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| Click photo for more views of the Olympus E-520. |
Olympus has announced a new compact 10-megapixel digital SLR, the E-520. Adopting its design from the E-510, this consumer SLR also picks up numerous pieces of technology from Olympus's flagship SLR, the E-3. These include an improved IS system that offers both vertical and horizontal panning modes, fast autofocus when the LCD is being used as a viewfinder in live-view mode, and built-in wireless control of up to three groups of flash units. The image stabilization improvement is one of the main differences between this camera and the smaller but otherwise very similar E-420. Like that camera, the E-520 features a 230,000-dot, 2.7-inch LCD with a 176-degree viewing angle. In Live View mode it supplements a rather small pentamirror optical viewfinder with approximately 0.92x magnification and a short 14mm eyepoint that some glasses wearers may find less than ideal. The camera has dual CompactFlash and xD-Picture Card slots.
The E-520 runs on Olympus's TruPic III processing engine, which the company says improves color rendition, reduces noise, and enables the camera's 3.5fps drive mode to capture an unlimited series of JPEGs or up to eight RAW files in a burst. Like all Olympus digital SLRs, the E-520 takes Four Thirds standard lenses and incorporates a dust-reduction system.
In addition to manual and priority modes, the E-520 offers 20 preset scene modes, including underwater options for use with Olympus's PT-E05 underwater housing. The camera's shutter speed ranges from a 30-minute Bulb mode to 1/4000 second. Other notable E-520 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 1600. In addition to exposure bracketing using the usual shutter speed and aperture adjustments, the E-520 offers a white balance bracketing mode.
The E-520 will be available in July 2008 for about $600 (body only) or $700 in a kit with Olympus's Zuiko Digital 14–42mm (28–84mm equivalent) f/3.5–5.6 ED lens. For more information, please visit Pop Photo's Olympus E-520: First Look.
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