olympus e330 "great" features???

[rottenkiwi]

First, I am an E-500 owner because I did not want to pay extra for the live view and did not like the look of the camera (sorry guys, I still think it is an ugly camera). Anyway, point by point answers of what I know, or believe I know.

1.) H could not have moved the focusing point only the small square that shows the zoom area of the live view. The E-330 has just like the other Oly three fixed focusing points. None are movable.

2.) Should not have anything to do with live view. Light needed to focus, if there is enough the camera can focus, if not then it vill never focus. The signals may be amplified in the display so it vill be easier to focus manually but you still need to have high ISO.

3.) What does that prove? Live view is useful if the camera is held over a crawd because it lets you compose the image. I have no problem to do that with my E-500, just need to practice and take several shots in some cases. The E-330, like the other Oly cameras has no anti shake, so if you hold the camera over your head long enough your hands will shake. Sharpness is fixed by the auto focus and the shutter speed combination. The higher ISO the higher shutter speed. If you have a bright lens that helps to reduce the needed ISO.

Some other points to consider is the power needed to feed the LV display. As far as I know it takes a lot of extra juice. One fully charged battery gives me 4-500 images with some mixed use of flash / no flash. Normally I have the LCD off except when I make some major changes or if I want to check some test images at the start of a shooting event just to see that things are not too far off. Histogram is a great help when starting shootings, especially indoors. LCD is not like a large screen or printed image, so it can only do part of the job.

Didn't he demonstrate the E-500?

BTW, the E-330 supposed to handle noise better than the E-500 on the other hand, you loose 1 megapixels because the 330 is on 7M while the 500 is 8M. There are also several other issues on the E-330 which are not seens on the E-500. In fact, glad to tell you, so far I have not heard any problems related to E-500. I think it is a very good camera, it replaces well my ex OM2n, even if there are some functions I would like to have which I had on my old film camera, I do not regret my choise. But you have to decide if what you want is a dSLR with P&S capabilities and if you would have use and need for the luxury of live view.

Well, what Bluewhite meant by the "moveable" small square box, its the main feature in Live View B mode. By pressing the Info button (in LV B mode), u can move the square box around the LCD screen and select the area you wanna do the 10x magnifying and do some very fine focusing. It a VERY useful function when you are doing macro shots.

Trust me, you'll discovered a new world when you fully utilized the LV function. When I went outing shotting some flowers with friends, the only response i get from them is "Geess, I wish my camera can do that" cos they cant shot the flower from that angle even though they are already lying straight on the ground. I'm not encouraging that ALL shot must be taken from weird angle, but who knows, you might discover something new.

As I mentioned before, Live View was not meant to replace the view finder, its just something extra from the creative Olympus crew that opens up a new perspective to the world of photography.

I use the viewfinder most of the time, LV B mode for macros. In fact, Olympus can take out the LV A mode, not very useful i think.

E-500 is a great camera, it was my first option at first.

Nvr regret using the E-System and the E-330.

 

[tomcat]

I use the viewfinder most of the time, LV B mode for macros. In fact, Olympus can take out the LV A mode, not very useful i think.

For me, I find the Mode A more useful. Mode B is only suitable for shooting macros of subjects that cannot move. Try shooting macros of insects or portraits of cats & dogs with Mode B and you will see what I mean. The shutter delay and the loud double slapping of the mirrors before exposure can take place will make it really difficult if not impossible to take such shots. Mode A would allow such shots to be taken much, much more easily... and successfully.

The L1 has only LiveView Mode B and that together with the non-articulated LCD screen practically ensured that I never use LiveView on that camera. How I miss not having mode A on the L1 !

 

[OlyFlyer]

Well, what Bluewhite meant by the "moveable" small square box, its the main feature in Live View B mode. By pressing the Info button (in LV B mode), u can move the square box around the LCD screen and select the area you wanna do the 10x magnifying and do some very fine focusing.

That is exactly what I meant. The E-500 can be used the same way, only not live but after the shot is taken. But still, even if the LCD is of very high quality, nothing beats a good optical view finder. I would gladly spend another $300 if my camera could get the same vf as my OM2n had, large and bright.

It a VERY useful function when you are doing macro shots.

I would be a fool to deny that. Not many people love to crawl in dirt over ants to take a macro, so for that part it is definitely very useful.

Trust me, you'll discovered a new world when you fully utilized the LV function. When I went outing shotting some flowers with friends, the only response i get from them is "Geess, I wish my camera can do that" cos they cant shot the flower from that angle even though they are already lying straight on the ground. I'm not encouraging that ALL shot must be taken from weird angle, but who knows, you might discover something new.

As I mentioned before, Live View was not meant to replace the view finder, its just something extra from the creative Olympus crew that opens up a new perspective to the world of photography.

I use the viewfinder most of the time, LV B mode for macros. In fact, Olympus can take out the LV A mode, not very useful i think.

Yes, it is definitle true, I agree on all except the last sentence. That may be true for you but it would not be for me. While I do have a very good display, it is mainly used for settings and histogram. I never chimp, check a few images at the start of a shooting but not during and definitely not after each picture. I have a lot of different auto functions but mostly use manual. Every time I go fully Auto I get disappointed by the results. It is not that it is not good, just that I can do better if I needed to and want to. I don't think Live view would improve my shooting but definitely would give me less pain in some situations.

 

[tomcat]

That is exactly what I meant. The E-500 can be used the same way, only not live but after the shot is taken. But still, even if the LCD is of very high quality, nothing beats a good optical view finder. I would gladly spend another $300 if my camera could get the same vf as my OM2n had, large and bright.

What Bluewhite and rottenkiwi meant was that in the initial LiveView Mode B display screen, there is a small focussing square that is originally set at the centre position of the screen.

Press the INFO button and the part of the display represented by the small focussing square is enlarged 10X.

This enlarged view can then be moved without constraint from the position representing the centre of the original display to anywhere else, even to the corners if desired, using the cursor arrow pad (with the up, down, left, right directional arrow heads). When the final position is reached, press the OK button to set it.

The lens is then manually focussed using the enlarged view at its final position. What most reviewers liked about the use of the LiveView Mode B for macro photography was that this enlarged view display is of extremely high resolution (unlike a somewhat similar feature in some other P&S digicams like the Panasonic LC1 which has a rather fuzzy enlarged view display) and allows for very fine manual focussing. This is very useful in macros as the DOF can be very shallow and this high resolution enlarged view allows for very fine control as to where in the small area we want the camera to focus exactly on.

When manual focussing is completed, press the shutter release to take the photo.

 

[rottenkiwi]

What Bluewhite and rottenkiwi meant was that in the initial LiveView Mode B display screen, there is a small focussing square that is originally set at the centre position of the screen.

Press the INFO button and the part of the display represented by the small focussing square is enlarged 10X.

This enlarged view can then be moved without constraint from the position representing the centre of the original display to anywhere else, even to the corners if desired, using the cursor arrow pad (with the up, down, left, right directional arrow heads). When the final position is reached, press the OK button to set it.

The lens is then manually focussed using the enlarged view at its final position. What most reviewers liked about the use of the LiveView Mode B for macro photography was that this enlarged view display is of extremely high resolution (unlike a somewhat similar feature in some other P&S digicams like the Panasonic LC1 which has a rather fuzzy enlarged view display) and allows for very fine manual focussing. This is very useful in macros as the DOF can be very shallow and this high resolution enlarged view allows for very fine control as to where in the small area we want the camera to focus exactly on.

When manual focussing is completed, press the shutter release to take the photo.

Yes, yes, finally....... Tomcat, thanks

 

[cjtune]

That is exactly what I meant. The E-500 can be used the same way, only not live but after the shot is taken. But still, even if the LCD is of very high quality, nothing beats a good optical view finder. I would gladly spend another $300 if my camera could get the same vf as my OM2n had, large and bright.

I think there's this 3rd-party LCD 'angle-finder' that sells for US$200+ that attaches to Canon and Nikon eyepieces and effectively makes them 'Live-view'. But they are bulkier.

Now that I seem to use the view finder more, I too would like a bigger, brighter, viewfinder...

 

[cjtune]

BTW, the E-330 supposed. to handle noise better than the E-500 on the other hand, you loose 1 megapixels because the 330 is on 7M while the 500 is 8M. There are also several other issues on the E-330 which are not seens on the E-500. [\QUOTE]

Ugly noise bands... to the OP, if you plan to use it for a lot of low-key high ISO shots, please test out the candidate E-330 throughly first to see if the bands are agreeable to you.
Check out my thread on the "Horizontal Noise Banding" issue in this forum to get more background info.

 

[OlyFlyer]

I think there's this 3rd-party LCD 'angle-finder' that sells for US$200+ that attaches to Canon and Nikon eyepieces and effectively makes them 'Live-view'. But they are bulkier.

Now that I seem to use the view finder more, I too would like a bigger, brighter, viewfinder...

As far as I know that works on Oly also. Have seen a link a while ago showing the demo also but I am very sceptical about that since it is just a video camera connected to an LCD display. I did some experimenting with a webcam some time back in May. I could make it work but could not find a way to connect it to my Ipaq pocket PC, so the project is killed. Also the quality was not good enough to be able to use it for manual focus.

I think optical vf is always (or for a very long time to come) going to beat any lv LCD display. It is also very difficult to use it for fast moving objects because it is not easy to eliminate the lag. Even my digital video camera has problem with it when I am on an air show. It has problems to handle fast moving planes even though there is nothing wrong with my way of paning and following the subjects.

I would like to get a proper, large and bright optical vf. That would even eliminate the need for zooming in on small details. If the mirror bay was possible to exchange to a vertical type that was common on some old film cameras than the live view would not have many pluses any more. Anyway, I would gladly spend a few hundred $$$ on better optical vf but not a cent on any electronic vf and once it will be on all cameras I hope the optical vill still be there since that is the only real live view actually. Everything else is just synthetic and processed.

 

[OlyFlyer]

What Bluewhite and rottenkiwi meant was that in the initial LiveView Mode B display screen, there is a small focussing square that is originally set at the centre position of the screen.

Press the INFO button and the part of the display represented by the small focussing square is enlarged 10X.

This enlarged view can then be moved without constraint from the position representing the centre of the original display to anywhere else, even to the corners if desired, using the cursor arrow pad (with the up, down, left, right directional arrow heads). When the final position is reached, press the OK button to set it.

The lens is then manually focussed using the enlarged view at its final position. What most reviewers liked about the use of the LiveView Mode B for macro photography was that this enlarged view display is of extremely high resolution (unlike a somewhat similar feature in some other P&S digicams like the Panasonic LC1 which has a rather fuzzy enlarged view display) and allows for very fine manual focussing. This is very useful in macros as the DOF can be very shallow and this high resolution enlarged view allows for very fine control as to where in the small area we want the camera to focus exactly on.

When manual focussing is completed, press the shutter release to take the photo.

Yes that is what it is in E-500 also except that it is not live view, so what you can do is take a picture and then zoom in and move the magnified spot around with the arrows, or just like you say move the little square around in the bigger picture and than click OK to have a larger view of the spot. Maximum magnification is 14x in E-500. That is one way, another is to use MF bracketing (page 74 in Advanced manual). I think that is actually faster than live view, find the spot, zoom in and focus. With 2.5 images a second the maximum 7 is taken after about 3-5 seconds (more in RAW than in jpeg) and in that short time I don't think you can do all that with live view.

Another way of working which I believe is also faster than the live view zoom is the way I work without lv, that is the old traditional way before AF and digital cameras. I use only the center spot, aim at what I want to focus on, half press to lock all the setings, move the camera to correct composition and first then press fully. Very fast and the only thing to practice on is the pre-composition part. Zoom shall not be changed after the button is half pressed, that may bring everything out of focus again. I would hate to start a fight but I think that Live View as a focusing aid will only impress P&S people who want to move to dSLR but don't want to leave the display. I see no use for it there.

But there is no argument against live view for macro or actually even studio photography. Strange that nobody mentions the studio use. It must be quite a bit easier to get the right composition both for products and for portraits. Even in landscape photography I think live view should be great to avoid having to bend over and lean forward to be able to see the image composition. Actually, maybe for most tripod photography live view works great.

I think that the thread starter may not have received the correct information about the moving around of focus point due to the salesman's lack of knowledge. I have no doubt that those who have the E-330 has all the knowledge about that and they know that it is not actually the focus point that is moved around but a spot that you value higher and what you do is actually you force the camera to focus out of focus somewhere else than where the actual focus points are. That is important since there are actually cameras (as I have heard) with movable focus points, none are Oly. But it seems that the salesman is very eager to sell the E-330, not even bothered to demonstrate the E-500.

 

[tomcat]

Yes that is what it is in E-500 also except that it is not live view, so what you can do is take a picture and then zoom in and move the magnified spot around with the arrows, or just like you say move the little square around in the bigger picture and than click OK to have a larger view of the spot. Maximum magnification is 14x in E-500.

Gee... that's not the same thing, is it? With the E-330, we are talking about using LiveView Mode B to fine-tune the exact point of manual focus before taking the picture. With the E-500, you are talking about viewing a particular part of a magnified display of an image during playback, something that all DSLRs are actually capable of doing anyway. :dunno:

 

[rottenkiwi]

Maybe a good look at this will clear things up

http://www.olympus-esystem.com/dea/products/e330/feature/index.html

 

[OlyFlyer]

Gee... that's not the same thing, is it? With the E-330, we are talking about using LiveView Mode B to fine-tune the exact point of manual focus before taking the picture. With the E-500, you are talking about viewing a particular part of a magnified display of an image during playback, something that all DSLRs are actually capable of doing anyway. :dunno:

YES YES and YES!

That is what I also say, one is before (E-330) the other is after (E-500). None of which I find very useful, definitely not worth paying extra for. But all depends on what ones individual needs are.

 

[drakon09]

Well, we all are actually agreeing with each other.

Just a little bit off-frequency. ;p

 

[philshots]

... after 6 months of using the camera, only 1 regret....the E-330 is heavy. other than that, it's just a fantastic camera...

The noise reduction and high ISO may cause a banding on blurred/ soft background. cjtune and myself have experience that with our E-330. This banding, so far, have not occurred in any of the daylight shots.

Hello Blu-By-U,

The e330 may be a little heavy, but with some practise, you will soon get used to its weight. I own a c8080; now it feels like a toy after handling the 330 for a while. If you get a e330 recently (firmware upgraded to 1.2), the "banding/ soft background" should not be as serious as it is reported. I see "acceptable" banding at iso 1600. But in real life, I don't shoot at iso 1600 often. Like what Tomcat has explained, banding is not a Olympus problem, other dSLR also suffer from it.

If noise reduction makes your shots a little soft, sharpen it using PS We have more control this way. This should set many a hearts at ease should they want to get the e330

cheers,
Phil

 

[cjtune]

Hello Blu-By-U,

If you get a e330 recently (firmware upgraded to 1.2), the "banding/ soft background" should not be as serious as it is reported. I see "acceptable" banding at iso 1600. But in real life, I don't shoot at iso 1600 often. Like what Tomcat has explained, banding is not a Olympus problem, other dSLR also suffer from it.

I have handled 5 E-330 bodies and all but on 1 I'm sure it's at FW v1.2 and they all have banding to some degree. Acceptable or not depends on the user. Acceptability to me means both the severity (how noticeable) and likelihood (how frequent) the banding turns up. Shoot at ISO800+ and in high contrast or low key settings and you'll be summoning up the evil bands from the netherworld. It's not just a ISO1600 problem. Seems more likely to be a hardware issue as I have noticed two populations of E-330 with distinctly different noise band characteristics. One being much worser than the other. My first E-330 was of this population and was subsequently exchanged by Oly Support for a new body from the other better-off population.

Other DSLRs do suffer from it. D200, 20D, 30D, 5D, you name it. Difference is, there were public notifications of commitments to fix it. Also, do you want this to be a 'normal' behaviour of any camera? BTW, do any of the cheaper P&S out in market now with ISO1000-3200 have banding??

To me, I've simply resigned to be fact that Olympus cannot address this issue with the E-330 anytime soon and just try to use my E-330 to the fullest. Oly Support have tried their best of their ability and responsibility and was (is still?) probably also as confounded as I was to this issue initially so I don't feel buggering them anymore will result in any more resolution to this issue. Oly Support S'pore has fully communicated this to their Japanese HQ as I was told.

 

[Blu-By-U]

Let's hope that the engineer I talk to in Oly M'sia keep his promise to look into this issue too. He have been directed to this thread and he did mention that I am so far the only person complaining of this issue.

 

[microcosm]

Let's hope that the engineer I talk to in Oly M'sia keep his promise to look into this issue too. He have been directed to this thread and he did mention that I am so far the only person complaining of this issue.

Since you are the only person complaining about this issue, they should then shut you up by giving you a free upgrade to the E-pro when it is released... LOL. :bsmilie:

 

[OlyFlyer]

Since you are the only person complaining about this issue, they should then shut you up by giving you a free upgrade to the E-pro when it is released... LOL. :bsmilie:

If that happens I will be starting to find banding on my E-500 and so will a few hundred(thousand)s more.

 

[drakon09]

Hmm, I wonder what will they offer me if I complained about my E-1... :think:

Wouldn't mind another actually. :bsmilie:

 

[Blu-By-U]

dream on, dream on...:

me coming into S'pore on Saturday, leaving on Tuesday...any meet up? or Oly photo outing along Orchard??