3 has a weather-sealed magnesium alloy body. Only a horizontal grip is incorporated into the design, which makes the camera more compact than larger pro SLRs with integrated vertical grips. Olympus has introduced the $199 HLD-4 Power Battery Holder for the E-3, which incorporates a vertical grip, for those photographers who want it.
The E-3 replaces the E-1's lower-resolution CCD with a Live MOS sensor that Olympus claims is able to offer increased resolution with the same Four Thirds chip dimensions, while keeping noise low and image detail high. The company also added a sensor-shifting optical image stabilization system to the new camera; it functions regardless of the lens being used. Naturally, the E-3 retains its predecessor's successful automatic sensor-cleaning system.
Olympus claims that when combined with its new Supersonic Wave Drive (SWD) lenses, the E-3's 11-point autofocus system offers the fastest performance in the world. With any lens, the camera should promise a noticeable speed improvement over the E-1's unremarkable three-point AF system. The E-3's 11 autofocus points are all cross types and are fully biaxial, meaning that the sensors are equally responsive on the vertical and horizontal axes. The AF system also uses an improved sensor layout and a dedicated processing engine to lock on subjects quickly. Other performance improvements include a 5fps drive mode and a top shutter speed of 1/8000 second and 1/250 x-sync. The camera uses Olympus's TruePic III image processor.
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Other notable E-3 features include a 2 percent spot meter; Highlight and Shadow spot metering modes that are designed to favor whiter whites and blacker blacks, respectively; Olympus's Shadow Adjustment Technology for opening up shadow details, the effects of which can be previewed via the Live View LCD; and an ISO range of 100 to 3200. In addition to exposure bracketing using the usual shutter speed and aperture adjustments, the E-3 offers an ISO Bracketing mode and a White balance bracketing mode.
Olympus has also expanded the flash options on its top-end SLR, with the addition of both a pop-up flash unit and a commander function for wirelessly controlling multiple remote flash units.
The E-3 will be available in November 2007 for $1699 (body only).
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