With a new 12-megapixel four-thirds sensor, the E30 from Olympus currently offers the highest resolution of any four-thirds Digital SLR, even eclipsing its professional cousin, the 10 megapixel E3.
However, Olympus says the E30 aims to help enhance photo enthusiast’s creativity without the need for complete mastery of the technical details of photography.
“The E-30 is the camera for people who are not content to simply capture and document a scene, but rather enjoy enhancing or customizing an image to make it their own,” said John Knaur, senior marketing manager, Digital SLR, Olympus Imaging America Inc.
“The camera’s Art Filters and Multiple Exposure capabilities enable incredible individual artistic control over an image within the camera, in many cases eliminating the need for time spent applying image effects in the computer. Additionally, it delivers the same proven image quality of our E-System DSLR line.”
In-Camera Image Manipulation
These include scene modes for automatic exposure to a range of special effects photographers can apply to their images in the camera rather than using a computer.
- Pop Art: Enhances colors, making them more saturated and vivid, creating high-impact pictures that express the joyful, lighthearted feeling of the Pop Art style of the 1960s.
- Soft Focus: Creates an ethereal, otherworldly atmosphere that renders subjects in a heavenly light without obscuring details.
- Pale & Light Color: Encloses the foreground of an image in flat gentle light and pastel colors reminiscent of a flashback scene in a movie.
- Light Tone: Renders shade and highlight areas softly to lend an elegant air to the subject.
- Grainy Film: Evokes the feeling of documentary footage shot in monochrome with grainy, high-contrast film.
- Pin Hole: Reduces the peripheral brightness of an image, simulating shooting through a pinhole, connecting the viewer intimately with the subject at the center of the picture.
In the E30 Olympus, includes more features for image editing functions usually performed on the computer. Photographers can perform what is essentially the film technique of double exposure, to merge two or more images. The E30 includes facilities for cropping images for a range of aspect ratios; this is handy to make the image suit a particular print paper size.
Live View Autofocus
The Olympus E30 boasts a real technical advance in an autofocus system for its Live View function. While Live View initially appeals to Point & Shoot users, unused to using the optical viewfinder, the long-term usage of this feature by serious photographers is on the tripod.
The E30 scores particularly well in this regard as it is one of the few DSLRs with a swiveling LCD screen, allowing photographers to position a tripod mounted camera in the best position for image composition, yet still carefully consider the composition without having to maintain difficult gymnastic contortions just to see through the viewfinder. Part of this is due to Olympus fitting the E30 with an autofocus system just for the Live View operation. The mirror swinging out of the way during Live View operations blocks the normal focusing system.
Digital Spirit Level
The E-30 is equipped with an internal Digital Level Sensor that detects the camera’s pitch and roll and indicates it in the optical viewfinder, on the control panel and during Live View operation. This is an important feature as one common criticism of photos is the horizon is not straight. This is particularly obvious for seascapes where any slope is obviously wrong, and even small errors are unsettling to viewers. Spirit levels are an essential part of a quality tripod head, and they are just as necessary when hand holding the camera to take photos, made more likely because the Olympus E30 has in-body image stabilization, reducing the need for a tripod.
Image Stabilization
The Olympus E30 is one of a new generation of digital SLRs with a moveable image sensor, providing image stabilization for every four-thirds lens ever made; so there is no need for special lenses. Another benefit of the moving sensor is that it also forms part of the E30’s dust reduction system by shaking dust off the sensor.
Availability
The Olympus E-30 DSLR will be available in January 2009 with an estimated U.S. street price of $1,299.
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