James M Hughes
Senior Member
I can't believe how good the E1 is! I recently bought one boxed in mint condition at a very low price. It was great to buy such a well-made camera for so little, but I did question my sanity for doing so. Okay, the E1 had long been something of an 'aspirational' camera for me, and I'd always wanted one. But, having already got an Olympus E510, surely buying an E1 in 2008 was pointless - the E510 has double the number of pixels, a much bigger/better screen, image stabilisation, and is smaller and lighter, with a handy built-in flash. Surely I should be saving up for an E3 - not wasting money on an E1?
I shot a few times (in dull winter light) when I first got the E1, then put it aside for a few weeks. It seemed okay, but I didn't notice anything unusual or exceptional. Then I tried it again (in better light), and this time noticed how exceptionally smooth and natural its images were. I take a lot of portraits, and the E1 (shot in RAW and processed in Phase One Capture One 4) has perhaps the best (that is, the truest and most natural-looking) colour I've ever seen from any digital camera. I have many other good DSLRs, among them Fuji's S5 Pro. This is almost universaly regarded as the 'king' when it comes to DR and natural skin tones. It certainly is very very good, but if anything the E1's images bettered the Fuji's for naturalness and sheer believability.
The E1 captures a very 'real' look that goes beyond sharpness and saturation. It's very hard to put this into words, but after the E1 most camera images look a bit brash and gimmicky. The lines are sharp and the colours are bright and punchy, but the images lack finesse and depth - for all their superficial brilliance they don't look real.
I mostly use my E1 with the outstanding Leica 14-50mm f2.8-3.5 image stabilised lens that came with the Leica Digilux 3. This Leica 4/3rds camera has lovely colours and gorgeous tonality (though like the E1 you need to shoot RAW to get the best from it - the JPEGs are only so-so). But good as the Leica is, the E1 slightly betters it in terms of subtlety and unforced naturalness!
The E1 seems good at getting the white balance accurate, so that colours look fresh and realistic. But (sorry to keep harping on!) you do need to shoot RAW to see the full benefit of this; the E1's JPEG's are quite good, but the RAW files processed in Capture One 4 look significantly sharper and cleaner with better colour.
It's strange, but few (if any) of the original reviews seemed to have picked up on how good the E1's colour was and is - maybe the RAW converters back in 2003 were not that good? Indeed, dpreview only gave it a Recommended rating. Yet here I am, some five years after the camera was launched, and digital cameras supposedly having improved hugely, saying the E1's one of the best digital cameras I've ever used for IQ. If you value subtle tonality and unexaggerated naturalness above low noise at high ISOs, and a high fps shooting rate, there are few cameras that approach the E1. It really is rather special!
Problems:
Alas, there are some downsides; the screen is small, has poor resolution, and a greeny/yellow colour bias. With only four times magnification you can't really check sharpness. Which explains why I marked the E1 down on Features - it's an old camera, and newer models are faster and have much better screens, etc. The E1 is not very good at high ISOs (noise), but produces exceptionally smooth/clean results at base ISO - all I use anyway. The resolution is limited. The E510 produces sharper results, as do most other higher megapixel cameras. But for head and shoulders portraits, the E1 is plenty sharp enough, and shows excellent detail. If find the Digilux 3's AF returns a higher number of critically-sharp pictures. Despite somewhat mixed reviews, the D-3 has one of the most consistently accurate AF systems of any DSLR - it hardly ever misses. The E1 is nearly as good (and certainly no worse than my E510), but it does inexplicably 'miss' the target sometimes, when it shouldn't.
I shot a few times (in dull winter light) when I first got the E1, then put it aside for a few weeks. It seemed okay, but I didn't notice anything unusual or exceptional. Then I tried it again (in better light), and this time noticed how exceptionally smooth and natural its images were. I take a lot of portraits, and the E1 (shot in RAW and processed in Phase One Capture One 4) has perhaps the best (that is, the truest and most natural-looking) colour I've ever seen from any digital camera. I have many other good DSLRs, among them Fuji's S5 Pro. This is almost universaly regarded as the 'king' when it comes to DR and natural skin tones. It certainly is very very good, but if anything the E1's images bettered the Fuji's for naturalness and sheer believability.
The E1 captures a very 'real' look that goes beyond sharpness and saturation. It's very hard to put this into words, but after the E1 most camera images look a bit brash and gimmicky. The lines are sharp and the colours are bright and punchy, but the images lack finesse and depth - for all their superficial brilliance they don't look real.
I mostly use my E1 with the outstanding Leica 14-50mm f2.8-3.5 image stabilised lens that came with the Leica Digilux 3. This Leica 4/3rds camera has lovely colours and gorgeous tonality (though like the E1 you need to shoot RAW to get the best from it - the JPEGs are only so-so). But good as the Leica is, the E1 slightly betters it in terms of subtlety and unforced naturalness!
The E1 seems good at getting the white balance accurate, so that colours look fresh and realistic. But (sorry to keep harping on!) you do need to shoot RAW to see the full benefit of this; the E1's JPEG's are quite good, but the RAW files processed in Capture One 4 look significantly sharper and cleaner with better colour.
It's strange, but few (if any) of the original reviews seemed to have picked up on how good the E1's colour was and is - maybe the RAW converters back in 2003 were not that good? Indeed, dpreview only gave it a Recommended rating. Yet here I am, some five years after the camera was launched, and digital cameras supposedly having improved hugely, saying the E1's one of the best digital cameras I've ever used for IQ. If you value subtle tonality and unexaggerated naturalness above low noise at high ISOs, and a high fps shooting rate, there are few cameras that approach the E1. It really is rather special!
Problems:
Alas, there are some downsides; the screen is small, has poor resolution, and a greeny/yellow colour bias. With only four times magnification you can't really check sharpness. Which explains why I marked the E1 down on Features - it's an old camera, and newer models are faster and have much better screens, etc. The E1 is not very good at high ISOs (noise), but produces exceptionally smooth/clean results at base ISO - all I use anyway. The resolution is limited. The E510 produces sharper results, as do most other higher megapixel cameras. But for head and shoulders portraits, the E1 is plenty sharp enough, and shows excellent detail. If find the Digilux 3's AF returns a higher number of critically-sharp pictures. Despite somewhat mixed reviews, the D-3 has one of the most consistently accurate AF systems of any DSLR - it hardly ever misses. The E1 is nearly as good (and certainly no worse than my E510), but it does inexplicably 'miss' the target sometimes, when it shouldn't.
