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Posts Tagged ‘Olympus’

Olympus working on 8K video for Micro Four Thirds

11 Mar

In an interview with French publication Focus Numerique senior representatives from Olympus have revealed a number of interesting insights about what consumers can expect from the Japanese manufacturer in the future, for example Micro Four Third image sensor that support 8K video. 

General Manager of Olympus Product Planning, Mr. Akira Watanabe, said: “we can assure you that there is no problem in developing sensors at 33 million pixels for filming in 8K. We started the 4/3? saga with a sensor at 5 Mpx In 2003. Now the same sensor is at 20 Mpx with a much higher image quality especially for the management of electronic noise.”

In the same interview Mr. Watanabe suggests that Olympus might be working on its own version of a Bluetooth-based app, the likes of which Samsung pioneered and has recently been implemented by Nikon. He also thinks that Olympus will be able to offer a handheld high-resolution image mode in the future. It’s impossible to know how close Olympus is to bringing those new features and technologies to market but for users and fans of the brand it’s certainly reassuring to know they are in development.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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In memoriam: Olympus brings down the curtain on the Four Thirds system

11 Mar

It probably shouldn’t be a surprise but it’s still a little sad to see it in print: the latest catalogue from four-thirds.org states that production of Olympus’s Zuiko Digital line of Four Thirds lenses has been discontinued.

It’s been six and a half years since the launch of the last Four Thirds mount camera, so it’s understandable that Olympus has decided to move on, but we thought we’d look back at Four Thirds: what it meant and where it led.

The first Four Thirds camera: the Olympus E-1. Built around a 5MP Kodak CCD, the E-1 arrived around two years after Olympus first announced a collaboration with Kodak.

Where it all started

In 1999, Olympus engineer Katsuhiro Takada selected the 4/3″-type sensor as being the optimal size to allow smaller cameras capable of high quality images. Olympus developed the lens mount and communication protocols and was joined by other makers including Kodak, Fujifilm and Panasonic. The Four Thirds system website was launched fourteen years ago tomorrow.

Four Thirds was the first ILC system specifically designed for digital. This not only meant a wholly new lens system, providing the focal lengths that make sense for the sensor size (at a time when most camera companies were making do with selling film lenses mounted on smaller sensors), but also adopting a policy of making telecentric designs, which project light straight onto the sensor, rather than at increasingly challenging angles, towards the edge of the sensor.

Panasonic’s first Four Thirds camera: the still beautiful DMC-L1.

Unfortunately, the telecentric lens designs often ended up being relatively large, meaning that the system didn’t end up being significantly smaller than APS-C cameras. Unfortunately, the decision to use 4/3″-type sensors also meant that the viewfinders in most of the models were even smaller than those that still plague most low-end APS-C DSLRs.

My personal favorite. The Olympus E-620 was the Four Thirds camera that, to my mind, offered the best balance of size and capability.

While the Four Thirds system is no longer with us, it’s worth giving credit for the innovations it played host to. For a start, it was the first interchangeable lens system to offer live view. It wasn’t the slickest of implementations: seemingly unsure whether live view was supposed to offer an immediate digital preview (with phase detection still available) or provide the precision of contrast detect AF and live view magnification, the E-330 offered both. And was duly given short shrift by DPReview founder Phil Askey in his review.

It may be out of production, but the Olympus US website says the 90-250mm F2.8 is still in stock. It’ll cost you $ 5999.99

The system evolves

However, the most significant development to come out of Four Thirds, though, was its successor, Micro Four Thirds, the world’s first mirrorless interchangeable lens camera system (indeed the system for which the term was coined). Micro Four Thirds persisted with the Four Thirds type sensor but by abandoning the mirror box (and the telecentric design philosophy) was able to fully deliver on the size benefits that had originally been promised.

Without a mirror to move out of the way, live view came into its own and a whole new class of camera was born.

Lessons from the Four Thirds system led directly to the creation of the world’s first mirrorless system: Micro Four Thirds. And between Panasonic’s GH5 and Olympus’s E-M1 II, a lot of interesting things doing on, 18 years after the sensor size was chosen.

Credit should be given to Olympus for working to provide cameras (specifically the E-M1s) that were designed to continue to give good performance for those users who’d bought the highest-end Four Thirds lenses.

Long live Four Thirds

The history of photography is full of defunct systems and obsolete mounts. Even though the curtain has come down on Four Thirds, you can still buy a camera that will make good use of its lenses. The king is dead…

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Throwback Thursday: the Olympus C-2100UZ

09 Mar

Even in 2000, the Olympus C-2100UZ’s 2MP sensor was a bit behind the times. Plenty of other cameras offered 3MP sensors, but what the C-2100UZ lacked in resolution it sought to make up with a huge (at the time) 10x stabilized zoom. That 38-380mm equiv. F2.8-3.5 lens was matched with a full slate of manual exposure controls, built-in EVF and a focus assist lamp that ‘actually works’. 

The C-2100UZ shared a lot of features with the C-2020Z on which it was based, which offered a 35-105mm equiv. F2-2.8 zoom. Shared features included a 1.8″ 114k-dot rear LCD, which site founder Phil Askey noted was in sore need of an anti-reflective coating.

The lens was obviously the C-2100’s biggest selling point. At the time, the only other ‘compacts’ to offer a lens this long were Sony’s floppy disk-based Mavica cameras. There wasn’t much out there to get you to 380mm equiv. on a DSLR either, so the C-2100’s relatively compact, stabilized lens was a pretty wondrous thing. Phil Askey noted some slight chromatic aberration in images, and lamented the camera’s over aggressive sharpening algorithm.

The C-2100 cost $ 1300 at launch, but a dip in street price to $ 900 later made it much more competitive in its class. Askey revised his review in 2001 to give it a ‘Recommended’ rating reflecting its new price. Do you have fond memories of the C-2100? Let us know in the comments.

Read our Olympus C-2100UZ Review

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Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Heliskiing in British Columbia: Scott Rinckenberger uses the Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II

14 Feb

Scott Rinckenberger is a professional adventure and outdoor sports photographer. We lent him the new Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II for a few days, to shoot a wintry commission for outdoor clothing brand Eddie Bauer.

The OM-D E-M1 Mark II is Olympus’s flagship mirrorless interchangeable lens camera, and should be ideally suited to use in tough, wet (and cold) conditions. Watch our video to find out how it performed. 

Read our in-depth review of the Olympus OM-D E-M1 II

See more videos at our YouTube channel

This is sponsored content, created in partnership with Olympus. What does this mean?

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Exclusive interview: Olympus R&D on continued E-M1 Mark II development

01 Feb
Conference room to conference room: Setting up for a cross-Pacific meeting.

Over the years, Olympus has steadily released firmware updates to its previous flagship, the OM-D E-M1. It currently sits at firmware version 4.3, and in the interim, updates have added features such as Live Composite and Live Boost II, and also included functional improvements to such aspects as continuous autofocus performance, image display lag time and more.

Bearing this in mind, it stands to reason that Olympus would be planning a similar treatment with regards to the E-M1 Mark II. Since its surprise reveal at Photokina 2016, and particularly since we’ve published our full review, we’ve emailed back and forth with both feedback and feature requests for Olympus Tokyo to consider in future firmware updates. This all culminated in an international video conference call last week, where we learned a great deal about just what Olympus’ has in store.

“I would like to promise that we will be improving and evolving [the E-M1 Mark II] with firmware upgrades.” – Mr. Takao Takasu, E-M1 Mark II Product Development

It’s important to point out that the Olympus engineers we met with are understandably unable to confirm specifics such as when (or if) certain improvements will come to the E-M1 II, but they are at the very least committed to confirming some items that they are ‘working on.’ The most notable of these include:

  • Adding ‘Auto ISO’ capability to manual video shooting
  • Allowing for control of autofocus racking speed while shooting video
  • Clarifying and enhancing customizability of continuous autofocus behavior beyond the current -2 to +2 ‘tight to loose’ scale
  • Working on the AF algorithm to improve tracking performance
  • Enable the ability to enter playback and menus while the buffer is clearing

To see considerations as significant as refinement of the autofocus algorithm this early in a product cycle is encouraging. Olympus is adamant (and, given what we’ve found in our full review, rightfully so) that the E-M1 II is part of a system that can appeal to professional shooters looking for a more compact kit without sacrificing anything in terms of overall speed. Admittedly the smaller Four Thirds sensor lags behind many cheaper APS-C and Full Frame solutions with regards to low light and noise performance, but no other camera offers 18fps Raw burst shooting with continuous autofocus, and the smaller sensor in the E-M1 II is precisely what allows the camera to do so.

“We will try to improve playback function during data recording.”- Mr. Katsuhisa Kawaguchi, Continuous Shooting

In addition to letting us know what they’re working on for future firmware upgrades, Olympus gave us some further insight into some of the E-M1 II’s headline capabilities.

With regard to autofocus during burst shooting, the camera is able to capture and analyze phase-detection autofocus information of the image that has just been captured to use it in tandem with Live View autofocus information for more accurate prediction of subject movement – this is all meant to improve tracking performance.

The in-body image stabilization system currently allows around 5.5 stops of image stabilization at 40mm (80mm equiv.) focal length, with shorter focal lengths reducing overall effectiveness, as with shorter focal lengths, you have ever lengthening exposure times where body shake – as opposed to hand shake – becomes dominant (this is true of all IS systems). Smaller amplitude and higher-frequency shaking from hand shake is far easier to engineer for in terms of sensor movement than high amplitude, slow-frequency shake from a photographer’s whole body.

“Our [image stabilization] becoming very, very sensitive. But we are not satisfied with the current performance and will continue to improve.” – Mr. Hisashi Takeuchi, Image Stabilization System

There are, of course, reports of users getting sharp shots at shutter speeds ranging from 2-10 seconds, though these users are also bracing against larger body movements by leaning on a wall, or placing elbows on a desk.

As with its predecessor, weather sealing and durability was a big point of emphasis on the E-M1 Mark II.

That being said, the engineers stated that they are aiming to push image stabilization technology even farther than the 6.5 stops afforded when the E-M1 II is paired with an image stabilized lens, such as the 300mm F4 Pro or 12-100mm F4 Pro. We asked them how they aim to do this, and were greeted with a wry smile or two – certainly indicative of some confidence in their ongoing development. 

Olympus was also able to tell us that the E-M1 II was ‘benchmarked’ against competitors’ models, with a concerted effort being made to improve upon them. In this vein, particular attention was paid to speed of image playback (which is blazingly fast, and highly important considering the burst speeds), JPEG tonality, noise reduction and overall quality (important for quickly filing photos on, say, breaking news assignments), and run-and-gun movie capability, especially in terms of movie image stabilization.

“We have achieved high quality 4K shooting without a tripod or stabilizer.” – Mr. Kazuhiro Haneda, Video

It’s clear that Olympus is proud of the E-M1 Mark II, and is serious about tackling its shortcomings with firmware upgrades wherever possible. One thing they won’t be able to fix with firmware is one of the E-M1 II’s biggest criticisms: the price remains prohibitively high for many. 

But given what Olympus is already aiming to tackle, those investing in the Olympus system for the long term are likely to be rewarded. It’s become more common practice over the past few years to bring updates to camera models (particularly flagships) throughout the product cycle. It’s encouraging to see Olympus continue this going forward, not only in terms of usability and technical improvements, but perhaps new features as well – we’ll just have to wait and see.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Ultimate travel kit – Thailand with Olympus’ E-M1 II & 25mm prime lens

26 Jan

Introduction

ISO 200, 1/4000 sec, F2.

When I travel, I always bring a dedicated camera with me. My preferred form of ‘travel photography,’ at least when taking pictures for myself, is to document my experiences and create a visual diary. I like to travel as light as I can while still being able to come back with results of decent quality (though a personal trip to Iceland with a D810 was a notable exception to the notion of traveling light).

So, what would I bring for a planned personal trip to Thailand? My D700’s are solid but a bit bulky, and I’m not entirely sure how my original X100 would stand up to high humidity, beaches and possibly a rain shower or two (understatement of the year, as I’ll get to in a bit). I considered the Nikon D500 or the Pentax K-3 II, but both are also fairly bulky, though I was still hoping to end up with a camera that had a larger sensor than the waterproof Nikon AW1.

My constant companion, based on a combination of size, speed and durability.

Luckily, Olympus has been kind enough to allow us an extended loan on our OM-D E-M1 Mark II for continued testing, particularly in anticipation of future firmware updates. I also decided on just a single lens for the whole trip; the Olympus 25mm F1.2 Pro.

It was settled, then. An informal travel experience with a Micro Four Thirds camera and a fixed, 50mm-equivalent lens to document the trip of a lifetime. What could possibly go wrong?

Full disclosure: This was a personal trip paid for entirely by myself. The choice to bring along an Olympus E-M1 II and lens was mine alone. I do wish to express gratitude to Olympus for allowing DPReview to hold on to our E-M1 II review sample, as well as my fellow staffers at DPReview for allowing me to borrow it for this trip.

All images processed and cropped to taste in a beta version of Adobe Camera Raw unless otherwise noted.

Living with your choices

When I told photo-nerd friends that I was going to Thailand with only an E-M1 II, they thought that was awesome. When I told them that I was going with only a 50mm equivalent lens, a sort of shade passed over their faces; a mixture of interest, bemusement and pity.

Wat Pho is also known as the Temple of the Reclining Buddha, which measures 15 meters high and 46 meters long and resides in a confined space. This made using my 50mm equivalent lens…challenging. Straight out of camera JPEG cropped slightly to taste. ISO 400, 1/125 sec, F1.2.

Despite being primarily a prime-lens shooter, I do not shoot the 50mm focal length very often. Yes, it was the de-facto ‘kit lens’ for entry level film SLRs of yore, but after discovering how much I preferred prime lenses to zooms, I gravitated toward the 35mm focal length years ago and haven’t wavered much since.

As anyone who shoots mostly prime lenses knows, familiarity with a focal length often allows you to ‘see’ pictures that will work before the camera is even to your eye. Given my unfamiliarity with the 50mm focal length, I found myself working a lot harder on my compositions than I anticipated.

I found that for general photography in Thailand, including landscapes and basic ‘I was here’ images, 50mm was difficult to adjust to. ISO 200, 1/1250 sec, F4.

What worked and what didn’t

To state the exceedingly obvious, there are times to experiment with new gear and times to stick with what’s familiar. It wasn’t long into our time in Bangkok that I began to second-guess my decision to bring this single lens.

Sometimes, the 50mm field of view was an asset, allowing me some more working distance than I was used to. Other times, it was constricting. ISO 200, 1/200 sec, F2.8.

Bangkok is a busy, bustling metropolis with a sea of activity surrounding you at all times, whether you are in the back alley of a flower market or anxiously waiting for a seat at Thip Samai for some of the best pad thai you’ll ever eat. In this sense, the camera and lens combination was perfect. The E-M1 II is one of the most responsive mirrorless cameras out there, and the autofocus on the 25mm F1.2 lens is swift and accurate – all of this ensuring that the camera was ready to capture a moment when I was.

Spongebob says, ‘Buy me. You know you want to.’ ISO 200, 1/200 sec, F2.8.

The problem was in developing my ability to ‘see’ an image with the 50mm focal length, as I would often swing the camera around, only to realize that I really needed to take a few steps back. I was finding it difficult to capture single images with both a strong subject as well as a sense of context, which I generally find much easier with the 35mm focal length. 

But as we made our way from Bangkok to the Krabi province in southern Thailand, I had other things to worry about than my framing and compositions.

Until next time, Bangkok. ISO 200, 1/2500 sec, F5.6.

The rain

Shortly into our time in the Krabi province, southern Thailand was ravaged by unseasonably strong rain and winds (the rainy season is supposed to end in November). The result was large-scale flooding affecting around 700,000 people and resulting in dozens of lives lost.

The beginning of the storms roll in to Koh Phi Phi. 1/100 sec, ISO 6400, F4.

The worst of the weather was to the east of us, as we experienced stormy conditions but largely less severe flooding. It wasn’t until much of the rain had subsided that we had realized the gravity and impact of the situation; we had simply been attempting to make the best of our trip, as did the countless tourists that surrounded us.

Rain begins to fall on tourists and locals on Koh Phi Phi. ISO 640, 1/125 sec, F1.2.

I bring this up so as to make clear that as I go on with this piece, it is with respect and acknowledgment of the scale of the human impact we were lucky enough to have avoided the worst of.

Though the rains did their part to keep me from taking as many photographs as I would have otherwise, the E-M1 II’s purportedly extreme weather sealing meant that I was comfortable having the camera with me much of the time. So while I was taking fewer photographs, the point is that I was still taking them.

Flooding continued in the town of Krabi even after rains had ceased, forced multiple reroutings of traffic on and off Route 4 to the airport. ISO 1250, 1/125 sec, F1.2.

Growth and challenges

The final region we visited in Thailand was Chiang Mai, in which we planned a visit to the Elephant Nature Park. Here, all elephants in residence are rescues and not subject to rides, tricks or shows. Instead, visitors are able to experience an elephant’s life in a more natural, simple and tranquil setting.

As far as the relative simplicity of shooting with only a 50mm equivalent lens throughout my trip, it ended up being a positive experience despite my earlier hesitations. While my images weren’t exactly how I had envisioned them, I found that wasn’t a bad thing. Most importantly, I struggled a bit and found some enjoyment in the challenge of shooting different subject matter with a different selection of gear than I’m accustomed to. It might sound strange to challenge one’s self on a ‘vacation,’ but I guess I’m a bit weird like that.

Forcing myself to work with the 50mm focal length was a challenge that often forced me to see scenes in front of me a little differently than I would with a wider lens. ISO 200, 1/1000 sec, F2.

To be sure, there are other solutions out there I could have chosen for this journey, but I was more than pleased with the Olympus E-M1 II. It offered an good balance of size, ergonomics, speed, weather resistance and image quality. It would have been nice in some dimmer scenes to have a larger sensor with lower noise levels, and I didn’t particularly have a use for the ultra-high burst rates the Olympus is capable of. But as a travel camera for this particular journey, the camera performed admirably. Maybe next time I’ll even take a zoom lens.

ISO 200, F8, 1/3200 sec.

Samples Gallery

All images were shot in Raw + JPEG with a 3:2 crop as personal preference. Many of the edited Raws were differently cropped, and were produced using a beta version of Adobe Camera Raw. Please do not reproduce any of these images on a website or any newsletter / magazine without prior permission (see our copyright page).

We make the originals available for private users to download to their own machines for personal examination or printing (in conjunction with this review), we do so in good faith, please don’t abuse it. Unless otherwise noted images taken with no particular settings at full resolution.

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Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Throwback Thursday: Olympus C-211 Zoom Digital Printing Camera

15 Dec

If you want to see a truly rare camera, look no further than the Olympus ‘Camedia’ C-211 Zoom Digital Printing Camera. The big feature of the C-211 Zoom ($ 800 at launch) is immediately obvious – it’s a camera and photo printer in one. Even if you found a C-211 in a thrift shop you probably couldn’t even print anything, as it uses the now-defunct Polaroid 500 instant film.

From a spec point-of-view the C-211Z wasn’t any different than other Olympus cameras in 2000. It had a 2 Megapixel CCD, 35-105mm equiv. lens, TIFF support and no manual exposure control. One interesting feature was its 113k-dot LCD, which used a ‘Hybrid Collector Backlight.’  Just above the panel was a window, through which light passed through, brightening the display when shooting outdoors without requiring additional power from the traditional LCD backlight. The C-211 used the wondrous storage format known as SmartMedia.

The C-211 used Polaroid 500 film packs, which held ten pieces of film as well as a small battery to advance to the next sheet. The print area of 500 film was 2.25 x 2.875 in. (57 x 73mm) and it took about 15 seconds for the camera to pop out a sheet.

There were a number of options for photo printing. Naturally you could select a photo in playback mode and hit that large blue print button and be done with it. You could also print a contact sheet or a crop of a photo (cropping must have been fun on that tiny LCD.) You could even print a series of frame grabs from a video you’d recorded at a whopping 320 x 240.

While clever, the C-211 Zoom was the only photo printing camera Olympus ever made, and the concept never went anywhere – until quite recently that is, when instant cameras like Fujifilm’s Instax became a big hit.

Read original C-211 Zoom news story

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Heliskiing the British Columbia wilderness with the Olympus OM-D E-M1 II

07 Dec

We took the Olympus OM-D E-M1 II up to Revelstoke, British Columbia and caught the season’s first helicopter out into the wilderness alongside some of the World’s top pro skiers. It was cold and terrifying, but we did it all in the name of putting this new flagship camera to the test. Part of a forthcoming feature video with Scott Rinckenberger, we wanted to share some of the images with you as soon as we got back. We also used the camera to shoot opening day at Revelstoke resort, which is famous for having one of the longest (and most fun) lift lines of any mountain in North America. 

The gallery contains a mix of Raw conversions and out of camera JPEGs, including some shot using the Grainy Film II profile (a staff favorite), as well as a High-res mode sample. Many of the images shot in back country were done so under extreme conditions: sub-freezing temperatures, blizzard-like snowfall, avalanche warnings and the like. This in particular should demonstrate just how tough this this camera is, even if the photographer who shot the images was less so.

See our Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II Heliskiing Samples Gallery

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Olympus E-M1 owners report firmware 4.2 bugs

04 Dec

Olympus OM-D E-M1 owners are reporting issues using their cameras after updating to firmware version 4.2. Forum member Denjw reports problems with focus stacking and corrupted image files after updating to 4.2, echoing comments from German blogger Pen-and-Tell. Firmware 4.2 in part added support to the E-M1 for focus stacking with the 300mm F4, 8mm F1.8 fisheye and 7-14mm F2.8 Pro lenses. We’ve reached out to Olympus for comment and will update this story with any further information.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Throwback Thursday: Olympus E-10

02 Dec

Throwback Thursday: Olympus E-10

Back in the early days of consumer digital photography, I was a bit of an Olympus fanboy. My first camera was the D-300L (launched in 1996 for around $ 900), which had a resolution of just 786k pixels. A year later I stepped up to the D-600L ($ 1299), which increased the resolution to 1.4MP and had a 3X zoom lens and, in a first for consumer cameras, a TTL optical viewfinder.

Then, in the year 2000, a really interesting camera arrived and, as you may have guessed, it was an Olympus. That camera was the E-10 and, after shelling out two grand, it would be mine.

Throwback Thursday: Olympus E-10

Even if you ignore its hallmark feature (described later), the E-10’s specs were amazing for its time. It had a 4MP 2/3″ CCD, fast and very high quality lens with manual focus and zoom rings, twin control dials, an articulating LCD and much, much more.

In the above image alone you’ll notice its numerous collection of I/O ports, which included flash sync, remote control, USB and A/V output. There were plenty of direct controls, too, which kept you at an arm’s-length from the camera’s menu system.

The body was super-solid – perhaps more than some DSLRs of that era – and was weather-sealed.

Throwback Thursday: Olympus E-10

Oh, that lens. The E-10’s 35-140mm equivalent lens has a maximum aperture range of F2-2.4, both aspherical and ED elements, and excellent sharpness. The zoom could be adjusted just like on an SLR – no buttons needed to be pressed. Focusing, on the other hand, was ‘fly by wire.’ The lens was threaded and Olympus offered some pretty crazy conversion lenses for it.

The E-10 had a pretty advanced AF system for that era. It first used infrared light (from a transmitter seen here) to get a rough idea as to the distance of the subject. Once that was done a more traditional contrast-detect system was used for fine-tuning.

Throwback Thursday: Olympus E-10

Another nice feature on the E-10 was its articulating LCD (look how thick that enclosure is!). The 1.8″ screen could tilt upward 90° and downward about 20°. The E-10 also had a large optical viewfinder with 95% coverage, though DPReview founder Phil Askey had some issues with it.

Rear controls were conventional and could’ve come off of any camera made that year.

Throwback Thursday: Olympus E-10

A number of things that made the E-10 feel a bit ‘pro’ were its dual control dials and backlit LCD info display. That SM/CF switch is how you toggled between memory card slots. Yes, the E-10 had two; one for SmartMedia and the other for CompactFlash. Looking back, I still have to laugh at the dedicated spots on the mode dial for connecting to a printer or computer. Those were the days (or not.)

Throwback Thursday: Olympus E-10

I’ve covered many of the things that made the Olympus E-10 such an impressive camera, but I’ve been saving what makes it unique for the end. The E-10 was the first camera to allow photographers to use live view at the same time as the optical viewfinder. It does so via a ‘beam splitter’ which sent a TTL view of the scene to the camera’s large OVF and directly to that 4MP CCD. 

This was all very impressive, though the live view resolution was poor. And, for those wondering, the E-10 could not capture video. Can’t have everything, I guess. 

Overall, though, the E-10 was a heck of a camera, and one that I used for many years (and still have today.) For those who wanted an SLR camera that didn’t require carrying around extra lenses, there was nothing else like it on the market.

Read DPReview’s Olympus E-10 Review

View Sample Gallery

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