[NanoGordeno]

My old point and shoot camera has been acting kinda flakey lately, so I've been thinking of caving and just getting a DSLR. Admittedly, I'm quite new to the DSLR thing, so I've been reading up on different cameras and features to try and educate myself in what would be a good price to featureset purchase.

My older sister does a bit of amateur photography and she has an Olympus EVOLT E-300 that's a few years old now, but it seems to take pretty good pics and didn't cost an arm and leg. Well, the E-300 isn't in production anymore, but I was talking to her earlier and she said I can get the E-510 for about $600USD with a 14-42mm f3.5-5.6 lense, and the lenses for Olympus cameras seem to be interchangeable between models, so my sister and I could share if need be.

Do you guys think it's a good deal? Does anyone actually have an E-510 that could give me some personal thoughts on the cam? In about a month I'll be going to Japan for a couple weeks, and I want to take some nice pics while I'm there[yes].

[usacomm]

I have the E-510 & it an excellent DSLR thou it does have it pro & cons as with any DSLR on the market today.

Pro's

Excellent dust reduction system, i had my now for a few months changed lenses plenty of times and still not a spec of dust on the sensor, when i was with Canon i had dust problems were it wouldn't shake it of the sensor bug the hell out of me hence one reason why i switched.

In Body Image Stablizer which is good upto 3 stops so even with fairly slow lenses like the 14-42mm kit lens your still be able to get decent shots to 1/10th of a sec handheld in poor light.

Colour Reproduction, From the Olympus is second to none it really punchy & very accurate without ever being over saturated I love it.

3 types of spot metering, on the E-510 you has 3 types of spot metering one for Hightlights one for Shadows and one for standard, Canon on only just decided to add spot metering to the 450D, Both the 450D and Nikon D60 only have standard spot metering.

Now spot metering really comes in handy on certain shot but you have to learn how to use it properly, something i won't go into detail about as it take me forever lol.

Live View, when the E-510 was launched last year is was the most feature packed budget DSLR on the market and the only DSLR in the budget range to have Live View, Canon finally added it to the 450D but that DSLR cost a good few hundred dollars more than the E-510.

Now i don't use this often but it does come in handy when mounted on a tripod if you want to take both Landscape or macro shots.

Lenses, Olympus has some of the best glass on the market, even the standard 14-42mm kit lens is superb with very little CA & vignetting and is sharp corner to corner has a proper manual focus ring, the front end doesn't rotate meaning you could use polarizing filters without having to keep messing about changing it when it focused onto something, also has a circluar aperture blades meaning very decent bokeh also comes with a lens hood.

If you consider buying more lenses in the future & have the money then i recommend getting the Zukio 40-150mm really good sharp little telephoto lens for not much money & the Zukio 9-18mm ultra wide angle due out in Sept for around $600 thou it be cheaper at launch, also if you want a 600mm reach telephoto lens then the Zukio 70-300mm.[thumbup]
For macro then the Zukio 35mm Macro, good macro lens for not much money

Or if you really want to splash out then either the 14-54mm, 12-60mm SWD, 11-22mm wide angle, 50mm macro, 25mm pancake, 50-200mm SWD, and the ultra wide angle lens the 7-14mm the best wide angle lens on the market.

Cons

Ok now here the bad bits of the E-510.

Dynamic Range, due to the sensor of 4/3 camera being slightly smaller than APS-C cameras from Canon,Nikon,Pentax, Sony ect you can blow highlights or get clipping easier if you shoot Jpeg but if your careful you can usually avoid this 90% of the time by underexposing to -0.3 or -0.7 in really bright contrasty subjects to save both highlight and shadow detail.

Now shooting RAW as i do i don't run into this problem so it not a problem for me.

ISO Noise, another problem due to the 4/3 sensor is noise with ISO above 400 pictures become pretty noisey and slightly worst than pics taken with the ASP-C sensor due to the 4/3 sensor being smaller, also banding can kick in with high ISO of 1600.

Now all is not lost as the E-510 has it has option for noise reduction that you can set to diffrent settings it really helps in ISO 800-1600 thou it does tend to make pictures soft and lack detail if you put it on the high setting.

Now when i have to shoot at a high ISO i always set this option to low to medium as it doesn't kill the picture ive took and retains a good certain amount of detail, or anotherway to lessen the noise is to keep the filter to off and run it though a noise reduction software like Noise Ninja ect.

As for banding i never run into this problem on my E-510 but it does and can happen, if you google it it should give you some pictures to what i mean.

But to be honest i find myself never going above ISO 400 most of the time as i have a fast lens on mine ie constant F2.8 so keep NR to off and ISO 100-400 is just as good as any other DSLR on the market.

Viewfinder, now on the E-510 the viewfinder is small now were not talking small as simlair to a point & shoot but small for a DSLR the Canon one slightly bigger on both the 400 & 450D as so is the Nikon D40 D40X & D60 but to be honest i don't have a problem with it, but some people do and this being the reason some don't opt for the E-510 or any other 4/3 budget camera, the Olympus E-3 one is massive thou that cost over a $1000 or £900 in my money lol.

Only 3 focus points, now this isn't really a con depending what you plan to shoot now as i don't shoot sport so it not a problem for me as i only tend to use the middle focus point only and you find even people with 51 focus point ie Nikon D300 they only shoot using the center focus point to.

Were having more focus points come in handy is when shoot fast moving action thou to be honest i done a couple of panning shots with the E-510 and captured the shot i want no trouble, if you plan to shoot sport ect most of the time then you want to move upto either the Canon 40D Nikon D300 ect that have fast fps and plenty focus points.

Now the pro's of this camera outweigh the cons and for me this camera been nothing short of excellent i'll post a couple of example at the end of this post and now the price has come down loads since it was launched which makes it one of the best budget DSLR you can get today and has only just been suceeded with the E-520 that has a bigger 2.7" screen, better dynamic range and both contrast live view and face detection and 3.5fps shooting up from 3fps.

Hope this helps and there are plenty of 4/3 forums with DP being proberly the best one here the link to that forum.
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/forum.asp?forum=1022


Ok here a couple of pics and the camera with the FL-36 flash mounted & Sigma 18-50mm F2.8 EX DG macro lens.

Sorry about the crappy camera pic as that was shot with my mobile lol

[eocavrWM]

Ah, cool. Thanks for the feedback. I've been reading a few reviews on the cam, and after reading your post and seeing those shots you took, I think it's really growing on me. For the price it seems like a very well balanced camera.

Unless I run into some serious space issues, I plan to be shooting in RAW for the most part for maximum quality and for easy editting on my computer later on if need be. I really like that it can hold more than one memory card. I was already expecting things like ISO noise at high ISO since a vast majority of digital cameras are affected by it anyway. The pros definitely look like they outweigh the cons. I'll most likely be picking one of these up on Tuesday unless anyone else has any input on similarly priced DSLRs.