Olympus E-30

Color (13.56)

The first of our array of tests analyzes how accurately the E-30 captures color across all its color modes, unfortunately, it was mediocre across all modes, only beating the Pentax K2000. In general, it did well with flesh tones and dark colors, but for brighter hues it really struggled, especially with oranges and yellows. We test this by shooting the X-Rite color chart under 3000 lux illumination, and use the Imatest image analysis application to measure the deviation from known color values and image saturation for each available color mode. The Olympus struggled in this area, with all of its four color modes either leaning towards the inaccurate or undersaturated. We found the Muted color mode produced the best results, so used that in our in-depth testing. More on how we test color.

Below you can see full-size crops of the X-Rite color chart patches for each of the comparison models and the Olympus E-30, in their best modes. On the far left are the ideal values for each color.

Camera Color Comparisons					Expand
	Ideal	Olympus E-30	Nikon D90	Canon EOS 50D	Canon EOS Rebel XS	Pentax K2000
Dark Skin
Light Skin
Blue Sky
Foliage
Blue Flower
Bluish Green
	Ideal	Olympus E-30	Nikon D90	Canon EOS 50D	Canon EOS Rebel XS	Pentax K2000
Orange
Purplish Blue
Moderate Red
Purple
Yellow Green
Orange Yellow
	Ideal	Olympus E-30	Nikon D90	Canon EOS 50D	Canon EOS Rebel XS	Pentax K2000
Blue
Green
Red
Yellow
Magenta
Cyan

NOTE: Because of the way computer monitors reproduce colors, the images above do not exactly match the originals found on the chart or in the captured images. The chart should be used to judge the relative color shift, not the absolute captured colors.

When compared to other brands of camera, the Olympus E-30 performed poorly in terms of color accuracy, only managing to beat the significantly less expensive Pentax K2000. The images were consistently undersaturated.

The overall scoring results for our color accuracy testing are shown below; taller bars indicate superior performance.

Color Modes (4.00)

The Olympus E-30 has only four color modes: Muted, Vivid, Natural and Portrait, of which Muted was the most accurate, but also under-saturated. However, none of these were particularly amazing in terms of capturing a color as close to ideal as possible.

In addition to the four modes shown below, there’s also Monochrome (which wouldn’t provide for a very interesting addition to the chart). Each of the color modes can be tweaked for contrast, sharpness, saturation, and a custom mode can be based off of the presets with additional controls for gradation. Monochrome mode cannot be altered for saturation, but black and white filters can be added (yellow, orange, red or green) or a color tone can be thrown over the top (sepia, blue purple or green).

Color Mode Comparisons					Expand
	Ideal	Muted	Vivid	Natural	Portrait
Dark Skin
Light Skin
Blue Sky
Foliage
Blue Flower
Bluish Green
	Ideal	Muted	Vivid	Natural	Portrait
Orange
Purplish Blue
Moderate Red
Purple
Yellow Green
Orange Yellow
	Ideal	Muted	Vivid	Natural	Portrait
Blue
Green
Red
Yellow
Magenta
Cyan

NOTE: Because of the way computer monitors reproduce colors, the images above do not exactly match the originals found on the chart or in the captured images. The chart should be used to judge the relative color shift, not the absolute captured colors.

White Balance (9.61)

We tested the E-30’s abilities to handle different light sources appropriately on both automatic and custom settings, and it performed below average yet again. It did alright on auto, but was less accurate than most other cameras when a manual white balance was taken. In order to test this reliably, we shoot the X-Rite colorcheck chart in the Judge II light box, which provides tightly controlled illumination at precise color temperatures. More on how we test color.

Automatic White Balance (11.3)

Under incandescent/tungsten, fluorescent and daylight illumination, the E-30 tended towards the warm side, leading to slightly yellow images. This was especially noticeable under incandescent light, which is not uncommon.

The Olympus E-30 did relatively well with daylight illumination, though not quite to the level of the other cameras we tested.

All cameras struggle with incandescent light, and the E-30 is no exception, though it dealt with the yellow light of the standard household fixtures better than most.

The E-30 scored worse under cool white fluorescent bulbs than any other camera in our test group except the Nikon D90.

Custom White Balance (7.92)

When taking a custom white balance, you expect a high degree of accuracy from the camera. The E-30 had a tendency for its ‘one touch white balance’ to run slightly cool, but not hugely. While the results is worse than most other cameras on the market, the difference won’t be highly visible in actual photos.

One issue we had with the custom white balance is that the only way to take a reading requires the use of the customizable Fn button on the camera. Since there’s no way to take a white balance from the menu system, you have to use your customizable button for this if you want to take an accurate white balance, precluding it from other uses.

While the E-30 did relatively well when set to automatic white balance, its relatively poor custom performance pulled it quite a bit lower in the overall white balance performance comparison. In Custom mode it scored lower than any of the other listed cameras.

White Balance Options (9.00)

The E-30 had 10 white balance settings, including 3 different fluorescent settings. These presets can all be tweaked along the amber-blue and green-magenta axes, either individually or all at once. Additionally, white balance bracketing can be set to either axis in two, four or six steps over three photos. If you’re using Live View, one of the view options shows you four variations of your current scene with different white balance presets applied.

Interestingly, the camera has a dedicated white balance sensor on the front of the camera, sadly placed where it can easily get blocked by stray fingers. It didn’t seem to give the E-30 a performance boost over cameras that don’t have it, though, and it can be turned off if the light sources are substantially different between the camera and subject.

Long Exposure (7.93)

With longer exposure times, the E-30 struggled with low color accuracy and high noise levels, ranking it below the four cameras we compared it to. For this test, we look at how well the camera handles long exposures in low light, testing for color accuracy and noise levels, with noise reduction both on and off. We shoot under dim 20 lux illumination at ISO 400, analyzing the X-Rite color chart using Imatest.

The results in this section have changed slightly since this review was originally published, though it did not affect the overall comparative ranking of the tested cameras. Our testing procedure calls for turning off dynamic range adjustment (which Olympus labels ‘gradation’) when performing any noise-related testing (this includes both the Long Exposure section and the Noise section that follows). However, the Olympus E-30 does not offer an ‘off’ option. In our first round of testing, we used the Auto setting. Based on reader input, we experimented with the Normal setting and determined that it does improve image noise performance in the core noise tests that follow. While still not an ideal solution based on our standardized testing procedures, we decided to rerun all the relevant tests with gradation set to Normal. This produced an improvement in our noise testing, shooting under relatively bright illumination, but under low light conditions, the original Auto setting actually produced marginally better results, by roughly 0.3%. For consistency’s sake, we scored based on the Normal mode scores below. More on how we test long exposure.

The E-30 produced reasonably accurate color reproduction until the longest exposure time, 30 seconds, where it overexposed even as low as 20 lux.

The noise levels were disturbingly high across the board, and using noise reduction made matters even worse. Long exposure noise reduction works by taking a second exposure of the same length directly after the first, but with the lens closed. The logic being that the noise of the second image can then be subtracted from the first, and it will be smoother overall. The problem with this logic is that noise is inherently random, so for the E-30, it worsens the situation overall. With shooting from 1-15 second exposures, noise levels were slightly worse with Gradation set to Normal rather than Auto, which is the opposite of what we saw with high ISO noise.

As stated above, the E-30’s battle with image noise let it down in this test. The photographs came out covered with the distinctive speckle of high amounts of image noise, which dragged down the score in this category, even further than its already below-average color accuracy.