E-300 /Evolt : first serious competition for Canon?

[chris clements]

First read of the Olympus press release sounds like the 300d may have a real rival by Christmas.
I'll be intrigued to handle one : a sideways mirror with no prism.

At least the Olympus DSLR forums won't be full of the "how to clean your sensor" tips!

[Belmondo]

For anyone interested, here's the scoop:

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0409/04092710olympuse300.asp

[DocFrankenstein]

I'm confused... is this one of those no prism, no mirror cameras?

How does the viewfinder work? Is it another LCD in there? And the sensor is a CCD :?

[who me?]

And when they come out with a revised 'R' version, it can be called REVOLT... :lol:

I would think that a 8MP 4/3 chip will have the same noise issues like the other 8MP cameras like the Powershot, Nikon 8700 and SOny 828. I guess it will be proofed out in the real world tests.

[Jon]

No, it uses a porro-mirror finder, like many of the lower-end SLRs do these days. It's still a purely optical finder.

[chris clements]

I'm no Olympus apologist, but it won't be the carp Sony chip that saddles all of the 8 meg bridge cameras (I'm a Pro1 owner).

Any of the big players trying to put that tiny lump of noise into a DSLR would sink faster than Pro1 /Sony 808 prices.

[Mthorpe_Davies]

Its the camera Oly should have launched the 4/3 system with not the E-1. It has all the attributes that they rambled on about, small size, light weight..... To my mind it looks a bit like the Minolta vectis APS slr from way back.

[sp00g3]

First read of the Olympus press release sounds like the 300d may have a real rival by Christmas.
I'll be intrigued to handle one : a sideways mirror with no prism.

At least the Olympus DSLR forums won't be full of the "how to clean your sensor" tips!

and I thought 1.6 crop was bad!! Jesus, that thing has a 2x crop!!!!

[Jim_T]

It appears to be a great little camera..

I just don't like the 4/3 sensor.. It's much smaller than the APS-C sized sensor in the 300D/10D/30D.. This means smaller sensor sites that don't gather as much light and require more amplification. As a result you wind up with much more noise at higher ISO settings. Squeezing 8 megapixels out of the little sensor just makes it worse.

One of the main reasons I bought my 10D was for the very low noise at ISO 400

[defordphoto]

This will be a fine consumer camera. It's not in our world.

[MrChad]

The greatest advantage this camera (E-300) has going for it is it has it's own completely custom set of lenses.

I think this would be a fine camera, but I can't believe we will be using crop factor sensors for long. 4/3 or APS or APS-C

I'd much rather dump $1200 into a lens then a crop factor camera at this point. Who knows in 3years or less we could all be using full 35mm frame size sensors and suddenly all those great designed for film EF lenses will be awesome vs. the EF-S, Di, and DG lenses for Digital that seam to be all over the market.

But I do give credit to Olympus for designing a ground up new system, that's what put Canon ahead of Nikon when EOS electronic autofocus lenses and cameras came out. Could this do the same for Olympus? Well, Canon has been one of the first to jump on the full digital market so maybe Oly is a bit late now.

[Jesper]

And when they come out with a revised 'R' version, it can be called REVOLT... :lol:

I would think that a 8MP 4/3 chip will have the same noise issues like the other 8MP cameras like the Powershot, Nikon 8700 and SOny 828. I guess it will be proofed out in the real world tests.

The noise issues from those compact digital cameras (although some are not so compact) comes from the fact that they have a very small sensor. This new Olympus has a 17.3 x 13.0 mm sensor, which is a lot bigger than those other cameras - so probably it will not have the same noise problems as the others. The sensor is, however, smaller than that of other DSLRs, so it probably has more noise than the 300D, 10D, 20D and Nikon D70.

According to the specs you can set it from ISO 100 to 400 and there are two "expanded" modes, ISO 800 and 1600. That doesn't sound good..... it will not be as clean as the Canon or Nikon DSLRs.

I'd rather have a real DSLR, such as the 20D, than this new Olympus.

[CyberDyneSystems]

Its the camera Oly should have launched the 4/3 system with not the E-1. It has all the attributes that they rambled on about, small size, light weight..... To my mind it looks a bit like the Minolta vectis APS slr from way back.

My thoughts exactly.. the E-1 should have been a ground breaking camera.. this might just do it n the consumer end IF Olympus prices it correctly.. (and drops the price of the lenses!!!)

FYI.. the 4/3rds sensor, though smaller than a 10D sensor.. is still significantly larger than the Sony chip in the Pro1 etc...
it is almost exactly 1/2 the size of a 35mm "full frame" whereas the Sony chip is closer to 1/5th that size!

Don't forget this lovely comparison;

http://www.bidencap.de/SensorSize.jpg

[Mthorpe_Davies]

The greatest advantage this camera (E-300) has going for it is it has it's own completely custom set of lenses.

I think this would be a fine camera, but I can't believe we will be using crop factor sensors for long. 4/3 or APS or APS-C

I'd much rather dump $1200 into a lens then a crop factor camera at this point. Who knows in 3years or less we could all be using full 35mm frame size sensors and suddenly all those great designed for film EF lenses will be awesome vs. the EF-S, Di, and DG lenses for Digital that seam to be all over the market.

But I do give credit to Olympus for designing a ground up new system, that's what put Canon ahead of Nikon when EOS electronic autofocus lenses and cameras came out. Could this do the same for Olympus? Well, Canon has been one of the first to jump on the full digital market so maybe Oly is a bit late now.

I don't understand the point of your first comment as all OEM lense are custom made for the manufacturers lense mount. I would like to think my Canon lens are custom made for the Eos mount.

I believe crop factors are here to stay, if they weren't Canon and Nikon wouldn't have invested in designing lenses for this type of sensor. I don't think FF is the holy grail of the 35mm photographer, remember this is digital not film, it's a whole new world.

The reason my Canon went to the Eos mount is because there ould mount wasn't capable of being turned into an AF mount effectively. I was under the impression the old FD mount wasn't wide enough, whereas the Nikon mount was. Canon have only really pulled ahead of Nikon over the last 5 or so years and that's due to smarter products, better marketing and digital technology not a redesigned lense mount that happened 20 years ago.

[Jon]

The idea of the completely custom set of lenses is that they're all tied exclusively to the sensor size Olympus is using. They're designed to cover that area, and no more, so you aren't paying for quality where it doesn't affect the picture. Sorta like the EF-S lenses. Is it a good decision? Depends on whether you think that sensor size is the right choice for the long run. My take would be that bigger (area) is better, and Olympus is locking themselves out of any larger sensors, even if they hit the resolution limit on their current one. Tradeoff's that wide angle lenses are easier to make in that format than for full-frame 35.

[ron chappel]

Its the camera Oly should have launched the 4/3 system with not the E-1. It has all the attributes that they rambled on about, small size, light weight..... To my mind it looks a bit like the Minolta vectis APS slr from way back.

I also agree

**later edit

Actually i think olympus were totally stupid in just about everything to do with their digital 4/3rds SLR line
They alienated any remaining fans by dropping any usabillity with past lenses,made absurd claims (near lies) about the new system and basically made something that is dearer and not as good as existing cameras.

[MrChad]

The greatest advantage this camera (E-300) has going for it is it has it's own completely custom set of lenses.

I think this would be a fine camera, but I can't believe we will be using crop factor sensors for long. 4/3 or APS or APS-C

I'd much rather dump $1200 into a lens then a crop factor camera at this point. Who knows in 3years or less we could all be using full 35mm frame size sensors and suddenly all those great designed for film EF lenses will be awesome vs. the EF-S, Di, and DG lenses for Digital that seam to be all over the market.

But I do give credit to Olympus for designing a ground up new system, that's what put Canon ahead of Nikon when EOS electronic autofocus lenses and cameras came out. Could this do the same for Olympus? Well, Canon has been one of the first to jump on the full digital market so maybe Oly is a bit late now.

I don't understand the point of your first comment as all OEM lense are custom made for the manufacturers lense mount. I would like to think my Canon lens are custom made for the Eos mount.

I believe crop factors are here to stay, if they weren't Canon and Nikon wouldn't have invested in designing lenses for this type of sensor. I don't think FF is the holy grail of the 35mm photographer, remember this is digital not film, it's a whole new world.

The reason my Canon went to the Eos mount is because there ould mount wasn't capable of being turned into an AF mount effectively. I was under the impression the old FD mount wasn't wide enough, whereas the Nikon mount was. Canon have only really pulled ahead of Nikon over the last 5 or so years and that's due to smarter products, better marketing and digital technology not a redesigned lense mount that happened 20 years ago.

My point was the standard EF lens on a crop factor body is wasting light near the edges you don't use the full lens. Olympus designed the lens just for the E-300/1 4/3 sensor.

Your right about the FD mount, but think of how tough a move that was. What if the EF lenses were discontiued and you had to buy all new Canon lenses for the digital bodies? Gutsy move, good thing that autofocus electronics move payed off. :P

Since the 1D doesn't have a crop factor (right now) it's only a matter of time before all digital SLR's don't have a crop factor. If anyone is going to do it, look for Canon to do it first. All those EF L-glass lenses beg for full frame. Canon has made a wopping 3 consumer EF-S lenses, once we have the first f2.8 L EF-S, I'll put more faith in the lasting effects of crop factors.

[Hellashot]

Looks like its magnification for lenses is 2x - how awful unless you only want to zoom. And its only USB 1.1

Hellashot