Olympus E-30 Digital Camera Review

The Olympus E-30 is a new, mid-range SLR that costs $1299 without lens, and shoots 12-megapixel images. Olympus has added a number of features usually seen in point-and-shoot cameras, most notably a bevy of scene modes, and their new Art Filters, which add elaborate special effects to your photos as you shoot them.

The camera’s overall build quality is impressive.  It’s 5.5 inches wide by 2.95 inches deep and 4.23 inches high (141.5mm x 75mm x 105.5mm) and weighs 23.1 oz (655g) without the lens. It’s a very comfortable weight, and it feels solid in your hands. Couple this with the robust control system, and it’s a camera that feels like it’ll take a fair amount of abuse.

The standout feature of the E-30’s hardware is the LCD. While the resolution is only 230,000 dots, the screen is hinged, so that it can be swivelled out from the back of the camera and tilted, which makes it fantastic for any situation where you can’t easily get your eye up to the viewfinder; when shooting on a tripod, for example, or if you’re holding the camera above your head to get a good angle. The E-30 also has one of the better Live View modes that we’ve seen. Live View lets you line up a shot using the rear LCD, instead of relying exclusively on the optical  viewfinder. On most SLRs, Live View is slow to focus, but the Olympus performs better than others we have seen. The articulated LCD coupled with the camera’s good Live View performance, makes the E-30 quite adaptable.

We were also impressed by the wide variety of controls that the camera offers. Its exposure compensation spread of ±5 stops, much wider than the usual ±2 or ±3 we see with most cameras, was especially appreciated, , and allows for greater control of exposure in difficult lighting situations. We were also impressed by the shutter speed range of 1/8000 to 60 seconds (or up to 30 minutes in bulb mode). The camera has extensive white balance controls, with white balance presets for three types of fluorescent lights, and the ability to shift the presets on either the amber-blue or green-magenta axes, either individually or as a group, allowing precise fine-tuning for finicky photographers. Additionally, if you’re unsure of which white balance preset to use, white balance bracketing lets you automatically take a series of shots using a number of different settings. In one of the better uses of Live View we’ve seen, the camera lets you preview your shot by displaying the effects of four possible white balance (or exposure compensation) settings on screen at once, allowing you to choose the best setting for your situation.

Performance (read in-depth lab performance coverage at DigitalCameraInfo.com)
While we were generally impressed with the physical quality of the camera and its variety of options, we encountered problems when we took it into the lab for image quality testing. While there were a couple of bright spots, overall the E-30 results were below average, with noise and dynamic range scores that were particularly poor.

On the plus side, the E-30 has excellent image stabilization, some of the best we’ve seen. Even when using high shutter speeds, the image stabilization helped prevent even the slightest amount of blurring from sneaking in, and at exposures of around 1/60th of a second, the improvement was impressive. The other area we were very pleased with was the overall image sharpness. Part of this was due to the 14-54mm f/2.8-3.5 II lens ($500) we used for testing, which was excellent, but the sensor did an admirable job of capturing detail.

However, the down sides are severe enough to prevent us from recommending the camera. In color accuracy, long exposure and white balance the E-30 performed noticeably below average. In noise and dynamic range, it did very badly indeed. The noise (with noise reduction turned off) is one of the highest we’ve seen on an SLR and at ISOs 1600 and 3200, it so high as to render images almost unusable at full size. While noise reduction does an admirable job of lowering this, it does so at a significant loss of image detail. The dynamic range, a measure of how well the camera can capture a wide range of lights and shadows in a single image, was also very low, due in part to the high noise levels. These two factors are both substantial negatives, especially considering the level of performance you would expect from a camera of this price.

Comparison (read in-depth comparisons at DigitalCameraInfo.com)
The Olympus E-30 sits at approximately the same price point and feature set as the Nikon D90 and the Canon 50D, and we also compared it to the entry-level Canon Rebel XS and Pentax K2000.

The trends we saw were almost universal across all the comparison cameras, regardless of price. All, bar the Pentax, outperformed the Olympus for color accuracy, and they all did significantly better in noise, dynamic range and long exposure. However, the E-30 beat the others in sharpness, and also performed well in image stabilization.

For the price of the E-30, you can get a Nikon D90, which performed much better overall and wasn’t plagued with noise problems. The D90 is also one of the few SLRs that includes the ability to shoot video, a significant benefit to many users. The Canon 50D only costs a little more, and likewise delivered superior image quality, particularly when it comes to noise issues. While the E-30 delivers a lot of features to make the camera more approachable for new users to the world of SLRs, the fact that you can get either the Rebel XS or Pentax K2000 for less than half the price of the E-30, both of which performed very well, makes them more tempting for new users.

For a more in-depth review, visit the Olympus E-30 Review at our partner DigitalCameraInfo.com