Olympus E1 SLRThe first "Four Thirds" system (almost) sees the light of day!<<Video, Power, Software :(Previous) | (Next): Reference: Datasheet>> Page 12:Test Results & ConclusionReview First Posted: 06/24/2003, Updated: 03/16/2004 |
Test Results
In keeping with my standard test policy, the comments given here summarize only my key findings. For a full commentary on each of the test images, see the E-1's "pictures" page.
As with all Imaging Resource product tests, I encourage you to let your own eyes be the judge of how well the camera performed. Explore the images on the pictures page, to see how E-1's images compare to other cameras you may be considering.
- Color: Good, accurate color, although a tendency to undersaturate greens. Overall, the E-1 produced good to very good color, but I felt that its greens were a little flat relative to the original subjects. Its Auto and Daylight white balance settings tended to leave a slight warm color cast in the images, but the Manual option proved very accurate under a wide range of light sources. The Kelvin temperature settings provide very precise control over color balance, but I'd really like to see them extend below 3000K, to handle household and commercial incandescent light sources. Skin tones were generally good and hue-accurate, but I'd personally like a little less saturation in them than the default camera settings produced. Flash exposures produced very good color, with no perceptible color cast, although this may well depend on the flash unit you use with the camera, since it doesn't have a built-in flash of its own.
- Exposure: A very conservative exposure system leads to slight underexposure in many situations. The E-1 had a tendency to underexpose somewhat in the studio, as well as under harsh sunlight. I interpret this as the mark of a very "conservative" exposure system, exposing to preserve highlight detail, at the expense of darker midtones and shadows. This is the preferred mode for pro photographers, who want to make sure they bring back shots with the maximum information recorded, so they can be manipulated on the computer later without losing subject detail. Under the deliberately harsh lighting of the Outdoor Portrait, the contrast was rather high, compromising midtone detail somewhat. The optional contrast adjustment control helped a fair bit with this, and I found a combination of minimum contrast and a slight saturation boost produced the best-looking image. - I'd still like to see a wider range of control on the contrast adjustment though, as it really didn't have enough range to fully cope with really harsh lighting. That said, dynamic range was pretty good on the outdoor house shot, with good detail in both the highlights and shadows, but there was more noise than I'd like to see in the shadow areas. Overall, good exposure accuracy (with the aforementioned bias toward preservation of highlight detail), and good dynamic range marred slightly by high shadow noise.
- Resolution/Sharpness: Good resolution, typical of a 5-megapixel camera. The E-1 performed very well on the "laboratory" resolution test chart. It started showing artifacts in the test patterns at resolutions as low as 1,000 lines per picture height, in both horizontal and vertical directions. I found "strong detail" out to at least 1,300 lines. "Extinction" of the target patterns didn't occur until about 1,600 lines.
- Image Noise: Higher than average image noise for a d-SLR. Given that it's built around a Kodak full-frame transfer CCD, I really expected that the E-1's noise performance would be superior. (Frame-transfer technology permits more of the CCD's surface area to be devoted to light gathering, so it generally results in a better signal to noise ratio.) Instead, the E-1 has higher noise than any of the competing models currently on the market. - Only slightly higher than some at lower ISOs, but noticeably higher than any at the higher ISO levels. As is always the case though, everyone will need to look at my test images and decide for themselves how they feel about the noise - I've found that image noise is very much in the eye of the beholder, with different people reacting very differently to the same images...
- Closeups: Totally a function of the lens used. The 14-54mm Zuiko isn't a macro optic. Macro performance on the E1 will vary depending on the lens in use, but with the 14-54mm lens that's something of a default option on the E-1, the camera captured a rather large macro area at 5.33 x 4.00 inches (135 x 102 millimeters). Resolution was very high, as the dollar bill, coins, and brooch showed a lot of detail. Details were just slightly soft, but still well defined.
- Night Shots: Excellent low-light performance, with good color balance and reasonably low noise. The E-1 offers full manual exposure control, a wide range of ISO equivalents, and a maximum exposure time of 60 seconds (plus a Bulb setting for longer exposures). Thus, the camera performed very well in my low-light testing. The E-1 produced clear, bright, usable images down to the 1/16 foot-candle (0.67 lux) limit of my test, with good color at all of the available ISO settings. Given the available Bulb shutter setting, there's no question that the E-1 could produce good images at even darker light levels as well. Noise is kept pretty well under control up to the 1,600 ISO setting, where it increases a great deal. The camera's Noise Reduction system is pretty good at reducing image noise, but at ISO 1,600 and 3,200, it only removes the brighter pixels of noise and leaves a fairly thick pattern. As noted earlier though, the E-1 generally has noticeably higher image noise at high ISO values than most of its competitors.
- Viewfinder Accuracy: Excellent accuracy from the TTL optical viewfinder. The E-1 is a digital SLR, meaning that the optical viewfinder shows the actual view through the lens. (The camera's LCD monitor is reserved for image review and LCD menu display.) The TTL optical viewfinder proved very accurate, showing 99+ percent frame accuracy at both wide angle and telephoto zoom settings, and excellent performance. (You'd expect that SLRs would always show exactly 100% of the subject through their viewfinders, but this is far from the case. Many of them show only about 95% of the final image area in the viewfinder.)
- Optical Distortion: Distortion is dependent on the lens used, but the in-camera distortion correction provided by the E-1 and Zuiko optics makes for very low geometric distortion. Optical distortion on the E1 will depend entirely on the lens in use, but the Olympus in-camera distortion correction technology evidently works very well. Shooting with the 14-54mm lens, I found very low distortion at both ends of the zoom range. At wide angle, I measured only 0.2 percent barrel distortion. The telephoto end showed only a half-pixel of barrel distortion, an amount corresponding to about 0.01 percent. Chromatic aberration was fairly low, but greater than I'd expect, given the quality of the Zuiko 14-54mm lens in other areas. - There was as much as about four pixels of fairly visible coloration on either side of the target lines. (This distortion is visible as a very slight colored fringe around the objects at the edges of the field of view on the resolution target.)
- Shutter Response: Very fast shutter response, very good cycle times. Full-autofocus shutter lag will depend on the lens used, but I found both the 50mm and 14-54mm Zuiko lenses gave very good full-autofocus shutter delay figures of 0.21 to 0.27 seconds. Manual focus delay was a little slower than I'd expected, at 0.178 seconds, but prefocus lag was a very short 0.076 seconds (76 milliseconds). Overall, very good shutter response. Cycle times in single-shot mode were also very fast, at only 0.57 seconds between frames with a 12-frame buffer, regardless of whether I was shooting JPEG, RAW, or TIFF-format files.
- Battery Life: Because it uses a proprietary power connector, I couldn't measure power consumption for the E-1 directly, but in actual use found it to have really excellent battery life. In one case, we shot over 700 images with it in a single day, and still had quite a bit of battery capacity left when we were done.
Conclusion
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Overall, I've spent quite a bit of time shooting with the E-1, and have found myself liking the camera quite a lot. It feels good in the hand, takes good-looking pictures, and is fast and accurate to use. With its true professional-grade build quality, it's priced well above the current crop of entry-level digital-SLRs, even though it's less expensive than competing "professional" models from other manufacturers. It's clear that Olympus intends the E-1 to be a camera for the professional shooter, and in many respects it is. I do think that they've got a bit of a tough sell ahead of them though, as I found the camera to be a bit of "neither fish nor fowl." On the one hand, it doesn't have the autofocus quickness or continuous shooting speed that pro sports shooters and many photojournalists demand, while on the other hand, it doesn't compete well against sharper 6-megapixel and higher resolution cameras for the studio market. Price-wise, it's a bargain compared to the d-SLRs with pro-grade bodies, but most prospects for cameras in that category already have full kits of Nikon or Canon lenses. At the other end of the spectrum, it's pricey compared to entry-level d-SLRs like the Canon Digital Rebel and Nikon D70. While there's no comparison between the build quality of the E-1 and either of those models, it's a valid question whether an amateur shooter can justify the price differential to step up to the E-1, not only for the camera body itself, but for the pricey lenses as well. (Although Sigma's recent announcement of lenses supporting the 4/3 format will likely address this latter point.) Bottom line, the E-1 is a well-built camera with a lot of compelling benefits, but in a package that demands a commitment to the 4/3 system approach, and somewhat deeper pockets than any of the current crop of prosumer d-SLR models.
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