HeresMy2Cents
New member
Let me just say right from the start that I've never been an Olympus fan. It's not that I've ever had anything against Olympus cameras, but their products simply never entered into the equation for me when shopping for photo equipment. I've always relied on Nikon for solid results every time.
So why am I writing a review about an Olympus camera? Well, when I began searching the market for a digital SLR below $1000, I was immediately drawn to the Nikon D50 because I wanted to stay in the Nikon family. The D50 is a great camera, no question about it, but after hearing that Olympus had just released the new E-500 with the dual lens kit for around $800 and that it was a head-to-head competitor with the Nikon D50, I decided, rather reluctantly, to check it out.
I was amazed at what I found. The Olympus EVOLT E-500 is as close to a masterpiece as you will find in a digital SLR for less than $1000. Many of its features simply leave its closest competitor, the Nikon D50, in the dust! The 2.5" LCD screen on the E-500 is unlike anything I've ever seen on any digital camera. It is crystal clear and very bright, even at the default setting. And it can easily be seen from just about any angle, unlike most other LCD's. The menu system is extremely intuitive, but the Control Panel feature on this camera really shines. This is a screen that shows all the main settings of the camera at once, and with a few quick touches, you can easily change just about any setting you need to in an instant. Very nice! This is much better than the D50's LCD panel on top of the camera with no backlight, which would be completely useless in low-light conditions.
The numerous features on playback mode are also very user-friendly. The camera is fast, responsive, and a real pleasure to shoot with. The Auto setting is perfect for a novice who wants to take the leap into the SLR world, but still needs the capability to point and shoot without worrying about having the right settings. And the picture quality is superb! At 8 megapixels you've got plenty of room to zoom, crop and print without losing quality.
The software included is truly fantastic for automatically organizing all your shots. The calendar feature is a great idea. It shows your photos in calendar format so you can instantly go to any day and see all the shots you took that day. Plus, the keyword search feature saves me tons of time finding those old pictures.
The bottom line is, the E-500 is a stunning camera which produces brilliant results and is a pleasure to shoot with. I got mine for $791 (at Circuit City) with the two lens kit. A really incredible deal no matter how you slice it. Overall, Olympus did a heck of a job designing this camera... enough to convince this Nikon fanatic to actually buy one! And I'm glad I did!
Problems:
I have two main gripes about the E-500. First, the viewfinder is too small. It's not horribly small or unusable, but compare it to something like the viewfinder on the D50, for instance, and you'll notice immediately that it just feels so much more natural looking through the viewfinder on the D50 than on the E-500. Olympus has apparently caught some flack over this, because they are releasing an eye cup with a slight magnification in December. Hopefully this will help solve the problem.
My second gripe is the fact that the E-500 does not have "true" USB 2.0 high speed. (On some websites this camera is listed as having USB 2.0, but it is not true high speed USB 2.0) It's nothing short of mind-boggling to me why any camera manufacturer in 2005 would create a brand new camera without true 2.0 high speed USB transfer capability. What were the engineers thinking? If it was to save a few cents on each camera during production, it was a stupid decision, because I almost didn't buy the camera for this reason. However, the simple solution is to do what I did... instead of plugging the camera directly to your computer, just put the compactflash card into a USB 2.0 card reader and load the pictures that way. In side-by-side time tests, it took 25 seconds to upload three SHQ pictures directly from the camera. It took just under 5 seconds to load those same three pictures from my card reader! That may not sound like much, but just imagine returning from a day of shooting with 200-300 pictures on your 2GB CF card! In my opinion, Olympus engineers should be thrashed for this enormously poor decision... a mistake I bet they'll never make again.
So why am I writing a review about an Olympus camera? Well, when I began searching the market for a digital SLR below $1000, I was immediately drawn to the Nikon D50 because I wanted to stay in the Nikon family. The D50 is a great camera, no question about it, but after hearing that Olympus had just released the new E-500 with the dual lens kit for around $800 and that it was a head-to-head competitor with the Nikon D50, I decided, rather reluctantly, to check it out.
I was amazed at what I found. The Olympus EVOLT E-500 is as close to a masterpiece as you will find in a digital SLR for less than $1000. Many of its features simply leave its closest competitor, the Nikon D50, in the dust! The 2.5" LCD screen on the E-500 is unlike anything I've ever seen on any digital camera. It is crystal clear and very bright, even at the default setting. And it can easily be seen from just about any angle, unlike most other LCD's. The menu system is extremely intuitive, but the Control Panel feature on this camera really shines. This is a screen that shows all the main settings of the camera at once, and with a few quick touches, you can easily change just about any setting you need to in an instant. Very nice! This is much better than the D50's LCD panel on top of the camera with no backlight, which would be completely useless in low-light conditions.
The numerous features on playback mode are also very user-friendly. The camera is fast, responsive, and a real pleasure to shoot with. The Auto setting is perfect for a novice who wants to take the leap into the SLR world, but still needs the capability to point and shoot without worrying about having the right settings. And the picture quality is superb! At 8 megapixels you've got plenty of room to zoom, crop and print without losing quality.
The software included is truly fantastic for automatically organizing all your shots. The calendar feature is a great idea. It shows your photos in calendar format so you can instantly go to any day and see all the shots you took that day. Plus, the keyword search feature saves me tons of time finding those old pictures.
The bottom line is, the E-500 is a stunning camera which produces brilliant results and is a pleasure to shoot with. I got mine for $791 (at Circuit City) with the two lens kit. A really incredible deal no matter how you slice it. Overall, Olympus did a heck of a job designing this camera... enough to convince this Nikon fanatic to actually buy one! And I'm glad I did!
Problems:
I have two main gripes about the E-500. First, the viewfinder is too small. It's not horribly small or unusable, but compare it to something like the viewfinder on the D50, for instance, and you'll notice immediately that it just feels so much more natural looking through the viewfinder on the D50 than on the E-500. Olympus has apparently caught some flack over this, because they are releasing an eye cup with a slight magnification in December. Hopefully this will help solve the problem.
My second gripe is the fact that the E-500 does not have "true" USB 2.0 high speed. (On some websites this camera is listed as having USB 2.0, but it is not true high speed USB 2.0) It's nothing short of mind-boggling to me why any camera manufacturer in 2005 would create a brand new camera without true 2.0 high speed USB transfer capability. What were the engineers thinking? If it was to save a few cents on each camera during production, it was a stupid decision, because I almost didn't buy the camera for this reason. However, the simple solution is to do what I did... instead of plugging the camera directly to your computer, just put the compactflash card into a USB 2.0 card reader and load the pictures that way. In side-by-side time tests, it took 25 seconds to upload three SHQ pictures directly from the camera. It took just under 5 seconds to load those same three pictures from my card reader! That may not sound like much, but just imagine returning from a day of shooting with 200-300 pictures on your 2GB CF card! In my opinion, Olympus engineers should be thrashed for this enormously poor decision... a mistake I bet they'll never make again.