Olympus Reviews

The camera has many nice points. These have been covered in other people's reviews. I will mention the few items that I think are less good:
- It is not very good at focusing, especially in less light environment. I had the Olumpus people look at it but they said there was nothing wrong with it.
- It is terribly heavy.
- It is slow to start up.
Dispite the recomendations from Olympus to not use the Microdrive, I have found a somewhat safe way to copy the pictures from the Smartmedia card to the Microdive. In this way, I can take several hundreds of pictures without needing to upload to a computer.
My next camera will be a Minolta - also with a Microdrive function.

I've had a Minolta SLR for the past 10 years and been very happy with it, but after buying the my "other half" a Canon Digital Elph, I found the ability to immediately review photographs compelling. So, I looked for a digital SLR.

Olympus has hit the price/performance sweet spot with this camera. Competitive digital SLRs cost 50% more than the E10 for the body alone -- i.e. before you've bought any lenses. However, I was concerned that the E-10 would be an adequate replacement for my film SLR. So, The E-10 passed with flying colors.

What's good about this camera: terrific image quality, great lens (f2.0-f2.6!), all the control you could want (white balance, focus, zoom, exposure, flash), support for compact flash and smart media, and ability to take up to 4 shots in rapid succession, easy upload of images to a PC, Adobe Photoshop LE included and good battery life on Olympus NiMH AA batteries.

I took scores of pictures every day and was generally pleased with the results. The camera functions well in program mode, but immediate image review on the camera enables you to use more control if you don't get the shot you need. And with digital, you can just keep on taking shots until you get it right without worrying about film.

The ability to take 4 shots in rapid succession is useful when trying to capture spontaneous events -- like the procession of flag throwers (a Tuscan tradition that goes back over 700 years) out for a practice early one Sunday in Siena. Other digital cameras have big problems with both "shutter lag" (time from pressing the button to capturing the image) and the interval between shots -- especially with a 4 megapixel CCD where images take longer to write to flash.

I made extensive use of a polarizing filter to cut glare under the Tuscan sun, and the images came out with strong colors as a result. The E10 seems a little "flatter" in its color balance than Canon cameras, but color saturation can be easily tweaked in Photoshop if this is a problem for any given image.

I never managed to run the Olympus AA NiMH batteries (purchased separately) flat during a day's shooting, so camera power consumption seems to be excellent -- short battery life is a killer for many digital cameras.

The lens is very impressive. It has a great zoom range, and as the camera was designed for digital from the ground up there are none of the multiplying effects of film cameras converted for digital use (e.g. Canon D30). This means that the E10 has great short-range capability as well as telephoto without having to switch lenses. This is very important if you want to travel light, as I did.

What's not-so-good: problems with IBM Microdrive, autofocus requires care to avoid misfocus errors, viewfinder image location leads to orientation errors, general operation could be a lot faster, and the optional Olypus case is poor.

The E10 requires the photographer to carefully monitor whether it has successfully locked on the subject. Early on, I got several poorly focused shots because the AF didn't focus on the subject. It's easy to miss this in the viewfinder or on the LCD image preview -- you only find out when you get home... However, once you learn to watch for mistaken AF lock, it is possible to re-focus and avoid this. Still, after Minolta's exemplary AF system, this was an unpleasant surprise.

I also used an IBM Microdrive with my E10, but discovered that it does not work properly. I would be able to take several photographs, and then the camera would suddenly complain of flash card errors. It's easy to miss candid shots when you're wondering why the camera isn't working, then realizing there's a flash error, switching to smart media... so the Microdrive went back. Get a 256MB flash card instead.

The viewfinder image is large and oddly focused -- it's easy to tilt the camera about a degree and not notice -- until you get to image review. This can be fixed in Photoshop, but it's annoying to have to fix it.

Finally, the Olympus feels slower than many point-n-shoot cameras, and this is likely down to the embedded processor used in the camera. It takes several seconds before an image can be previewed, and it is slow to move around in image preview mode. Also, it seems to take a long time to compress an image and store it to flash. The 4 image buffer dramatically reduces the impact of this, but not entirely -- especially when you want to take one photo and see how it came out straight away.

Finally, don't buy Olympus' case for the E10. It is very cumbersome and you'll end up wishing you never brought it. I left it at home or in the car most days. You cant open up the case and leave it hanging off the camera -- it gets in your way. That means you have to totally remove the camera from the case and either put it down, stuff it in a bag or squash it under your arm while you try to take photographs.

The net is that I can't see why I'd go back to a film SLR. Although the Olympus E10 has its quirks, and Microdrive incompatibility is a drawback, it is a very good digital camera at an excellent price point for the value you receive. Olympus really doesn't have any competition for the money.

Ok - Wow.

In digital photography, all you need is good photo-editing software (the E-10 comes with Adobe Photoshop LE) and a good printer - no eye-irritating chemicals and hours alone in the dark, like with film photography! Oh ya, and a good camera!

Using the E-10 is functioning on a whole different plane than anything I've used before (digitally, Kodak and Sony in the $800 - $900 range). The control is total. The product is eye-popping. What pictures! I'm producing 13x19 inch prints of amazing clarity. And although there is still quite a bit of effort involved - the comfort level and the amount of ultimate control over the product is astounding. And it all starts with the E-10.

To the hand, the fit and feel are unmistakably that of a 35mm SLR. Of course, there is no f-ring, and no gnarled knob dedicated to shutter speed control - too bad, I thought at first. But with some adjustment to thinking, there is an easy (actually, easier!), total control of these functions - and so much more. The zoom and focus rings are the smoothest I've ever used (and I have a couple of lenses for my 35mm that cost more than this camera).

I also have the 0.8x and the 1.45x lens attachments, for wide and telephoto (or 28mm and 200mm, respectively, in a 35mm format camera). Lens extenders exaggerate chromatic aberrations, flares and distortions - and they certainly reduce the speed of the lens fairly dramatically, among other things. Regarding the Camedia extenders, though there is a reduction in speed, it's absolutely negligible. And for image quality, I performed some tests photographing newspaper (a great test pattern, believe it, or not) and found nothing to complain about - quite the opposite. This is really good stuff. Not perfect, but very, very good. The quality of the lens on the camera, on the other hand, may as well be perfect. Similar, but more precise tests performed against this lens just made me smile. There are some flares and barreling under certain circumstances, but nothing - absolutely nothing to complain about. The contrast and brightness-uniformity (condensing) of the image are as good as you can get without spending a lot, like on some of Canon's Flourite lenses.

Overall, the experience is just great. The designers thought of everything. This E-10 is easier to use, and fits the hand better than any professional grade camera I've ever used.

Just a couple more notes: The optical viewfinder is bright. The shutter release is perfect for handheld, low shutter speed shots in that it requires only a very light touch (but there is good travel to prevent premature release). The CCD is noise-free at any contrast (some owners claim noise at higher contrast settings, but I haven't experienced this. Perhaps, Olympus had dealt with this by the time I purchased mine). The LCD monitor really comes in handy with its multi-position feature - in making waist level and over-head shots.

Olympus suggests that this camera will eliminate the need to ever return to film format cameras. I definitely agree. Digital photography really is a revolution. And this particular camera really is the beginning of the revolution as far as cost/quality combination is concerned.

This is a great camera.

I purchased this thinking that I was getting a recorder that would actually hold 90 minutes of audio. Unfortunately that capacity is only available for "LP" mode which is highly distorted. HQ and SP modes record very well, but only plan on getting 20-30 minutes of use out of it before the memory is full.

The PC connection was not automatic, despite the instruction manual comments that no additional software was required. On the whole, I found no little to no support material available on the Olympus website.

I returned the recorder and am still looking for something <$100 that provides 2-3 hours of high quality recording with a PC connection.

I purchased the Olympus DW-90 Voice Recorder to record ambient sounds for some web work I'm doing. I found the DW-90 easy to operate after browsing the manual. Loading the included software was a non-item. Once you record a sound you just plug the unit into a USB port and the software automatically pops up on the computer screen. You then push one button and it uploads the file or files to the computer. Fast, simple. You select the file (it records in .wav file format) with your mouse and hit the play button and there you are. I'm into recording sounds of doors creaking, birds chirping, water dripping, etc. I record outdoors and in, on the hiking trail, voices in the park, the crackle of a fire in a fireplace, children's voices. In short, I record anything that might make a digital scene come to life. I also use the sounds for link buttons: the ping of a pencil on a drinking glass or china, the crumpling of an aluminum can, fist on a tabletop. Once I've uploaded the sound, I open it in my sound editing software (Sound Forge) and go to work on it. The sound that comes from the DW-90 in HQ mode is crystal clear. Since it's designed to record voices, I was worried that it might muffle background noise, but found this to not be true. Everything the ear hears, the DW-90 records (not the same frequency response, of course), which can at times be a problem for me. Human hearing is selective, so we don't ordinarily hear the refrigerator running or whir of our computer's fan. But they will all be there when you replay a DW-90 sound file. The DW-90 is smaller than it looks in the pictures, ~3.5 inches in length, and extremely light weight, so you can take it anywhere. But it definitely has its limitations. File storage volume is one. Just make sure that prior to purchasing the unit you evaluate its specifications against your requirements. I'm immensely pleased with it, but then I'm not trying to record a one-hour lecture in HQ mode (limit 22 min) or LP mode (limit 90 min) where so many of the reviewers here on Amazon have complained about sound quality.

I've been using this recorder for about 5 months now, and I love it now just as much as I did when I first purchased it. One thing that I like very much about the design is that the Erase button is extremely hard to accidentally push (and that, twice) - which shows someone was thinking when they designed it. The software installed perfectly, and works perfectly. I am very satisfied with this little recorder; it does not weigh much, but it gets the job done - and very well at that.

This tape recorder is perfect for recording class lectures or conducting field interviews for academic purposes. The only thing you have to watch is make sure you have it on the right tape speed. You have to use the higher quality speed if you want to hear anything in a classroom setting. If the speaker is close and you only want the lecture and none of the student comments or you are conducting an interview both speeds are fine. Overall a very fine purchase

I don't know where to begin with this product. I spent WEEKS trying to get this to work with voice recognition and the only result was my computer crashing - several times. The customer service at Olympus was USELESS as they kept telling me it was the software and the software company kept telling me it was Olympus. I finally returned it and settled on desktop version of Dragon Naturally Speaking. I don't have the mobility that I wanted, but I sure do have FEWER HEADACHES.

Excellent voice quality on this digital recorder. Saving files onto your PC is a snap with the serial or USB cables. Use the software that comes with it to edit the recordings and then save them to WAV files that can be played on any system. The data compression is excellent -- the sound files are small and can be emailed or put onto floppy disk.