Back on August 1, Olympus PR invited me to attend the Legg Mason Tennis Classic here in Washington, DC and shoot with their new DSLR, the EVOLT E-510. I enjoyed myself thoroughly at that event, and my thanks go out to Michael Bourne from Mullen, the agency that handles the PR for Olympus.
When I arrived there, I was given a review kit for the E-510, containing the camera, the FL-36 Speedlite, and the two-lens kit (14-42mm and 40-150mm). For my review, I did what I usually do: I used the review unit as my primary camera for a month, taking note of the experience. What you'll get now are my impressions of the camera, after taking thousands of photographs with it in various light and weather conditions, indoors and outdoors.
You can choose to watch a hands-on video review or jump past it to read my written review.
The E-510 is a prosumer camera made to be portable, affordable, and easy to use. The E-510, a 10-megapixel DSLR, is smaller and lighter than its predecessor, the E-500, which I reviewed this past January. Even though it's smaller, the grip was designed so well that I could hold the camera comfortably, without missing the heft of the E-500 or that of my personal camera, the Canon 5D. (I like my cameras a little chunky, they're easier to stabilize that way.) The E-510 was even lighter than I thought with a lens mounted on it. The two-lens kit includes two premium lenses designed for travel and portability. They're incredibly light given their focal range. I expected the 14-42mm lens to be light, but I was blown away by how small and light the 40-150mm lens was. Olympus really did an amazing job with the lenses and the camera when it came to portability. The whole kit (camera, lenses, Speedlite, and charger) was so light I could carry it anywhere very easily. I could run with it and barely felt its weight—as a matter of fact, I did just that on a couple of hikes through the forest.
The thing to remember when looking at focal lengths with any Olympus DSLR is that they've got a 2x crop factor. It's because they use the 4:3 standard, which specifies a sensor size of approximately half the dimensions of a full frame sensor (17.3 mm vs. 36 mm and 13 mm vs. 24 mm). This means the surface area of the sensor is 1/4th that of a full frame sensor. It also means you need to multiply the focal length listed on each lens by two in order to get the effective focal length. If the math is a bit confusing, just keep remember the crop factor and you'll do fine.
To illustrate this, let's look at the two kit lenses. The wide angle zoom, 14-42mm, yielded an effective focal range of 28-84mm. The tele zoom, with a 40-150mm range, yielded an effective focal range of 80-300mm. Now do you understand why I was amazed by how light and small the lenses were? Try finding an 80-300mm zoom lens from another DSLR manufacturer, and I guarantee you that it won't be this small and light. Olympus can accomplish this because of their sensor's form factor. It's a small sensor, 1/4th the surface area of a full frame sensor. That means they need less glass in the lenses, because there's less sensor to cover with the glass. Because there's less glass, the lenses are easier to make. You get the same optical quality, but the lenses are cheaper, lighter, and smaller.
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