Olympus Cameras, Printer Aim High

SAN FRANCISCO -- Come October, you'll be able to choose between two new Olympus cameras that push digital photography technology in different directions. The Camedia E-10 RS takes still pictures at a speed more often associated with video, while the Camedia E-100 RS pushes the limits on resolution and has a lens Olympus claims will provide a sharper image. Olympus announced both cameras last week and is showing them, along with others, at the Seybold show here.

At an estimated street price of $1999, the Camedia E-10 is not your father's digital camera--unless your father is a professional photographer. This camera is clearly meant for people who take photographs for a living.

What do you get for that price? To start, you get a huge 4-megapixel resolution. That's enough to crop a picture to your heart's content and still get a great-looking enlargement.

It also means a very large picture, typically 12MB in the uncompressed TIFF format. Luckily, the E-10 comes with a 32MB SmartMedia card.

Mimics a Lens

In many ways, the E-10 handles itself like an old-fashioned 35mm single-lens-reflex camera. Its focus, zoom, and aperture settings are on the lens. You can attach a separate flash with either a hot shoe or PC flash attachment (which has nothing to do with PCs). And the optical viewfinder looks through the same 4x zoom lens that the CCD sensor does.

According to Olympus, that lens is one of the E-10's revolutionary features. Most lenses direct light toward the center of the picture-taking element; light therefore reaches the edges of the picture at an angle. This is not a problem for film, but it is for a CCD. Olympus promises that light going through the E-10's lens will hit every corner of the CCD at a direct 90-degree angle.

The E-10 will also have an adjustable LCD screen that you can view from three angles. In addition to the traditional straight-on view, you can tilt it upward 20 degrees, or upward 90 degrees for looking straight down at the camera.