General image quality
Check the dedicated Olympus E-1 interactive forum

Viewfinder accuracy

The red area above indicates what is seen through the viewfinder of the E-1. The E-1 claims to have a 100% coverage viewfinder and in our hands it gets very close. The black strip at the top is wasted space, as is the white strips on the side. A few millimetres at the base of the frame have escaped. Viewed through the eyepiece we calculate you actually see 96.2% of what is actually captured, or about 4.7 megapixels instead of a perfect 4.9 megapixels.


To get things into perspective, above is the Pentax *ist-D viewfinder performance. It only shows 85.2% of what is captured by the sensor, giving a practical resolution of 5.1 megapixels instead of the sensor's full capacity of 6.0 megapixels.

Close focus

Using the 14-54 at its closest focus point and at full tele, coverage is as small as 5.8cm across the frame. The lens has no specific 'macro' mode, so this is a good performance.


You can get physically closer in wide angle mode, but there is nothing to gain as lateral coverage is no smaller than 13cm.

Colour

Above is the Gretag Macbeth DC colour chart for the E-1. Colours are fairly neutral, as are greys and whites. In practice the E-1 delivers a fairly faithful colour performance in normal daylight conditions.


For comparision purposes, here is the same colour test chart shot using a Pentax *ist D. The Pentax chart has come out slightly lighter, but apart from a slightly deeper blue in the Olympus result the two charts are fairly comparable.

Fluorescent colour
I have decided to shoot a simple day-glo fluorescent colour test swatch as fluorescent tones are very difficult to reproduced. From left to right the original colours are fluorescent red, green, orange and yellow.

The E-1 has produced a rather flat result.


By comparison, the Pentax result is quite vibrant and true to the original.

Barrell/pincushion distortion

When shooting straight-sided buildings I was very impressed with barrel distortion control of the 14-54mm zoom at full wide angle view before I got the test chart out (above). Vertical bowing is a more sensitive issue and, indeed, the lens does well in this respect but the visible horizontal bowing was a surprise in the test chart.

With the E-1' s lens. everything straightens out nicely at the mid-zoom setting.

There is hardly any evidence of pincushion distortion you might expect at the telephoto end of the zoom range.

Below, again, for comparison, are the test results for the 24-90mm zoom that came with our review sample Pentax *ist D:

The Pentax 24-90 shows moderate barrel distortion at its fullest wide angle setting (24mm, or equivalent to 36mm when taking the 50% digital sensor multiplier into consideration).


A touch of inward bowing, the tell-tale characteristic of pincushion distortion, can just be seen at the mid-zoom setting of the Pentax 24-90 zoom.


The pincushion effect of the Pentax lens does worsen at the full tele zoom setting, but only marginally.

Resolution
Widest aperture setting
At their respective widest apertures for the zoom setting at which the test target was photographed, there is little to choose between the Pentax and the Olympus results, but the key point here is that the E-1 is just over two thirds of a stop brighter.


(above)Olympus E-1, 14-54mm zoom, f/3.1, 27mm focal length (54mm equivalent)


(above)Pentax *ist D, 24-909mm zoom, f/4, 35mm focal length (53mm equivalent)

Mid aperture setting
At f/8, both lenses show resolution gains, but there is still not much in it overall.

Olympus E-1, f/8


Pentax *ist D, f/8

Small aperture setting
At f/22 the Olympus maintains its performance while the Pentax is shows a notable deterioration in sharpness.


Olympus E-1, f/22


Pentax *ist D, f/22

High contrast colour fringeing
A consistent test for determining resistance to fringeing is under development. However, in conditions where other cameras have shown copious degrees of purple ghosting around high contrast boundaries, the E-1 and it 14-54 zoom has been impressively free of it in all but the most extreme situations. To put this in perspective, the old E-10/20 models from Olympus were quite prone to fringeing, but not the E-1.

Image noise
Image noise issues are tackled on a separate page - click here.

Check the dedicated Olympus E-1 interactive forum