Interview With Olympus Product Managers Richard Pelkowski and Sally Smith Clemens

Olympus Interview, Part Two:
Part Two of our interview with products managers Sally Smith Clemens and Richard Pelkowski of Olympus covers the nuts and bolts of what the E-330 offers and what it can do, including commentary on power consumption and the challenges of a movie mode on a DSLR.

DCI: Could you explain what advantages each mode has and what situations in which you’d see them being most applicable?

Pelkowski: Certainly. A mode, as Sally mentioned, is really going to be for the person who’s just looking to use the LCD panel for composition. This camera facilitates that tremendously because it has the moveable LCD panel for an overhead shot, waist low shot, or even shot captured by kneeling on the ground. The B mode is, again, going to be for people that need to do fine focusing on copy stands or tripods. That mode is really only useable in that type of photo situation with a camera mounted in a stable fashion. There will be manual focusing also available in that mode. Now, the E-330’s live view offers an advantage in focusing. You’re probably thinking that you could focus just fine through an ordinary optical viewfinder, but if you’ve got a split center FC screen, it’s very difficult to tell at very close working distances of very shallow depth of field if your focus is correct and exactly what point it’s on. For instance, if you’ve ever tried to use a macro lens and an extension tube to try to photograph jewelry products or anything like that, you’ll know what I mean. You can go back and forth with trial and error until you get it right, but it’s difficult to determine through a focus screen on an optical TTL viewfinder on an SLR camera. With the E-330, I can actually select the area on the preview screen that I want to magnify, and there’s little rectangle that pops up which I can move around with the jog dial on the camera. If I press the OK button it’ll give me a 10x magnification of that area on the subject.

DCI: And how sharp is the LCD? What’s the resolution?

Pelkowski: It’s sharp. And I’m going to get to that in a second. Anyway, in B mode I can also overlay some different scaling grid patterns on the LCD panel… and get depth of field preview, too, in that live view mode.
DCI: How is the depth of field preview enabled on that camera?

Pelkowski: By the same way on a traditional SLR; it actually stops down the lens diaphragm.

DCI: Is the button near the lens barrel?

Pelkowski: Actually, it’s a button on the back of that camera that we dedicate to that function. It’s the drive button that’s just about at the 11 o’clock position on the jog dial. You asked me what’s the quality of the image on the screen, right?

DCI: Yes.

Pelkowski: You’re going to be pretty impressed with it. And that’s a very good question, because it has to be very high quality.

DCI: Absolutely.

Pelkowski: It has to have low noise for it to really be of use.

DCI: Yeah, if it’s expected to be a major selling point.

Pelkowski: In the A mode, we’ve achieved that splendidly. That second CCD that we use in the viewfinder is the 8 million pixel capture CCD from our Stylus 800.

Smith Clemens: You guys are familiar with that, Alex.

DCI: Yes.

Pelkowski: Now, you really could have effected this negatively with a $20 little itty bitty 800,000 pixel chip. We didn’t do that. We actually used a very high quality secondary image sensor as the secondary sensor for the viewfinder. That not only gives us the capability that that chip offers for low light situations, but it gives a really high quality signal to send to that LCD panel on the back. Now I’m going to talk about that LCD panel on the back and what it offers for live view technology in this camera. It’s the same 215,000 HyperCrystal technology panel that we use in our EVOLT 500, which has gotten tremendous reviews. It’s just a brilliant component. And it’s just packaged with a different frame now, the tilting LCD frame. We could have been able to do that with cheaper components. I mean, if we had used a lower resolution CCD in the viewfinder, and then maybe just a 150,000 plain-Jane TFT LCD on the back, it would have worked, but nowhere nearly as nicely as it does now.

Smith Clemens: HyperCrystal, by the way, basically means that it’s a wide view high contrast LCD that can be viewed from angles up to 160 degrees.

Pelkowski: Yes. And the difference from a 1.8 or a 2-inch LCD that’s got 150,000 pixels is tremendous. But anyway, if I could go back to the B mode again. The main sensor is a 7.5 megapixel Live-MOS sensor.

DCI: That’s a metal oxide conductor, right?

Pelkowski: Exactly. MOS is Metal Oxide Semiconductor. Of course you’ve heard of CMOS that Canon’s using in their products and some other manufacturers use. We’re calling it a Live-MOS sensor, but to answer your question it’s technically an NMOS sensor, which I believe stands for Negative-type Metal Oxide Semiconductor chip. This type of sensor, though, facilitates and complements the live view function. You could use a CCD in this camera for capture and live view in B mode, but those are interlaced chips, and it makes the image kind of jaggy and not that fluid when you’re panning the camera. We’ve always said in the past when people asked us, “Are you going to stay with the Kodak? Are you going to stick with CCDs?” we’ve always said that we’re going to use the type of chip that’s best for the particular application.

Smith Clemens: The predecessors to this camera, Alex, were the E-1 and the E-300 and the E-500, and they all used a single Kodak full-frame transfer CCD to collect image data. The E-330 is using dual sensor technology, an 8 million pixel CCD in the viewfinder with Bright Capture Technology for framing and composing the image on the 2.5” LCD, which is by the way the same type of CCD that is used in the Olympus Stylus 800 digital camera And the capture sensor which is a 7.5 effective pixels metal oxide semiconductor that we’re calling Live-MOS. Richard, isn’t this the only camera so far that’s used that type of sensor?

Pelkowski: That is correct.

DCI: Obviously with the addition of the live preview, they’ll be more of a power drain. Is there a different battery in this than the E-300 and E-500, and if so, how is that designed to cater to all the functionality the camera has to offer?

Pelkowski: Good question. It actually is using the same battery, the BLM1. It’s a lithium-ion battery, and I think its 70 watts. With no live view, just using the optical viewfinder, it would be very similar to the 500 or the 300: [according to the battery life data sheet] they’re stating approximately 400 releases or exposures. In A mode: 250. That’s with the optical viewfinder still enabled and using the little sensor on the top for the live view. In the B mode, where we’re using mirror lockup and the main NMOS sensor to capture the image, we’re down to 200.

Smith Clemens: Which is still pretty reasonable for a 2.5-inch live LCD.

Pelkowski: I’m fine with the numbers they’re giving us on this, actually. Think about it. That’s with that [LCD] turned on constantly. So that’s pretty good.

DCI: Well…

Pelkowski: By the way, while we’re talking about that… one of the reasons for choosing this chip was the power consumption, and also noise. If you leave a CCD turned on for a long period of time, it actually develops a lot more heat because it’s using a lot more voltage and current, and its going get noisy as well. But with this chip, the spec we have for this is1.5 hours continuously turned on at ISO 100 until there is any increase in noise. And I believe at ISO 1600, it’s 8 minutes before any noise would be encountered. I think these are very impressive specs.

DCI: Do any of those figures include flash usage?

Pelkowski: The figures that would have pertained to flash usage would have been with the battery life figures. And frankly, I don’t know. That’s a very good question. I’m sorry I don’t have the answer for you.

DCI: Okay. I was also curious whether or not the camera is capable of recording video?

Pelkowski: It is not. That’s a really good question, too, because you’d probably….you know, you could have done that with this camera, because obviously in the B mode we’ve got the shutter out of the way and the mirror locked up.

DCI: Exactly.

Pelkowski: But it would have added additional cost to the camera to do that. We were really conscious of where we were going to hit the market, at what price point. To do it with contrast detection autofocus throughout the movie duration [instead of with manual focus] would have added more expense to it. You have to understand, too, it’s not just another position on the mode dial. There would be additional circuitry and additional memory buffer to do that, and so on and so forth, so it would have been popped the cost up at retail maybe $50 or $100 dollars. You can be sure that’s certainly something that we’re considering for the future. The other thing we have to bear in mind is whether this type of customer is looking for that, as well. I think some of them would. I mean, why not.

DCI: Absolutely. One of the reasons the ultra zoom market is flourishing right now is because you get the live view and video recording. And I think a lot of manufacturers are consciously targeting that multifunction, hybrid type user. And, as far as I’m aware, there is only one consumer camcorder under $5,000 that has interchangeable lenses.

Pelkowski: That’s the Canon?

DCI: Yeah, the XL2.

Pelkowski: It’s a good point, because in more and more cameras as the memory gets faster and the buffer is more robust, they’re going to the VGA movie mode, too, which is some pretty cool stuff.

DCI: Can you tell me what ISO settings are on the camera?

Pelkowski: This camera actually starts at 100 and I think it will go around to 3200. I thought it was just 1600 at first.

Smith Clemens: You can check, the specs changed.

Pelkowski: I’m sorry, I was wrong. It’s 100 to 1600. Which with a digital camera, 1600 is pretty darn high, actually.

DCI: Are the noise reduction mechanisms similar to those in the E-500?

Pelkowski: That’s a good question. They probably work similarly, but since they’re using much different chips, I honestly…

Smith Clemens: I don’t think we know yet, Alex.