First impressions of the Olympus e-510

[Sushigaijin]

I'm about 150 frames into my new camera, mostly throw aways to test settings, sharpness, etc. I'm finding that I really miss the live histogram that my Sony H5 has, and that the live-view function is not nearly as useful as it is in a point and shoot camera. Having access to a histogram through the viewfinder is something that has totally spoiled me as far as exposure goes, and even though the olympus DOES indeed have a live histogram on the LCD option, I'm not totally sold on its functionality.

Without getting too far into a review (it is way too soon to write one) I am generally happy with the image quality and handling. RAW workflow, which I have never done before, is a resource hungry and time consuming process. Whereas .JPG can go from camera to internet in about five minutes, just the conversion of RAW to .TIFF takes 30 seconds. I'm still trying to figure out exactly what the advantages are, aside from lossless recording and untouched by camera processing photos.

The single biggest surprise is ISO performance. The sony H5 takes nice clean shots at ISO80, but ISO200 is about the limit of clean detail. The Olympus shoots nicely at ISO400 - the grain is fine and film-like. Here is an ISO400 shot, processed from RAW, some minor post including light noise reduction - just the usual stuff. I'm looking forward to giving this machine a good run in the coming weeks!!

[Loupey]

LOL - yeah a new camera always comes with hidden costs. For me, it translated to buying 2GB of RAM for the laptop and a larger backup HD. It almost cost me those crazy white computers that has an emblem with a half-eaten fruit on it.

Keep us posted on your experiences. I'm sure that there are quite a few other people who can benefit from reading your findings here.

Nice clean shot of the snake.