Seventeen E-30 Impressions... 1/17 ~ David Gaunt

It was a fantastic opportunity at the Safari Group Exhibition to have an early hands-on review of the new Olympus E-30 and the new Zuiko Digital 14-54 Mark ll lens. The E-30 promises much as a camera in its own right as well as offering pointers to new features that may be added to the E-3 replacement whenever that is released so I was doubly keen to have a look at the new E-30.

On first picking up the E-30 the E-3 pedigree was obvious in the design. The E-30 body looked very similar in style and size to that of the E-3 with two immediate differences: the weight was considerably less and there was a command dial on the top left for selecting the shooting mode. Both these differences are very welcome. The command dial allows selection of the standard exposure modes: shutter, aperture etc as well as a range of scene modes. Anybody familiar with other Olympus E-series cameras would quickly be at home with the E-30 camera as the button symbols and layout follow the usual Olympus style. The button labels that were traditionally green are now blue which aids visibility. On the downside the card-door, USB port and on-off button did not have the same solid construction as the E-3 and felt a little flimsy to handle.

The on-off button is part of the new four-way button and on turning on the E-30 for the first time the most noticeable difference was the new level gauge which is visible in the view finder and top panel. Some simple test shots showed that the level gauge was very sensitive and suggest it will be useful for getting the horizon and verticals straight in photographs. Even working diligently with the E-3 a number of my photos end up with the horizon slightly out so this feature promises to save much post-production editing.

After testing the new level gauge I had a good look around the E-30 viewfinder. The viewfinder is bright although it is not quite in the same league as the E-3’s. The E-30 has the same 11 Auto Focus point system as the E-3 and sports several other pro-features such as up to 1/8000 sec flash synchronisation and five-frame per second burst shooting rate. All these features position the E-30 as the next camera above the current E-520. Like the E-420 and E-520 the E-30 features live view auto-focus so the mirror can remain up whilst using Live View. This is a vast improvement over the E-3 that has to move the mirror up and down between focusing and Live View. The E-30 has an articulating Live View screen which is slightly larger than that on the E-3. The E-30 also has the excellent Olympus anti-dust mechanism and in-camera image stabilisation. As such the E-30 has pulled together many of the best features from the E-520 and E-3 cameras as well as adding some new features unique to the E-30.

The most significant new feature in the E-30 is the new 12 megapixel sensor. Is the increase from 10 megapixel to 12 megapixel import? Absolutely; this is a very welcome move forward. The additional megapixels are very welcome as they increase resolution and give you more scope for selective cropping whilst maintaining a high dpi when printing out the final photograph. The potential downside of increasing the number of megapixels is that since the sensor size is unchanged the actual individual pixel size must be decreased which brings with it the potential for increased noise. The E-30 review camera had pre-release camera firmware version 0.8 which means that Olympus had not finalized the firmware prior to the Safari Group Exhibition event. Taking this into consideration I took some sample photographs specifically to test the noise level on the new sensor. By using the same lens on an E-3 and E-30 meant it was possible to do a direct comparison on the resulting noise levels at various ISO levels. Even allowing for the E-30 having pre-production firmware the noise level at ISO 800 was significantly better than the E-3’s. At ISO 1600 noise started to become more visible but was still much better than that on the E-3. Overall Olympus have successfully increased the number of megapixels and at the same time reduced the image noise levels.

In summary the E-30 is a very welcome and useful addition to the Olympus range bringing together some of the best features from the E-520 and E-3 cameras and adding new, unique enhancements such as the level gauge and much improved sensor.