Pricing and image quality will be the judge and jury of the new E-Series

Olympus official press releases: here, here, and here.
Full detailed E-1 DSLR specifications.
Our detailed blow by blow examination of what was announced by Olympus.
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The verdict is… well, despite Olympus taking most of the wraps off the E-System and the E-1 camera, there are still some important unknowns. How much will the lenses cost and just how good is the image quality?

What we do know is that Olympus aims to sell the E-1 camera body in Europe for around €2,000, or GBP£1,384 (US$2,312) when it finally ships in 3 months time. That price is at the higher end of our expectations, based on what we knew before the launch and we had hoped a lens would be bundled at that price point. But let’s see how Olympus justifies its pricing.

Undoubtedly, the E-1 is a great camera to hold. It’s comfortable and solid – it definitely has that ‘pro’ feel about it, like the E-10 and E-20 before, but even more so. There are even more external controls that save you having to resort to on-screen menus than the old E-10/20 and both those menus and the top-plate LCD have been improved radically. Compared to the E-10/20, the autofocus of the E-1 is a dream, as is the bright and sharp viewfinder. Shot to shot performance is also a revelation with its tripled buffer size and accelerated electronics. The E-1 will wow most E-10/20 users.

But will the E-1 wow people with, for example, a Canon EOS 10D or a Nikon D100 on their short list? The answer is a qualified yes. While Olympus is unashamedly pointing to the E-1 as a pro camera, the reality is that almost 3 years on, the E-1 represents the logical evolution of that original Olympus break-through, the E-10, which proved to be the archetypal pro-sumer camera. Back when it was first launched, the E-10 was also pitched as a pro camera and, certainly, some pros have made good use of it and its successor, the E-20, but neither were pro cameras in the same light as Nikon D1 or Canon EOS-1D models. I know pros who are using Canon 10Ds and Fujifilm S2s and the new Olympus E-1 is certainly a match for the likes of these when it comes to pro features, robustness and handling.

A lot of people are going to moan about the conservative 5 megapixel resolution sensor. Olympus could have done themselves a big favour by introducing a higher-resolution model. But let’s think about this clearly for a moment. All the E-1’s obvious competitors have 6 megapixel sensors. That’s just 20 percent more pixels overall and in terms of vertical resolution, there is hardly anything in it.

Olympus is making some very confident claims about the Four Thirds concept, even to the point of suggesting that some of its competitors are offering cameras with more resolution than their non-digital lens designs can serve. At the time of writing, there are no E-1 image samples to analyse, though Olympus was busily printing studio shots, using P400 dye-sub printers, apparently taken using E-1s on hand at the launch. It has to be said that some of these prints looked very good.

There are some very interesting features to keep the boffins happy. That ultrasonic sensor cleaning device is a hoot, but dust on the sensor is a very real problem. It will be interesting to see if the Olympus fix really works. It’s a nice touch by Olympus to incorporate interchangeable focus screens, as is the inclusion of both Firewire and USB 2.0.

Then there’s the potential of the Four Thirds smart lens standard. Mount a lens and the camera will immediately know about the distortion and vignetting characteristics of that lens. In-camera real-time distortion correction is still something for the future, but the potential is clearly there.

It was slightly disturbing that the Olympus launch event was practically devoid of Four Thirds System consortium partner contributions. We were directed to quiz Kodak’s and Fujifilm’s respective press officers for their view on the future of the standard, though neither was present. A vague press release underlining Kodak’s commitment was in the press kit. There is also no mention of any deals with independent lens manufacturers.

To summarise; the E-1 looks great, handles well and has some interesting features. But we will only know how if Olympus has a success on its hands once the first sample images emerge and we receive finalised pricing on lenses.

Our blow by blow examination of what was announced by Olympus, click here.
Discuss this story.