Originally Posted by Bean
How's the E300 event last night at Oly's River Point office?
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Dear Oly Enthusiasts,
A late posting as I was helping out shooting some flowers for a friend over the weekend. There was a short period of drizzle but the E1 & the 14-54 kept going despite operating in the drizzle. I was as wet but happy that the camera & lens coped.
Here's a disorganised summary of what happened last Fri.
Having to rush from work & dinner, I was 45 minutes late into the Oly E300 event and entered a roomful (capacity 40) of attendees.
There was a presentation in progress with John Arifin sharing his nature photography experiences with the E1/E300 & the DZ including the yet-to-be released 7-14mm. I remember John as the featured photographer for Oly's E1 roadshow at Suntec last year.
This was followed by a technical presentation by the Olympus in-house guru on the various aspects of the 4/3 system, some of which were shown at Sitex.
Much of the information presented are already available at Oly official site & elsewhere, so I took time looking for potential Oly clubsnappers in the midst of the roundtable. The tone & manner of writing from the clubsnappers does not commensurate with a majority of the age-group present, so much for an informal gathering :-)
Item of specific interest: A sample picture of an dedicated underwater housing for the E300 was shown, UW photographer's take note. That the Supersonic Wave Filter vibrates at 35,000 times a second to bust dust. The top plate of the E300 is strengthened & designed to handle the stress of heavy lenses including the 300mm, so you could pack one along for your world tour :-)
With the conclusion of presentation was a break for snack. Those that stayed from good food at the pantry were rewarded with first hand experience with the E-System. John together with supporting staff from CP brought out 4-5 units of E300 for test rides together with a majority of the ZDs namely the 14-45, 40-150, 14-54, 50-200, 50 Macro. Unfortunately, the silvered ring endowed 150mm was unavailable, neither was the FL36 or the vertical battery grip for the E300.
Although the 11-22, 7-14 lenses were unavailable as well, sample photos were available for scrutiny in print of A2 in size.
John also brought along his camera haversack & showed his STF-22 twin & the SRF-11 ring flash for macrophotography and the 300mm 2.8 was available for handling if one is patient & asked politely :-)
I picked the E300 with the 50mm Macro because I thought that's the closest to an OM1 with an fast 50 and was rewarded with a bright viewfinder image and a very compact manageable package.
Handling - This is just my 1st hands on of an E300 & it's of my opinion, actual experiences will vary. It wasn't a suitable venue then for optical performance testing, so I won't comment on image quality.
As an E1 owner, I've been pampered by the accessibility of many dedicated buttons for common photography tasks. I was initially worried for having one control dial to set the myriad of options for digital photography. But realized the button's are sticky & setting changes in combination with dials were made faster than I had envisaged, even though manual mode & exposure compensation requires taking your eyes from the viewfinder to dial the correction values. I found the rear information display to be sharp & clear under average room lighting conditions that evening. The menu's are generally familiar & I was able to access most of the features of the camera on my own. As intuitive to use as the E300 has been, I have come to value the ergonomics of the E1 even more. But the illuminated AF points of the E300 is something I miss in the E1, the ability to zoom 10x in playback/review to check focus is also a big plus and it zooms much faster than my E1 (4x), such is progress :-)
Built-in Flash - Very well constructed & quick-to-operate. I was happy that subjects taken with the built-in flash photos taken at 3 meters & at eye level were evenly lit & showed little hot spots. The flash doubles an an AF illuminator which strobes in dim light to assist focus. I found this distracting but this shortcoming is not of Oly's alone and is found in a popular digi SLR as well.
The 40-150 lens is very compact & the zoom extension is not intrusive. However, the front element rotates when focusing, so filter users take note. Zoom action is smooth & well damped. It's a real plus for travel photography.
In additional to key members of the sales team, as a show for the importance of the E300 to Olympus, the head for sales for Singapore was present & was chatting informally with the visitors & spared no effort to illustrate the full line of ZDs for the E300. I did inform Oly representatives that topics on Oly use are picking up activity on Clubsnap. I was also requested to inform the forum here that Oly would not be making the MA-1 OM adaptor available here :-(
Lastly, someone called for my nickname at the lift on my way back & it turned out to be Philshots, that makes two identifiable Oly clubsnappers at the event :-) We're off to a good start :-)
Cheers,