Okay, the new E-510 arrived Wednesday. I had to work in a craft shop
all day Thursday, so I took the camera with me, and then after the
shop closed shot a few frames on the drive home. Took it out again
this morning for another work out.
No images posted yet, and I'm not sure there will be. Seems pointless
to waste time putting together test images for the web when the use
for which the camera is intended is so different. I've seem some
really nice stuff out of the 410 and the 510 on the web, but it
doesn't jibe with what's coming out of my printer, which is what
counts for me and my customers.
Not that I want to go negative from the git-go, but I'm not sure the
510 is what it's been cracked up to be, and furthermore, if the 510
is a sneak preview at the new E-Thing, I'm not feeling too good about
it.
Build quality is excellent. Nothing toylike about the feel. Not an
E-1 by any stretch, but a good, solid feel. Controls are pretty
convenient, and intuitive enough for me to get most of them working
as intended without a _lot_ of cussing. It's definitely angled toward
the more casual shooter, but with enough features to make semi-pros
nod with approval.
Live View is pretty spiffy. I can see uses for it. The imposed grid
is nice, too. Menus and such are straightforward, and there are
several different ways to directly address stuff such as white
balance, ISO, etc.
Image Stabilization is worth the extra money on this one. True, it's
not a miracle cure. I tried to make it work at f/8 @ 1/60th shooting
a 50-200 racked all the way out with a 1.4 extender to boot. Not
going to happen. It's not that miraculous. But at the shop yesterday
I was taking pictures of price tags on the other side of the room,
with and without IS, and there was a very definite improvement in
sharpness with IS, at least as shown by the huge LCD on the back of
the camera. It magnifies up to about 14x, to you can check your focus
with some degree of confidence.
My problems with the camera are twofold: Sharpness and Noise. Before
I get into this, a caveat: I've had the camera less than 48 hours.
I'm sure I don't have it all sussed out yet. The E-1 has been in my
hands for years and I know how to make it sing for my supper. Not so
with the E-510. So if anything jumps out at anyone in what I'm saying
here, don't hesitate to dive in and get me straight. It may save me
from sending this camera back in the next few days.
First, I'm not sure Oly has done that much improvement in the noise
department. Yes, the images shown on the web seem to suggest vast
improvement, but that's because of the noise reduction function, the
default of which is on, and the effect of which is to somewhat soften
the image, depending on how much noise reduction is used. (This is
not the same as the noise abatement function that kicks in on long
exposures.)
With noise reduction off, I can see a good bit of noise even at ISO
400, which had appeared to be virtually noiseless in the stuff I was
seeing on the web. But then as I said above, what you see on the web
and what you see coming out of your printer are two different things.
I've turned noise reduction off, and left camera sharpening at 0
(Where my E-1 lives), and I plan to shoot more frames this afternoon.
Which brings me to images. To my eye, the E-510 produces quite soft
images, at least in RAW mode, where I live, and with the several I
worked on earlier today, I couldn't get the same level of sharpness
in an E-510 image I can get out of an E-1 images. In fact, the Raw
files from the E-1 convert noticeably sharper than the E-510 images
through Adobe Camera RAW 4.1, even though both the E-1 and E-510
shared similar in-camera settings, and even shared the same tripod,
lenses, f-stops and such. (I try not to be a pixel-peeper, but
sometimes I can't help myself.) It also should be noted my images are
with the 14-54 and 50-200. I'll shoot a few this afternoon with the
kit lenses just to see the difference.
My ego is not such that I am opposed to being straightened out by
some of the folks on this list who know this digital stuff front to
back. My intent is not to trash Oly or the 510, but to point out how
it's working for me early on. Right now, I don't see it taking me
where I need to go, which is paper output rather than web output. Too
bad, because the native image size coming off that 10MP sensor is
roughly 11x15 inches. In the CS3/Genuine Fractals world, that ought
to go to a true 16x20 without even breathing hard. The color fidelity
for which Olympus is known seems to have survived, and all in all I'm
a realy Oly fan, so I'll gladly take some correction from those who
know what I may be doing wrong! I can't think of anything better than
to find that my clumsiness and ignorance are at fault, not the 510 or
Oly's marketing department.
Just my first impression, and worth exactly what you paid for it.
--Bob
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