Customer Reviews

Olympus E1 5.5MP Digital SLR Camera Special Kit

5 star:		(3)
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I've been using E1 with Zuiko Digital 14-54 f/2.8-3.5 for several months now, and I must report that I am thoroughly pleased with its operation. It performs flawlessly, without any glitches, and is a solid, well built and reliable photographic tool. It is a joy to use in the field.
Image quality is nothing short of excellent. A3 sized prints from E1 easily match my best slide scans from 35mm film. The images are clean, vivid, sharp, with beautiful colors, which reminds me of Kodak emulsions. Once I made a beautiful, clean A4 print from a small cropped segment of a portrait; at this enlargement, the entire picture would exceed A2 paper size. 5 megapixels yes, but 5 megapixels of extreme signal quality. Unlike Canon, Kodak didn't put hardware noise reduction on its sensors, so with help of NeatImage or Noise Ninja, one can make very clean prints even at ISO 800. However, ISO 1600 and 3200 display banding artifacts, and are useful mostly for black&white images. Those B&W images, however, respond very well to noise reduction and produce very good A4 prints. As for the 14-54 lens, it is very sharp from f/3.5-f/11, has very good but not excellent bokeh, has extremely useful range from moderately wide to moderately tele (28-108mm in 35mm equivalents), and works best at the long end. There it really shines as a portrait lens. However, it displays some vignetting at the long end, and some cyan fringing in the corners at the wide and.
So, the strong points of this camera are its absolute image quality, color fidelity, buid quality and ergonomics. On the minus side, however, there is autofocus, which leaves much room for improvement. It is slow and of little use in low light. Also, the buffer could clear faster, especially with microdrive, whose full potential isn't utilized.

Conclusion: it's an excellent camera, whose real competitor is Canon 20D. Canon has a solid resolution advantage, produces good images, and works better at high ISO values. However, E1 is better built, it has an excellent kit lens which is every bit as good as Canon L zooms and rivals good primes, has built-in sensor cleaning, is splash-proof and an excellent overall package. Choice between them is a matter of individual preference and taste. What made it for me was the range of focal lengths. With Olympus, I can cover my needs with just two lenses, and 14-54 is designed just right. It's wide enough and long enough for me not to need anything else for most applications. With a 35mm legacy and 1.6x crop factor, Canon's lens range is just inconvenient. Most lenses are either not wide enough or not long enough or cover the wrong range. With Olympus, I still didn't feel any desperate need to buy a second lens; 108mm equivalent is just right for portraiture, and 28mm is just wide enough for the kind of landscapes I usually shoot.

I agree with everything Mr. Danijelt Turina said in his review except for one thing. This camera is a pro camera all the way. In my opinion there is no semi about it. Olympus thought of everything on this camera. Ergonomics, capture speed, durability, and last but most important image quality. I suggest that anyone that thinks that 5MP cant cut it go to www.myfourthirds.com and browse around. The images will blow you away! They feel three dimensional.

Remember, with digital we are dealing with light producing an electronic signal, storing it, and converting it back to an image. The cleaner the signal, the cleaner the image. Olympus has no weak link in the electronic chain, and no weak link in the ergonomic chain. As a photographer who stated at 9 years of age and is still at it at 58, I have used many cameras, Nikon FTN, Contax SLR, Leica, and 4x5 large format. This camera equals or betters them all. It makes you want to pick it up and shoot photos. Go and handle one, and check out the location of the controls. Absolutely Superb! Dont get fooled by the megapixel myth. Its better to have a one pound bag of one carat, blue white diamonds than a five pound bag of diamond dust ;-)

You can look at every digital SLR camera on the market and not find a better feature set than the E1. The four thirds system really does solve a lot of the problems facing 35mm lenses on digital bodies. The critical lens suite is now available and they work flawlessly.

I've used this camera in Trinidad at 90 plus degrees and 90% humidity, and in interior Alaska at -45 degrees and 2% humidity. It has worked flawlessly across all of those conditions. It's rugged enough to be undamaged in a fall that cracked two of my ribs, but is stunningly light in your hands. My buddies struggle with dust on the mirror; I have _never_ had to clean the mirror; the "supersonic wave filter" is that good.

Much of my work is bird photography. Bracketing exposures, quick focus and multiple shots are simply indispensable. The E1 has never let me down.

Special points for Firewire support, which lets me pull 1 GB of photos at nearly hard disk drive speeds. I think you'll like this camera very much. Very highly recommended.