Oly E-330 Comments Wanted

[rcolman]

I have been shooting with an E-300 in an Ikelite housing for the last 18 months, or so, with good results. However, lately, I am finding the viewfinder somewhat limiting and am thinking about changing to an E-330 body for live preview.

This involves a considerable amount of expense since I need to buy a new body and housing.

Is anyone out there using an E-330 underwater. If so, your comments about how the live preview works and general comments much appreciated.

Rick Colman

 

[SuPrBuGmAn]

I don't have a housing for mine just yet, but I can attest to the usefullness of the LiveView and its workability on dry land. The LCD is large and crisp enough to gauge focus. Its a great camera, but aside from the LiveView, slightly lower noise in higher ISOs, slightly better metering, it will be very comparable to your E300.

 

[calypsonick]

Rick, I can't compare my E330 to any other DSLR, as it is my first. I am coming from the Oly C8080. That said, I really like composing in the liveview screen (the main reason I chose this DSLR over others). It seems to give me more flexibility when taking macro in nooks and crannies as I can maneuver my rig into holes or under corals without having to worry about getting my head in there too. I have to admit that having the liveview, I have yet to need to compose through the viewfinder. I keep telling myself that I have to learn but haven't yet.

The battery lasts for 2 dives with the liveview screen on all the time and after taking 250+ photos, so battery life is not an issue.

If you want to preview photos from the E330, the more recent photos in my gallery were taken with the E330.

So far, I really like the camera.

 

[rcolman]

How is it in low-light conditions? Do you find yourself with enough light to stay in mode A or do you end up switching to the macro mode due to low light conditions?

 

[calypsonick]

I found that low light was an issue when I had the focus mode set for all of the three focus points and the camera had a hard time picking one over the other. Now that I set it to use only the center focus point, I have had no problems. On dawn and night dives, I use a HID canister light and therefore have no light issues as it is very bright.

 

[Fota]

Rick, I can't compare my E330 to any other DSLR, as it is my first. I am coming from the Oly C8080. That said, I really like composing in the liveview screen (the main reason I chose this DSLR over others). It seems to give me more flexibility when taking macro in nooks and crannies as I can maneuver my rig into holes or under corals without having to worry about getting my head in there too. I have to admit that having the liveview, I have yet to need to compose through the viewfinder. I keep telling myself that I have to learn but haven't yet.

The battery lasts for 2 dives with the liveview screen on all the time and after taking 250+ photos, so battery life is not an issue.

If you want to preview photos from the E330, the more recent photos in my gallery were taken with the E330.

So far, I really like the camera.

Hi,

Very interesting. I'm coming from an Oly 7070 and even though I'm able to take some really nice shots with it, there are way to too many shots that I just can't take mainly due to it's crappy autofocus (which is very similar to the one in 8080).
Not only is it dead-slow (shooting a moving fish is a no no and subject further away than a 1-2 feet very seldom gets really sharp), it also has major problems with focusing in low light (i.e. where I typically dive), and as if that wasn't enough, it has major problems finding the focus on the subject when there is particles in the water (after some thinking it decides to go for the particles) and last but not least it fails almost everytime on several soft and transparent objects.
Note that I find the autofocus really bad even though I use the pointing light from my DS-125 as focus light (but I'd rather not as it has many drawbacks) when diving in Sweden (where I dive the most). In tropical waters the DS-125 pointing light is not visible.


Now, please tell us all what the main reasons were for you to switch from 8080 to E-330?
Did it fulfill your desires?
What wasn't as good as you thought?
What was as good?
What was perhaps even better?

And most important, relative to the 8080, how good is the autofocus?
Much better? A little better? As good/bad? etc

I've heard that the A mode display is very dark in low light conditions. Is it so?

I mostly dive in bad sight green water (Swedish west coast) and so far no one has shown me any picture from that type of conditions.

I've heard that the viewfinder is electronic only in the E-330. Is it really so?
From what I've read, the viewfinder is not very good (compared to e.g. D80), so the main reason for getting the E-330 is to use the display. In uv-photo it's really good to be able to use a display in all conditions but when the autofocus is not trusty, or if you want to go manual focus. A true and good viewfinder is then outstanding.

Really looking forward to your comments.


/Fota

 

[SuPrBuGmAn]

The D80 has a very nice big bright viewfinder. The E330 is smaller and without as much magnification, but its useable on land, not sure about while housed UW(I don't use my E330 UW yet). The LCD is crisp enough to judge accurate focus.

Not sure if anyone has noted this or not... B Mode has autofocus now with the E330s current firmware update.

 

[jlyle]

Not sure if anyone has noted this or not... B Mode has autofocus now with the E330s current firmware update.

Sort of...in B mode, you have to push the AEL button for auto-focus, followed by the shutter to take the picture. Awkward, but better than nothing.

 

[rcolman]

To respond to Fota's comments, I moved from a C-5060 (same a 7070 mostly) to an E-300 about a year ago. The improvement was immense. I can now do fish photography and get decent autofocus under conditions that were impossible for the 5060. Also, I can shoot RAW fast which is a vast advantage.

The viewfinder in the E-300 is decent in an Ikelite housing, but, there are still situations where it is a pain to get the housing up to your eye. Lately, I find myself just pointing the camera and pulling the trigger without bothering with the viewfinder. This works because: (1) I use the focus priority setting so the camera will not take the shot unless the autofocus locks in, and (2) I shoot wide-angle with an 11-22mm lens and can get good focus most of the time without setting up the shot in the viewfinder.

So, I am heading towards the E-330 because I want the live view feature exclusively.

Rick Colman

 

[calypsonick]

Fota, I cannot judge the viewfinder because I have never used one, including the one on my E330, even on land.

As for the autofocus, it is better than the 8080. I would often wonder why the 8080 would choose to focus on something that was outside of the focus box and way in the background. This is especially frustrating with subjects like wire coral gobies or pipefish. With the E330 on single spot focus, I can get things like that into focus much faster. I have to admit that it is not as fast as I thought a DSLR would be but seeing as this is my first one, I have no others to compare against.

As for autofocusing on particles, I think this is a universal problem as the camera does not know what you want to focus on. I try not to use my model lights to avoid illuminating anything between camera and subject. I have a HID light set on pinpoint focus and hold it as far as I can from my camera and point it to my subject. This will help the camera focus on what you want and not other stuff in the water column.

A huge difference with the 8080 is being able to take RAW in real time. The 8080 would take forever to write to the card, I gave up trying and only did SHQ. Now, I can take all my shots in RAW and the flexibility to adjust exposure in the RAW processor in PS is overwhelmingly superb. I am still trying to figure out how best to use all those additional tools. One drawback on the E330 is the USB 1.0 interface for your computer. You will need a card reader, otherwise it will take hours to download a 2GB card full of RAW shots. It is sloooooooooooowwwwwwww!

Liveview A mode is very nice. It will flicker from time to time but not enough to be a nuisance. It is bright and compared to the 8080 screen is big enough to tell whether your shot is in focus or not. It was near impossible with the 8080 with which, on a number of occasions, I would come back to my computer and realize that all 25 shots of something like that really rare and cool baby frogfish were all out of focus !!!! I do alot of dawn and night dives and the screen brightness is not a problem for me under those low light conditions.

I can't talk to the firmware for B view as my internet connection is so slow the download will not work for my camera.

HTH
Nick