DCResource.com posted an E-510 review today. They have a few complaints about the camera, namely:

  • Proprietary battery that’s slow to charge (5 hours), although you get an impressive 650 shots (CIPA standard) of battery life, which is better than the competitors. I guess you just have to trade off charging time for shooting time.
  • No AC adapter available.
  • No extra battery grip available.
  • Poor RAW conversion (soft images) using the included applications, Olympus Master and Olympus Studio.
  • Live view isn’t very smooth because the frame rate is low. It sounds like this is a common issue with these early live view sensors in DSLRs. I’m assuming this will be improved over the years, since this was an issue with the early point and shoot digital cameras also.
  • One second shutter lag when using live view, which again sounds like a common issue with live view.
  • Like with the E-410, there’s no way to erase a picture right after you take it, as with pretty much every other camera on the market. You have to switch to playback mode to do that. Like I mentioned in my summary of another Olympus E-510 review, deleting pictures right after I take them is something that I do all the time, and I think it would seriously mess with my picture-taking flow to not be able to do that.
  • Tendency to underexpose shots by about 2/3 EV.
  • Flimsy battery cover.
  • On the slow side when trying to autofocus in low light if you don’t use the flash assist.

But on the whole, they liked the camera:

I like the Olympus EVOLT E-510 — much more so than the E-410. That’s not just because I like the larger grip, either. I like the optical image stabilization (on every lens), improved battery life, and the extra features (mostly custom settings) that were not found on the E-410. I do think Olympus should’ve shipped the camera with different image quality defaults and offered an AC adapter, but you can’t have everything. The E-510 is a great entry-level D-SLR, and one I can recommend highly — just be sure to fool around with the settings a bit. Unless you must have the small size of the E-410, I’d spend the extra $100 and get the E-510 — the image stabilization and more powerful battery are well worth the price.

It does sound like Olympus has put out some interesting digital SLRs with the E-410 and E-510. Be sure to check out the whole review for all of the details and sample pictures.