Olympus Evolt E-510 digital camera resource

Last update: Feb. 2nd, 2012 Feb. 2nd: Lenses section updated

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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 E510 complete specifications
• Software for the E510 can be downloaded here.
  
  

Reviews and previews

• Imaging resource have a detailed review of the Olympus E510 with test results and full-size samples.
  
• Dcresource published their full review of the Olympus E510. Detailed review with full-size sample images.
• digitalcamerainfo.com have a detailed review of the Olympus E510 with full-size sample images.
• PhotographyBlog have published a detailed review of the Olympus E-510 with test results and full size samples.
  
• dpreview have reviewed the E510. Very detailed review with sample images.
  
• Cameralabs published their review of the Olympus E510. It's a detailed review, but has no full-size sample images.
• Andrzej Wrotniak has a detailed technical review of the Olympus E510 on this wrotniak.net site.
  
• digicamreview.com have an interesting review of the Olympus E-510, without full size samples, but still with very useful information.
  
• TrustedReviews have a review of the Olympus E510 with several sections and crops of high resolution originals, but no full-size samples.
• fourthirds-user.com have an interesting analisys of the benefits of the in-built camera IS of the Olympus E510.
  
• The Nature, Wildlife and Pet photograhy forum has a field review of the Olympus E510. Not many details or quantitative analysis, but some discussion on the camera and some wildlife and nature photos taken with the E510.
• Letsgodigital has a short, not so interesting one-page review of the Olympus 510.
• PhotoReview have a short review of the Olympus E510 with some Imatest test charts.
• digitalcamerareview.com have a review of the Olympus E-510, which actually is more of a camera description, as there are no test results, just a description of the camera.
• Gary Ayton has a page dedicated to the Olympus E510. There are links, a description of the camera, a personal review with pros and cons.
  
• Here is a user review by David Strickland:
  
  
  First impressions are very favourable. The IS gains about 2-3 stops, I really do not know how to measure this other than trying it out. I use the 50-200 Olympus lens and the Sigma 50-500 a lot and often need to hand hold. The Sigma will produce good results with IS on. I took a couple of photos in deliberately poor conditions and have attached them. In one you will see a chaffinch approaching a feeder. The Sigma 50-500 was used at about 400 handheld with the photo taken through double glazing! The other was hand held of a bee with the Olympus 50-200 at 200 as close to the camera as possible, about 3 feet and hand held. In both of these the sky was overcast. These photos will not win prizes for composition or anything else but they do give an idea of the capability.
  
  I understand that the remote issue with the E-500 is now resolved as the E-510 will use the same cable as the E-410 the RM-UC1. This I have ordered but not received or tried. This is another piece of essential kit for me, in fact I made up my own remote for the E-500 so that I could trigger it from the back from some distance.
  
  Some controls have been moved and I prefer the layout. The camera body has been slightly changed as compared with the E-500 and I find I prefer it. To all those Nikon and Canon fans all I can say is that this is a great camera with superb lenses and I much prefer its weight, size, capability and performance. Olympus has a real winner here, it is just that 80% of digital SLR users have no idea of what they are missing!!
  
  The battery charger supplied is the BCM-2 which is disappointing as it charges the standard BLM-1 battery in about 4 hours, so keep your older BCM-1 as this does it in about 2 Hours.
  
  
  

Sample images

• Imaging Resource has full size sample images with different settings and a detailed discussion of the results.
• DCresource has a page with 18 clickable full size sample images of outdoor scenes with different settings.
• digitalcamerainfo.com have a page with 14 full size samples taken with different settings (exif data displayed).
• photographyblog have 25 full size samples of the Olympus E510.

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.
• Adobe Photoshop CS3 is capable of converting E510 RAW files. You will need the Camera RAW 4.2 plugin (earlier versions do not support E510 RAW files). But you can also buy the cheaper Adobe Elements 5, which also supports the plugin. Adobe Photoshop CS2 and older versions cannot directly convert E510 RAW files. You will first have to convert E510 RAW files to DNG.
  
• Another good RAW converter is Olympus Studio.
• dcraw by Dave Coffin is an open source software used by several RAW converters, which can convert E510 RAW files. It's available as source code, command line executable or within a large number of image editing softwares. See Dave Coffin's page for an exhaustive list.
• Even Irfanview can decode E510 RAW files, thanks to the dcraw code.
  

 

Questions ? Comments ? Put them in the Olympus E510 user group

Memory cards

• The E510 takes both CF and xD cards.
  
• Generally speaking there is no reason to use xD cards, since CF cards are cheaper.
  

Firmware

• February 08: firmware v.1.3 released:
• Enabled use of the Image Stabilization function with non-Four Thirds System interchangeable lenses by inputting a specific focal length.
• November 07: firmware v1.2 for the E510 released.
• Improved the focusing accuracy when using the EC-20 Teleconverter.
• Improved image stabilization when shooting at slow shutter speeds.
  
• March 30th: Olympus releases firmware 1.1 for the Olympus E510.
• Here are the changes: Improved reliability of writing to high-speed Compact Flash card
  

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

How good is image stabilisation on the E510?

• Andrzej Wrotniak performed a test, shooting 60 images with IS on and 60 with IS off, at 1/15s and 150mm (=300mm equiv.) focal length, handheld. With IS on, 32 out of 60 frames were sharp and none obviously bad. With IS off, only 2 out of 60 frames were sharp and 47 obviously bad.
• Dcresource also performed an IS test, obtaining a sharp image with IS on at 1/6s exposure time.
• Cameralabs performed a test showing reasonably sharp handheld images at 1/2s exposure time. They also tested the E510 with the Leica 14-50 IS lens. Their conclusion is that having both optical and body stabilisation on does nor produce better results.

Accessories

• Olympus Digital Accessories compatibility page: lists all accessories and tells you if they are compatible with the E510.

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 E510

• 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

• Wide angle and Fisheye

• Standard zooms

• Superzooms

• Telephoto zooms

• Prime lenses (fixed focal length)

• Extension tubes, teleconverters and adapters

• Photozone.de have detailed and accurate reviews of four thirds lenses.

• Firmware updates for Olympus Four Thirds and the Leica D Summilux lenses are available on this page.
  
• 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 E510 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.

Changing the focus screen

• See this article by Roberto Coloretti on how to change the focus screen on an Olympus E510. Step by step explanation with many images.

Controlling the Olympus E510 with a computer

• You can use Olympus Studio 1.5 to control the Olympus E510 with a computer.
  
• Try these software packages
• Cam2Com: see this information.

Underwater Photography

• Ikelite launches the 6855 underwater housing for the E510. 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 E510'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 E510 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 E510

• Below are the steps necessary to connect the E510 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/E510_unchanged/ $ mv -i ./* ~/data/pics/E510_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 E510.
• 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 E510.

Astrophotography with the Olympus E510

• Here is an astrophotography forum for users of the Olympus E510 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 E510 users can upload images and give/get feedback
• Yahoo Olympus E510 discussion group: a discussion group dedicated to e Olympus E510 digital camera