Living with the Limitations of the Olympus E450

Now I am not an Olympus fanboy by any means: I rather do not like the PEN direction and pricing.

And so I chose a camera to get a little system together and was happy to learn its limitations.

This was really the way it was in 35mm days, with "knowing the limitations" being many of the same as I find, but more centred around the film you used at the time. Re-spooling was a risky
business ( I lost a couple of half rolls in winding back and one film end caps failed!) , so multiple rolls just to "get the shot" with a higher or lower ISO, or FP4 was the
reserve of pro's and pseud's.

Technically, Olympus E system score poorly (DXO amongst others- However, they test only older and the basic 14.42 lenses and seem overly Nikon biased for an "independent". ) while in reality the E system continues to deliver very good images. Perhaps this says more about the type who choose Oly, and the quality of Olympus glass, the JPEG engine and the pre-RAW engine which does deliver improvements in red-RAW bitmaps apparently. Maybe most Oly owners are a little longer in the tooth, like me, with a love affair going back to OM2 to 10
days.



So what are the limitations, or irritations of the E450?


1) Programme shift needed to speeden up P's shutter choice: the standard programme apertures and shutters are biased very oddly to slower, more shut down settings. You can twiddle the shutter speed up by using the wheel in "shift" Ps , but this is poor, I mean it should select for a reasonably fast shutter in the presumption it is a hand held shot.

Shutter priority is fine but it will just flash when the shot is over-under exposed, and not take the shot. mode relies on the very poor C-AF so is no get out of jail.

This has ruined many of my hosts in the poor winter light, whereas I found P with AE BKT to be so good in the strong summer and autumn light : see last point!

2) small ViewFinder; this gives me issues with perpendicular / horizon sighting and overall usability. However I prefer it over not having one! I did not see the big issue with the EVF on say the S1800. I will test a GH2 soon.

3) blown highlights : known on the 43 system; but in fact other DSLR do this. For that matter
fujichrome 200, my winter transparency favourite had often blown highlights or featureless skies too. Highlights as big blocky white areas are ugly, but using AE BKT can help get the best shot, or best combinaiton of layers if you are on a tripod and using PS / GIMP later.

4) FPS with Raw in combination with JPEG becomes quite slow, can be down at 1 ps.

5) No "in body image stabilisation" , purely jealousy, but even some tripod shots have been
blurry. The IBIS makes up for highlights and poor high ISO on the 520/620 cameras...which brings me to my next point......

6) poor mid to high ISO : this relates to being able to push the camera a little to get faster
shots or avoid using flash. Relative to newer cameras, like the D3100 and the 450D, this is a
decided weakness. If I had a 520 though, the IS makes up for it. Also, shooting in BW helps, because most of the noise is red specle, and this seems to be practically eliminated in BW for ISO800 and even 1600 "at first glance" ie normal viewing, not navel-gazing.

7) Mirror lock up is tempory, it should cover several shots with a choice. There is the
"antishock" ( lock up in Olympus' speak) over multiple exposures, but it flips down wasting time
inbetween shots.

8) focus can be slow, and C-AF is poor. Olympus are not known for their sports images these days, because both Nikon and Canon have superior focus systems which cope with fast moving objects across the frame.

9) NAGGING WORRY THAT THE S-AF IS OUT OF SYNC'. This is most likely because I can no longer enjoy 320th of a second in the weak mid winter light. I did test it with a tripod on a semi distant object, but the atmospherics weren't good enough actually. I always find a shot I am happy with, but so many are not keepers in the winter. A 12-60 or an f2 prime may well help my worries, and in the first place this may be cheaper than finding a service agent in another country.

I wander around test images on Flickr and DPreview ( which is mostly a tedious, untalented source or technical appreciation shots around the house, office, garden or "block") and I am suprised that some camera EXIF selections come up with a lot of rubbish, while others like say the Fuji S1800 super zoom, have a whole pile of really good images. If I'd had the budget I would have either got a PEN a GH2,. Even between olympus E cameras: the 450 is good, the 52o really very good while the 620 and E3 are suprisinly poorer composition and overall quality.

Understanding your camera's limits helps inform your overall skill and handling of cameras in different situations. Furthermore, it is invaluable when you choose accessories and expand lens systems or like me, come to buy a second, back up compact camera or move system.

Later when I do have a better camera, I will still understand the technical challenges of some subjects and scenes and take a little more thought into getting some good frames. Now I am more comfortable with the limitations of the E450 I can advance my concentration and ability in the true core of photographic art, composition.

Anyone for an E530? E700 ...do I hear any higher bids?

Following on from my last ranting blog, which is based on a lot of social media buzz about how sthooooopid oly are in ditching the hobby DSLR range, I wonder what features we would all like to see in a 2012-13 upgrade possibility as a DSLR from Olympus? An E530 or E700 possibly for us and PEN owners to upgrade to?

Here is my wish-list for the "E700"

1) FT. Stick to FT; even the kit lenses out perform micro.

Give the E5 or later top end some feeder customers, and give the E3 and E5 owners a back up body!

2) At least 14 mpx for a 2012-13 launch. Ignoring the "space race" arguements , more mpx has practical advantages: for example with an electronic shutter, using a crop ara of the sensor for much higher FPS while still producing usable images is good for sports, scientific applications or just plain enjoyment. While on needing more mpx to allow for cropping "in-camera", digital zoom for that matter, with built in image enhancement from the crop area rendering to an 8 or 10 mpx output.

I crop about two thirds of my "keeper" shots in "post" processing, and there are some gems to be had from cropping. The GH2 has an innovative use of the larger sensor to deliver better one shot panormas for examplke. Having just a bit more mpx to work from is like having two f stops and 40mm extra FT on the front end.

To be serious in 2013,Olympus will need 14 megapixels as a bare minimum; they can't keep on trying to educate the market that 12 is plenty. The market will leave the lecture hall.

3) A single replacement for all the current "E" hundreds. This would be a senisble marketing strategy: this would mean that you capture 400-600 and E30 upgraders already in the system as well as being able to focus all your NPI yen into a camera which can perform at the price point of the D90/450D and the likes today. Oly' could base some variants, suggest titl screen and HDV, on the same body and core production line tooling, rather than having three lines.

4) Great ergonomics: improving grip from even the reknown 520. Great hard buttons and user interface: and more on that below:

5) Compact size: smaller than the 600. This is a stregnth, keep it going, stay on FT's script.

6) A big view finder: the optics or EVF (god help us) prism-hood area does not need take up a huge increase in volume like we see on the otherwise over grown E3 and E5.

7) Communications: an "i Olympus": FaceBook ready, flickr auto sync....okay I am not generation "i" but I crave this: put up a VGA sized image with high contrast and sharpness on the internet in no time. This means WiFi and even a 3G/ LTE capability. Then maybe some more generation "i"s will buy in.

8) user definability and programmability. In respect of things like toggle buttons which can be user defined, and other things like combinations of more than two image storage types. Also complete user definable modes which can be selected very quickly: for example, user defined output for web ( as in 7) with a high contrast, highly sharpened VGA image output. Sports, with a default range of 30-50m, IS on, high ISO and highest available shutter speed and FPS. BW mode, tripod mode and so on and so on.

I have taken some torturous routes to customise the 450, see previous blogs, for things like fill in flash one touch which are a pain! Also being able to set output to a prefered image treatment: sharp, high contrast, colour balanced etc, even curve work which can be optimised in post and then back programmed into the camera as an option or like a third JPEG output.

9) Improved AF; focal range locking ; much better C-AF and the option for traditional ground glass-split prism manual focusing as an upgrade/ version of the camera: why not?. There is just too much good OM glass and other usable stuff from the SLR boom of the 1980s lying around! Focal range lock would be a useful short cut to getting more performance out of the current rather simple AF system, and would help live view immensely.

10 ) Touch Screen - Button User Interface picking up on 8 and 9 and 7, 6, 4........a really good user interface, in both hard buttons and a touch screen. . Simple things like pinch zooming in LiveView and Playback, double click-touch to select focus target, two wheels, a "super toggle" button for the right thumb to get onto easily. A front mounted focus range lock toggle button. Focus hard lock with a simple means to do this for fingers off waiting for the subjec to come into shot....As in 8, the abiloty to communicate directly, and programme the camera from a laptop while retaining other settings or defaults as a fall back.

Shape and Package

All this in a sub 1000USD body....throw in a new kit lens with f2.8 performance.....and do that 100 f2.0.... I don't need a flip screen or video...make those later upgrades or a G2/GH2 set up, the same camera basically, two different OSs so to speak.

The WIfi or maybe just the 3G could be put in the extra battery and features "drive" which would plug into the base. This could also have an SSD drive with a SATA cable.....more SD ports....okay it would be cash to splash, but a good upgrade. Even the thin iPod touch and most slim smart phones have WiFi so why not us?

Another market such a camera would address, apart from E400-600 upgraders and new buyers, would be E5 owners (E6 by then?) looking for a back up body, or actually considering the camera as a feature-pack and mpx upgrade. Of course, PEN users would see this as an upgrade and need to start buying new glass, while keeping their PENs as back up/travel camera.

The deployment of an EVF would be difficult for many, and given it needs to stay full FT, a bit of an irrelevancy without some ehanced benefits in this feature anyway.

Olympus: ask a thousand users to consider various options, mine are just the obvious ones above, and then come back to them with a MOSCOW purchasing regime: what MUST they have, should and would. Coupled to a high intent to upgrade from Ex00s and other marques, this would be using ears to the market.