Olympus E-3 DSLR is officially official
By Ryan Block 
posted Oct 16th 2007 6:51PM
posted Oct 16th 2007 6:51PM
- 10 megapixel sensor
- 2.5-inch 230k pixel live view display
- "World's fastest autofocus" with 11-point biaxial AF system
- Image stabilization, sonic dust cleaning on sensor, shoots up to ISO 3200
- 3/4 lens mount, takes CF and xD media
[Thanks, Zo]
I still prefer films
Pretty mediocre specs for a pro body, especially at a MSRP of $1700.
Nikon D300 still the leader in this price range
Just nabbed a D200 new off Amazon for $450 less, better specs. Olympus, fail.
Oh man, 7 years between this and the E1.. and this is the best they can do? Oly fails (i used to be an E1 shooter).
Isn't it a four-thirds mount?
Yes, the mount should be written as "Four Thirds", not "4/3", or even worse (as its written here) "3/4".
What kind of lens are 4/3? seems hard to compete with Nikon or Canon mounts.
the Four Thirds systems was championed initially by Olympus, but has been adopted by Leica, Panasonic and Sigma. The idea being that any four thirds body can accept any four thirds lens. In practice, I don't know if that's exactly true, but it would be nice to be able to use the Leica glass on your SD-14 or new E-3.
Those specs seem a bit outdated and that price is redicuous. I thought the four thirds concept was supposed to reduce the prices.
Rolling my eyes at this one. Come on Olympus, bring something competitive to the table!! Autofocus speed is great, but what about the construction, durability, and ergonomics? You are just now putting 11 AF points in your top of the line body while everyone else has had that or more for years!? This goes to show their highest reaching customers are pro-amateurs...uninformed ones at that.
"bring something competitive to the table!! Autofocus speed is great, but what about the construction, durability, and ergonomics"
What /are/ you talking about? You can complain about the sensor size if you like, but to complain about construction, durability or ergonomics implies you have no knowledge of Olympus cameras. The E1 is almost undoubtedly the best build DSLR to date that a normal human being could afford (construction and durability are second to none). It also has superb ergonomics, an order of magnitude better than Canon for instance. The E3 is unlikely to be any worse than the E1 and quite likely to be better in all these respects...
Olympus is famous for durability and image quality. Driving a tank does not make you the best driver on the road nor does having the meatiest camera body with 100 auto focus points make you a professional. Your photographic ability should never be judged by the equipment you use. Afterall, great photos have been taken with a pin hole camera. Being a pinhead is not the same thing. The Oly E3 should win camera of the year awards in its class. You could always buy a more expensive camera, but this one has a full toolbox.
Sigma's bodies don't have a Four thirds mount. The Leica/Panasonic lenses won't work on an SD14. Sigma just makes some lenses (and is rumored to be subcontracted out by Olympus for some of their lenses).
Too expensive considering competition.
My Pentax K10D sub 1,000 does it better...
If you actually go to their website you'll see that the camera has quite a few interesting capabilites - either engadget threw together a sloppy article or olympus released the worse press release ever. The E-3 offers 5 stops of image stabilization! That's huge compared to the A100's 2.5, the A700's 3, and even the 4 stops offered by the best image stabilized lenses currently available (Nikon 18-200mm VR). It also features live view which none of the competition accompanied by a flip out LCD that, wait, also is unique to the E-3 among all DSLR's. It might be expensive, it might not have the most megapixels, and it might be late, but don't bash it without even looking at the full specs.
I'd be more concerned about the lack of lenses available for this thing - the specs by themselves look pretty damn impressive.
The Four Thirds format does not have a lot of lenses, but they do have some very good ones.
My favorite, and perhaps one of the best lenses out there is the Olympus 7-14mm wide angle lens
http://www.olympusamerica.com/cpg_section/lens/dea/products/lens/7-14_40/index.asp
As most reviews of this lens say - "It is worth getting a 4/3 body just to be able to use this lens."
- Roger
I completely agree. Most of those posting in here I'm sure don't make a living shooting anyway. You guys need to stop looking at things like MP. It's like saying that a cpu with a higher clock speed will perform better.
This is a huge advancement, and I am quite interested to see if it can handle noise as well as nikon and canon. The optics are amazing and anyone who says otherwise is grossly uninformed. I'm starting to really consider the 4/3 aspect. The obvious reason being that in portrait photography the image is almost always cropped, resulting in a loss of H-resolution. With the 4/3 you actually gain some v-resolution and throw out less.
I believe their body is priced right but their lenses are quite a bit more expensive than nikon or canon. Although I actually prefer their flagship lenses to the competition, nikon equipment keeps me more profitable.
I agree, everyone things that adding more pixels to the same size sensor means better images, when in reality, you just get more noise and less quality.
I have the E-510 and have used it for a month and the 10 MP sensor is great. I very carefully compared it to the Canon and Nikon's and they Olympus came out on top.
- Roger
Not too shabby if you are a user of Olympus glass, but definitely not enough to win over new customers, in my opinion. The IS is nice, and I would hope the autofocus will be just as fast as the Sony A700. Only problem is Olympus doesn't have much to offer to their customers.
The two dimensional AF will definitely be nice. For me it will be a decision between this and the D300... hmm.
My post was supposed to be a followup to the "Vince @ Oct 16th 2007 8:25PM" post.
Geez! Half hearted Engadget post or maybe too busy?
Wow! Too much hate for a camera that has not even been reviewed yet nor that anyone who has commented as even touched. Sounds just like the release of the E-1 all over again.
For those with an open mind and are DSLR fans in general, Dpreview, pop photo and four-thirds.com has all the scoop including new lenses, new flashes and other accessories and camera's to be released over the next two months.
Camera will be available in Nov 2007 (that was on the Oly site too). There are also a few new lenses available. This is plenty camera for most people and already just as under rated as the E-1 when it was released. Unless it has Canon, Nikon or Apple in the name apparently it can't be any good.
For the pro-sumer -- this is plenty of camera. For the pro, it will fit the bill except for very specialized work.
And, lastly, that is MSRP that is qouted. Wait till after Xmas and it will be in $1,200 range.
I have been using the E1 professionally since it came out and have tried Nikon and Canon and occasionally shoot with a hasselblad. The E1 despite its pixel size still managed to produce better images IMHO than both the Canon and Nikon equivalents and that is why I have stuck with Olympus despite the crazy time it has taken to replace the E1.
I am a bit disappointed at the 10mp but at the same time I am pretty certain this is going to be a great workhorse of a camera and when i need the MP I will shoot with the Hassy. The build and ergonomics of the E1 were also unsurpassed IMHO.
Pentax K100D had all this 1 year ago & with most spread bayonet K + DSLR sensor producing 1.5 crop... Oly is pretty fast :)
Really? The pentax has worlds fastest AF, usable live view with movable LCD, working dust removal system, 5 stops of in body IS, a 1.15x magnified viewfinder, effective dedicated WB sensor, wireless flash setup etc does it? No it fscking well doesn't so keep your gob shut and stop making yourself look like a fanboy asshat.
It does have AF (pretty doubt about worl's fastest since AF ALWAYS depend on lenses), LCD is useless, dust removal system works fine, in body IS as well, viewfinder - don't make me laugh comparing it to worlds leader pentaprism :)
I'm to lazy to search for wireless flash but I'm sure it has infrared.
Also it has bigger sensor which beats all schit written here...
"It does have AF (pretty doubt about worl's fastest since AF ALWAYS depend on lenses)"
I'm obviously aware that the Pentax does have AF. My question was does it have the worlds fastest AF? Obviously NOT from your reply. Obviously AF depends on lenses, Oly are releasing at least 3 new SWD lenses which will offer better AF when used with the E-3 than your Pentax can do with any lens available now or known to be in the pipeline.
"LCD is useless" - on your Pentax yes it is because its non-articulated. On the E-3 it will actually be very useful, and if you cannot imagine why, that's not my fault...
"Also it has bigger sensor which beats all schit written here..."
This shows just how little you know. Yes it has a larger sensor. Do you know how much larger an APS sensor is than a 4/3 sensor? I suspect not or you wouldn't claim this as your defence of last resort... Especially when you consider the more useful aspect ratio of 4/3 vs 3/2.
If you were talking about a 35mm sized sensor cam then this /might/ be a valid argument, if high iso work was important to you, but trying to use this argument on APS vs 4/3 is just a joke, so give it up!! ;)
I'm sorry to sink your battleship but the E-3 will blow your Pentax out of the water in terms of features, speed, ergonomics, build quality and likely IQ. (as will a new Pentax which will be out next year - cameras move on, get over it)
All this bashing seems a bit premature, does it not?
So far the most-complained-about aspect of the E-3 here is the feature set. I fail to see how the E-3's feature set is any less than competitive.
Sure, it has 40 less AF sensors than the D300. However, all of the olympus' are cross-type, and apparently faster. Do you really think you need 51 AF sensors? People have been making amazing pictures for 100+ years with as few as NO AF points. But Oly didn't use that as an excuse to skimp, they just decided to use the best AF sensors they possibly could rather than using 51 lesser ones that will mostly see little use.
The spec sheets are something to interpret. Saying the E-3 is inferior because it has only x number of _____ shows that you just don't get why you should buy a camera in the first. It's not about the specs. It's about how it really works.
The ironic part is that, despite all that, if you look at the E-3's features, such as this much-decried "flimsy" flip-out LCD, those who've had their hands on it describe it as seeming "military grade." Flimsy? People are criticizing features that they have had no opportunity to test and finding the most improbable flaws... I strongly believe that most of these "flaws" are reactionary mental fabrications and time will tell the E-3 to live up to Olympus' long history, past and present, of delivering excellent imaging products. For those of you who weren't around, Olympus was at the top of the world with the OM system in the 70's. They aren't a crap-late-arrival-startup. Olympus is the real deal, just as much as Canon or Nikon or any other major manufacturer.
The E-3 has a quite competitive spec list, for those who really care that much about being able to boast about how their camera has _________, and I fully expect that even more than that the E-3 will be more than competitive in real-life performance.
BTW, to whoever said that a large viewfinder doesn't matter... do you even use a DSLR? I mean, maybe you do, and you just point and shoot and crop later, but some shooters really do use their nice big ground-glass screen to actually *compose* the image, thereby saving resolution...
You know. Just a thought.
It's so funny that people just want to see a name and suddenly start bashing. The fact of the matter is that Olympus has and has had the best dust reduction system around. Originally Canon stated they didn't need one..but guess what? There it is and it's not as good.
Canon also has LiveView.. hahaha and guess who pioneered that? Olympus
The E-3 will have remote flash ability. Without cords you will be able to set one of the new flash units and move around.
The articulating screen is what made it 2.5" but it is going to allow you to get shots otherwise impossible without luck. Hold it over your head. Down below near the ground. You don't have to contort yourself or lay on the ground to get that shot anylonger. Save me some dry cleaning bills.
The body construction is solid and well thought out. They have come up with some new molding techniques for the magnesium allow casing that makes it's seams thinner and the entire thing more solid and rigid.
Yes they're late to the 11point autofocus but unlike the others..who have cross focus all 11 of the focus points are cross sensor types which nobody else has done. Usually they are just a few cross type for those of you feeling incredibly superior.
It's also lighter and the focus is said to be incredibly accurate. What good are those ten frames a second if more than half of them are out of focus? I'd rather have a solid clear selection than a bunch of out of focus images I'll just toss out anyway.
The Oly glass is second to none. They are a leading medical imaging company and know how to make a nice piece of glass. Now with the IS all lenses will have IS. Unlike Canikon who will sell you OIS at a crazy premium for each and every lens. The pro lenses on any system aren't going to be cheap so who are you kidding? The kit lenses on the E-510 were declared superior to all the rest of the kit lenses by most reviewers. For the person that thought there wasn't much selection in lenses Oly has the largest number of Digital specific lenses. It's over 30 lenses.
The bottom line is not the camera. It's whether you are any good at what you do. The camera is going to be quite outstanding and unique from the others. It's not a converted camera system but completely unique. If you're any good then you don't need to bash someone else's camera... only prove you're as good as you think you are. It's all great equipment regardless of teh brand, and some people who are complaining probably don't even have the skill to use their camera's as it is. We clearly know you haven't held one or used one.
Hellow, I am only a newbie at understanding cameras, however having searched the internet to find interviews on digital cameras. I found it strange to find only negative comments regarding Olympus, I am not a newbie at understanding crowd psychology and to find only negatives regarding a brand led me to believe that Olympus was being bashed. Just a thought, in 1985 porcshe produced a car called a 951 or 944 turbo, it was not recieved becuase it did not look like a 911, untill the 911 twin turbo was produced almost 10 years latter there was not a car produced by porsche which outperformed the 944 turbo.
I would rather have the car the performed the best, I would rather have the camera that produced the highest quality photos for the money.
Just a thought.