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We clicked with:
Live View
Cost effective
Small & Portable
Shots in the dark:
Live View slows down picture taking process
Three AF points are a limitation
Price Comparison:
Olympus E510
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The E-510 is ideal if you're looking to buy a relatively small and portable DSLR that's packed out with enough features to keep you happy. Plus it's a Four Thirds camera system - the only existing DSLR camera standard, meaning you can utilise a whole range of compatible lenses without a manufacturer-specific bias.
The Olympus E-510 picks up where its little brother - the E-410 - may have fallen short.
Obviously there are many similar features between the two and rather than continually harking back to the E-410 review, here's the Delia Smith comparison:
Take an E-410. Add 85 grams to the body weight (but at 450g, still very light and fluffy) and fold in chunks of ergonomically designed hand grip. Now sprinkle over a generous helping of in-camera Anti-Shake (IS). Drizzle two handy lenses of the camera and serve… for a lot less than Michelin star prices.
Features:
One of the big issues is that the E-510 offers in-camera Image Stabilisation (IS) - a first for Four Thirds designs. There are two modes - general stabilisation, and a mode that controls only the vertical movements, which is useful when panning or tracking a subject.
The camera has both Compact Flash and xD card slots, although you can't write to both simultaneously. Olympus was first (and arguably still best) with an Anti Dust feature that shakes the sensor clean via the power of the supersonic waves. Very swoosh.
Good to see an option of one touch white balance - should you happen to have a white sheet of paper to hand (which you, er, clearly always should), a simple click of the WB button and no more orange-red-green-blue-nastiness.
Live View really is the icing on the cake, icing it shares with the E-410. This is a feature that has eluded the DSLR market until recently, but in terms of composing an image it offers the immediacy of a compact camera, yet can be used more judiciously (for example on a tripod) to compose a scene by looking through the ground glass of a large format camera, only this time the image isn't upside down and reversed.
Operation:
Live View can be a little slow - there is a bit of a lag as it disengages prior to taking the shot. Not a problem for landscapes perhaps, but when that Henri Cartier-Bresson decisive moment slips by - well, you just can't use Live View for everything, after all.
The kit lenses are good (this is the two-lens kit, with a 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 and a 40-150mm f/4-5.6 zoom- that's 28-84mm and 80-300mm in old money) although the manual focus may not be as intuitive as one may wish for. This isn't a problem because of the autofocus, but there can be issues due to the limitation of 3 AF points.
White balance control is much better than a number of entry level DSLR on the market. You are able to control colour temperature from 2,000-14,000K (degrees Kelvin) in bands of 200K, which covers any range that you are likely to have to confront. Great opportunity for using filters, gels and off-camera flash/lighting with the degree of control offered here. There are series of pre-set white balance types suitable for sunlight through to varying degrees of fluorescent lights.
Flash is reasonably good - there's enough breadth from the options to do a number of things, including controlling the flash output for some quirkier fill-in flash. There's a hotshoe on top should you look to expand your accessories arsenal and get a beefier flash, too.
Picture Quality:
A 10 megapixel resolution allows for large, high quality images. RAW and JPEG are available simultaneously, which whilst may clog up your memory pretty quickly, is a really pro way of managing your workload.
Olympus had issues in the past with certain colour reciprocities - the E400 suffered from a slight blue tint, while the E410 had suffered with green colour issues. The E510 doesn't evade such problems, but the colours are very rich and vivid which can only be taken as a positive.
Noise isn't much of an issue either, with the 100-400 ISO region being virtually without noise. ISO 1600 is noisy, but it's not 'bad' by any means.
Exposure is very good - the LCD reciprocates both monitors and print exposure accurately, the kit lenses keeping purple fringing and chromatic aberration to an absolute minimum.
Light fall off is kept to a minimum, even with the kit lens shooting 14mm (28mm equivalent). Keep in mind that if you wish to use filters and intend to shoot at 14mm with a kit lens - you are likely to catch the corners of a screw on filter in your shots, so prepare to crop.
Conclusion:
The E-510 is probably the most feature-rich entry level DSLR available on the market today. Competition may be rife, but it seems that Olympus have succeeded with one of the most obvious (yet effective) selling points - it's affordable. Not 'cheap cheap', but if you are looking to buy into the DSLR market and are looking for a camera with decent auto and manual modes whilst remaining portable and light, then there's not much missing here. Top marks go to Olympus.
