Olympus E-10

Crollo · Dec 23, 2011

First impressions for this 12 year old DSLR:
The E-10 was supposedly a professional grade camera or at least aimed at professionals, and even today it shows. It has a full metal body and has a heft to it that helps cut down on camera shake, the button layout is disorienting at first but is easily learned, and the zoom\focus rings are extremely smooth.

Garbz · Dec 23, 2011

I haven't seen one but it is a damn weird design and I have no idea why Olympus even produced it.

It's an SLR without interchangeable lenses and more strangely without a mirror. That last point is a real bizarre one as it uses a beam splitter to send light to the viewfinder. The silly part there is that you have a dark viewfinder (ok nothing new there given the mirrors in most SLRs are semi-transparent anyway) but critically it means not all the light reaches the sensor.

On the upside it looks neat, durable and quite versatile. Oh and make with the pictures

Crollo · Dec 23, 2011

I agree the design is absolutely borderline alienated, but to be honest I like the U shape better then the standard L shaped SLRs. I find it's much more natural to have your hand rest against the side of the camera then it is to have the back of your palm rested against the front of the camera. The viewfinder isn't dark even in very dark conditions, with a f\2.0-2.4 lens there isn't a lot of loss light even with the beam splitter.

Overall it's a solid DSLR, some quirks here and there but it's definitely usable.

Sw1tchFX · Dec 24, 2011

When I was still working at Ritz, a customer brought one of these in. I couldn't make heads or tails the purpose of it...

And I can't make heads or tails why someone would buy it aside from curiosity.

Granted, I was in elementary school when it was introduced, but (at that time) if you had the choice of an F100 or E10, what would you choose?

Sw1tchFX · Dec 24, 2011

So I went and looked it up on DPReview..and again, why would anyone shoot this over any 35mm SLR? The D1 was still cost-prohibitive at the time.

Crollo · Dec 24, 2011

I bought it because the only other DSLR within the price range was a old barely-consumer grade Digital Rebel without a lens.
I don't need film I have 3 film SLR's that are perfectly adequate, but I needed to branch out to digital and I don't see any reasons not to buy it other then not being able to upgrade the lens. It's not like +10MP is terribly useful to me.

Crollo · Jan 28, 2012

Finally got some storage for it.

Crollo · Jan 30, 2012

More images.

Jeremy Z · Jan 30, 2012

Olympus used to really think outside the box. To the nay-sayers, let me pose these questions:

- Some posts suggest that it is it bad just because it's different. Why?

- Would you rather have a fixed lens of super quality that covers all your needs, or a crappy kit lens that will require you to buy several supplementary lenses? I can't even COUNT the number of times folks buy kit lenses, shoot for a while, then realize they want something fast, and then end up with a 50mm f/2 or 35mm f/2 something. With this camera, you've already got it.

Does anyone remember when the Olympus XA was considered funky? That camera launched a whole genre. People complained about how the lens was only an f/2.8, compared to the 1.8 of its larger competitors. But this funky little clamshell design continued for decades. They're getting scarce now, but it was a well-engineered design. That was a camera that could be put in a pocket with keys and just shake it off.

CJ_CJ · Mar 23, 2012

I was given this camera by my grandfather about a year ago and I love it. www.flickr.com/insubordinateprojections. I have a fold there specifically for the olympus E-10.