Some words about Olympus E-system cameras

I posted my review of Olympus E-300 / Evolt some time ago, but today found December 2004 issue of Professional Photographer (UK photomag) that reviews Olympus E-1 launched already in 2003. It's interesting to read how professional camera holds up after a year of being on the market at a time when several new digital SLRs are launched every 6 month or so. And E-1 is 5 megapixel camera at the time of cameras with 8, 11 and even more megapixels.

So, what's notable in the light of my recent review of E-300? Somewhat surprising was the fact that E-1 seems to be suffering from not-so-great autofocus just like E-300. Of course this is not a problem in normal light and only starts showing in lower light and with less strongly defined subjects. Will Cheung from Professional Photographer also notes that manual focus does not feel the best or most responsive. This was also my conclusion with E-300 / Evolt where it can be blamed on focus-by-wire. Cheung says: "There seems to be a time lag and the amount of focus adjustment doesn't seem proportionate to the amount the focusing barrel is rotated."

E-300 actually shows pretty good performance considering that it's entry level camera. 8 megapixels is hell of a lot more if you need the extra resolution, it's slightly slower at 2.5 fps (3 for E-1) but also much smaller. Of course it does not have weather sealed body, viewfinder has only 94% coverage against 100% of E-1 and cannot compete with 12 image buffer of E-1.

If you can find December 2004 issue of Professional Photographer somewhere I suggest taking a look at this article. Olympus E-system is rather interesting, certainly a big risk on Olympus' side, and we'll see if Four-Thirds can carve a viable market for itself. Sigma has made some lenses specifically for this standard but at the moment Olympus E-1 and E-300 / Evolt remain only cameras. And I think Olympus needs to introduce new pro-level camera real soon or they'll miss the window of oportunity.

Oh, and I recommend PP anyway. It's a great magazine if you've grown out of simple how-to general advice and inspiration magazines (I used to read another British magazine called Practical Photography) and want to read about how professionals do it, what are their tools, how their day looks like, what are the business aspects then give it a try.