Went to the big "sale" at Keeble and Schuchat Photography today.
Played with an E-1 again from the one of the reps, and also got to
shoot with three of the lenses; the 14-55, the 50/2 Macro and the
50-200/2.8-3.5
Notes:
This time I used a newly formatted card for the E-1 so as to avoid
any formatting/write speed problems.Camera was set to ISO100, and
Auto White Balance was used. Some things I noticed is that the image
review from the card to camera preview LCD takes less time,probably
because of not using the Noise Reduction. I can't really tell if the
write speed is any faster, but the red light still seems to flicker
for a longish time after each shot. That's anecdotal, though, not a
measurement. In daylight the camera focuses quickly, with a nice
quick shutter release; comparable in feel to the speed of a 10D.
Exposures, for the most part, seem very accurate. The Olympus rep
told me that the camera only has 3-segment metering, but that it is
quite accurate. It certainly looks that way from the histograms. I've
uploaded about 15 photos to the Image Event gallery. Nothing was done
to these other than downsampling to 750 pixels for web viewing using
Fred Miranda's Web Presenter Pro, and a Save for Web at 75 quality.
No color correction, levels or curves adjustment was done, nor was
there any sharpening done. You will note that the auto white balance
renders a greenish cast to the lighting in the interior shots.
Outside, the Auto White Balance looks to be much more accurate. Also,
the color looks to be quite accurate (that is, neutral) in photos
taken outdoors; I don't feel there is much need for color correction
when the white balance is correct, but I will look at some more
images in detail looking at them with Samplers and the Info Box in
Photoshop to get an idea of any trends towards one color or another
in each channel.
Regardless of what anyone says, the camera still has notable trouble
focusing with interior lighting. With he shots inside the store (for
example, shots with lighting as shown in 13, 14, and 22), the camera
often had trouble finding focus, and sometimes it gave a "locked
focus" beep on subjects that were still out of focus. I shot with a
10D today as well for about 10 minutes, and it found focus much more
quickly and accurately inside the store than the E-1 does; even with
a slower (f/4 on the 10D vs the 2.8-3.5 lens on the E-1) lens on it.
As for the pictures, they start with image no. 13 in the gallery.
13-23 were shot in Program mode with the 14-55 lens. They should
really be looked at in a color managed application. I don't think Web
Browser support color management.
No. 14 was shot inside a "soft box" with outside light; focal length
52 mm; f/3.5 at 1/125th of a second. The shot is bit soft due to lack
of depth of field. The lion's right eye is in focus,but that's all.
Shot 18 was of some leaves on the pavement outside. The autofocus got
fooled here and the leaves are soft for the most part, but another
shot taken right after, no. 19 was better. The basket of yarn was
shot against some seamless with studio lights lighting the scene. It
looks a bit soft, too, probably again due to lack of depth of field
and motion blur, as it was shot at 1/25 second, f/3.2. These were my
fault in having the sales rep hand me the camera in Program mode, and
not changing it.
Shot 24 was taken with the 14-55 lens, shutter priority at 1/250th,
f/3.3. It looks quite good to me; nice, neutral color and good detail
and texture throughout.
Shot 25 was taken with the 50mm f/2 Macro lens, 1/160th second at
f/3.5. I like this shot a lot, though part of the leaf at far right
is sticking up well above the level of the others, and is out of
focus due to lack of depth of field at f/3.5. It is still my one of
my favorite shots so far with the camera.
The rest of the shots were all taken with the 50-200 f/2.8-3.5; all
at 1/160th of a second, at various focal lengths and around
f/3.5-f/5.0; except for the portrait.
A nice camera. I think people will be very happy with it for the most
part if they get one. While the autofocus performance is fine
outdoors, Oly needs to do its homework on interior lighting
performance, where it is still poor in my humble opinion. I can't
help but think, though, that for this camera to be a success, it
needed to come out a year and a half ago.
Here's the link to the E-1 gallery:
http://imageevent.com/puma_cat/olympuse1photos
-Stephen.
--
2001 CBR600F4i - Fantastic!
< This message was delivered via the Olympus Mailing List >
< For questions, mailto:owner-olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx >
< Web Page: http://Zuiko.sls.bc.ca/swright/olympuslist.html >
|