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A site called wrotniak.net has posted a very comprehensive Olympus E-510 review. Keep in mind that this isn’t a general camera review site, this is someone’s personal web site who has a strong commitment to Olympus cameras, so I’d recommend reading the review with that potential bias in mind.

He posts some very impressive results when doing tests of the Olympus image stabilization system, estimating that it was able to give him roughly 2 to 3 EV of assistance, which is very significant:

I’ve run an informal test…consisting of 120 frames shot in both modes and then analyzed. The experiment was carefully designed, and the shutter speed used was 1/15 s at the focal length of 150 mm (corresponding to 300 mm on a 35-mm frame camera). At this length, the generally recognized “safe” handheld speed is 1/300 s, so I was more than 4 EV (or a factor of 20x) below that.

The results were quite dramatic: image stabilization increased the share of clearly “good” frames from 2 to 32 out of sixty, and the fraction of obviously “bad” ones dropped from 47 to zero. This leaves no doubt: image stabilization really works.

This does not answer the most frequently asked (if not the best-phrased) question: by how much does the IS lower the safe handheld speed? While I’ve seen this one answered in a number of sources, I do not trust a single one of them, without being able to verify the testing method used and the statistical interpretation of results. I have already designed a proper experiment, but this will take shooting and analyzing at least 500 frames, obviously not a one-hour task.

For the time being you’ll have to accept my guesstimate of a 2 EV or, maybe, 3 EV gain, i.e., a factor of 4x to 8x in terms of shutter speeds.

That really makes me drool over the thought of having a good in-camera image stabilization system. I can get great low-light results with a nice fast lens (e.g., f/1.8) and moderate ISO settings, but another 2 EV would make a big difference in the results. I’d be able to get away with lower ISO settings for lower-noise low-light shots, and be able to shoot in even lower light conditions. I wonder if Canon and Nikon would ever consider doing in-camera image stabilization in addition to their lens-based IS; I’m guessing they wouldn’t play well together, but the in-camera could kick in when using non-IS lenses. Cameras like the E-510 are in the same price range as cameras like the D80 and Digital Rebel XTi, so it doesn’t seem like it would be prohibitively expensive for them to offer it as well.

Anyway, back to this review. This reviewer echoes something I’ve seen in other E-510 reviews, namely that the noise filtering should be turned off or set fairly low, because it’s too aggressive by default. This review gives more fine-grained advice with recommended settings at different ISO values:

Only after some extensive experimentation I realized how much is the image sharpness affected by noise filter setting. In this context I find the default Standard setting excessive at any ISO; my preference is Off for ISO 100 and 200, maybe even ISO 400, and Low above that… [T]his, unfortunately means that after changing ISO I have to dig into the menu system to adjust the noise filter — a cumbersome process.

One interesting lens feature that I hadn’t seen mentioned before is that a Four Thirds lens will communicate its vignetting characteristics to the camera, which can then correct for vignetting when saving the image. This is obviously something that would have to be done in your RAW importer if you shoot RAW (or, as Olympus calls it, ORF (Olympus Raw Format)).

There’s reference to the discussion over whether the E-510 has a slightly reduced dynamic range:

Some reports indicate a slightly narrower dynamic range in the E-510, compared to the competing models and to the E-500. I cannot say much on this, having done any actual measurements, but some of my samples shot in bright, contrasty sunlight hint that this is probably true. This is not much of a problem, as the difference, if any, does not seem significant. Any camera needs a proper exposure compensation to be applied to protect the highlights; maybe with this one I’ll have to watch it more closely. So far I haven’t lost any frames because of that. Lowering the in-camera contrast setting will help: while it does not widen the dynamic range per se, it expands its usable central part.

Overall, he reports very good image quality:

All in all, the image quality delivered by this camera is hard to beat — certainly not in this price range, and possibly much higher. I say “possibly”, because to make a stronger statement I would have, again, to use all cameras compared, and my experience is limited, with a few exceptions, to entry-level models from other makers.

I’d strongly recommend checking out the full review, since it’s extremely extensive — most likely the most comprehensive E-510 review I’ve seen so far. There are also a large number of sample images with different lenses and settings that are very educational. A highly recommended review.

There’s a new E-410 firmware and a new E-510 firmware posted at the Olympus web site.

The new firmwares for both cameras improve the CompactFlash write performance. The E-410 update also improves the white balance preview accuracy when you’re using Live View, and fixes a problem that caused the filename numbering to get reset when you delete an image. I guess those issues didn’t affect the E-510? Either way, both sound like valuable firmware updates to get — at least, if you have one of those cameras — so go get ‘em!

The Olympus E-510 has won the European Imaging & Sound Association (EISA) European Consumer Camera award for 2007-2008. 2008? Aren’t they getting a little ahead of themselves, giving out that award only halfway through 2007? And yet it’s a yearly award, which seems to imply that the time period would only include half of each year. But then that still makes you wonder why they’re giving it out at the beginning of that period. Oh well, those crazy Europeans with their metric years, we’ll never be able to understand them.

Here’s a snippet from the Olympus press release proudly showing off their bouncing new baby award, explaining why EISA gave the award to the E-510:

Commenting on their decision to bestow the camera with the award, the EISA jury explained that: “The Olympus E-510 is a digital SLR with excellent image quality and some clear advantages over the rest of the market.” Handling was cited as another winning feature: “The camera is compact and light, but with its large handgrip it is comfortable to hold.” Naturally, the innovative technology incorporated in the E-510 had not escaped EISA’s attention. Here they said that the camera’s “anti-dust and image stabilisation systems are both invaluable benefits for the amateur photographer.”

Seriously, we’ve got a virtual deluge of Olympus E-510 reviews pouring onto the Internet. The latest is from Camera Labs and is worth checking out.

Their sample photos include shots taken with the E-410 and Canon 400D to compare with the E-510 photos. In a way the shots are testing the included kit lenses against each other (the Olympus 14-42mm versus the Canon EF-S 18-55mm) but it’s still a valid test between the cameras as long as you take the differences in lenses into account. Keep in mind that the Olympus kit lens is generally regarded as a nicer lens than the Canon kit lens The results are pretty hard to call:

We’d say it’s pretty close, although the 400D / XTi sample hasn’t blown its highlights as much on the mountain ridge. That said, the Olympus bodies, especially the E-410′s Vivid mode, have the edge on the foliage detail in the final row of crops.

As far as high ISO noise, Camera Labs notes much less noise (or much stronger noise reduction) than the Olympus E-400, and overall noise results that are competitive with Canon and Nikon (at least on a MacBeth color chart):

As observed in our E-410 review, both it and the new E-510 appear to apply greater noise reduction with their default settings than the E-400. In our Olympus E-400 review we noticed the camera was quite modest when it came to noise reduction, leaving visible speckles at higher sensitivities rather than smearing them out. Olympus appears to be applying a different strategy for its new models, although it’s possible to select two lower (and one higher) types of noise reduction filters – and we have examples of each in practice on the next page.

As it stands here though, the E-510 by default exhibits similar noise and noise reduction levels to the Canon 400D / XTi and Nikon D40x, although is sadly missing the 3200 ISO option of the latter.

The noise results with a real-life scene, as opposed to a color chart, give a little more insight into what really matters, which is noise performance outside of a test lab:

Between 100 and 400 ISO, the Olympus E-510 delivers good, clean results with little noise or noise reduction artifacts. Like most DSLRs, the big fall in quality occurs at 800 ISO, where the E-510 exhibits much higher noise reduction and smearing of ultimate detail as a result. The 1600 ISO result looks quite fuzzy and has been quite compromised.

Slight brightness variations aside, these results are identical to the E-410. This is expected though as both cameras share the same sensor and image processor, and both were using the same settings, not to mention the same lens.

In this particular set of results, the Olympus bodies deliver superior levels of detail at lower sensitivities to the Canon EOS 400D / XTi. At higher sensitivities though, we’ve found the Canon often does a better job at retaining detail compared to the default noise reduction strategy of the E510 and E-410 which can generally smear it out.

They also compare the noise results when using different noise reduction settings on the E-510, which is useful. As expected, if you’re going to be post-processing the photos on the computer — which I strongly recommend everyone do — they report the best results with the noise reduction turned off completely.

In the end, as with pretty much every E-510 review I’ve read to date, they really like the camera.

…its unrivalled feature-set and affordable pricing makes it one of the most compelling – not to mention important – DSLRs to date. It propels both Olympus and the Four Thirds standard to the premier league and should be seriously considered by anyone in the market for a new 10 Megapixel DSLR.

Be sure to check out the full review, which also includes a video tour, although doesn’t have any full resolution sample images for the pixel peepers in the audience.