Village Idiot
No longer a newbie, moving up!
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- Mar 20, 2008
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4:3 is the ratio of the Sensor that Olympus uses. It is a format that Olympus came up with ( along with i believe Panasonic Kodak, Fuji...) How does that affect yoou?
1)The output files (photographs) come in a ratio of 4:3 ( i.e. for every 4 inches of width you'll get 3 inches of height) which is much closer to standard International photo formats than the 3:2 ratio that other manufactureres use which means less cropping of your photos when it comes time to print.
2)This size of the sensor gives you a 2x crop factor compared to the 1.6x crop factor of other manufactureres. This has benefits and disadvantages:a) All lenses end up being much smaller than other manufaturers for the same 35mm equivalent focal length (i.e the 40-150mm olympus kit lens is equivalent to a 80-300mm and much much smaller in physical size. That is a benefit to you because your gear won't weigh as much especially if you have some zooms to carry around.
b)Disadvantage is , because of the small sensor size and the bigger crop factor than other manufacturers. noise is something that introduces itself at higher ISOs (i.e. low light situations) but those problems are definately being overcome with newer models. The E-510 for me did not have anymore noise problems with the cameras it competes with.Hope that helps
I believe the 510 still uses noise reduction but doesn't allow you to turn it off in RAW mode. That leaves images plasticy. Correct me if I'm wrong here.
Olympus also has a dust reduction system that actually works. Not very good, but it works. A couple sites have done test of the different models available and all but Olympus had no more than 10% success rate with the Olympus cameras having around 40%-50% success rate.
They also have some nice glass....but some of it's really expensive in comparison with similar sized lenses. There's some one on another forum that would argue that in body IS was better because it doesn't hike up the cost of the lenses and it's available all the time...Even with out paying extra for IS in lens, they still have some pretty expensive stuff.