Picked it up at The Camera Store here in Calgary; one other person had
already got theirs, and there were five or six more on the "holds"
shelf. First impressions:
Getting the deepeereview stuff out of the way first:
1. Is ISO 3200 clean? No. Is it usable? Very much so.
2. Does IS turn me into a man of concrete with caffiene-free hands?
No. Is it useful? Definitely.
3. The viewfinder's nice, though personally I don't really mind
smaller viewfinders that much; sure, it's not as big as OM bodies, but
it's big enough. Actually, now that I pay careful attention, I think
it's about as big as I want a viewfinder to be -- I can see all the
corners and the info at the bottom, where with an OM4 I have to shift my
eye back and forth to get everything.
4. Body feels nice, it's "at home" in my hands much like the E-1 was.
Niggle #1: the flash popup button is inconveniently located; on the
E-330, it was easy to pop the flash up with my right thumb, on the E-3 I
have to fumble around with my left. Similarly, putting the power switch
on the back seems a bit unnecessary. No PASM dial, but I tend to shoot
in A mode 95% of the time anyway, so I can live with this.
5. Builtin flash isn't much for power, _but_ it doesn't vignette
anything like as much with the 11-22. The E-330's flash is basically
useless with wideish lenses, because the lens gets in the way -- the
E-3's is fine all the way out to 12mm.
6. Live view is nice, not so much for point+shoot-style armslength
use, as for the "kneepod". (squat down, rest camera on knee -- voila, a
much stabler base). The flip-out screen, as with the E-330, is what
really makes this. (and the extra pivotyness means I could theoretically
use LV with the camera pointing off at 90 degrees to the right of me and
still take shots; the left, not so much, the image ends up upside-down)
7. Finally, manual focus in live view has intermediate zoom levels;
the 10x on the E-330 was always that bit too far in, the E-3 has 5/7/10,
which is much more like it.
8. MF through the viewfinder is possible; no split-image screen (boo)
but the matte seems to work okay, I can focus accurately enough to count.
9. AF in the dark seems to work pretty well. And AF with older lenses
is faster than it was with previous bodies. If the lens has to rack all
the way from one to the other, it takes just as long as it ever did, but
as long as you're roughly in focus, it can get the final focussing done
noticeably faster. (now, I picked the thing up at 5:30 today, so I don't
really know about focussing _not_ in the dark yet.. :) ) Ack, though,
the "AF assist" is strobing the flash if you're using the builtin
flash.. With an FL-50, it uses the illuminator on there, but it'll be a
pain having to flip back and forth.
10. It's not a small or light camera. It's noticeably more tiring using
it with a 50-200 on the front than an E-1 or E-330, though it's only 6oz
heavier; that's possibly the 50-200's fault as much as the camera's, though.
Sample shots -- re: points 1 and 2 above, here's some crops from test
shots in the shop, for all your pixel-peeping needs (trust me, you're
missing nothing in the rest of the image worth looking at..)
http://www.danielmitchell.net/temp/e3_sample_1.jpg
ISO 100, 14mm, 1/2.5 seconds, no IS -- shaky hands
http://www.danielmitchell.net/temp/e3_sample_2.jpg
ISO 100, 14mm, 1/2.5 seconds, IS on -- not perfectly crisp, but a lot nicer
http://www.danielmitchell.net/temp/e3_sample_3.jpg
ISO 3200, 14mm, 1/60 seconds. A bit noisy, sure, but definitely usable.
Here's a more colourful ISO 1600 shot; full-size image, so it's a big
file, beware. It seems like shorter exposures give the system less time
to show noise, which I think makes sense? Certainly, looking at some
darker shots, the noise is more noticeable, so it's not just a freebie
to wind the ISO up.
http://www.danielmitchell.net/temp/e3_sample_4.jpg
ISO1600, flash on, 200mm, 1/250th (developed from raw)
Actual photographically interesting shots coming soon, I promise.
-- dan
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