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Olympus E-1 Digital SLR
Date: Tuesday, January 20, 2004
Author: Jsgolfman
Provided By: Olympus
Page: 2 of 3
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Function
I won't go into boring detail describing every minute function, knob and dial. You can check out the spec sheet or my preview for other details. I want to describe the experience I had while using the camera. I started by utilizing the one aspect of the camera that most people will use, the auto focus setting. From this perspective you simply point and shoot, the picture is processed almost instantaneously. The camera takes care of adjusting for light, distance, shadow, etc. I was reasonably happy with letting the electronics take care of the dirty work for the time being and I only found one or two occasions where either the lighting was a tad dark or I could not get the objects into clear focus. The lighting problem was caused, I believe, by and alternately sunny/cloudy day here in the Midwest. At one point, the sun would be radiating down and the next the clouds would move in, often in the middle of my shot. Not to mean that the camera response is slow, quite the contrary. You snap the pictures the same way you would on any other digital camera. Depress the shutter button halfway down to focus and once focusing is done, press it the rest of the way down to take the picture. I noticed lag only when the shutter speed was set very slow and even then it was less than I had experienced with other cameras. The other time I experienced lag was with noise reduction turned on. My experience with noise reduction on digital cameras is somewhat limited, but the lag with noise reduction on was horrendous. The other issue I had, concerning the inability to get clear focus on objects, is depicted in the picture below:
I was attempting to take a picture of some Christmas decorations situated on my mantle with a mirror behind them. My assumption is that the camera was having difficulty with the reflections and was unsure of what to focus on. I must have taken 5-6 pictures and this is the best one I could get.
I next switched to the manual shutter speed mode to see if I could capture some motion shots with little or no blurring. I forced (yeah, right) some youngsters to play in the snow and snapped them in various stages of the torture. As can be seen from the pics below, I was able to stop the action with no blurring and capture some great moments.
One of my favorite motion shots was when I had an epiphany and remembered seeing some great professional shots of running water. Well, with a little bit of experimentation I was able to capture some running water myself. The two shots below were taken at 1/4000 sec. speed:
Olympus states the closest focusing distance for this lens as 3.9ft. I was well within 1 foot when I took those pictures. I would say it is a testament to the Zuiko lenses that they were able to get such great focus.
The next mode I tried was the manual aperture mode. This one is great for creating shots with a blurred background and heightened foreground object for some really incredible pictures. I happen to be lucky enough to live next to a stream with a variety of flora. There are some berry bushes growing along the bank and I was able to take the pictures below by adjusting the aperture to 22:
It creates an interesting effect with the blurred background and the berries in sharp contrast, don't you think?
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