Back in January 2001, I wrote this piece on the E10, which has been upgraded to the 5 megapixel E20, this 'review' has been updated and my comments are valid for both models. 

The Olympus E10 is a digital camera that can replace a 35mm film camera for most of my photography and has done for the last 18 months. Its not perfect but it is very good and despite some minor design quirks this camera has set a new standard in digital photography.

Any camera is as good as its weakest component and Olympus must be congratulated upon their effort to balance some very good components to produce a well integrated picture making tool.

This is a well designed automatic camera with a considerable options for manual adjustment and offers the photographer control in terms that someone well experienced with film will be very comfortable. This is not a 35mm camera with a digital implant but a new design built around its image sensor and computer. The lens and camera body have been designed to maximise the performance of the electronics to produce a camera that is less of hesitant step in the evolution of the digital camera than any of its predecessors. The integration of the lens as the core of the camera does mean that the lens is not interchangeable but the advantage is that the compromise of lens mount, component interface and the probability of dirt entering the 'film chamber' are eliminated. The designers have wisely finished the camera in black and used the 'ideal format' to maximise the performance of the lens.

Metering and autofocus work very well but manual focus is uncertain with its power assisted 'near' and 'far' focusing ring. A focus scale can been brought up on the rear display but the whole manual focus operation is unsatisfactory.

The remote control is a left over from previous efforts and needs a revision. The controller is a tiny toy designed for people that want to take snapshots of themselves. Logically you should be able to mount the camera on a tripod, turn on the LCD screen to view the image without touching the camera, and the use the remote to release the shutter while standing behind the camera. But this is not possible - the infra red sensor is mounted on the front of the camera instead of on top and is therefore blind to a command from behind the camera. This can be 'fixed' by taping a small piece of foil to bounce the signal to the sensor. But for some reason known only to Olympus the LCD screen is shut done when the remote control is made operational, making a prime use of this screen unavailable. While there is clearly much room for improvement with manual focus and wireless remote control other aspects are state of the art as the camera meets its outstanding specification with its fast high performance zoom lens and 4 mega pixel image sensor and a through the lens viewfinder. The reflex viewfinder is a flashback to the Canon Pelix using a fixed beam splitter which cuts out the delay and vibration of the quick-return mirror enabling very slow shutter speeds without camera shake( 1/20th honest!). The viewfinder is not as good as manual focus 35mm SLR but is much better than any other Digital camera in its price range. This together with a very fast zoom delivers sharp low light pictures with a surprising depth of field at full aperture. The results are considerably better than using a 400 ISO 35mm colour negative film and so it wins on convenience, quality, and shooting costs within the 35 -140 mm zoom range . The actual focal length is 9 - 36mm with a relative maximum aperture of F2 - F2.2 . The design of the camera makes shooting 'portrait' format (upright) pictures awkward and 90% of my shots become 'landscape', ( maybe I need to think upright! ). The advantage of not having a reflex mirror banging up and down is partly outweighed by the fact that light can enter the camera through the viewfinder eyepiece and that the design relies on your eye being close to the camera to block the light! the result is a degradation of colour and contrast which can render the image unusable. The camera does have a simple lever operated viewfinder shutter which you must remember to close when you are using the rear screen to frame pictures. This problem occurs whenever I work with a tripod or shoot from a difficult angle. An eyepiece shutter that closes automatically when the electronic screen is switched on would be ideal or at least an LED warning that the viewfinder is open. My final gripe is the barrel distortion at the wide end of the Zoom which is the only fault of an otherwise excellent lens. Small image sensors force the designers of electronic cameras to use very short focal lengths to achieve what are only moderate wide angles although the plus side is a great depth of field. Digital cameras are not a good choice for wide-angle work.

My expensive 35mm wide-angle and telephoto lenses are obviously not yet redundant but as my skills with 'Photoshop' advance my old 35 mm cameras begin to gather dust. However using the excellent value Epsom 2450 flat bed scanner to scan medium format film has forced me to rethink and I now make much more use of 40 year old 'classic' cameras than I have in the last 10 years. The logic is simple, a 645 or 16 on 120 negative generates a 55 megabyte image when scanned at 2400 d.p.i. while a four megapixel digital camera delivers only 10.5 megabyte at full resolution. An A4 magazine page at 300 dpi demands a 24 megabyte file which is twice the output of most digital SLR's but only half that of an old rollfilm camera.

 Next a few snaps with the E10, at first I shot in SQH mode as low compression JPEG's all pictures are hand held in available light, accept the vintage Contax, which was on a tripod at about 1/2 second at f7. Screen images have been reduced to a fraction of their original size in Photoshop a small section of the original is show full resolution. The camera's images processing capability is outstanding although sometimes you have to wait between shots. However I started by using the SQH low compression JPEG setting which requires about 2.5 meg of memory to deliver a 10.4 meg file, recently I have been shooting some comparison shots with the HQ setting which delivers the almost the same image with only .8 of a megabyte. Getting 3 times as many pictures on a memory card with a minimal loss of quality seems to good to be true, and the downside is problems with electronic 'noise' and the dreaded JPEG artifacts . The Camera also offers a choice of three different contrast and sharpness setting and the lowest of these produces the best files for Photoshop particularly when you have shoot in the harsh winter sunlight.

Contax 2a , Tungsten light , SHQ mode , ' normal' settings

Marsden Quarry, Whitley Bay, SQH mode ( low compression JPEG ) 'normal' contrast

Waltzer, Spanish City, Whitley Bay . SHQ mode ' normal' sharpness and contrast.

E10, HQ ( High compression JPEG ) Low contrast & Low Sharpness Setting.

Post Photoshop - Auto Levels and Unsharp Mask.

The U.K. package is a bit mean containing only the camera, connecting leads , basic software , the almost useless Remote Control , 16 meg of Smart Media, lens hood and a C.D. manual that would only run on a Mac.

U.K. prices for essential Accessories - Power Supply, Close Up lens, and Cable Release are too high and don't generate the goodwill that this camera deserves.

The camera has been back to Olympus for service under warranty because of a few 'stuck' pixels, Olympus kindly upgraded the camera by installing the latest Pixel mapping technology which refreshes the image sensor.

Mike Tilley 15/01/2001, 15/09/2002.

The full specification can be found by clicking on to the

Olympus web site http://www.olympus-europa.com/