Olympus E-3 (Body Only) Digital Camera

Olympus has done it!

By Don  Apr 5, 2009 | 3 out of 3 found this Olympus E-3 (Body Only) review helpful

Pros: Dust, Moisture proof, 4/3 tech, fast focus, high FPS rate, tilt Screen, high frequency CCD cleaner, reliable sturdy construction

Cons: Grainny at high ISO's

This Camera has taken DSLR tech into the quality of Film photography.While Nikon and Canon are in the Pixel count wars, Olympus has taken the route of Camera quality and technology where it should be going.Unless you're going for extreme enlargem...ents, there's no need for more than 8 Mega Pixel CCD's for pure Film like quality so at 10.1 Mega Pixels, the E-3 covers that well.Another area that Co's like Nikon and Canon are concentrating are CCD size.They go for true 35mm which shows they're still trying to make a digital Camera to be like a Film Camera, instead of concentrating on digital format as just that, digital.Olympus on the other hand has taken the stance that their digital SLR's are just that, digital.One of the greatest leaps they've taken is in the 4:3 standard.In the days of Film Cameras one of the drawbacks has been in Lens design.Even with the highest priced quality Lenses you still get distortion at the edges of the Lens and in the days of Film Photography it was a concern that forced many professional Photographers to crop their Photos to get rid of this distortion.While the others are trying to make their digital Cameras emulate at 35mm Film Camera, Olympus has deiced to concentrate on using digital technology to improve on SLR Photography.What the 4:3 standard does is effectively eliminate Lens distortion thus allowing the Photographer to use 100% of the shot, instead of cropping.Another area Olympus shines is focus speed and FPS.The E-3 is the fastest auto focusing Camera I've ever used and the 5 FPS isn't a myth, this Camera does it flawlessly.Many say one of the bad things about the E-3 is that at higher ISO's the Image is very grainy with too much noise.All I can say is that in this area the E-3 may fall shorter than Nikon or Canon but I think it has more to do with filtering than the Camera itself.If you're wanting a Camera to use exclusively in very low light conditions then the E-3 might not be the Camera for you.I've found that Image quality is excellent up to 800iso but to compare to Film, even at 3200iso the Grain is comparable to 1000asa Film and with the Olympus Master 2 program you can drastically reduce the grain and noise levels giving very good results.All in all, after looking at Nikon and Canon, I went with the Olympus E-3 for more reasons than can be explained here. Read more Less