Commentary in red italic is from the Editor. Skip is a long term Olympus OM user and a great fan of the E-1 and the E-system in general. Skip was an early adopter of the E-1 and is a highly experienced amateur photographer based in United States. He has agreed to write a small review of his hands on experience of the E-3 and the SWD lenses at the New York release event, for this web-site, for which I'm very grateful indeed.

INTRODUCTION:

"Here I am in New York City for a Saturday morning at PhotoPlus. I drive in and park - $22.00 for parking - geez, what a ripoff! This is my yearly pilgrimage to a photography show, as I don’t go to Photokina, PMA, or CES. I didn’t come to this event last year as, at the last minute, I found out that Olympus wasn’t going to be here. Boy, was I annoyed!

I get through the mercifully short lines and I make a bee-line for the Olympus pavilion which, thankfully, is up front. I immediately grab one of the 20-odd E-3’s mounted with a ZD12-60mm lens and spent about 45 minutes with the camera and the two new SWD lenses.

These are my first reactions after trying the patience of the nice technician who I asked every question that I could think of. Mostly they are impressions of usability and ergonomics against my current camera, the E-1 + ZD11-22mm, ZD14-54mm, and ZD50-200mm lenses. I think that most of the technician guys hadn’t had their E-3’s for more than a couple of days judging by the way they were still talking to each other. They too were still discovering features, menu settings, etc. that morning.

There was an E-3 cutaway on display too:

USABILITY AND HANDLING NOTES IN RANDOM ORDER:

Overall, the camera is very similar to the E-1 in operation and feel. The weight difference wasn’t noticeable. Many buttons are in the same area, but they’ve re-worked the layout. The power switch is moved to the lower rear, as there’s now no mode dial. The tech said that this feature was 'borrowed' from Canon/Nikon.

Startup/Shutdown time was very, very quick, versus the rather tardy 1.5 sec on the E-1.

Elimination of the drive-mode switch and migration to a button+wheel function is a negative step for me compared to the E-1, but I suppose you can’t have everything. I also loved having the ease of seeing and changing the focus mode via a physical switch on my E-1, abandoned on the E-3. Also, there are now high and low speed modes, so it’s obviously easier for them to implement in software rather than a hard-wired mechanical switch.

The custom WB button is moved to top deck from the front of the camera body that will help the accidental presses that I’ve experienced. Often, when I pick up the E-1, my middle finger strays over the grip and hits the WB button, bringing up the custom WB dialog on the rear LCD and making me cancel it.

You can turn off the E-3's external WB sensor. The technician told me the E-3's WB sensor is much more reliable; the E-1 WB sensor tended to get confused and vary the WB in a sequence sometimes (I’ve seen this many times). He said that he tapes over his E-1's external WB sensor?!! Interesting.

Custom “Fn” button on the rear top (next to the focus point button). What is it? There are about 10 preset functions that can be assigned to this button, so it’s nice, but not infinitely configurable. You can turn it off if you want. A nice feature that will probably find a lot of fans.

The 1.15x magnification finder is significantly larger than the E-1. Far superior to the 410 or 510. Nice removable rubber surrounding the eyepiece. Entire finder visible with glasses on, although the numbers are a little smaller than the 510.

ISO visible in the finder at all times….hurray! This is always a PITA for me and the E-1, as I shift ISO’s a lot. An in-camera reminder will be much used. It’s also on the top-deck LCD along with all the other data at all times when it’s switched on.

In-camera (viewfinder) data: Aperture value, Shutter speed, Record mode, AF confirmation mark, Flash, WB, AE lock, Number of storable still images, Exposure compensation value, Metering mode, Battery warning, Exposure mode, AF frame (super impose), IS, Bracket, ISO value.

Spot metering has Shadow/Highlight tools, but the OM-3/4’s multi-spot metering is still missing, from what I could see. Nobody has crowed loudly enough, I guess.

ISO in 1/3 increments 100-3200. This seems like something that they could do to compete with Canon/Nikon in a feature check-off exercise. You can customize the increments, so it’s not a big deal. I just like the ability to quickly move up/down one full ISO stop at a time, and three-presses per one-stop would be a PITA.

ISO peaks at 3200, but ~1 stop better noise that the E-1, according to the tech. ISO 6400 would have been nice; the Nikon D300 does 6400.

You can set the DPI on resulting files. No more wacky 314 dpi images like the E-1 generates. Yay!

The menus are much, much deeper than the E-1, but similarly laid out. It’ll take some time to hunt through everything. The manual for the E-3 has not been printed yet, even the tech hadn’t seen one.

Gone are the HQ, SQ, SHQ monikers, replaced by something less proprietary.

LCD can show histogram (single color or RGB channels) by default after every photo, which clears up a nagging fault of the E-1. I wonder if they’ll offer a clip-on LCD cover ala E-1. I hope so, as I don’t want to get mine scratched up.

A 5/7/10x magnification choice on LCD review of images. Hopefully it will be better than the E-1 for checking focus, etc.

Live view works very easily via one button. The rear screen is very easy to pull out and swivel. It’s slower to use than the optical finder, but will be much appreciated by me for macro shots.

No-record shot feature. This is like a virtual Polaroid. In this mode you take a shot and it only gets stored on the camera’s internal memory, check focus, lighting, etc. Nice touch.

Shooting speed is 5 FPS. Great news. I really wish it was 6-7, but it’s not a huge deal. I miss substantial numbers of shots with the E-1’s speed, especially when it’s in C-AF mode. I even turn off the outer focus points to speed up things. My favorite thing is to switch to MF with the SHLD-2 if my subject is moving in a parallel plane, which gives me the best frame rates. I hope these hoops won’t be necessary with the E-3.

Unlimited shot buffer in JPG modes up to the card’s limit. You need a UDMA compliant card for best performance (Sandisk Extreme III or better). No more 12-shot limit. For RAW files the buffer holds 17 files due to processing time. I saw reports that when the in-camera buffer is full of JPG files the camera slows down capture by 1-2 FPS. But I didn’t try to find out where the limit is.

FOCUS POINTS: 11 focus points, all double-cross-types. Very fast with the SWD lenses. Focus points light up when they lock on. Gone is that stupid idea of a focus confirmation in the in-finder LCD tucked away bottom left!

Focus point choices: It’s got usage and hunting patterns for use of the focus points; Center, Loop, Spiral, etc.

TOP: AF in the viewfinder (a) layout, (b) cross points. CENTRE: General layout of VF information. BOTTOM: AF frequency sensitivity chart.

Above: This is the layout of the basic 'in V/F' information panel.

SOME BODY FEATURES:

Dual xD/CF card slots. You can copy between them in-camera. This effectively gives an additional 2 or 4GB space in-camera on a separate card (insurance).

HLD-4 Battery grip ($200) takes two standard BLM-1 batteries OR AA’s (adapter included). At last, a reasonable price! I paid $350 for the SHLD-2, which was crazy. My question: will the included charger hold two batteries, or do you have to charge them one at a time? I wonder if Olympus has thought that one through?

Shutter is somewhat noisier than the E-1, more “clacky”. Much smaller blackout time. Separate shutter cocking and mirror motors, as I was told, improve the overall frame rate speed.

1/8000 shutter. Useful in bright sun and with the f/2.0 lenses, I often hit the 1/4000th barrier outside with my E-1 in A mode, which is my preferred shooting mode.

Control Panel has been updated too:

Enlarged top-deck control panel icon/info layout (with back light).

POP-UP FLASH: was sorely needed on the E-1 and I will really appreciate this addition to the E-3.

1/250 synch. Nice touch. Wireless TTL flash will also be nice with the new, $450 FL50R (though not worth it for me). There’s no way to mix an old flash TTL with the new wireless units and still retain? TTL.

E-3 with dust & drip proof pop-up flash raised GN = 13.

IMAGE QUALITY & SAMPLES?

The tecnician told me Olympus tried to keep the image characteristics much like the E-1. So maybe the nice, accurate colors and film-like noise pattern from the E-1 will carry forward? I often don’t like the out-of-the-camera JPGs that I see from Canon cameras. I shoot about 80% of my photography JPG, as it satisfies my needs. I only post-process about 10-20% of my photos.

Unfortunately no image quality opinions from me, yet. All cameras at the release were pre-production, beta units and you couldn’t put your own card in them.

NEW LENSES:

The new SWD ZD12-60mm is very similar size to the older ZD14-54mm.

SWD ZD12-60mm was surprisingly light, not much heavier than the ZD14-54mm, if I recall correctly. I might think about selling my ZD11-22mm and/or ZD14-54mm and replacing them with this single lens. Focusing was lightning fast.

New SWD ZD 50-200mm telephoto zoom.

ZD50-200mm SWD had a more solid build feel/quality than the non-SWD previous version. This too had super-fast focusing, but I’m not sure that it’s as fast as a Nikon AF-S lens. It’s MUCH, MUCH faster than the old lens with an E-1. Is it faster with the HLD-4 grip? I've decided to order mine soon, with the old lens on the block.

OTHER COMMENTS:

I asked Skip to comment on some of the issues readers of the site have raised mainly surrounding the E-3's size, Mid-ISO performance, If 10MP is the current ceiling and not delivering on the E-System promise of smaller machines. These are Skip's personal responses:

Size and Weight: from my initial reactions, very similar to the E-1, but it's of course a bit wider.

Mid-ISO performance: opinion reserved until I see true production images.

(It's fair to say that many are waiting for the 'official' or 'trusted' samples to arrive, particularly those at mid-ISO level. Olympus' claim that ISO performance is 1 stop better than the E-1 may not seem much but to many it may make or break their purchasing decision).

MP ceiling: Technology marches on. What will the world bring in another 4 years? Who knows. So 10MP will be fine for me for the next few years. The only disadvantage is that ultra-large images, those above 20" x 24" may have unacceptable interpolation artifacts. At 200dpi, the E-3's files produce a 13.5" x 18" print.

Not delivering on E-system advantages: I now think the smaller, lighter pro-spec body, is a myth. So much of the mechanics of the body is consumed by electronics, finder, shutter mechanism, etc, that there's little saved room delivered by the smaller format. But the lenses definitely are smaller and lighter. Could you imagine the size of a 70-200 f/2.0 lens that could cover a 35mm frame? Or a 300/2.0 versus the ZD 150/2.0? People who want small, light, rugged, high performance all in one package will be disappointed.

Just as a side note, I picked up the E-410 and it was too small for me. It's more of a lady's camera, IMO. My hands swallowed the camera and made it awkward to handle.

I know that I forgot something, but I was favorably impressed. I’m getting one ASAP."

THANKS SKIP.

I'd like to thank Skip for his report. It is great to have some first hand experience and opinion delivered in an uncompromising way. It is a pity none of the attendees were able/allowed to generate their own images for scrutiny. Presumably the final version of the firmware is still being tweaked. Once we get a range of ISO images to study we'll see not only the performance of the sensor, but of the new lenses too. All else looks very impressive.