Camera Labs

UPDATE: OLYMPUS E-620 REVIEW NOW ONLINE!

http://www.cameralabs.com/reviews/Olympus_E-620/

Gordon



Hi everyone, ahead of our upcoming full review of the Olympus E-620, I thought you might enjoy seeing a preview of the High ISO Noise results, compared against the Canon EOS 450D / XSi and the Nikon D90. Remember the new Nikon D5000 shares the same sensor and imaging pipeline as the D90, so the results seen on this page are indicative of what we may expect from Nikon's latest.

http://www.cameralabs.com/reviews/Olymp ... oise.shtml

Let me know what you think!

Gordon

Thanks! We look forward to your full review, Gordon. When should we expect it?

Thank you! However I was looking for the complementary results in RAW? And perhaps, the current street price update.

The D90 seems best at 1600 ISO and beyond -- no surprise there. What I do find interesting, is that for me, the E-620 looks to be better (albeit marginally) than the Canon up to 400 - then at 800 it's a toss-up to my eyes. At 1600, the Canon is better. Maybe it's the glass, maybe it's my poor sad eyesight

In the end, what I think will be better is seeing actual printed copies at poster-size as I am rarely looking at photos on a pixel-peeping basis.

Thanks Gordon, for posting.

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Olympus e-620 / 14-42mm / 40-150mm
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In my opinion, the D90 looks best period.

You can see the noise on the E620 even at ISO100 (while pixel peeping), which makes me wonder if it is indeed true that ISO100 in the E620 is actually ISO200 (as speculated in various forums). While there is clearly more noise in all of the E620 images as compared to the XSi, there is also more detail on the E620 than the XSi all the way through ISO1600. Here's another comparison of the E620 vs. some of its newer competitors. http://www.dcresource.com/specials/rebel_t1i-vs-d5000-vs-e620.shtml. Unfortunately, the E620 falls behind again in noise levels. But the colors on the E620 in the images are better in the E620 than the D5000. But in my opinon, the Ti is the winner.

I am wondering if Oly should have just kept the megapixels to 10 and worked on improving noise control on the 4/3 sensor without losing the sharpness and detail that the 410/510 are famous for. But I suppose that it is hard to sell new cameras without increasing the number of megapixels, particularly to entry level buyers who are attracted by the number. Sigh.

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Olympus E620 | 25/2.8 | 50/2 | 12-60 | 14-42 | 14-54 | 40-150 | 70-300
Olympus E-P2 | Panasonic GH2 | 20/1.7 | 14-42 | 14-140
Leica M7 | M9 | 21/4 | 35/1.4 | 50/2.5 | 50/1.5 | 70/2.5 | 90/2
Sony NEX-3 | 16/2.8| 18-55
My FlickR!

I don't think giving results of testing in jpeg and noise reduction is much of a test at all. That, to me, is like asking which company had the best programmers.(don't mean that Literally...but you can get the idea where I'm going with that) Show us RAW data..straight from each camera and then we can decide who has the best sensor. Who is buying the best technology for their camera. Dynamic range is affected by noise. Noise is the sensor. Sensors are not considered when we analyze jpegs and in camera programs.

I think they did what they had to do and the result is good enough.
If they would not increase the number of pixels, it could cost them a lot of customers. What would be interesting to see is how it compares to the E520 and E3. from what I have seen so far it seems that the result till 400 or 800 iso is better then the E520 and the result at iso 800 and 1600 is about the same or maybe a little less compared to the E520. In other words, for 90% of your photo's it is better and for 10% it is the same.

And, no doubt about it: the Nikon is much better at high iso.

Hans

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Olympus E-500, 12-60, 40-150, 70-300

Thank you for the preview.
The high iso performance of the D90 is impressive.

regards,
HTG

Personally, I am not interested at all in the quality of the jpeg engine in a DSLR, but its inherent image quality - i.e. RAW. Much as I like the style and commitment of this site and especially the video reviews, it holds little value for me as you persist treating RAW performance as a side-show. Are there really that many people out there who spend 700 to 1200 EUR for a decent camera set-up and then go out and shoot jpeg, I wonder?

I have a question about this paragraph:

"Note all three cameras metered quite different exposures for this particular scene, so to match the image brightness of the E-620's samples (as measured by Photoshop) we had to apply +1EV to the Canon 450D / XSI and +0.7EV to the Nikon D90. The subsequent exposures at 100 ISO f8 on the E-620, 450D / XSi and D90 were 1.3 seconds, 1 second and 0.62 seconds respectively. Since these resulted in images with roughly the same measured brightness at various areas, we can conclude both the Canon and Nikon bodies are slightly more sensitive than the E-620."

If you had to apply positive ev to the other 2 cameras, wouldn't that indicate that their sensors were less sensitive (underexposing) compared to the Oly, not more?

D90 is top notch, around 2 stops cleaner, and no chroma noises which is great. not sure about lost of detail.

Olympus E-620 is slightly better in 1600 because there is no chroma noise.
But overall they are pretty tie, which is not so good news for Olympus because it is a newer and more expensive model.

But compare to E-520 or E-420 which is quite noisy at iso 800, this E-620 shows significant improvement especially in standard low iso 100-400

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I've used raw with my E-510 in the past for most of my shots.

Now that I have received my E-30, I'm quite eager to find out what the famous Olympus JPEG Engine is all about. And then I'll see whether I'll switch back to raw.

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Olympus E-30, ZD 9-18mm 4.0-5.6, ZD 50mm Makro 2.0, ZD 14-54mm 2.8-3.5, ZD 70-300 4.0-5.6

Light travel equipment:
Olympus EP-2, µZD 14-42mm , Panasonic 20mm 1.7 pancake.

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IMHO its hard to compare ASP-C & 4/3 systems for two reasons
- the sensors are different sizes & so are the lens properties
- Oly has image stabilization which IMHO is an ISO equalizer of sorts

I can see some logic to an Oly-Pentax-Sony Comaparison, but Canon & Nikon must rely entirely on high ISO wo in body IS.....yes there are image stabilized lenses but relative to Oly lenses $$$$$

You need to look at a whole system IMHO

Tobias, how do you like your E-30 so far?

I'll probably use RAW more frequently from now on. Maybe I'll give the E-620 another shot in the near future, particularly now that prices have come down by $100.

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Olympus E620 | 25/2.8 | 50/2 | 12-60 | 14-42 | 14-54 | 40-150 | 70-300
Olympus E-P2 | Panasonic GH2 | 20/1.7 | 14-42 | 14-140
Leica M7 | M9 | 21/4 | 35/1.4 | 50/2.5 | 50/1.5 | 70/2.5 | 90/2
Sony NEX-3 | 16/2.8| 18-55
My FlickR!

But then go and compare the images to the E-510, which I feel has the least amount of noise of all of these [excluding E-3]

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E-3!
12-60 2.8-4.0
12-60 2.8-40 [Also going]
40-150 3.5-4.5
70-300 4.0-5.6
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