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Olympus E-5 in my hands

iiiNelson

Well-known member
Congrats on the new camera and ISO 3200 looks good and certainly useful at the very least on small prints/ web use.
 

Jorgen Udvang

Subscriber Member
Well, to be honest Jorgen, although I cannot deny the existence of said Bath Tub, I don't have any Gin either (if we buy it the children drink it first), and therefore no tonic.
However this doesn't matter, because I never read manuals, especially those for the E5, because, like you, I don't even have an E-5, let alone it's manual.

However, as a general principle, IF:
1. I did have an E-5
2. I decided to read the manual

Then I think it indubitable that I would go out and buy some Gin and Tonic especially to read it in the bath.

You would probably be able to borrow someone else's bath?

all the best
Nah... I'm not too fond of gin anyway. Do manuals go down well with Islay whisky? Lagavulin isn't too brute and should match the rather smooth operation of an Olympus camera, don't you think?

Bath? No, only foreigners have bathtubs in this country... oh wait... I know a couple of those I think.
 

cam

Active member
Lag goes better with candlelight, as do most of the Islay whiskies... as such, they suck for manual reading but are brilliant for using your camera in manual by a nice toasty fire.
 

Godfrey

Well-known member
Hasn't it been famously stated that if the user has to read the manual, the product is not well-designed?
That's an overstatement, an oversimplification of the goals of good UI.

In the case of a camera, a manufacturer can only make one design and it has to serve a wide variety of different uses as well as a wide variety of different people. So a good goal is to produce something which out of the box and set to the defaults can produce good results (positive feedback) while also having enough depth of features, controls and options to allow it to be customized to both the use demands and the people demands. The design of the interface should be logical, should lead the user from the basic first use to more sophisticated use in a sensible way. It should be easily rememberable for those things used often and its logic should allow quick rediscovery of capabilities and settings infrequently used once the preferred configuration is set up.

The E-5 is like this exactly. It is a complex and sophisticated device with, for most of its capabilities, at least two paths to setting and controlling them. It has a range of customizations on top of its range of features. Coming to it afresh, it produced great pictures right out of the box after simply fitting a battery, card and lens, 100% on the defaults. It took me five minutes to learn the basics of use from manipulating the controls. I could have stopped there and gotten on with it.

(Something like a Leica M9 is almost at the opposite end of the spectrum. Aside from nuances in its image processing system, the M9's functions and features are very limited. It's pretty much as close to the "focus-exposure-frame-expose-wind" as a digital camera can get. What customizations and sophisticated features there are are few, are small, and one can probably learn everything about the syntax of that logic just as quickly from working the controls as you can from reading a manual. But then, you might just miss something then too.)

I prefer to understand the logic more thoroughly. I find this enables me to understand a camera and what I can do with it much more swiftly than any amount of "hunt and peck" discovery can achieve, with any camera of this level of sophistication and complexity. To make it easy on myself, I usually read the manual through once, quickly, then go back and re-read the more interesting sections while I experiment with each of the controls per section directly. I find it helps me learn and understand, "read" the designer's logic very quickly when I do this.

And six months from now, when I encounter a situation where some infrequently used option can make a difference, because I will thoroughly understand the camera's logic I'll find it again very fast ... usually without having to go back to the manual.

I always keep a copy of the camera manual, for any modern camera, in my bag with me when I'm on a shoot nonetheless. Sometimes looking up a function and reading about it is indeed the fastest way to solving a problem. ;-)
 

cam

Active member
Godfrey,

as somebody who had to do tech support for a lot of pig-headed men (yes! i can say that because they didn't like hearing from a woman how to operate their equipment and i occasionally found myself having to ask my male secretary to act as "translator"), i wholeheartedly agree! if more people would RTFM in the first place, there would be a lot less disappointment in products...

i honestly applaud that you do.

(though you don't know what you're missing by not doing the first read-through in the tub :p)
 

jonoslack

Active member
I always keep a copy of the camera manual, for any modern camera, in my bag with me when I'm on a shoot nonetheless. Sometimes looking up a function and reading about it is indeed the fastest way to solving a problem. ;-)
I'm with Cam on this - although not with myself, in that I rarely read manuals, although I do always keep the manual for new cameras in my bag for reference.

But I do write manuals, and it's quite irritating when someone asks a question one has (clearly of course) answered!

Having abandoned Olympus, I'm rather jealous of your new experience with the E5 - I really hope that it's a rip-roaring success (and then they can put something similar in a body like the E1!)
 

RichA

New member
ISO 3200 seems quite usable:

Can't wait to work on files like this with the Lightroom 3 tools from raw!
Speaking of. I was on Olympus's sites and didn't see an upgrade for Viewer or Master that would process the E-5 raws. Aside from what you probably got in the box, is there anything available out there that will?
thanks
 

Godfrey

Well-known member
Speaking of. I was on Olympus's sites and didn't see an upgrade for Viewer or Master that would process the E-5 raws. Aside from what you probably got in the box, is there anything available out there that will?
The version of Olympus Viewer 2 that comes in the box is the only released application software currently able to read E-5 .ORF files to the best of my knowledge. I expect that to change very soon.

However, given that the sensor is very closely related to the E-30 sensor, if you go in with EXIFtool and change the Camera ID to "E-30" in the .ORF files, the E-5 files are immediately usable in Lightroom 3.2. Camera calibration profiles might be off, but that's a simple matter to rectify by using DNG Profile Editor or Xrite Passport software to create an appropriate camera calibration profile.
 

Godfrey

Well-known member
... (and then they can put something similar in a body like the E1!)
I doubt they can, or would even be interested to try. Much of the difference in body size with the E-3/E-5 has to do with the viewfinder and image stabilization system, and was necessary.

With just a little time to work with the E-5 and two months of using the E-1 exclusively before that, my hands have already adapted to the E-5 layout. I picked up the E-1 and it felt different ... Just points out: our musculature and such are much more adaptable than the camera design and manufacturing processes can ever be.

To me, the E-3 was a very well laid out, nicely realized and developed design. Different from the E-1 for sure: a little less organic and more practical. I'm glad they didn't change the E-5 body from the E-3 very much: I liked it immediately when I first handled the E-3 in 2007.
 

cam

Active member
how much bigger is it, Godfrey, compared to the E-1?

oops! you were answering the question as i typed it... nevermind.
 
Thank you Godfrey.
Just a question, the LV shhoting activation is as noisy as it is in E3 or is it usable also in a quiet environment?
Cheers,
Ario
 

jonoslack

Active member
To me, the E-3 was a very well laid out, nicely realized and developed design. Different from the E-1 for sure: a little less organic and more practical. I'm glad they didn't change the E-5 body from the E-3 very much: I liked it immediately when I first handled the E-3 in 2007.
HI Godfrey -
I do agree - I liked my E3 as well. Perhaps what I mean rather than size explicitly is the 'organicness' of the E1 - three points:
1. that feeling of solidity that the E3 was slightly missing
2. such an elegant design on the E1 (E5 looks more utilitarian)
3. The shutter noise . . . but you'll agree with that!
 

Godfrey

Well-known member
I spent yesterday playing with button configuration settings and think I arrived at a good setup. So this morning I took my walk and breakfast with friends as normal and carried the E-5 into the field for the first time.



"If it doesn't make sense, it's not true!"

Olympus E-5 + ZD 11-22mm f/2.8-3.5
ISO 1600 @ f/5.6 @ 1/60 second, 22mm
from the JPEG output, camera defaults on image processing


With the setup as I've made so far, my attention was on content rather than camera. This is a good start.
 

Godfrey

Well-known member
Thank you Godfrey.
Just a question, the LV shhoting activation is as noisy as it is in E3 or is it usable also in a quiet environment?
Sorry, but I've never used Live View mode on an E-3 so I can't really judge whether the E-5 is any quieter in operation. One thing on the E-5 that might make a difference is that I noticed an option to disable Phase Detect focusing in Live View. This might reduce the amount of mirror flapping that goes on ... I don't know for sure.

I don't think any SLR using Live View is going to be "quiet" the way a Micro-FourThirds camera or NEX can be.
 

Godfrey

Well-known member
HI Godfrey -
I do agree - I liked my E3 as well. Perhaps what I mean rather than size explicitly is the 'organicness' of the E1 - three points:
1. that feeling of solidity that the E3 was slightly missing
2. such an elegant design on the E1 (E5 looks more utilitarian)
3. The shutter noise . . . but you'll agree with that!
Hmm.

- I don't feel any difference in 'solidity' ... I might not be as sensitive to that nuance as you. Feels pretty much the same to my hands.

- Looks ... eh? De gustibus non disputandem. I like both, I think they're both wonderful, utilitarian looking hammers.

- The E-5 shutter/mirror sound is brighter and higher pitched than the E-1, for sure. The E-1's shutter/mirror is soft and gentle, it's almost blurred. The E-5 sounds more business-like.
 
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