[matthew]

It's amazing what changes in a few years. The camera that I've been using for the past two years wasn't a new design when I got it, and was already showing its age compared to the competition. Last week, a slightly stunned Me walked out of a Toronto camera store with a brand-new Olympus E-510, one of the first in Canada. I had been planning on waiting for the next top-end Olympus camera, but it's not expected to be released until after I'm safely back from my trip around the world. And the modern features of the new midrange body are just too good to pass up.

It's been a long time since I've been cutting-edge...

It's a nice machine, being slightly narrower than my E-1, but a lot shorter. It's too new for the review sites to have opinions, but I'm guessing that it'll be compared to the Nikon D80 and Canon 30D. It has a non-weatherproof plastic construction (it's worst feature, for me), but it has plenty of external controls (18+1 dial, compared to my E-1's 21+2) and even comes with a pop-up flash. (Nifty.) It has a 10mp sensor, a moving-sensor image stabilizer, and a useable iso1600. Oh yeah -- and Live View.



The IS system really does work. The photo of my neighbouring construction site was taken during a storm a few days ago, and shows the steel studs that had been torn loose by the high winds. It's taken at 1/30s and a 200mm effective focal length. This was using my 5-pound lens that I was able to carefully hand-hold at 1/125 when I was photographing a concert, so it's a good two-stop advantage. Given that I've gone from bracing against a wall at 1/125 to bracing against the wind at 1/30s, I have no complaints.



I have to apologize for a strikingly unimpressive pair of photos, but I was able to take this at a local street fair today. The camera was over my head, and I framed this shot on the LCD. Wedding Shooter, given how much better the Canon you have on order is supposed to be, you are going to love this.



Just for fun, I tried some high-iso photography. I've never been afraid of noise, and I'll even emphasize it in many of my photos. My recent experience with my E-1 at iso1600, when I needed to be able to sell the resulting prints, finally convinced me to buy some noise-reduction software. The results were usable, but not great. Here's a 100% crop from a jpeg with my E-510 at iso1600 with no PP noise reduction at all. (And it is a colour photo.)



So, I have a 10-megapixel image-stabalized camera that can work at iso1600. Naturally, I spend most of my time in broad daylight. Here are a few more images from the past week.







...now if they'd just make a portrait grip for it...

[Wedding Shooter]

That's great news Matt - I can feel your creative juices getting a whole new kick. I am looking forward to live view as well - but more for macro work.

Love that last shot.

[matthew]

Thanks, WS, it has been an adventure. This is exactly the camera I needed the week before I bought it. :/

I haven't tried macro with the LCD finder yet, but it's supposed to be easier -- as long as nothing's moving. The Oly goes through some complicated acrobatics with the mirror that gives it about 0.5-1s shutter lag. Manual focus should be much easier, though, so I'm going to need to give it a try.

[shuttertalk]

Great stuff Matthew... looks like a great catch!

The live preview is a very interesting feature - every time I hand my SLR to someone, they inevitably try to take a picture by holding the camera in front of them, while looking at the LCD screen.

[Toad]

Congrats M... always a thrill to get new hardware. The blue beach is stunning graphically - but you probably knew that I would like the high ISO "detail" shot (#4) the best becausw I just like that kind of stuff...

[Irma]

Congratulations Matt on your new camera.
Great results in all your pictures. I love the detail in the seagull and the bokeh in the flower is lovely!! wonderful colors too.

[matthew]

Irma, both the flower and seagull were taken with the same lens, my 35-100f/2. It's the one that I'd use if I went with you to take photographs.

Toad, I haven't had a chance to get out at night with my ultra-wide, but I think the high-iso and IS is going to get me a lot more keepers, so there'll be a lot more high-iso detail shots for you to admire. It's too bad the days are so long now. There is a low-iso detail shot in this message, though.

Jules, Back when I was switching between my F828 and E-1, I'd do the worst of both worlds -- I'd hold the LCD up to my eye! It doesn't work. I've already tried looking through the viewfinder when I had live-view active, so this is going to take some getting used to.

I finally broke out the tabletop tripod and my favourite macro subject, and gave the live view system a try. I've never used a 35mm film SLR for manual focus (in the past 20 years, anyway) so I can't compare against their viewfinders, but it was a massive improvement over either my E-1 or the E-510's OVF. The 510 lets me select a small area on the LCD and magnify it by 10x, which makes manual focus flexible and powerful. Not fast, but powerful. I tried this using both my f3.5 and f2 lenses, and the difference in DOF when focusing at macro distances is noticeable.

The penny has been cropped for height, but the width is full-frame:



And here's the 100% detail crop I promised Toad, without any sharpening:



I used a strip of aluminum foil around half of the penny to create the uniform specular highlights. I printed this image as-is, and really didn't like it. Ah, well, live and learn.

Here's an image that I do like, from one of my evening walks:



With my recent move, I now live in the most architecturally interesting part of the city. Would you believe that the photo above was taken about three hundred meters from the building below?



It's going to be a very photogenic summer.

[Irma]

I love your neighbourhood Matt!
Gorgeous pictures both...

[Wedding Shooter]

Live view and macro - a match made in heaven