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Table of Contents01. Introduction |
Raw and Jpeg ThoughtsIn my daily use of a camera I honestly prefer Raw. Even the little E-420 I shoot raw with pictures of my kids because; A - they give me latitude in developing, such as fine adjustments in exposure and White Balance. And B- they also give me a greater Dynamic range with my pictures. However, having the camera at this early stage no raw developer will work with the E-30, so all my comments are based on the Jpeg's. While discussing the RAW images I would like to make a note of my disappointment in that the RAW images are still only 12 bit. At this stage of the game in all reality the RAW images should be at least 14 bit, and in my opinion Olympus and Panasonic are really missing the point of shooting an SLR camera without this ability. The Jpeg's are very nice but in reality I want the power and flexibility that a full feature SLR offers. And after asking for this for the last 4 years, I am quite disappointed that this technology has not reached the fourthirds SLR's to date. (This is a 2 stobe shot of my boys from Thursday morning with the E-30) However, I do not know if I am the target audience for this camera, what Olympus does do very well, perhaps the best in the industry, is produce an SLR which produces incredible Jpeg's. The jpeg's white balance is correct 99% of the time, and exposures are usually spot on. The Auto Gradation increases the overall perceived dynamic range of the camera to nearly the same quality as the raw images. If you want a camera which can automatically produce incredible images, instead of messing with it in post processing then I think that the E-30 is a very good choice of a camera. At least for me, until Adobe supports the E-30 with the DNG raw converter, I would not buy this camera. With ACR 5.2 you can convert the images from the E-30, but no native profile is avalible for the E-30, and at best it is mediocre. Adobe makes no comments about supporting the E-30, and we need to think of it as a bonus. Olympus could very easily solve this issue with using DNG's in their future cameras. I assume I could use Olympus Studio but in all reality over the last few years I have grown to scorn Studio. Though I think in many respects it does a very good job processing files, it simply runs too slow (even on the top end computers of our day, I am not running ancient technology), very hard to add metadata, lacks PSD export, and is even troublesome to install on my computer. Though I continue to hold out hopes for Studio, the lack of effectual updates and awkward controls is very disappointing. Outside of occasionally tethering my camera to my laptop I do not use studio for anything more now a days. |
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