I own this camera for over 2 years.
Bought it second hand at a time I needed the cheapest heavy duty construction camera with a reasonable image quality.
At the time, my main issue was reliability and weather-proof.
On paper, the Olympus was ideal, but coming from Nikon F3 and F4 cameras, I was afraid because of the “fly by wire” manual focus and the focus speed in low light (but I’m not a reporter and my eyes aren’t accurate for manual focusing…).
I was sold. Is one of those situations were reality is much better than the prediction.
The camera feels solid and “light”.
The viewfinder is very good (at the time it was among the best ones in digital cameras, but far away from the “size” of my old F3).
The image quality is very good, if we don’t go up in the ISO scale. I’ve manage to get some good pictures at 1600 in some particular situations (BW portraits with exposure spot on and external noise reduction), but it’s better so stay bellow 800.
The thing I like most in the camera is that fantastic ability to be simple, yet with everything that is essential in it.
If one whats to twist with all the possible variations, its better to shoot raw and do the rest of the work in the computer.
This is one of the main reasons to still keep using this camera.
Of course, all the new cameras work better, or faster, or have more MP, or…
For the moment, I just don’t care. With those near perfect weather sealed zuiko lenses, at 100 ISO, up to 20x30cm, this camera still produces wonderful results.
Problems:
a bit slow start-up (the price to pay for dust free images).
Color image quality above ISO 800
Bought it second hand at a time I needed the cheapest heavy duty construction camera with a reasonable image quality.
At the time, my main issue was reliability and weather-proof.
On paper, the Olympus was ideal, but coming from Nikon F3 and F4 cameras, I was afraid because of the “fly by wire” manual focus and the focus speed in low light (but I’m not a reporter and my eyes aren’t accurate for manual focusing…).
I was sold. Is one of those situations were reality is much better than the prediction.
The camera feels solid and “light”.
The viewfinder is very good (at the time it was among the best ones in digital cameras, but far away from the “size” of my old F3).
The image quality is very good, if we don’t go up in the ISO scale. I’ve manage to get some good pictures at 1600 in some particular situations (BW portraits with exposure spot on and external noise reduction), but it’s better so stay bellow 800.
The thing I like most in the camera is that fantastic ability to be simple, yet with everything that is essential in it.
If one whats to twist with all the possible variations, its better to shoot raw and do the rest of the work in the computer.
This is one of the main reasons to still keep using this camera.
Of course, all the new cameras work better, or faster, or have more MP, or…
For the moment, I just don’t care. With those near perfect weather sealed zuiko lenses, at 100 ISO, up to 20x30cm, this camera still produces wonderful results.
Problems:
a bit slow start-up (the price to pay for dust free images).
Color image quality above ISO 800