Olympus might release firmware upgrade to resolve ISO1600 problem

[apex]

Sorry if this is really an old news! Lolz Just happen to surf into this website








Saturday, May 28, 2005 - Page updated at 07:35 a.m.

Getting Started

Zooming in on Olympus' digital DSLR camera

By Linda Knapp

Special to The Seattle Times

The compact consumer cameras I've used in the past year or two are excellent.

However, their capabilities are limited. They can't capture indoor action without a flash, most can't shoot at ISO 800 or 1600, and their fixed zoom lenses can't get close-ups when far away.

To accomplish such feats, it takes a more capable camera with interchangeable lenses — a single-lens reflex (SLR) camera.

So when I began looking for a digital SLR (DSLR) camera to suit avid amateurs like myself, Olympus offered to let me try its Evolt-300 ($800 body only) with a range of lenses — the Zuiko ED 14-45mm (28-90mm film camera equivalent) f/3.5-5.6 ($250), the 40-150mm (80-300mm equivalent) f/3.5-4.5 ($180), and the 50-200mm (100-400mm equivalent) f/2.8-3.5 ($1,000).

Olympus DSLR camera systems are designed from scratch as completely digital, which means the camera, lenses and flash units can be upgraded to take advantage of improved technology simply by downloading firmware. For example, there have been firmware improvements for color and low-light focusing capabilities.

Olympus now offers 10 digital lenses with three more coming by the end of the year. Digital lenses are designed to work with pixels rather than film and said to be better able to maintain sharpness and color definition, especially near the edges when shooting with a wide-angle lens.

Olympus DSLR cameras use a 4:3 aspect ratio rather than the 3:2 ratio others use, which means the Olympus sensor and images are slightly more square than the longer shape used by Nikon and Canon, for example.

One reported advantage of the 4:3 ratio is it can support lenses that are slightly smaller and lighter with a large aperture that can maintain sharpness across the whole frame.

Unique to Olympus DSLR cameras is the Supersonic Wave Filter, which vibrates at startup (35,000 times a second) to remove dust from the image sensor that could otherwise appear on the images.
Dust in the camera isn't a widespread problem in consumer cameras with fixed lenses, but with DSLR cameras, every time you remove a lens the camera is open to collect dust, which can be a problem.

Some of the Evolt's other features include 8 million pixels, built in pop-up flash, support for CompactFlash and Micro Drive storage media, storage of RAW and JPEG files of different sizes, auto and manual focus, exposure settings that include automatic, manual, shutter priority, aperture priority, as well as programmed portrait, macro, landscape, night and sports settings.

Now let's move on to how the camera performs in this photographer's hands.

When the Evolt arrives, I charge up the battery, set the date and time, load my 1GB CompactFlash memory card and notice it can hold 180 images in SHQ (super high quality) JPEG and 72 images in RAW. I twist on the 40- to 150-mm lens and start shooting.

Generally, I shoot with the flash off and the exposure setting on shutter priority. For indoor family shots, I usually start with the shutter at 1/125 and the ISO at 400.

After checking the first shot on the view screen I may have to reduce the shutter speed or increase the ISO (or both) to get enough light for a decent picture. Today, these settings seem to work since there's light coming through the windows.

Later, I take the Evolt with a long telephoto lens to my daughter's karate dojo. There I need a faster shutter speed (around 1/250) and a higher ISO (800-1600) to get enough light.

Back at home, I import the images from the camera to my iPhoto Library and open them for editing with Photoshop Elements. The family portraits look good with a wide range of tonal quality and color.

The action shots I'm able to shoot at ISO 400 or 800 look quite good, but when I have to push the ISO to 1600, the images are a bit noisy. (Noise is the artifacts and mottling that appears on the image when there isn't enough light and the ISO is high.) Photoshop Elements is able to clean up much of the noise, but not all.

An Olympus spokesperson notes that the company is aware of the ISO noise issue and improvements are likely to come in firmware updates.

I've been using the Evolt a lot lately (mainly indoors), and the results are fairly consistent — excellent, except when I have to push the ISO to 1600 and when I shoot with a telephoto lens and do additional cropping.

Those images aren't all keepers. Still, my consumer camera can't even come close to capturing this kind of flash-free indoor action.

In sum: The Evolt handles all but the toughest challenges very well.

If you don't mind shooting with a flash and don't use a long telephoto lens, this camera is an excellent choice and costs less than the Nikon and Canon equivalents, for example. For more detailed technical reviews of the Evolt-300, go to www.dpreview.com and www.imaging-resource.com.

The concluding sentence of the Imaging Resource review summarizes my opinion: "If you're shopping for a digital SLR, and don't already own a bagful of Canon or Nikon lenses, the Olympus E-300 Evolt deserves a close look."

Next, I'll try the Nikon D70s, and that will be the last DSLR before I actually pick one and, I hope, help you choose for yourself. Stay tuned.

Write Linda Knapp at lknapp@seattletimes.com; to read other Getting Started columns, go to: www.seattletimes.com/gettingstarted

Copyright © 2005 The Seattle Times Company

Credit: http://www.photographyblog.com/index..._at_photoxels/

[bariq]

hmmm for E-300, the sensor is the problem. As compacting 8mp onto a small ccd sensor always causes the noise problem. Well i think oly can only come up with a strong noise reduction algorithm is all.

[apex]

Originally Posted by bariq hmmm for E-300, the sensor is the problem. As compacting 8mp onto a small ccd sensor always causes the noise problem. Well i think oly can only come up with a strong noise reduction algorithm is all.

Yah I agree and we can't expect much from a firmware upgrade! But at least we see some hope in reducing the noise.

[chii]

The Noise is actually a sensor characteristic, a good work around solution would be to use photoshop to reduce the noise of each colour channel.

[apex]

Originally Posted by chii The Noise is actually a sensor characteristic, a good work around solution would be to use photoshop to reduce the noise of each colour channel.

Yes, I understand that the noise is always there and can nv be total remove.

Care to share the step in photoshop? I not very good in PS

[tao]

do not agree totally that the noise is fully due to the sensor, it has got to do with the processing and noise removal algorithm, in which canon gets it 'right' but you do get pictures that look rather plasticky and less detailed.

[chii]

Originally Posted by apex Yes, I understand that the noise is always there and can nv be total remove. Care to share the step in photoshop? I not very good in PS

okie.

Based on the review from Dpreview of the E-300, u would be able to tell from the "RGB noise graph" and the "RGB channels compared, ISO 400"

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/olympuse300/page17.asp

the red, green & blue channels are pretty noisy.

by using the noise reduction function in photoshop, u should be able to reduce the RGB noise per channel, though u might need some tweaking to find the sweet spot.

hope this helps

[chii]

Originally Posted by tao do not agree totally that the noise is fully due to the sensor, it has got to do with the processing and noise removal algorithm, in which canon gets it 'right' but you do get pictures that look rather plasticky and less detailed.

Yes, I agree that canon got the NR alogorithm right at the expense of plasticky pics & some detail loss.

But one has to see the design intent of the design team working on the project, prehaps the team was leaving the choice of how the end-user would like to remove the digital noise.

This could be due to the fact that what you see on the monitor is not exactly what you would see in Print.

cheers
chii

[nightpiper]

Originally Posted by tao do not agree totally that the noise is fully due to the sensor, it has got to do with the processing and noise removal algorithm, in which canon gets it 'right' but you do get pictures that look rather plasticky and less detailed.

i don't agree with what u mentioned on the 1st line. Canon's pics don't look plasticky at all. if a blind test is done, i bet u wudn't see that plasticky efx.

however Canon did get it right becos CMOS has patterned noise characteristics. this was mentioned by people who work in the imaging aquisition industry. CCD has random noise (& better signal output) so its very difficult to clean it up. an analogy i can think of is movie films. some film comes with an audio track (very expensive) & in order for the audio to be cleaned from the film spool clicking sound, a patterned audio filter is applied & its very very effective. this has been done since the old days of "Gone with the wind".

for me, i wud prefer to have the quality from a CCD any time any day.

[ykkok]

I do notice that some cameras lower down sharpening when they're set to higher ISO settings. Guess, this will slightly improve noise level.

Try comparing some shots with the same high ISO settings but different level of sharpening, say -2, 0 and +2.

[tao]

Originally Posted by nightpiper i don't agree with what u mentioned on the 1st line. Canon's pics don't look plasticky at all. if a blind test is done, i bet u wudn't see that plasticky efx. however Canon did get it right becos CMOS has patterned noise characteristics. this was mentioned by people who work in the imaging aquisition industry. CCD has random noise (& better signal output) so its very difficult to clean it up. an analogy i can think of is movie films. some film comes with an audio track (very expensive) & in order for the audio to be cleaned from the film spool clicking sound, a patterned audio filter is applied & its very very effective. this has been done since the old days of "Gone with the wind". for me, i wud prefer to have the quality from a CCD any time any day.

I see, so that is CMOS advantage, but I stand by my statement that Canon's way of noise removal does results in more plasticky images such as skin tones at times. but if you take images in RAW and do postprocessing diligently, great results can be had from Canon's DSLRs and you don't get the plasticky problem.

interesting that you mentioned that CCD has better signal output.

translated to realworld difference, what does that give us? better DR or what?

[nightpiper]

if u compare the jpgs straight from the cam, definitely there's a quality issue here. RAW is what i m looking at as a fairer comparison, sorry i didn't make myself clear enuf.

better signal output in CCD translate to better tonality in real world. as for DR, it depends of the type & make of that particular CCD. imagine u r using a Leaf Valeo 22 medium format digital back, u get what i mean?

i read somewhere long time ago that the signal in CCD is measured in terms of microvolts, so if there's higher output, definitely better useable signal. also there r other problems as well, eg pixel distortion, signal distortion, dark current, electrons overflow, etc. so if u r dealing with very weak signal, it makes a lot of sense to have higher & better quality output.

let me try to put it in a more obvious way. for eg, say CCD A has an output of 1microV max before saturation, CCD B or CMOS B has 0.7microV max before saturation. now if each sensor has 12bit data output, u will have to divide the 1uV & 0.7uV into 4096 levels. how big is each level? in this case, u can see that the higher the signal, the less error u get. of cos in real world, the signal will be boosted before sampling but its still very much the same. let say u boost the signal to 10uV & the other to 7uV, then divide it by 4096 levels.

other problems will come in as u try to boost a very weak signal high as well (distortion, noise, etc). there's also a limit of how weak a signal consumer electronics can process (not talking about the physics labs in NASA or MIT). if it gets too weak, the signal is either thrown away or substituted with arbituary values.

i think u can see how the FFT CCD from kodak performs in the Oly website. u can have a good idea there. & having a higher output with more real data, is also the reason why Oly E1 sys RAW is 10MB whereas others' 6MP DSLR is only 7+MB, same for E300 vs 20D RAW file size.

hope i clear some doubts.

[ed9119]

any news on this firmware yet?

[hammer_400]

maybe they will do something like on the d2x, options for NR OFF, NR Norm, and NR Agressive...

[tao]

Originally Posted by hammer_400 maybe they will do something like on the d2x, options for NR OFF, NR Norm, and NR Agressive...

if they do that, that will be fantastic... JPEG performance is the only thing stopping me from splashing $$$ on an E-300.