New Olympus DSLR

Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 6:35 am

Was a little suprised by this to tell the truth- looks good though.

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0609/06091401olympuse400.asp

Premium Member Joined: 21 Nov 2005 Posts: 679

Looks promising. It should be a good product for the beginner consumer market. I don't think it'll even come close to a prosumer market because of its very small size. Most photographers' hands are somewhat bigger :)

Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 2:25 pm

Does it seem odd to anyone of a "warning" on anything above ISO 400? I can understand that someone might want a 10 megapixel camera over a 6 megapixel but what good is it if it is full of noise? I really wish they would try and tackle this issue before craming more pixels on the same smaller sensor.

Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 8:20 pm

They could have made it even lighter if they did away with the autofocus and the pop-up flash. It's a shame it won't be availible on the US market though.

Joined: 03 Aug 2006 Posts: 54

We are waiting for a demo model in shop although as it doesnt have an underwater kit we may not get it. I cant see any difference apart from its a bit smaller and lighter (almost handbag sized) Shame it doesn't have life view as the 330 its our best seller for slr underwater market

Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2006 2:37 am

andrewshalin wrote:

Looks promising. It should be a good product for the beginner consumer market. I don't think it'll even come close to a prosumer market because of its very small size. Most photographers' hands are somewhat bigger :)

I don't know for sure, but being a betting man I would bet that this one sells like hot cakes because of it's size. Olympus has been hearing the voices for a smaller sized camera, especially from Japan and they are now responding to those voices with the release of the E-400. Strange though is that though most of the voice for smaller size came from Japan, the E-400 will not be released in Japan or America this year simply because they can not manufacture enough in time. This camera is about the size (omitting the external flash) as the OM Series film camera Oly once released which was a huge success. Seem that history also shows that OM Series was a turning point in the design of cameras in general.

Olympus has said (quick translation here) about the E-400 that they "redid all the internal parts, so no components are shared in common with any of the earlier E-system cameras. The mirror, shutter, viewfinder, all parts have changed. Even the dust reduction system was redesigned a bit smaller. So we reviewed all the parts and reduced all their sizes bit by bit."

I think this one will be very interesting and we will see what happens when it is out on the market.