Olympus Evolt E-500 digital camera resource

Last update: Apr. 6th, 2008 Apr. 6th: Lenses section updated Jan 1st: Lenses, RAW and Firmware sections updated Aug. 29th: Lenses and BLM-1 battery sections updated Jan. 31st: Lenses and other sections updated Nov. 19th: Card write speed test updated: many new cards tested Jun. 17th: Tips & Tricks section added

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Technical data and reference manuals

• The complete reference manual can be downloaded here.
• See here the FAQs of Olympus America.
  
• Olympus E500 complete specifications
• Software for the E500 can be downloaded here.
  
• The CCD used in the E500 is the KAF-8300CE manufactured by Kodak.
• It has 5.4 x 5.4 micrometer pixels, with a total capacity of 25500 electrons per pixel.
  
• Total CCD noise is 16 electrons, which means that the dynamic range is 1600:1 - over 10 stops (64 dB).
  

Reviews and previews

• See Cnet's review of the E500: the E500 received a score of 7.4 out of 10.
  
• Dec. 8th, 2005: e-Fotografija publishes their review of the Olympus E500. In English despite the site is Slovak.
  
• Nov. 9th, 2005: Dcresource published their full review of the Olympus E500. This is a detailed review with test images.
  
• Steve's digicams full review: full review of the E-500, posted on November 17th, 2005; lots of details, test results; full size samples available
• dpreview's review of the E-500: very detailed, lots of tests; full size samples available
  
• J. Andrzej Wrotniak bought an Olympus E-500: here is his technical review of the camera
• Imaging resource have published a user report of the E-500: not a technical review, but very interesting anyway.
  
• Here is a comparison table comparing the E-500 with the E-300, the Canon 300D and 350D, the Maxxum 5D and Nikon D50.
• Fotopolis.pl have published a review of the E500 in Polish. Probably unreadable for most of us, the review contains many images of the E500. This page contains interesting test images. Here you will find full size sample images of the Olympus E500.
• Review in Czech on the Digineff.cz site
• Here is an interview with Toshiyuki Terada, product manager in the DI Product Planning Department in Japan. He speaks about the E500 and about Olympus future developments.
• Quesabesde.com posted a preview of the E-500 in Spanish
• digitalkamera.de posted a detailed first look of the E500 in German
  

Sample images

• See here the full size samples of Steve's digicams
• dpreview has full size samples of the Olympus E500
• Full size sample images at the fotopolis.pl site
  

Tips & Tricks

• Turn camera on
  Open card door.
  Press Play(green arrow on e1) and ok together
  
  Press up down left and right
  Press shutter button
  Press up
  press right.
  
  
  R = shutter releases (it shows the number of shutter releases the camera had so far)
• See here for an overview of what you can do with different key combinations.
  
  

Camera modes

RAW file format

• Olympus has released a codec for Windows Vista. The codec is a piece of software running under Windows Vista with which Vista can import and display RAW images of all Olympus DSLRs.
• Give a try to Olympus Studio, the software Olympus offers for processing RAW files.
  Comment by Jens Birch: It has some very nice features designed to effectively sift through large amounts of images. It also has a better .ORF conversion engine than any other program I am aware of. It can do most of the basic photo editing you need. However, it is quite slow in some of its tasks.
  
• Adobe Photoshop CS is not capable of converting E500 RAW files. You will need CS2 and the Camera RAW 3.3 plugin. But you can also buy the cheaper Adobe Elements 3, which also supports the plugin.
• There is also the Photoshop plugin from Olympus, which allows to import RAW images into Photoshop starting from version 6.0.
• Here is a comment by Steven Wray:
  
  
  "As an E-500 & Photoshop CS owner I'd like to let you know about another RAW conversion option.  I use Adobe's DNG Converter Version 3.3x43.  Although its beta it has proven to be reliable in the month (about 1500 shots converted) I've used it. Adobe is slightly misleading on their download page stating that its for CS2 or elements 4, but the converter is a stand-alone product.  It can be used with any graphics programs that support the DNG format.
  
  Once the RAW file is converted to the DNG format it can be processed in CS while preserving the RAW data coming from the sensor.  It also provides the option to completely embed the entire original RAW file for later extraction."
  
• 
  
• ACDSEE 8 now supports E500 RAWs. Here is what a user writes:
  
  I've been using the Olympus E500 for a couple of months now, and really enjoying its many qualities. Having initially saved files as SHQ jpegs while learning about the various options, etc., I am now saving to RAW files. This has been very much helped by my upgrade to ACDSee 8 Pro - this is an excellent program with a good range of Olympus RAW enhancement / conversion options - Exposure (Shadow, Midtones & Highlights, plus Exposure Compensation options), Colour (white balance, Temperature, Tint & Saturation options), and finally Detail (Sharpness and Noise Reduction options). Your own favourite Presets can be saved, and there are options to have Exposure Warning and to see the differences that your selections will make. RAW alterations are saved in a RIPCache, and files can be saved to most common image file formats including .jpg, .jp2, .psd, & .tiff. It is a very easy and quick program and (to me) much prefered to the supplied Olympus Master software, which I'm not too keen about!
  
• Give a try to Silkypix's Developer Studio RAW converter. Not free, but it is getting very good feedback from those who are using it. It seems to be THE raw converter with virtually any control you can imagine. Some feedback from Jerry Beggs:
• "I have tried the Silkypics raw converter - it is the best I've found and importantly, it runs on old pc's; I use Windows ME on a PIII 800 processor with 256mb RAM.  It works perfectly and is fast enough.  Many of the new RAW convertors like Pixmantecs Rawshooter Essentials and Phase One's Capture will not run on less than 500mb RAM and Windows XP. "
  
• Another RAW converter is Phase One's Capture One LE which allows saving the file as a 16-bit TIF. This allows saving the full range and tuning a high contrast image in CS preserving detail at both ends of the image.
• The E500 generates 13.4 MB RAW files.
  
• To convert E500 RAW files to JPEG either use the Camedia software which came with the camera or the much better Adobe Photoshop converter.
  

 

Questions ? Comments ? Put them in the Olympus E500 user group

Memory cards

• The E500 takes both CF and xD cards.
  
• Generally speaking there is no reason to use xD cards, since CF cards are cheaper.
  
• See here the results of a write speed test with different memory cards. Here are the conclusions:
  
• The Olympus E500 is currently one of the digital cameras with the highest card write speeds. The camera reaches 10MB/s sustained with a Sandisk Ultra III Extreme card - very few digital camera, just the fastest DLSRs, can match this.
• Surprisingly the camera reaches this write speed only with Sandisk Extreme III cards, and not with the Twinmos, which the manufacturer rates at 16.2 MB/s write speed.
  

Firmware

• November 20th: Firmware 1.3 is available. The update provides compatibility with the ZUIKO DIGITAL 2.0x Teleconverter EC-20.
  
• March 30th: Olympus releases firmware 1.2 for the Olympus E500. Here are the changes:
• AEL/AFL Button <> One-touch WB button
  A menu function is added for exchanging AEL/AFL button and One-touch WB button.
• Improve the precision of exposure by built-in flash
  Exposure level of built-in flash with the combination of some of lenses* is improved.
  *) Sigma Corp. Four-Thirds lenses (18-50mm F3.5- 5.6 DC,18-125mm F3.5-5.6 DC, 55-200mm F4-5.6 DC)
  

• Dec. 13th: New firmware v1.1 is available. See here for instructions. The firmware does the following:
• [8SEC] was added to the [BUTTON TIMER] menu on the tab.
• [OFF] was added to the [ FUNCTION] menu on the tab.
• Warning, both RAW and JPEG files are deleted when [ERASE SELECTED] is executed when the settings are changed on the [RAW + JPEG ERASE] menu to the tab.
• Incorrect values for the Danish were handled.
• To install the firmware you need to use Olympus Master.
  
• Check here to see if firmware updates for the E500 are available.
  
• To install the firmware follow the procedure described at the Olympus Japan page.

Chromatic aberrations / Purple fringing

• To remove chromatic aberrations you can process the RAW image with the Adobe Photohop RAW plugin.
  
• To remove chromatic aberrations with an image editor (desaturation of the magentas):
• It is very simple to remove chromatic aberrations from an image. Simply use a photo editor and set the saturation level of magenta (also green where this makes sense) to the minimum. In some images you might have to set the saturation level of red to the minimum. It might also make sense to limit the processing to the affected area (i.e. select the affected image area and only process that).

Polariser filter and other filters

• A polariser filter helps to obtain deep blue skies and to remove unwanted reflections. Consider the following example (both images taken with the polariser filter):

 

Perhentian island image

Same image with polariser rotated by 90 degrees

• See the difference ? In the picture to the right, the polariser filter substantially reduced the amount of light reflected by the water surface making the sea ground more visible and made the sky more dark.
• Polariser filters are also useful when the lower part of the image is dark and the top (the sky) too bright.
• Have a look at Darwin Wigget's page on filters for further information on polariser, blue-yellow polariser, graduated neutral density and other filters
• See also Jeremy McCreary's page on filters

Accessories

• The ME-1 eyecup magnifier enlarges the view by 20%. The eyecup incorporates two lenses and measures 40 x 30 x 12mm.
  
• The FP-1 Power Flash grip is designed for use with the FL-50 high-voltage pack and can be used in combination with the flash unit's built-in power supply to provide fast flash charging for an extended number of shots. The head is can be rotated by 180° for increased versatility.
• There is also a BCM-1 fast battery charger - recharges the BLM-1 battery in two hours instead of five.
• Olympus Digital Accessories compatibility page: lists all accessories and tells you if they are compatible with the E500.

BLM-1 battery and cheaper 3rd party alternatives

• According to Federico del Vall 3rd party BLM-1 batteries fail in low temperatures:
  
  Been recently to Ushuaia - (Patagonia, Argentina) and found Oly's BLM-1's made sense.
  I have three different compatible batteries and tree Olympus, two for each cam.
  BLM-1's are rated at -10 °C worst case, so I made no worries. But at this temperature, quite common around Ushuaia these days, while a BLM-1 would last one to two of my photoshooting days at 20°C, lasted no more than an hour or so. Compatibles failed after no more than 10 minutes.
  So set to the task of heating the batteries to ~30° for half an hour, and found the BLM-1 could still be used once more for one hour, and the compatibles too, but for other 10 minutes or so. But then none.
  At these temperatures (-10-0 °C) Oly's BLM-1's are worth their price. On the other hand, in Salta, (north Argentina) where temperature is nice troughout the year, both types endured quite the same.
  
  
• Warthog did his own comparison test of  original Olympus BLM-1 batteries and 3rd party ones (page is in Finnish!):
• I tested this week my original Olympus batteries (3 pieces, two of them 2,5 years, one is 9 months old) and two replacement batteries (2 years old). I used 15 Ohm resistor, pictures taken every minute with my E-300 and Canon TC-80N3 timer remote controller. I tried QuickTime to record my measurements, but that timer is more practical.
  
  Original batteries are expensive, but very good. Replacement batteries are cheap and good....
  Test results of replacement batteries
  Test results of Olympus batteries & evaluation of both batteries
  
  
• See this page which contains an overview of currently available BLM-1 battery clones: Olympus BLM-1 (original), PS-BLM1 (7DayShop.com), WT-BLM1 (SterlingTek.com), Energizer OM-1, Hahnel HL-M1, UNiROSS VB104295, WinTop PS-BLM1 and e-Film (Delkin) BLM1. The author rates the batteries according to construction, capacity, (low voltage) protection and cost. It appears that not all 3rd party alternatives are created equal.
  
• Test added which shows which capacity the original Olympus BLM-1 battery and cheap 3rd party alternatives have. With the batteries I had (one original and two 3rd party ones) I measured the following:
• Original Olympus battery:   1299 mAh
  
• 3rd party battery 1:   1077 mAh
  
• 3rd party battery 2:   744 mAh
• This is OK, since the Olympus original BLM-1 battery costs 17 times more than the 3rd party alternatives I bought.
• The complete test results are available here.
  

• The original BLM-1 battery from Olympus is rated at 7.2 Volt and 1500 mAh. The alternatives have voltages of 7.2 or 7.4 Volt and capacities of 1300 or 1500 mAh.
• The voltage difference is no problem:
  
• The 7.2 Volt which Olympus officially quotes varies in reality between 6.7 Volt (discharged battery) and 7.7 Volt (fully charged battery). These are voltages measured under a pretty heavy load of over 1 Ampere (battery loaded with a 6.8 Ohm resistor).
  
• With no load the measured voltages become 7.37 Volt in a discharged state (emtpy battery screen showing) and 8.2 Volt (battery fully charged).
  => In other words, it's highly irrelevant if the battery is rated at 7.2 or 7.4 Volt - the camera can withstand 7.7 Volts without problems.
• The capacity difference is also something not to worry about. There is no big difference between 1500 and 1300 mAh (we are talking of a 10% difference), but the 3rd party battery costs a fraction of the original one.
• Personally I bought two 3rd party BLM-1 batteries in August 2004 from a Hong Kong eBay seller.
  
• Price per battery was US $ 5.49 and the total cost including shipping was US $17.
  
• The batteries arrived in 10 days to my home in Germany.
  
• I tested one of these cheap "counterfeit" batteries. It lasted for over 600 shots (SHQ, all with the LCD on, about 10% with flash) and still had juice left when I got tired and interrupted the test. It just wouldn't die.
  
  
• Vidpro fast battery charger (this has been reported by Rod in the Olympus E510 users group):
  
  My results are the Oly charger took around 5 hours to get to a full charge and the Vidpro about half that (which is what they advertise). BUT, it could be the second battery I charged on the Vidpro didn't need that much charging - what I did wasn't under very controlled conditions re residual charge before recharging.
  The Vidpro (US $30) charger base is a little larger than the Oly, and also has an AC to DC module (a little smaller than the Oly unit itself) that plugs into the AC wall socket whereas the Oly unit accepts AC directly with the supplied AC cord. Both the Oly & Vidpro accept 100v-240v, but the big difference I like is that the Vidpro has a 12v DC (vehicle, etc.) adapter allowing the batteries to be charged in the field.

Infrared photography with the Olympus E500

• under construction

• The site Infrared photography with your digital camera contains interesting information about infrared photography with Olympus cameras and an overview of infrared filters with their spectral characteristics.
• These sites contain useful information about infrared photography with digital cameras:
• Echeng.com: Digital infrared photography - site devoted to digital infrared photography with image galleries, information about filters and equipment and links.
• Wrotniak's Infrared Photography page - excellent information resource devoted to infrared photography with Olympus cameras. Information about infrared filters, exposure settings, focus, post-processing, sample images and links.
• Also see the Infrared photography page of the Apogee magazine: this is an interesting general introduction to infrared photography with digital cameras.

Lenses

• Lenses are currently available from Olympus, Leica and Sigma:

• Wide angle and Fisheye

• How good are the kit lenses? John Foster has done an interesting review comparing the Zuiko 14-42, 14-45 and 14-54 lenses. The review was done with the 10MP Olympus E400 DSLR and shows better results with the pro Zuiko 14-54 lens.
• Here are two tests of the Zuiko Digital 7-14 mm F4 lens, one performed by Andrzej Wrotniak and one by John Foster. The one by Andrzej Wrotniak is a bit more scientific, with physics formulas and resolution charts, while the one of John Foster is more from a user perspective and contains many sample images.

External flash

• The Olympus E500 has a standard flash hotshoe and can take standard external flashes.
• Try out the Metz flash units - cheap and reliable. Alternatively try the FL-36 or other Olympus flash units.
  
• See here for how to measure the trigger voltage of your flash.

Controlling the Olympus E500 with a computer

• You can use Olympus Studio 1.5 to control the Olympus E500 with a computer.
  
• Try these software packages
• Cam2Com: see this information.

Underwater Photography

• Ikelite launches the 6855 underwater housing for the E500. You will find all details and lots of images on the Ikelite page. The housing sells around USD 1000 - not really cheap.
  
• The site Digideep.com is an online directory for digital underwater photography.
• Interesting forum for underwater photography: DigitalDiver.net

Data recovery

• Jpegdump, by Kurt Stege, is a free tool to recover deleted images from a memory card. Recommended, alough it involves more work an e tool of Convar.
  
• These software tools are not free, so since Convar's software is available for free, there is no real need to use them:
  
• Check this site: Digital image recovery
Christian Grau has some software tools to fix damaged memory cards. The software used to be free, now costs $39.
• Datarescue also has a software tool (Photorescue) for repairing damaged memory cards, although it's not free.
• Photorecovery is another tool. Price is $39.95.

Noise reduction

• In addition to the E500's inbuilt noise reduction, you can post-process the images with NeatImage. This software package produces surprisingly good results.
• Here there is a comparison of different noise reduction software tools.

Exposure information data (EXIF)

• The picture files of the Olympus E500 contain the complete exposure information (aperture, exposure time, focal leng, white balance etc.).
• To read this data you can use these software tools:
• ExifReader, by Ryuuji Yoshimoto. Haven't tried the software myself, but it looks interesting. Freeware.
• Exif Image Viewer, by Michal Kowalski. This is the one I'm using. Quoting from his homepage:

"EXIF viewer is a simple image viewer application for photos taken with digital cameras. It's capable of reading EXIF information embedded in photos as well as little thumbnail. Because small thumbnail is already present in most photos displaying it is really fast.
EXIF viewer can also provide detailed information about photos (shutter speed, aperture, etc.) and conveniently list them for comparison purposes.
EXIF viewer also displays image histogram. It also features copying/moving and deleting of selected photos. Single photograph can be displayed in separate window or in a full screen mode."
• Exifer, by Friedemann Schmidt. I'm using this one too. It can rewrite EXIF data to images which lost it due to processing with a software package which doesn't support EXIF. Quoting from his site:

"Exifer is a nearly free software (you only should send me a postcard if you're using Exifer frequently) with which you can manage the metadata (EXIF/IPTC) of pictures taken by digital cameras. Because many image processing software destroys this metadata when saving such files, the idea was to create a backup of the metadata before editing it in any software, and then, after that to restore it back into the processed file. With Exifer you can do this very easily. "

Panorama shots

• Some interesting links:
• http://www.skipwilliams.com/panos/panorama_links.htm
• http://www.htu.at/~sascha/ptguide/
• http://www.path.unimelb.edu.au/~bernardk/tutorials/360/calibrate/
• http://homepage.ntlworld.com/j.houghton/pttute.htm
• http://www.panoguide.com/software/reviews/panotools_v21.html
• Stitching software: http://www.vrtoolbox.com/vrthome.html
• Tripod specific for panoramas: http://www.kaidan.com/

Linux and e E500

• Below are the steps necessary to connect the E500 to a linux computer:

 

here are the steps (I'm on Suse 9.0 [1]): 1. boot Suse (optionally do $ sudo tail -f /var/log/messages ) 2. connect: 0. * use external power supply * "SETUP" -> "USB" must be set to "PC" (not "PRINT") * set playback mode on cam * make sure camera is turned off 1. connect with USB cable 2. turn camera on 3. watch: * drive icon appears on desktop: sda1 (rightclick -> properties: device /dev/sda1 mounted at /media/sda1) (clicking on it would mount the cam and open it in Konqueror "Icon View" => convenient thumbnail previews) (watch tail -f for USB stuff) ... or just wait a moment 4. get the pics: (as user:) $ mount | grep media $ mount /media/sda1 $ mount | grep media /dev/sda1 on /media/sda1 type vfat (rw,nosuid,nodev,sync,user=tobi) $ cd /media/sda1/dcim/100olymp/ $ cp -i ./* ~/data/move_to_cd/E500_unchanged/ $ mv -i ./* ~/data/pics/E500_changed/2004/01/10/ $ ls $ cd $ umount /media/sda1 $ mount | grep media $

 
• Brian Miller created a page about using a Olympus C-5050Zoom Digital Camera with Linux. Tons of detailed information on how to interface a 5050 with Linux. This information probably also holds for a E500.
• The page Using the Olympus Camedia C-3040 Zoom Digital Camera with Linux and USB by Micheal Schubart contains a description on how to download photos from an Olympus 3040 to a computer running Linux with USB. The procedure described there should also apply to an Olympus E500.

Astrophotography with the Olympus E500

• Here is an astrophotography forum for users of the Olympus E500 Evolt and E1
  
• Astrophotography users's group here
• This may be also a good source.
• And last but not least this site has enough links and information to keep you plugged for several lifetimes.

Links

• MyOlympus.org photo sharing site: similar to Photosig, here Olympus E500 users can upload images and give/get feedback
• Yahoo Olympus E500 discussion group: a discussion group dedicated to e Olympus E500 digital camera