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Thoughts on the Olympus E-5!

In a previous article, I expressed my scepticism about the new Olympus DSLR flagship; the E-5. My main concerns is that the dynamic range and noise levels of the sensor (which is an "old" 12.3Mpix PEN sensor) is not competative against cameras from competative brands (as Canon, Nikon etc). I've now read some "user previews" and such, and I've turned to be more positive. It seems that the new image processing unit (TruePic V+) actually is able to supress noise more efficently. The changes in the AA-filter has also done its parts in making the E-5 capable of taking sharper images than any other FourThirds camera to date.

... and for your pleasure; I got some samples. These are not taken by me, but they are all over teh intertubes, so I hope I'm not pissing anyone of by posting them here as well;

First off; The ISO-6400 samples. The E-3 is only capable of ISO-3200, and even this looks like .... ... crap. You might get a few decent results, but they are long in between. These pictures taken by the E-5 is taken in a "staged environment", and I don't know how the picture has been processed. Anyway; it looks promising;

ISO-6400 full frame (resized)
ISO-6400 100% crop
ISO-3200 full frame (resized)
ISO-3200 100% crop

I really think it looks ok. ... at least not "too bad". However, the noise at high ISO is not why I buy a camera, but having it under control is ot a bad thing. The dynamic range at low ISO is more important, and we have to wait for some proper tests to reveal this.
There are a few other features on the E-5 that's new over the E-3, but I'm still not "impressed". Maybe we'll see improvements on the videomodes with future firmware releases (or hacks).

Will I buy It?

Not at the indicated price. .., and still; I'm not seeing it as a "big" improvement over my E-3, so I'll wait until the shutter of the E-3 gets tired. ..., or until I get a fat bonus. :-)

Added by myself, 19.09.2010 12:05

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