Olympus E-520: Camera Test

	Click the photo to see more images of the Olympus E-520.

Jaded? Amid all the new DSLRs and jaw-dropping technology, it's easy to feel ho-hum about an Excellent image-quality rating from the Pop Photo Lab, topshelf image stabilization, live view, and a price so friendly it damn near invites you over for drinks. That's certainly the case with the 10MP Olympus E-520. Especially at $550, street, body only; $630 with 14- 42mm f/3.5-5.6 Zuiko Digital lens.

Yes, it's easy to dismiss it as a mere upgrade of last year's E-510, but it offers much more than just a bigger LCD (2.7-inch vs. 2.5) and a faster processor (for a burst rate of 3.5 frames per second vs. 3).

It's also easy to wave it on as the fifth-place finisher in our August "Midlevel Marvels" DSLR shootout, but that doesn't do this camera justice, either. Up against the Canon EOS Rebel XSi, Nikon D60, Pentax K200D, and Sony Alpha 350, the Olympus didn't score high in terms of a system (lots of lenses and accessories) or easy control of the settings. But all is not lost. Especially for those who want to join the Four Thirds system and don't expect to buy pro-caliber arsenals of add-ons in the near future -- and who don't share our views of menudriven camera controls.

In the shootout, there was space only to summarize our findings from both the Lab and field tests. Here's a deeper look.

Sharp shooting

Image quality? Impressive. The E-520 showed great consistency, both across the ISO range and in RAW and JPEG capture. It's one thing to garner Excellent imaging scores at ISO 100 in a huge TIFF made from a RAW file, and another in a JPEG at ISO 1600 -- exactly what the E-520 did. With Medium noise reduction on at ISO 1600, it scored Low on noise while resolving just under 1900 lines. With no NR applied, noise moved up slightly to Moderately Low and resolution reached 1930 lines. Color accuracy at ISO 1600 nosed into Excellent with an average Delta E of 7.85.

This tied it for third in image quality in August's shootout. With the five cameras averaging better than 2,000 lines of resolution, though, middle of the pack here would have been top of the heap not long ago. And there's no slamdunk champ in this category. The 12.2MP Canon EOS Rebel XSi topped the E-520 in resolution, but was slightly behind in noise performance. The Nikon D60 had superior noise numbers but a near-insignificant edge in resolution. And we judge the E-520's imaging superior to that of the 14.2MP Sony Alpha 350, whose noise was such that images at higher ISOs lost significant resolution when cleaned up with noise reduction.

No weighting

The solid feel of the E-520 is belied by its weight -- 1.7 pounds with the kit lens, among the lightest in its class. And, unlike its stablemate the E-420, which some bigger-handed photographers find too petite, the E-520 feels good in hands large and small.

The shutter button, thumb rest, command dial, and exposure comp button are in just the right places. We wish there were a second command dial, but that's the impossible dream in this class.

The pentamirror viewfinder has 0.91X magnification, just earning an Excellent rank, but it still has a tunnel-vision effect. This is partly perceptual -- the squarer 4:3 aspect ratio of the Four Thirds frame seems smaller than the wider-screen 3:4 rectangle of APS-C and full-frame cameras. Eyeglass-wearers may have to shift to see the readouts next to the image.

Every control can be reached through the menus. One layer up, the LCD serves as a status and control panel; press the OK button to scroll around the panel with the command dial or four-way controller, then adjust settings. The control panel is reasonably quick in use and gives you an extensive (if crowded) view of key settings. One layer further up, a dozen buttons are dedicated to specific settings, and you can assign a function button to any control. Again, pretty quick in use.

But the dedicated buttons bring up submenus you have to scroll through -- fine for things like ISO and white balance, but irksome when switching from auto to manual focus. That takes a button press, two clicks of the dial or controller, and another press of a button or the shutter release. So the AF/MF switch can't be done at eye-level, as on most DSLRs. To set "onetouch" custom WB, you assign it to the function button -- a scroll through three menu screens. These controls could be less cumbersome and more logical.