For a break from Olympus E-P1 rumors, here’s some facts about an actually released Olympus camera.

Not to be confused with Digicamreview.com and their Olympus E-510 review from last week, this is an Olympus EVOLT E-510 review from digitalcameraview.com. Completely different review on a complete different site, despite the confusingly similar names.

They mention one of the comment complaints about live view on digital SLRs, namely that it slows things down because the camera has to swing the mirror back down to autofocus and measure the light levels to get the exposure. This gives you about one second of shutter lag, making the camera much slower than you’d expect a DSLR to be. They conclude that it’s really only useful for still subjects:

What is neat about Live View (with stationary subjects) is the ability to view your composition on the screen, even from awkward angles, and to adjust exposure and white balance and then view the changes in real time.

The reviewer also notes slight underexposure, which doesn’t sound like anything significant to me:

I used the E-510 primarily in Program AE mode. I noted a slight tendency toward underexposure (generally by 1/3 to 2/3 EV) in Program AE and Auto mode, but this shouldn’t be problem for most shooters. Slight underexposure produces more intense colors and harder contrast, and better preserves highlight detail. The other side of the coin is that even minor underexposure causes some loss of shadow detail. Photographers who are bothered by the E-510’s consistent tendency toward minor underexposure in the Auto modes can simply dial in +1/3 EV of exposure compensation (in Program AE mode) or shoot in one of the manual exposure modes.

The review ends with two concerns about the camera:

I have only a couple minor concerns. Why isn’t there a shoot-only (IS engaged only during exposure) IS mode and why can’t users delete an image immediately after it is taken?

I’m surprised that there’s no way to delete an image right after taking it. That’s one of the things I do most often when I’m taking pictures. Click shutter, check preview, oops that picture is terrible, delete. When so many digital SLRs offer competitive image quality, little usability details like that become more and more important, in my opinion. Bring out a camera without any small things to complain about and you have a strong competitor.