11 thoughts on “Olympus E1 camera review available”

  1. Phil, the E-1 kit is a lot cheaper than $2000 now – B&H has it for $1590 and some places are selling it (camera, 14-54 lens and FL-20 flash) for around $1350. (I bought one at that price myself, so I’m not making this up!)

    Program auto isn’t as useful as with a Canon SLR due to the fact that you can’t simply dial in a bit of exposure compensation but must press a separate shift key and then turn a dial.

    You can change the controls so that either the main or sub-dial changes the exposure compensation directly (without the exposure button being pressed).

    Ultra wide angle lenses are not available in the Four Thirds mount.

    A 7-14mm lens is due to hit the shelves in January!

    In addition to the E2 Olympus really needs to build a light cheap body to build market share and establish the Four Thirds system as more than a boutique product. Certainly Olympus needs something that is lighter and cheaper than the bottom of the Canon and Nikon lines.

    Where have you been? The E-300 is on the shelves now!

    Danny.

  2. Ooops! From the blog entry I assumed this was a new review – I didn’t notice the review itself carries a May 2004 date.

    Anyway, the Four Thirds system now has a light cheap body (the E-300) with zooms to match (from both Olympus and Sigma) and an ultra-wide rectilinear (7-14mm, giving 14mm in 35mm equivalent). But we’re still waiting for a 25/1.4, shift-tilt lenses, and image stabilisation.

    The successor camera to the E-1 is going to be an E-3, not an E-2, but no details are known.

  3. Thanks, Danny. I’ll try to incorporate a few updates into the review. Olympus is definitely doing the right thing with the Four Thirds system but I don’t think they are being nearly aggressive enough with pricing and lens introductions to unseat Canon and Nikon. The E300 (Evolt, I think, in the US) is more expensive than a Canon Digital Rebel. That is not going to win them much market share.

  5. Your review fails to convince me of the benefit of either the Four Thirds system or of Olympus’ implementation of it (are there now other manufacturers of Four Thirds cameras?). Four Thirds somewhat reminds of digital television. Yes, it would be very nice for the industry if we’d all recognize that our television sets (and cameras) are obsolete and consequently run out and buy replacements. But in the absence of any perceived benefit to the new system (either one), nobody is willing to pay a premium as a “pioneer” who helps to get the economies of scale thing going (most big-screen sets offer a digital tuner only as an extra-cost option). So it languishes as a strange niche product before it dies. In the case of digital television, the media conglomerates have paid enough campaign contributions so that the government will pull the plug on NTSC and force everyone to buy a new set when those donors decide the time is right. There’s no such compulsion for the Four Thirds system.

    Four Thirds may be a good option if you’re either a wealthy playboy with an unlimited budget for gadgets, or you have a specific need for a full-up SLR that uses lenses that might be smaller and lighter than those based on 35mm. But an ordinary mortal who has no film SLR and lenses may be more likely to go with something like a Konica-Minolta A2, which is even smaller and lighter (and nearly as versatile). Or if he or she has a film SLR, he or she will chose a DSLR that uses its lenses.

    I also don’t see the aesthetic advantage of Four Thirds. Yes, it happens to fit the traditional aspect ratio of television sets and computer monitors. But even with those devices, the trend away from the 4:3 ratio in favor of 16:9, which is even wider than the 35mm-inspired DSLR.

    The only real advantage I can see with Four Thirds is that it standardizes on a lens mount. But that advantage will only be realized if a number of manufacturers adopt it. Until that happens, Four Thirds is nothing more than Olympus’ proprietary DSLR system that seems to offer less value for money than the proprietary systems of Canon and Nikon.

  6. Patrick: I can’t find any documentation on who is responsible for editorial control on photo.net, for what the directory structure is supposed to be, etc. My style of software development and Web site development has always been to plan first and type second, even if the plan is only two or three pages. I often can’t find stuff that I wrote for photo.net several years ago. It has either been moved into an undocumented directory structure or has disappeared altogether.

    Much easier to put stuff on my own server where there isn’t unexplained unannounced undocumented churning of the structure.

    If there actually is some sort of management structure or documentation for photo.net, let me know where to find it!

  7. Philip, here in the UK the E-300, _at_introduction_ seems only slightly more expensive than the 300D. That said, the main thing it has against it is that it doesn’t say Canon on the front. Although until the “Digital Rebel G” with the 8MP sensor from the 20D comes out they may find a market in the megapixel crowd…

    That said, if I were in that market for a sub $1000 DSLR, It’d probably be the D70 kit. The E-1 offers trumendous value, something the E-300 doesn’t seem to do.

    Bob Atkins now runs the equipment section, just email him, he’ll probably sort you out.

    Ted, the E-1 is not expensive, it is much cheaper than a 20D setup! Just try to put a Canon set together that gives you 28-400mm equivalent in “L” quality glass for the same price as E-1 + 14-54 and 50-200. Can’t be done at all without massive compromise. The closest is probably 17-40/4 + 50/1.4 + 70-200/4 + TC1.4 or something, but that’s two more pieces of equipment to carry and change all the time and much more expensive!

    So four thirds isn’t for people with lots of money, it’s for us poor folks that want value! If I were a rich playboy, I’d get a Canon system.

    Try however hard you want, unless you have a need for a 600mm equiv lens, nothing out there can beat the E-1 for value.

  8. Ted: I don’t work for Olympus. So the goal of the article was not to convince you of anything! I didn’t even convince myself to buy an E1 (the camera reviewed was a loaner from the manufacturer). The article was intended to help people decide if the Four Thirds system met their needs. It apparently worked because you were able to decide that it did not meet your needs.

  9. Ted, I agree with you about Four Thirds just being another proprietary format – the consortium should make it a genuine open standard but they haven’t.

    But Four Thirds isn’t more expensive than Nikon or Canon – Phil’s review gives the wrong impression there. I just bought an E-1 with 14-54 lens and it was a lot cheaper than a Canon EOS 20D with a much lower quality lens (the 18-55 kit lens) would have been. The E-300 is a bit more expensive than the 300D, but has better build quality (and more megapixels for the peepers), while the E-1 is a bit more expensive than a D70.

  10. Danny: Comparing the E1 and the 20D doesn’t make a whole lot of sense IMHO. The 20D is a vastly better camera body: 8 MP instead of 5 MP, pro-grade autofocus system, much more responsive CPU, etc. The Canon body that will do sort of the same job as the E1 is the Digital Rebel. And as you point out the Nikon D70 is also cheaper than the E1.

  11. Nope, Philip, comparing the bodies doesn’t make much sense, they are very different. But for people with a <2K budget that need a body and standard zoom, the E-1 will leave the 20D with kit lens in the dust when it comes to image quality.

    How do I know this without ever having used a 20D? Simple, I used to own a 300D with the kit lens, a 28-105/3.5-4.5UII and several other primes. The 300D’s performance with either the kit lens 28-105 is pathetic to say the least. (it’s great with primes and L zooms, however)

    When you put the same lenses on the 20D, no amount of megapixels or faster AF and CPU is going to make your images sharper and have more contrast. Only lenses will do that. And for those, you will need to spend a whole lot more in the Canon world.

    For a rich person like yourself who doesn’t mind carying the weight, the 20D certainly makes more sense; at the end of the day your system will yield better quality images than my E-1. If you are on a budget, however, you are not doing yourself any favours buying a 20D with kit lens or other cheap zooms.

    I don’t see the point in buying Canon at all now for people starting out with no lenses. Nikon’s D70 is for very little more money a much better starter camera than the 300D and the 20D hasn’t got all that much on it either. The kit lens is better and when you are ready to move up, at least they make a usefull 17-55/2.8; all Canon can come up with is a sissy 2x zoom 16-35…

Comments are closed.