A First Look at the Olympus E-510
Having received my new Olympus E-510 twin lens kit, Digital SLR a few days ago I thought it only fitting to share my first impressions. Having used an Olympus E-300 for the past couple of years I will use that as a reference point for the comparisons.
This is not a full product review, just my initial thoughts!
The first thing that I noticed even before I opened the box was the size of the box. It wasn't very big, or heavy, I was wondering if they had forgotten something? No, it was all there!
Eager to try it out I took a number of test shots under different conditions (initially using my 14-54mm lens, not the kit lenses). I must say that I was impressed with the result. The image quality was considerably better than the E-300. Shooting in RAW and processing with Lightroom 1.1 the resultant image clarity and detail were superb, even when zoomed in at 100%-200%. Skin tones were very natural looking.
Other things of note (in no particular order) are:
- Continuous shooting. Using my extreme III compact flash card and shooting in RAW I, was able to shoot continuously with very little lag (I stopped at 20 shots).
- Image stabilization - I need to investigate the capabilities of this more.
- Depth of Field preview
- Toggle on/off of AEL
Over the next few weeks I will add some more sample shots and other relevant information about the Olympus E-510.