Reading mode: Light Dark

Olympus E-300 or Pentax *ist DS

Go to last post
E1derful,

If you have not used some of older Pentax lenses I suggest you have no idea what you are talking about.

I have shot everything from concerts to macro and these older manual lenses are nother short of fantastic.

I don't car how much money Oly spent on their new lens digi design ( I'm sure it's good) but don't even think about knocking the Pentax lens design of yesterday.

wll
 
Sergey Todorov said:
BTW - would I be accurate in my assumption that the E-300 and E-1
noise levels are comparable? Or perhaps the E-1 has lower noise
levels?
Click to expand...
I do belive they are similar. The Kodak sensor in the E-1/E-300 has a native ISO up to 800, ISO 400 is ok, the noise doesn't show much on even a A3 printing. 800 is easily treatable with software. ISO 1600-3200 is just a boosted version of ISO 800.

--
http://www.4-3system.com/
http://jonr.light.is/
 
Sergey Todorov said:
Noise question. Why is the DS noise level considered to be lower
than that on the Olympus E-300, when I'm looking at the images in
the DPReviews the queen (or whoever that is) head image from the DS
appears to be noticeably noisier than that of the E-300 at the same
ISO levels. I made a composite comparison screenshot with quality
set at Maximum. You can see it here:



Is it just me or is the background behind the queen's head noisier?
And the detail in the crown is just not there, is this due to the
poor quality of the JPEGs?
Click to expand...
BTW I'd like to re-ask this one.. I would like to still consider the DS but this question of mine gets systhematically avoided... Can someone please elaborate on the subject? If there is some logical explanation here, of course :) Thanks.
 
Sergey Todorov said:
Sergey Todorov said:
Noise question. Why is the DS noise level considered to be lower
than that on the Olympus E-300, when I'm looking at the images in
the DPReviews the queen (or whoever that is) head image from the DS
appears to be noticeably noisier than that of the E-300 at the same
ISO levels. I made a composite comparison screenshot with quality
set at Maximum. You can see it here:



Is it just me or is the background behind the queen's head noisier?
And the detail in the crown is just not there, is this due to the
poor quality of the JPEGs?
Click to expand...
BTW I'd like to re-ask this one.. I would like to still consider
the DS but this question of mine gets systhematically avoided...
Can someone please elaborate on the subject? If there is some
logical explanation here, of course :) Thanks.
Click to expand...
I don't know, but FWIW, note that the noise in the gray patches seem to tell a different story than the noise in the queen pictures.

I've noticed that Phil's comments about noise in his reviews seem to be more consistent with what I see in the gray patches than with what I see in the queen pictures. However, using that as evidence would be an "appeal to authority", which is a classic logical fallacy, perhaps especially so in this case. :D

My advice: consider the Olympus noise issue, along with the Pentax in-camera Jpeg softness issue, to be non-issues. The vast majority of users who have compared find that these issues are extremely trivial.

Since you are choosing between two excellent cameras that will each take excellent photos, a far more important consideration is which one feels better in your hand after holding it and shooting with it for a while, and which one's controls seem more natural and intuitive to you. That's the camera that you'll take more photos with, and take better photos with because you'll be thinking more about the shot than the camera.

Good Luck,

Greg
 
I have purchased a 300D. The photos had overprocessed qualities and the build quality was bad. In this price range, the Kodak sensor of the Oly and the Sony sensors on the Nikon and Pentax give far more natural results. The Canons rely on sharpenning to give sharp edges areas that "sharp", "high resolution" look. When I looked at the D50 comparison photos, the DS was a lot better in resolving details without sharp, high contrast edges. This would be the reflections, ripples in the glass bottles, shading, and highlights. If you think the DS photos look soft, it is possible to turn up the in camera sharpness a notch and get the 300D and XT style edge sharpness. The DS will still have the better non - sharp edge resolution and better rendering of shading and contrast.
 
Greg Lovern said:
I don't know, but FWIW, note that the noise in the gray patches
seem to tell a different story than the noise in the queen pictures.

I've noticed that Phil's comments about noise in his reviews seem
to be more consistent with what I see in the gray patches than with
what I see in the queen pictures. However, using that as evidence
would be an "appeal to authority", which is a classic logical
fallacy, perhaps especially so in this case. :D

My advice: consider the Olympus noise issue, along with the Pentax
in-camera Jpeg softness issue, to be non-issues. The vast majority
of users who have compared find that these issues are extremely
trivial.

Since you are choosing between two excellent cameras that will each
take excellent photos, a far more important consideration is which
one feels better in your hand after holding it and shooting with it
for a while, and which one's controls seem more natural and
intuitive to you. That's the camera that you'll take more photos
with, and take better photos with because you'll be thinking more
about the shot than the camera.

Good Luck,

Greg
Click to expand...
Greg, thank you! I have actually checked all DSLRs which fit into my budget (albeit for a very short test in store) and I did find that I like the feel on the Olympus best (viewfinder, lens, build quality) of the whole bunch so I guess I should stop pondering and just get it. :)
 
Well, I am a Canon 10D user and just bought an E-300 as a backup. Sam's Club was selling them for $717.00, so it seemed like a very good deal.

I just took it back. Now I'm not the type who tries to compare apples to oranges as I do my own small camera site. The E-300 is not a 10D or 20D, so shouldn't be compared to one. Still, even at the reduced price, I think the image quality is a bit "iffy" at best. I guess I should explain that to me, "iffy" means that for MY uses, it does not stand up.

The camera build feels ok, but it's still plasticy, and the battery and card doors feel cheesy. The kit lens had a DECENT amount of sharpness and CA (purple fringing) wasn't too bad (though it does exist)... but even playing with the white balance controls, I found odd color casts to the images more often than not. Also, when shooting in SHQ (best) jpg mode, even though the compression is supposedly a very low 1/2.7, I found more artifacts and distortions in the images at close inspection than there should have been. High iso performance also doesn't stand up to the Nikon and Canon sets, and you'll start seeing a pretty fair amount of noise at iso 400 and up. I sell images to stock libraries sometimes, and they do inspect them at 100% whereas some folks aren't that picky, but I just felt the overall image quality did not match what a DSLR (even an entry model) should produce. You could shoot in RAW or TIFF to eliminate some of these things, but you shouldn't have to, and processing every image as RAW takes lots of time later.

I cannot comment on the Pentax other than at my local camera shop they said a few people had brought them back and exchanged them for Nikons or Canons, or in one case just downgraded to a consumer model from Fuji.

Again, $717 is a good price for a DSLR, and if you're not real picky about image quality and don't mind post processing your images to fix the color and artifact issues, you might be happy with an E-300 - I just wasn't. The sample images I've seen from the newer Nikon D50, even with it's cheaper kit lens - looks a bit better.
 
K1000Photographer said:
I have purchased a 300D. The photos had overprocessed qualities and
the build quality was bad. In this price range, the Kodak sensor of
the Oly and the Sony sensors on the Nikon and Pentax give far more
natural results. The Canons rely on sharpenning to give sharp edges
areas that "sharp", "high resolution" look.
Click to expand...
That's not true. Phil has commented in almost every review about Canon's "hands-off" approach to sharpening, which allows the photographer to control how sharp the picture is. The pictures you get from Canon dSLR's are the least processed of any of the major players. Just read Phil's reviews. And look at the comparison photos in the Nikon D50 review.
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikond50/page22.asp

And you'll note the Canon is the only camera to not show moire in the resolution test:
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikond50/page25.asp
 
Greg Lovern said:
FFS said:
You do have the option of using the currently free (in North
America) Four Thirds to OM adapter and use old OM mount legacy
lenses made by Olympus, Sigma, Tamron, Vivitar, Soligor, etc..
Click to expand...
The 4/3 to OM adapter forces you to use stop-down mode, meaning you
focus and compose at full aperture, then stop down to taking
aperture to meter and shoot, then open back up to focus and compose
the next shot, etc.

Stop-down mode slows me down. I only use it when I really can't
afford the same optical quality in a more modern lens.
Click to expand...
It is true with old lenses that if you don't have good AF (slow) lens to cover the common range. With the coverage of 14-150 mm (28-300 35mm eq. FOV) of the 2 digital kit lens (plus a bit more with the use of tele and wide converter), old lenses in E-300 are relegated to special shots: macro, ultra long and ultra wide, until new digital lenses are available. It is true that as of now there is no 'affordable' digital lens for the E-System with AF that are longer than 300mm. But in the realm of macro where accurate focusing is critical, manual focus and stopdown are not slowing anybody down, in fact most people doing macro had to be deliberate and prefers MF to produce a decent macro pic. The there is no advantage of AF and stop down mode in macro. The point I am making is that it is possible to use legacy lenses with E-System, but your milleage may vary, use this as stop gap measure only if you cannot afford the specialist lenses.
Greg Lovern said:
Also, Pentax doesn't have the exposure accuracy problem with old
lenses described on this page:

http://www.wrotniak.net/photo/oly-e/any-lens.html

That sounds like a very annoying problem. The same page also notes
that Olympus says that spot-metering is unreliable with non-4/3
lenses. No such problem with old lenses on Pentax.
Click to expand...
As far as I know, Wrotniak only does his test with Zuiko OM lenses, and at the largest aperture, f1.8. Firstly, has he tested OM lenses made by Tamron, Vivitar, Soligor, Sigma? Not from reading the link provided. Secondly, from the link he mentioned that there is no exposure problem when it is stopped down to f2.8.

No problem with old lenses on Pentax? I thought I read that some people had a very disappointing result with Tamron SP 17mm in Pentax forum.

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1036&message=14507638
 
When buying DSLR you should mainly think about lenses. You will overgrow kit lenses in first 2-3 month. With Pentax you will have tons of lenses available from local stores or used. USSR lens and SLR camera producers selected Pentax 42mm standard as main 35mm lens standard. So you may buy lenses with excellent optical performance to be used as manual lens on Pentax *ist DS body. Pentax supports manual lenses better then any other brand. I think that the whole price of ownership for you will be less if you will go with Pentax.

(I am not talking that: - ergonomics of Pentax *ist DS is several times better then E300; - ist DS has pentaprism where E300 has pentamirrow.)
 
Alex123 said:
When buying DSLR you should mainly think about lenses. You will
overgrow kit lenses in first 2-3 month. With Pentax you will have
tons of lenses available from local stores or used. USSR lens and
SLR camera producers selected Pentax 42mm standard as main 35mm
lens standard. So you may buy lenses with excellent optical
performance to be used as manual lens on Pentax *ist DS body.
Pentax supports manual lenses better then any other brand. I think
that the whole price of ownership for you will be less if you will
go with Pentax.
(I am not talking that: - ergonomics of Pentax *ist DS is several
times better then E300; - ist DS has pentaprism where E300 has
pentamirrow.)
Click to expand...
I have to agree with you - I quite liked the pentaprism on the *ist, but the viewfinder on the Olympus was top notch too when I was checking it out.

About ergonomics I think it's a more subjective matter and I quite liked the feel of the Olympus in my hand.

The JPEG quality of the Pentax still bugs me and I don't think I'll shoot all RAW.
 
Regarding the Pentax/Oly noise issue, I'd say it's not fair to base your judgements on small crops like that.

Better would be to look at full-size sample images at various ISOs and visually assess noise that way.

--
-Andy
http://www.caerphoto.com
 
I did not give it the lower rating. I did not put the noise in it's output.

If you ignore the facts, it's not my fault.

Hang in there.
 
Elsewhere in this thread I referred to Phil's review and took a lot of grief (and just plain old religious abuse) because they are less than meaningful (or so I was tolled)

So be careful...
 
60mm said:
Cephalotus said:
60mm said:
60mm said:
3. How much more different does the lens focus by wire on the E-300
feel, compared to a true mechanical focus ring (which I gather the
Pentax lenses have). I have an old Zenith film SLR, with a prime
50mm lens and I really like the mechanical feel to the focus ring.
Click to expand...
It lags when you focus quickly, pretty annoying.
Click to expand...
You never tried it, did you ?

There is absolutly no lag.
Click to expand...
The sotre I work in has the E-300 and have played with it many
times. There is lag with it. Snap it quickly from close to long
focus, you'll see it.
60mm said:
60mm said:
I would go for ANY DSLR over the E-300, it's noise is just nasty.
It's sad when theres a small P&S that beats it in that critical
department (F10)
Click to expand...
Use the E-300 with RAW and apply extremöy heavy noise reduction
like the F10 does and than compeare the results.

But yes, you are right, the E-300 is propably one of the DSLRs with
the most noise out there but for me noise is not so "bad" than for
most others, so noise is only a minor point for me, I did focus on
other aspects when chosing my DSLR.

Btw, I think that the *istDs is a very nice DSLR, too.
Click to expand...
As for being a troll, I dont remember saying I would recommend the
D50 over the Pentax . . . strange, being a troll I should have done
that . . .

My vote for this one would be Pentax.

I don't know how everyone else feels, but the Troll-Patrollers are
as annoying as Trolls themselves
Click to expand...
 
The OP asked about either an Olympus, or a Pentax?
Maybe HE has decided against Canon, for whatever reason...
His money not yours.
Nor mine.

If he has access to PK lenses, the Pentax wins.
If not, I would go for the Oly 2 lens kit.

Seems logical enough...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Keyboard shortcuts

f
Forum
m
My threads
Mobile site
About
Editorial content
Cameras & Lenses
Community
All content, design, and layout are Copyright © 1998–2025 Digital Photography Review All Rights Reserved.
Reproduction in whole or part in any form or medium without specific written permission is prohibited.
When you use DPReview links to buy products, the site may earn a commission.
©GPS Media - Guides, Products, Services.
Back
Top