Olympus E-1 Review.
This camera, in fact this camera company, is a great example of what can happen when an established idea is turned on it’s head. The camera world was, at the time of the E-1’s release, grappling with how to transition from film to digital, and what that meant for the industry as well as the consumers and professionals they were trying to please.
The competition were wrestling digital components into their existing film bodies for a sense of familiarity. However digital sensors were, at the time, often smaller in dimension when compared to the film planes they were replacing. This was not a deal breaker, but it did mean that many of the existing lens lineups of companies going this route were now viewed through a cropped field of view. Wide angle lenses became effectively more normal in their perspectives. This meant new lenses specifically designed for the format were required.
Olympus took a different approach - they had as much experience in the film SLR business as any of their contemporaries, but instead of relying completely on that legacy design they made moves towards a digital-first design. This meant a camera that was designed from the ground up around a digital sensor, without making compromises towards the designs of their past.
The Olympus E-1 was the result of this thought process. Built around a sensor designed by Kodak, the rugged and weather sealed body makes a great first impression when held in the hand. It has an impressive but not oppressive weight, feeling well balanced with all but the longest lenses available for the system. As for the lenses they were also designed from the ground up to fit the Kodak sensor and its smaller Four Thirds design. This meant that the system had the benefit of lenses producing image circles that fill the sensor completely, with complimentary edge to edge sharpness appropriate to the size of the sensor. A zero compromise effort was taken to building lenses that fill the frame of the E-1 with detail and typical Zuiko-level of colour and contrast.
Looking through the viewfinder indicators of the camera’s advancing years start to become more obvious. The viewfinder itself is large and bright with a diopter for helping those with less than perfect eyesight like myself, making it easy to frame up and compose your shot. There are a grand total of 3 focusing points, all of which are based effectively in the middle of the frame. This means that focus and recompose is an essential technique for wrangling the best out of this camera. A small LCD section at the bottom of the viewfinder provides essential shooting information including a meter readout that doubles as an exposure compensation indicator depending on the shooting mode. All expected fair for a DSLR and all very usable.
The images this camera produces have garnered a pretty legendary reputation for their colours. Helped a great deal by the fact that the CCD sensor in this camera is very closely related to the one in another legendary camera, the Leica M8. Having not used a Leica M8 but previously owning a Leica M9, I can’t fully comment on how closely related the images are, but I can definitely testify to the great colours that land on the memory card after passing through this sensor and image processing combination.
However, it is worth noting that there is no in camera black and white mode. This means you cannot preview the images in monochrome until they make their way on to your computer.
Alongside the great colours, and probably contributed to by the great lenses, the CCD sensor seems to pop with details. This is true of all the images I have captured at the camera’s lowest ISO setting of 100. As the sensitivity is increased to 200 or 400 the details begin to get less defined and the colours shift ever so slightly.
In good light the camera rewards you with fabulous colours, images are warm and full of character. This camera probably did a lot to setup what might now be considered the “Olympus-look”.
The one thing about image quality I have yet to mention in this review is the actual resolution of the sensor. The dimensions of the images saved to the memory card read as 1920x2560, in a 4x3 ratio and results in a 5 Megapixel image. In an era where most people consume images on small screens this “limitation” is somewhat mitigated, and personally I like to print collections of photos in books meaning the print size is often small enough for the 5 Megapixels to not impact there either.
There is something to be noted about resolution and its impact on the detail levels visible in the image. It is more noticeable with a camera with a relatively small number of megapixels that subjects in your frame that are closer to the camera make most use of the total number of pixels available. It is a concept that makes logical sense, but is not one I have had to consider with more modern cameras possessing higher megapixels counts. What this means in actual use is that close up shots have more apparent details than distant landscape images do. As an example here is a photo where I focussed the camera on the geese in the mid ground, but the trees in the background lack the opportunity afforded by higher resolutions to correctly record the detail needed for closer inspection. This limitation of the recorded resolution is not representative of the resolution of the lenses, but instead output of the sensor, and is most obviously seen in the zoomed in section of the photo below:
Ultimately this does not impact the quality of the image viewed at more natural viewing distances. Pixel-peepers may be disappointed, a super pixel-dense imaging device the E-1 is not. There are some very cool modern work arounds I have discovered whilst using the camera that may ease the resolution anxiety.
Software has moved forwards in a massive way since the release of the camera. We now live in a time where the RAW files can be enhanced with the power of AI technologies offering enhancements to noise reduction, sharpness and in some cases very believable increases in resolution. Using software by Topaz Labs called Photo AI it is very possible to double the resolution of the files captured by the E-1 if needed.
As I have mainly been sharing the images to Instagram this is not something I have explored with many if any of my the photographs I have published. It is comforting to know that there are options out there. The Photo AI software does allow for very natural looking sharpening and denoising to take place both of which have come in handy for those times where light conditions force the use of the ISO range where the E-1 feels less comfortable.
Closely related to my experience of the camera and its photo making prowess is the joy of discovering the range of lenses available to the system. As I mentioned earlier these are all lenses designed from the ground up for a digital system. They are compact for their relative field of view, in most cases they are very consistent performers across their focal ranges and as part of a now dead system most are available at very compelling used prices.
Again as further compelling evidence of Olympus’ respect for legacy and their customer’s investments the lenses available for the E-1 continue to be usable today via smart adapters offered by Olympus themselves. So the joy of finding a lens I love on the E-1 is doubled when discovering its usablility on a modern OM System OM-1 mirrorless camera.
The highlight of this lens system for me has been a little surprising. The Olympus Digital Zuiko 14-54mm f/2.8-3.5 sits solidly in the upper mid-range of standard zoom lenses made for the system. I have been using the Version 1 of the lens which I believe is optically very similar to the Version 2, which add a more competent, live-view compatible, Silent Wave Drive motor for the focussing system. It is a decent range of focal lengths, equivalent to 28-108mm in 35mm film terms, and the close focus ability is wonderful. A true swiss army knife of usable features for a standard zoom lens. Oh, and its very sharp with good background blur for subject separation when required.
I had previously used Olympus’ film era Zuiko lenses on a variety of modern mirrorless cameras via third party adapters. To no-one’s surprise reading this far into the review of the E-1, and its continued references the company’s ethos towards legacy products, Olympus make an offical adapter for use of film-era lenses on the Four Thirds system cameras. Here the Olympus Zuiko lenses are subject to the same caveats that other companies faced when utilising 35mm Film lenses on “cropped” sensor technologies, but as a concept using Olympus lenses on an Olympus body was very appealing to me. Interestingly, in my search for a good used copy I discovered that OM Systems still stock this adapter, which for a “dead” system is quite commendable!
The process of using the old lenses on the “new” camera was complicated by the E-1’s lack of any accommodation for manual focus lenses. Unlike my experience with mirrorless cameras, where focus-peaking and magnification are usually both readily available, the E-1 relies completely on your own ability to determine what is in focus and what is not. There are apparently split-prism focusing screens available for the camera, but after making such a fuss about it all I can confidently say that, a few mishaps aside, my time with the manual Zuikos on the E-1 was very pleasant and I enjoy the results very much.
After all is said and done would I recommend the Olympus E-1? It is undeniable that aspects of the camera are showing their age. The small low resolution screen on the back of the camera is one example of this.
It is low contrast with terrible viewing angles, and colour representation is also very poor. It is good enough to check that you did indeed capture a picture and offers up to a 4x digital zoom for checking focus. Unfortunately, it does not offer much detail beyond 2x to be useful for this purpose. It does encourage putting a certain amount of faith in the focussing system, and frequently this belief is rewarded as rarely do the images produced miss focus. The odd occasion this does happen it usually user error and not the camera.
Yet any aspects of the camera that were not hampered by technology of the time such as ergonomics and the craft of camera design do not feel dated at all. In fact, the camera still feels delightfully modern and well designed.
The body is fully loaded with buttons, but nothing feels cramped thanks to the generously large body and sculpted grip. Using this as my only camera for the month of January also highlighted how functional this design is even when wearing gloves. The power on off switch is easily swiped by the thumb of the hand gripping the camera. Then the raised front dial is easily turned due to its height but has all the resistance needed to stay put when needed. The stretch needed to reach rear dial is likely due to my smaller hands, but the huge front grip still leaves me enough to hold on to with a small shift of the hand position.
Spinning the camera around to the front, and just next to the E-1 logo itself, is a small white disc-shaped section. This is an exterior White Balance sensor. It largely contributes to the camera’s fantastic automatic White Balance performance with accurate and pleasing balance of colours. If a camera is going to lean slighly one way or the other I would much prefer it to go the way of the E-1 and lean to the warmer side of colours than cooler ones.
Below that is a one touch white balance button. Handy especially if you want to stick to one particular white balance setting but still benefit from the great White Balance read out that automatic modes use. This is especially true if making the most of the JPEG engine in the camera, these are the truest expression of the camera’s character after all.
Taking all of that in, and I realise it is a lot to take in, the camera is just fantastic to use. Wonderful in the hand, images with just enough resolution for most use cases. Aging components mean we may not full know how long we get to spend with old cameras like this one. This particular copy I have been using has its unique quirks. The first few days of use the “Up” arrow key would respond as if I had pressed the “Right” key, meaning navigation of menus for difficult, and erasing images from the card actually impossible. Bizarrely after a few days of use, and constant pressing of the “Erase” key somehow eased this and the problem has completely gone away. These are risks of purchasing old cameras, but these struggles are very much worth pushing through for the joy the camera brings in general.
I was fortunate enough to purchase the camera for £40, but I have seen some examples on eBay and similar sites for many times that amount, so I realise some of my camera joy I have experienced with my E-1 comes from the bargain-find-factor of such a useable camera at such a low price. I still believe that, if you can find the camera at the right price, the E-1 offers all the right elements that form a true classic.
To wrap up, the answer as to whether or not I recommend the Olympus E-1 is yes. With all the previously mentioned caveats taken into account the camera still provided me with so much joy when using it. It also gave me a new respect for my more modern cameras and their list of pro’s and con’s. This was the first month I will be using an old camera for the entire month and I had started this project with a real trepidation, a very real worry that using the older technology would mean I would miss out on certain opportunities. In reality the reverse was true, I actually enjoyed a new set of opportunities, embracing the camera’s flaws and working to overcome them and still get the kind of pictures I would enjoy.
It has given me a revived sense of excitement for the cameras I will use in the coming months, each of which will receive a similar set of blog posts acting as a kind of diary of my experiences with them, culminating in a more long form review such as this. I look forward to exploring them all with you. Until then I will leave you with some of my favourites from my time with the Olympus E-1:
