Olympus E10 SLR 2240X1680 4MP 32MB USB 4X Zoom

Olympus Camedia E-10

E10 SLR 2240X1680 4MP 32MB USB 4X Zoom Review, by Tracey Capen, PCWorld.com March 23, 2001

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• Reviewed by: seva

  Strengths: Aluminium body. Ergonimic design. Excellent F2 4X lense. Manual modes. Very decent battery life.

  Weaknesses: Could be a little faster with CF/SM (esp. reading speed; writing is OK for me).

  Overall: Serious amateur's dream. I was considering a few other cameras along with it; Sony DSC-F707 and Minolta Dimage 7 both are somewhat less expensive, have decent optics and higher resolution - but those are not the only important things about cameras. When I first took Olympus in my hands, I was amazed how ergonomic it is. Not a cheap plastic box with a few hundred worth of electronics inside (which is obsolete in a few years anyway). It is true SLR, like most of professional cameras are, rather than a low-resolution EVF. Long battery life (I use mere 1600 mAh NiMH) surprised me. It is a little slow when reading from a storage card - but then, I haven't tried the fastests ones on the market (becase current performance is good enough for me so not to force into buying one). Writing speed is acceptable; the only problem is in "rapid fire" mode. Only wish it was Olympus E20 at the same price.

• Reviewed by: azgeorgeb

  Strengths: SLR, both smart media and compact flash, flash is strong

  Weaknesses: close up capabilities

  Overall: Great camera for the $, pictures are great, software is good. Have owned 3 other digital cameras this was the best so far. I use an extra flash FL-40 and it make all the differance in the world for a good inside picture.

• Reviewed by: danag42

  Strengths: This camera handles like a 35mm SLR, the controls are accessed by buttons rather than menus. It has a raisor-sharp lens, and the 4 megapixel resolution allows for excellent 11x14 enlargments.

  Weaknesses: The time to write to the card is too long, and there is no focusing grid in the finder (the original OM-1 had the same problem). This has been addresed in the E-20.

  Overall: For a seasoned photographer who is used to using 35mm equipement, the E-10 offers the most painless tranlition to digital. The lack of interchangable lenses may scare off some people, but the prime lens has a very useful 35-140mm (equivalent) range and there are truly professional grade expansion lenses. I have taken excellent photos with the 200mm (equivalent) lens and the 28mm and 420mm(!) lenses. Even though the old saw is to require 300dpi in the original image file for enlargements, some professional photographers are using the E-10 (and now the E-20) to shoot weddings. In Photoshop or other image processing software, the camera will produce enlargements, that the customer percieves to be as sharp as film enlargments, at least to 11x14, and based on cropped images I would say to 13x19 and beyond. This camera writes to the card too slowly to be used for sports photography, after 3 full resolution shots it takes a while for the buffer to clear. However sports photographers use 2 megapexel cameras for newspaper quality reproduction of sports events. The camera serves well for on-site portraiture or location shots, nature, or portraits. The only caution is that the files at full resolution are HUGE (about 11and a half MB) so you will need to get at least one very large capacity storage card, I have a 512MB and 384 MB cards. This camera is suited for a small-town professional or a hobbyist who wants to capture images directly to digital.