Managed at last, recently, to strike an item off my GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome) list, an 8MP CCD Olympus E-500 (Olympus EVOLT E-500 in the US), a very affordable consumer-orientated Four/Third digital SLR camera system introduced by Olympus in 2005. The camera is fitted with the much talked about Kodak KAF-8300CE CCD sensor and was launched as an update to the E-300 introduced in 2004. Unlike the E-300, which also has the Kodak 4/3 Type CCD sensor, a flat top, and fitted with an unusual Optical Porro Finder, the compact E-500 is back to a traditional SLR built with a pentamirror viewfinder, and a hump on top of the camera which houses the camera's built-in flash, hot shoe, and viewfinder eyepiece.
While the camera I acquired was almost still brand-new, spick, and span all around, and had only 1787 shutter counts to its credit, it was untested and was offered as a low-cost buy due to a dead battery. All it needed was a fully charged replacement battery to get the E-500 humming and running perfectly. Being closer to old-school AF 35mm SLR film cameras than current mega-electronically controlled DSLRs, the camera is well endowed with the functionalities to get you up and running in no time, almost without the hassle of referring to the instruction manual to comprehend the dials and function buttons that are fitted to the camera.
The E-500 is also fitted with a 2.5-inch 215,250 dot LCD, dual (CF and xD) card slots, a manual ISO speed range from 100 to 1600 (100 to 400 on Auto), a shutter speed range from 60 - 1/4000 second, and Bulb (up to 8 mins) in Manual mode (1 - 1/4000 sec in AE mode), and saves image in RAW and JPEG file formats. Exposure selections include Program AE (with shift), Aperture priority AE, Shutter priority AE, Manual, Creative Modes with Auto, Portrait, Landscape, Macro, Sports, and Night Scene + Portrait, and a further selection of 15 different Scene modes.
These quick test images were shot with the 3.8x zoom Zuiko Digital 40-150mm f/3.5-4.5 lens (80-300mm in full-frame equivalent), the second lens that ships as part of the two-lens kits with the E-500. Constructed with multicoated 13 elements in 10 groups, and a sturdy metal mount, the lens is quite hefty in the hand and weighs 425 grams. Fairly usable for everything from portraits to sports scenes, the lens does pretty well across most of its focal length range but is rather soft at its widest as you go from 100 to 150mm. Looking forward now to more shoots other lenses and the ubiquitous manual focus legacy lenses which is abound.
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