News

• The Good: Live View LCD screen gives point-and-shoot feel to digital SLR. User-friendly interface. Set shooting modes perform very well most of the time. Live View B mode can be a boon to serious amateurs or professionals. Image stabilization and secondary sensor help in many ways hidden to the user. Captures textures and colours beautifully.
• The Bad: Hefty price point. Inconsistent results in darker settings. LCD screen is darker than normal lighting conditions. Battery takes five hours to charge. Continuous shooting with live view on slows down shooting considerably.
• The Verdict: Live View on a digital SLR is here to stay.
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REVIEW:

The novelty of a digital SLR can go a long way when you factor in the greater control you have over the photos you shoot and the increased quality compared to your average point-and-shoot digicam.

But the point-and-shoot cams always had the advantage of live-view LCD screens that pretty much made the traditional viewfinder obsolete, hence the reason most new point-and-shoot digicams have no viewfinder at all. So, what if you were able to have live view features on a digital SLR?

The Olympus EVOLT E-330 is the first digital SLR to offer just that. A 2.5-inch LCD screen that not only goes into live view mode, but also flips forward and tilts up or down to give you a view when you have to shoot over a crowd or in a tight space.

Without getting into the minute details and specifics of how Olympus was able to do this, the nutshell explanation is that there's a second image sensor that relays the visual information coming through the lens over to the LCD. Because of the dual sensor, the E-330 allows you to shoot in two modes: "Live View A" and "Live View B."

Unless you're a real professional and you want to have a high level of control, Live View B is not something you're likely to try. For one, it entails that you focus manually, and you can zoom in tenfold to accurately gauge that focus. The interesting thing about this is that the quality of the image may actually be better because the light shoots through the lens directly into the main sensor (rather than into mirrors that direct it to the second one on Live View A).

That's not to say that Live View A isn't a worthy option. If anything, it's the more suitable one for those who don't require too much control. This is the standard shooting mode for the E-330, and it does an admirable job of letting you shoot whatever you please.

The autofocus on this mode is excellent and you should have no real problem locking onto whatever your subject matter is. It's also fast, so if you quickly set yourself up to shoot, you're focused in less than a second.

Like any digicam these days, specific shooting sub-modes are offered for better results. You get your usual Landscape, Portrait and Action modes, along with Macro and Night settings. A small button to the right of the LCD shows you the continuous shooting mode where you can fire away at three frames per second — so long as the LCD live view is turned off. When turned on, the live view slows the process down to a crawl, allowing you to shoot at half that rate.

It's also important to keep in mind that the live view doesn't handle dark settings very well. From the very beginning, the screen is a little bit darker than the average screen on a point-and-shoot digital, so you may need to rely on the optical viewfinder at times in order to get the shot you're looking for. But under those circumstances, you might also struggle a bit because the amount of light that passes through to the viewfinder has been diminished a little to accommodate the second sensor.

What this basically means is that dark settings illustrate one of the weaknesses of the E-330, even though there are shooting modes that can overcome them. The built-in flash will pop up when the sensor knows it needs more light, but sometimes it creates a problem when it overcompensates and thinks the settings are darker than they actually are.

Thankfully, this isn't an issue that creeps up often or else it would really sour the experience of trying to shoot at certain times of the day or in certain indoor settings. You can, however, use an external flash (either an Olympus or third-party one) to gain better control of flash-based settings.

It's nice to see that you can manage all your pertinent settings using the LCD by simply pushing the display button on the control panel to the right of the screen. While you can potentially have the info as an overlay over image playback, you can't actually have the overlay while in live view mode. This isn't a bad thing at all, since it's unlikely that you would need both at the same time.

The good thing about this setup is that it takes mere seconds to change things like ISO, shutter speed and the softness/contour meter. And it's a good idea to experiment with different settings to see what the E-330 is capable of, especially since you can't test out a white balance until you see an image you took in playback. One example of this was in the Bahamas where I shot a scene at a beach in landscape mode and in manual settings of my choosing. Surprisingly, the manual settings weren't as good as I expected them to be, while the landscape mode compensated beautifully by fully capturing the blues of the sky and water and the off-whites of the sand. After fiddling and experimenting with the manual settings, I started to get the results I was looking for, but it was good to see that the landscape mode performed so well.

I had the default lens that comes with the E-330 and found it to be better than expected in macro shooting. Part of this is relative because it depends on what you're shooting. When I photographed some flowers and foliage, the contours and crispness of the image were very gratifying. It even performed well when in Live Mode B after a 10x zoom. But when using the macro lens (sold separately), you get some results that are worth the extra effort. Using this lens without a tripod will only make your job tougher, so make sure you have one if you're going that route.

There's an image stabilization feature that helps reduce blurring, no matter what setting you happen to be shooting in. It's not something you'll notice openly, as it's sort of a hidden perk, but better to not take it for granted.

The E-330 has two card slots — one for Compact Flash and the other for XD. It's better to use the CF card, since it's more durable and has better storage capacity at a cheaper price, which you'll have to factor into the overall price of the E-330, since no card comes with the camera. Go with a 512MB or 1GB card to make sure you have room for plenty of shots because storage can fill up quickly. Shooting in RAW mode with a 512MB card only gets you 40 shots, so take that into consideration as well.

With a live view LCD screen and other power-draining features available on the E-330, battery power becomes a big question mark, though I was pleasantly surprised that the battery held up quite well under the circumstances. Olympus says that you can take 400 photos using only the optical viewfinder, 350 with the live view on and only 200 in Live View B. Those numbers aren't bad at all, since they're probably more than most consumers would need anyway. The only downside is that the battery needs five hours to be fully charged again.

The E-330 can definitely be described as a "fun" camera to use simply because you have the option of having most things done for you. It's not overly bulky, it offers a live view for those who love that in point-and-shoot digicams and features an easy-to-use interface.

The price point is a little heavy at $1,300 (Cdn.), which doesn't even include a memory card or any other peripherals that might be needed like an external flash or extra lens. The thing with digital SLRs is that they need a certain amount of time and experimentation for someone to feel at ease with them. You would typically purchase one for the long-term, hoping that it can last you a good five years or more, and it's a good bet that the E-330 could be one of those types of cameras.