Photo samples: Olympus E-3

The E-3 holds detail quite well up to and including ISO 800; at ISO 1,600 you can begin to see blurring. This sample for ISO 3,200 tends to underrepresent the amount of noise--see the next slide for a better example.

For this shot, I wanted the "Think Adoption First" sign in the background. The E-3's flip-out LCD plus Live View made it possible--or at least easier--by allowing me to put the camera inside the cage above my head.

With the 12mm-60mm lens, the E-3 produced some extremely sharp photos.

As always, Olympus' sensor-shift image stabilizer works very well. This is a crop from a shot taken handheld--though somewhat braced--at 1/6 second (35mm-equivalent focal-length of 120mm, f/9, ISO 400).

At ISO 3,200, the E-3 seems to exhibit an overall color shift relative to the lower ISO settings, and colored areas show quite a bit of noise.

Olympus makes some pretty good choices when it comes to noise reduction. Standard is the default, and seems to represent the best tradeoff between reducing color artifacts and blurring. In fact, even with NR turned off some photos still look OK. (Ignore the incorrect color. ISO 2,000, 1/25 sec, f/4.0)