First impressions article page now set up for future updates alongside this forum thread.

A production E-330 has just arrived here and I've just run off a few very quick shots to compare it with the E-500 I also have here (see below).

First impressions are that this is a much more refined looking and handling beast than the similar-looking E-300. The viewfinder is definitely less bright than the E-500's but its magnification appears to be greater too - the frame definitely looks larger. I find this a little curious as an increase in magnification simply adds to the reduction in the E-330's viewfinder brightness that is already caused by the semi-silvered mirror serving the Mode A live preview sensor.

Another difference between the E-330 and E-500 is the colour saturation in the viewfinder - it's noticeably less saturated in the E-330.

That all said, my personal feeling is that Olympus has done a good job of preserving the TTL viewfinder - it's much much better than the old E-10/20, and as a compromise it's not too bad compared to the E-500. I could definitely live with it.

I was very keen to see how the new Live MOS sensor in the E-330 would perform compared to the E-500's conventional Kodak FFT (full frame transfer) CCD sensor.

Below are 100% in-camera best quality mode JPEG crops from the centre of the frame, taken with the E-500 (top) and E-330 (bottom). ISO was set to 800 and I applied 50% 2.2 pixel radius unsharp mask to bring out noise.

I can hardly claim that this is a scientific test! However, it clearly shows to me that the E-330 exhibits significantly less noise than the E-500. I will run off some DXO Analyzer tests asap to verify these initial impressions. Although the E-330 is smoother at ISO 800, I need to find out if this is at the expense of detail retention.

Interestingly the white balance of these two cameras is quite different. The E-500 shots show a greater red sensitivity, whatever the light, while the E-330 is more neutral. I'm still not sure if this is good or bad - a lack of decent sunshing outside today may put that conclusion on hold for a bit.

By the way the optical viewfinder lacks the etched focus point markers on the focus screen, though seleted focus points (usual three) do light up.

The Mode A live preview did exactly what I though it would, as did the Mode B - there was some motion persistence on the screen in Mode B, though it wasn't problem, just different to the Mode A live preview.

Overall, so far so good for the E-330.

Ian