Digital Camera Preview by: Michael Gazzola 

In an exclusive Australian preview Olympus treated just 7 people to a special hands-on trial of the new E-520 DSLR. Luckily, Buy-n-Shoot.com was at the top of the A-list!

The day started at 8:30AM out the front of the National Gallery of Victoria, met by a chauffer driven stretch Hummer taking the group to the Werribee Open Range Zoo.
 

On arrival, the Olympus hosts warmed the group up with teas & coffees, gave a brief rundown on the camera, then each handed an E-520 unit readied with high speed SanDisk CF memory cards that we would eventually be able to take back to the office to more closely critique the images.

We were met by four rangers, who took us out in open top safari vehicles allowing the group to really put the E-520 through its paces in picturesque surroundings. The weather was mixed which gave each photographer the opportunity to experiment. For the first 20 minutes it was overcast, the next 30 minutes glorious blue skies, combined with sections of low fog that cleared quite quickly, followed by the weather turning again, this time with dark angry skies and arctic cold winds for extra measure!

The Olympus E-520 digital camera came fitted with a 70–300mm (140–600mm 35mm equivalent) lens, so the safari atmosphere was a perfect arrangement. The body / lens combination was part of a ‘super tele’ kit – the E-520, a 14-42mm lens (28–84mm 35mm equivalent) and a 70–300mm lens which will have RRP of $1499. Note, for the record there is also a single lens kit with just the 14–42mm lens, which will have an RRP of $1099. And it’s also worth mentioning the 70–300mm lens retails at $599 on its own so as a twin kit there is plenty of value.

The camera in hand felt a little old school – which is a good thing. Looking directly down onto the top you could almost be fooled into thinking it was 35mm camera, with some very obvious styling inspiration being borrowed from successful relatives of yesteryear. The E-520 feels solid and is lightweight which may appeal also (as a bonus for Olympus) to the female photographer with some of Olympus’ competitors weighing in much heavier, giving the photographer’s wrists and forearms a fair work out over a long shooting period.

The LCD was bright and clear for most occasions but like 99% other DSLR’s it struggled a little in direct and very bright sunlight.

With testing for shutter lag, there appeared to be none. The camera shot smoothly as a professional photographer would expect. The 10-megapixel Live MOS Sensor with its TruePic III image processing engine responded very well when tested at a number of focal lengths and under various shutter and aperture settings.

The images were, on most occasions very sharp considering we were standing in a vehicle, using a zoom lens up to 300mm (providing a focal length of up to 600mm in 35mm equivalent) and operating totally hand held. View sample #5 below for a perfect example.

In bright sunlight the camera really hit its mark, focusing super quick, accurately and with the correct exposure on different aperture, shutter and program settings. In 200–300 shots there would have been less than 10 photos exposed incorrectly in Auto / Aperture Priority mode – and of those, they were not far off and quite usable if tweaked a little with imaging software after.

At one point when the vehicle was stationary, I took the opportunity to perform a small trial with the 3 lenses on the same scene. With the 14–42mm lens (28–84mm 35mm equivalent) the results were great. The wide and zoomed lengths exposed correctly and produced good quality images. The 40–150mm lens (80–300mm equivalent) produced equally good images.

Below are thumbnails with links to high resolution images of each focal length straight off the camera - unprocessed. (files sizes range between 2MB and 3MB) :

sample #1 (14mm), sample #2 (42mm), sample #3 (40mm),

sample #4 (150mm) and sample #5 (300mm)

Overall, from the early preview and limited time offered my experience with the new Olympus E-520 was a very positive one. In a couple of weeks Buy-n-Shoot.com will have a review unit and be able to more closely look over and examine each of the E-520’s functions and results.

Other images:

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