Olympus's elegantly designed SLR combines a 4-megapixel sensor with great optics to provide sharp, well-exposed images that should satisfy most enthusiasts. The trade-off that you make for the high resolution, though, is relatively noisy images that might be disappointing after you've plunked down AU$3,999 for the camera.
Only a few major quirks mar Olympus's Camedia E-10 digital camera, an otherwise first-rate, 4-megapixel SLR priced for the adventurous enthusiast with a substantial amount of disposable income or the cash-strapped pro. The high resolution brings with it some trade-offs in quality that make it a little less camera than we'd like for the money; on the other hand, it's priced exactly right for its feature set.
In all ways, the E-10 lives solidly between the worlds of the AU$3,000 3-megapixel enthusiast point-and-shoot cameras and the AU$12,000 pro SLRs with 6-megapixel CCDs and interchangeable lenses. It has the highest resolution that you'll find in a consumer camera. That's not quite optimal for printing an 8-by-10 photo on a good photo printer, since the camera's best-quality images have a resolution roughly equivalent to 200dpi; nevertheless, we found the output impressive on an Epson Stylus Photo 1280.
The E-10's sensor, combined with a noninterchangeable lens that was designed specifically to maximize exposure latitude on the higher-density CCD, produces sharp images with bright, accurate colours and a surprisingly broad dynamic range with good gray balance. Whether shooting on a sunny spring day or in a dim, lens-fogging rainforest at the Bronx Zoo, we faced few exposure problems. Although the camera's images can be large, it has a 32MB buffer that lets you shoot several pictures in a row without forcing you to wait for the camera to catch up.
You'll need to watch out for camera shake, however. Because the sensitivity range maxes out at ISO 320, you'll find yourself dipping into slow shutter speeds a bit sooner than you'd expect, considering the camera's 35mm-to-140mm (35mm equivalent) focal range.
Unfortunately, we found the images on the noisy side for a camera of the E-10's class. The level of noise looked comparable to the graininess of an ISO 400 film--no surprise, since noise increases with sensor resolution. We also wished that the automatic white balance were a little more accurate under nondaylight conditions. The camera does have a good (if somewhat finger-contorting) way to quickly set a white balance reference, as well as a nice interface for previewing the results of using one of the presets. As with many of the Olympus cameras, the E-10's flash is sometimes too strong at distances of less than 1.8 metres.
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