Olympus E 5 12.3MP Digital SLR with 3 inch LCD Body Only Camera and Photo Reviews

-Summary of all Reviews

Average User Rating:

The Olympus E-5 is best of breed.

The pictures are the sharpest I have ever seen at any resolution.
AF-S with the 14-54 II seems to be a bit more sure than the E-30, which would stair-step its focus more than the E-5 does.

The high-res screen is great, the art filters are fun to play with, especially since you can see their effects on the live-view, which is very cool.

Controls seem about right, though I don't like how far to the left the AEL/AFL button is located.

The battery still doesn't have a % usage or "shot counter", this system is so archaic compared to Nikon/Sony/Canon (I've owned/shot them all).

Noise, in VERY LIMITED testing that I've done, is about comparable to my Nikon D90 - which is pretty good I guess, but nothing earth-shattering.
Shooting under tungsten light or using flash, I would suggest changing from "auto" to the apropriate setting (either daylight or flash).

As for noise at high ISOs, the pictures are perfectly clean up to ISO 1600 and clean if you use a noise program at ISO 3200.

The two best art filters are dynamic tone and film grain.
Note that I'm shooting RAW using Olympus Viewer 2.1, as Lightroom 3 doesn't support the E-5 yet.

Live View - Still does mirror flop, won't take the photo without dropping the mirror (boo!).

Video - Decent I guess, I really rarely use it - but I've enjoyed the clips I've done so far.

Overall - A good camera.
It shares some of the same image characteristics, the overall Oly look to the photos, but the increased detail is surprising.
I never liked the extra steps, time, and storage required for raw, and the Olympus processor does a flawless job in camera.

I never used white balance on previous cameras because it always worked lousy.
I find that iso 100-400 in particular seems better than the 620.