Olympus Evolt E520 10MP Digital SLR Camera with Image Stabilization (Body Only)
- 10-megapixel CMOS sensor captures enough detail for photo-quality 18 x 24-inch prints
- Lightweight ergonomic design; body only, lenses sold separately
- Enhanced in-body Image Stabilization with Supersonic Wave Drive technology
- Face Detection and Shadow Adjustment technologies; Perfect Shot Preview
- Compatible with CompactFlash Type I and II, Microdrives, and xD-Picture Cards (not included)
Olympus EVOLT E-520 Digital SLR Body. 10MP, 2.7″ HyperCrystal II LCD, 20 Scene select modes, Built-in Image Stabilization (IS 1, 2 & 3) in a portable body, Autofocus Live View, Face Detection, Shadow Adjustment Technology, Dust Reduction, Perfect Shot Preview, Truepic III, Wireless Flash, Underwater Housing.
List Price: $ 399.99
Price: $ 693.27
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A New Era in DSLR,
I have done quite a lot of analysis before buying this camera, have used Nikon D40, D40x, D80, D200, Canon D350, D400, D450; but finally it was the Olympus E520 I fell in love with. I recently bought this camera in Hong Kong, when it wasn’t even released anywhere in the rest of the world yet. :D
Why did I like it? The ease of use, I have used a prosumer camera for a couple of years now, and was waiting for a camera with similar ease of use, and Olympus heard my prayers.
Technology wise, its one of the best FourThirds system in the market, this has enabled smaller lenses. The Live View is amazing (though I prefer using the optical viewfinder, my wife loves the Live view), it has Face detection and multi-point focus, all I can say is that it is the best as yet (the Canon D450 liveView is really bad), the kit lens is very good too, awesome wide angle. The assisted manual focus is extremely useful; the auto focus is super fast. There are multiple RAW file formats to choose from. The Sensor based Image stabilization works like a charm, better than the optical image stabilization. The playback features are the best, anybody would want to see the photos they clicked a bit closer, it is such a pain to zoom the preview on the Canons and the Nikons, in this even my 7 year old niece can do it. With respect to image quality, you might have seen them on the internet, its comparable to any of the professional cameras.
One small drawback i have noticed is the built in flash, its not as powerful as the Nikon, though we can increase the flash power, but the default setting is not as powerful as the Nikon.
You can checkout my photostream on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/phalgunp/tags/e520/
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|E510 / E520 | Awesome – Gem of the mid level DSLR:,
Though I have E510. I actually tried and tested the E520 as well and picked E510 for the 2 kit lens deal and the extra features E520 has over E510 which I rarely care about. I thought to add my E510 review under this to give the readers a better idea about how the Olympus E510/E520 wins over the Canons XSi and Nikon D80 we tested. Hope this helps.
Myself and a Canon lover Friend and a Nikon lover Cousin were hunting for DSLRs. We had Film SLRs and few Point & Shoot Digis. We don’t want to spend $1500+ for the DSLR and was waiting for the price to come down. When it reached $1000 mark, we started hunting for it and tried out few DSLR models in-stores by carrying our own flash memories and took few sample shots at the same lighting, focal length, ISO, f-Stop and Shutter and narrowed down to most people(s) three choices – Olympus E510, Canon XSi and Nikon D80. I went with E-510 right on the spot after looking at the images on the digital PC monitor in just 4 week end hunting. The other two contemplated a while and my friend went with Canon XSi and my cousin chose D80 as he wanted to use his old Nikon lenses and gears.
On a fine evening we got our stuffs ordered online. As soon we returned from work, we were excited to experiment our choices.
Right out of the box results: (No tweaking)
E-510 – Great Outdoor results with very good natural color processing well exposed. Indoor shots were good natural color tones with a bit dull and underexposed.
XSi – Great Outdoor and Indoor results with very little pink tinted color processing with a good exposure.
D80 – Great Outdoor results with little blue tinted color processing. Indoor results with very little blue tinted color processing with a good exposure.
You can see the pink and blue tint obvious on the skin tone and on the white base subjects. We actually compared the images captured by these three with what we saw with bare eyes. We all observed this very little tone changes when tried out at stores and agreed upon the myth that “Every brand has it’s own way and nothing is perfect”. But still it’s too early to decide which one is best.
We tried it every evening as soon we come back and with little tweaking as suggested by the reviewers and professionals. In just 3 days – I made everyone to think that – I WON. Still those guys wanted to give a try because some times the results from Canon XSi and Nikon D80 will have the same color as E510 in long shots and when occasionally (say like one in 100 shots) E510 underexposes the skin tones will look greyish. We almost go as a group for all the functions/festivals and fill with flashes everywhere :)
After 3 months of coutinuous use at the same places, here is our findings:
Speed: XSi is better than E510 and D80. but thats for just 6-7 frequent shots. after that, the XSi will pop up with “BUSY” icon. It is famous and you can see the complaints in Amazon reviews. The other to will be steady through out the the session. no BUSY nothing.
Color Tone: E510 is more natural across the lighting conditions. Indoor shots need to have exposure compensation set to either +0.3 or +0.7
Indoor Photos: E510 is a bit dull and underexposed right out of the box but after a little tweaking it just blows the other two out of the window with very natural color tones and bright images. It actually chooses the right ISO required where as the Canon XSi always chooses ISO 400 when using flash I don’t know why it is set like that.
Dynamic Range: Though the pro reviewers say, D80 is more dynamic we haven’t came across a situation to prove it. Under most common outdoors shooting, we all three got almost identical resluts and we liked the E510 processing much better than the other two.
ISO:
upto ISO 400, E510 is noise free. It get’s a slight noise pushing in at ISO 800 and at ISO 1600 noise is obvious. Canon XSi is noise free till ISO 1600. Nikon D80 is noise free till ISO 800 and at ISO 1600 it introduces a little noise. It is worth to be noted that we haven’t seen a situation that we need to use more than ISO 400 under normal indoor/outdoor common user needs. We actually forced the camera to use ISO 800 and ISO 1600 just to see the results where the camera picked ISO 400 by it’s own when you leave it to the camera choise in ISO. This is actually a dark night shot on the river bank pointing the camera at the lighted buildings on the other side of the river and the situation is really dark.
Auto Focus: E-510 locks on for sharp focus almost 99% of the time but hunts for focus at low light with too much flash strobes for 4-5 seconds drving you nuts. XSi is zippy but occasionally the focus is not properly locked. When you view on the camera display it looks fine but when blow up in the monitor, it’s unfocused. Nikon D80 had the most mis focus. You can see these…
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