Good old DPReview has come through for us yet again, this time with a review of the Olympus EVOLT E-510. Let’s see what they have to say about it.

First off, the reviewer loves the ergonomics. It’s a small camera (larger than the E-410, very similar in size to the Digital Rebel XTi) but the review says it feels balanced, comfortable, and “right.” As with the Panasonic L10, the E-510 uses the “Supersonic Wave Filter” (SSWF) dust removal system, which still seems to be the best one out there. The review points out that this triggers every time you turn on the camera, and can’t be disabled, meaning you have a delay when you turn the camera on that you can’t get around.

The ISO noise test images in the review are a little confusing. The Canon images look more detailed than the E-510 images, even at 100 ISO. At higher ISOs the difference is very pronounced, and the review points it out as noise reduction. My first time reading the review I was baffled by the blurred ISO 100 images and didn’t understand why the review wasn’t discussing them. Luckily they get to that on the following pages. Here’s what the review has to say about the noise performance:

From a noise point of view there’s little difference between these three ten megapixel digital SLRs up to ISO 400. At ISO 800 and 1600 the E-510 has the cleanest looking gray and black patches although this is clearly at the expense of detail lost to noise reduction, especially at ISO 1600. The noisiest ‘flat area’ patches come from the Nikon D40X although it doesn’t ‘smear’ as much detail at ISO 1600. From an overall performance point of view the Canon EOS 400D (Rebel XTi) with its CMOS sensor once more delivers the best compromise between noise and detail.

Apparently at ISO 100 the E-510 is still trying to do noise reduction, when there isn’t really any need for it. If you turn off the “Noise Filter” (and turn down sharpening, since it’s still trying to sharpen the blurry noise-reduced image) you get far more detail than with the standard settings. That’s a little strange, you’d think Olympus could set everything up right to give you good detail at ISO 100. In a way the camera seems to be optimized for higher ISO shooting (although, as the review points out, you’re still getting a lot of noise reduction at those levels.)

In fact, you can’t even turn off the noise filter all the way at ISO 1600; you can turn it to a lower level, but you’re still getting significant noise reduction and smearing of details. I’d always prefer that camera manufacturers leave settings like that up to the photographer and not try to second guess them (after all, you can always do better NR in Photoshop afterwards than in the camera.)

DPReview points out the noise reduction further in their discussion on image quality, which they’re not too excited about:

Our overall impressions of the E-510′s image quality are, unsurprisingly, pretty much exactly the same as they were when we tested the E-410; rather mixed. This is mainly due to the default settings, which produce very smooth (noise free) images, but images that lack critical detail. For many users the rather contrasty tone curve and bright, cheerful colors might produce images that are a little too ‘punchy’, but they always have the option to shoot RAW (the in-camera JPEG image parameters don’t offer enough range to really customize the output sufficiently).

Turning the noise filter off (and turning the sharpening down) produces superb results at lower ISO settings, but noise starts to rear its ugly head at ISO 400, something that — along with the limited dynamic range (and resultant highlight clipping) is almost certainly a direct consequence of the smaller sensor surface area.

The reviewer says that the limited dynamic range (0.7 EV less than the 400D or D40X, although similar to the Pentax K10D) is his biggest issue with the camera. He also calls the metering “erratic,” pointing out that that’s not really want you want to see when your dynamic range is limited to begin with:

The consequences are clipped highlights, particularly on bright, contrasty days when the only way to ensure you don’t lose highlight detail is through very careful exposure/metering (the metering tends to over exposure when faced with too much dynamic range). Shooting RAW with a -0.7 EV compensation significantly increases your chances of capturing the full range of tones in the scene, but you’ll eventually hit the dynamic range wall — and you can’t put back what was never captured.

Be sure to check out their samples comparing noise reduction settings. The difference is pretty amazing. It was big enough that they did their sample photo comparison between the E-510′s defaults, the E-510 with their improved settings, and then with other cameras, something I’ve never noticed them do before.

With all that said, the review concludes stating that the overall impression of the E-510 was “very positive.” On the good side, the image stabilization is good, handling is excellent, the kit lens is good, the SSWF dust reduction system is good. For all the negatives, the camera still comes out highly recommended:

If it had a better sensor (less noise and better dynamic range) the E-510 would be a strong candidate for category winner; as it is you’ll need to decide if the slight compromises the sensor demands are going to affect the type of pictures you take.

As always with DPReview, there’s a lot more detail in the full review, as well as full resolution sample photos, and is well worth checking out.