Freakin' cold today in Calgary -- +5 Celsius (41 Fahrenheit) with a
strong, dry wind that goes right through you.
Wandered around the neighbourhood with the E-3, looking for simple
targets to answer some of my questions. Observations (not all
completely on topic):
1. Suburban environments at this time of year are surprisingly ugly.
Huddled against the cold, I was uninspired to point my camera at almost
anything, but what the Hell, I did, though none of the images are
anything to write home about. Mebbe I'll try the Inglewood Bird
Sanctuary or Fish Creek Provincial Park tomorrow.
2. The E-3 is actually quite usable with a pair of gloves on. The only
issue was in removing the lens cap on the 12-60.
3. I still haven't got all the parameters on the E-3 "tuned" the way I
like 'em. It's just different enough from the E-1 to be an unfamiliar
country. This may take several weeks before I feel comfortable shooting
any "real" subjects. The basics are fine and reasonably intuitive, but
I'm a tweaker.
4. Exposure bracketing coupled with sequential shooting has a maximum EV
spread of 1 EV per exposure, for a five-frame spread of 4 EV from
"correct" exposure (-2, -1, 0, +1 and +2 EV). This is silly -- a
firmware update to the camera could easily give a spread of 2
EVs/exposure, for a five-frame total of 8. This would make the camera a
much more useful tool for doing HDR images (which my initial tentative
attempts at have pleased me highly). Oly should seriously consider
tweaking the firmware to make this happen. In fact, they could easily
make the maximum spread any value they wanted, or you could dial it in,
within the upper and lower limits of the camera's capabilities, of
course. That would rock.
5. Those who lament that the E-3 isn't super-small and at the same time
complain that they want "one button access" to everything on a DSLR are
smoking crack. You couldn't possibly engineer all the controls on the
E-3 onto the body of the E-410 (for instance) without having serious
problems with the accidental triggering of controls. Those fingers
gotta go somewhere. The E-3's body size actually feels just about right
considering all the connection and control points on it. Less square
centimetres for control surfaces would have been a disaster.
6. Multi-spot metering! Again, another firmware update could make this
available (though it would be a bit more awkward than the way the OM-4
did it...). The single-spot (and single-spot with shadow/highlight
bias) settings work reasonably well, but I sure do miss that multi-spot.
Makes doing zone work much easier.
7. I don't like the way Photoshop CS3's ACR 3.4 handles the RAW files
from the E-3. There's something wonky about it. Can't put my finger on
it yet, but it seems to be assuming that the .ORF files from the E-3 are
*much* darker than from the E-1, the E-410, or for that matter, the RAW
files from my KonicaMinolta A1. Here's hoping a software update clears
this up...
Garth
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