Olympus E-30

	Design & Handling Summary
• Good weight and build quality • Rear dial and some buttons placed awkwardly • Four-way controller hard to use with USB plugged in • Cluttered menu system • Decent manual
	Controls	Page 11 of 19	Speed & Timing

Handling (6.00)

The camera has a pleasant heft behind its 23oz (without lens) weight, giving it a certain stability and solidity. It also has a good, deep grip to wrap your mitts around, so you won't be dropping this camera because of a stiff breeze. The button layout is pretty good, though we found the rear dial placed just a tiny bit further away from our thumb's natural resting position than we would have liked. The Delete button is also placed far from the right hand, making it impossible to erase bad images with only one hand. One other small problem is that when the USB cable was plugged into the back of the camera, it became difficult to press the down button on the four-way pad.

The E-30 has a pleasant heft to it

Controls (8.00)

The control scheme on the E-30 is generally laid out well, and the buttons all feel highly resilient, as if they'll take many, many presses without complaint.

Back Controls
	Autofocus Change autofocus mode.
	Metering Changes metering settings, when combined with autofocus button, brings up bracketing controls.
	Delete For deleting images in Playback.
	Info Alters information on the LCD.
	Live View Fires up the Live View mode.
	Image Stabilization For setting image stabilization.
	Rear dial For changing settings.
	Fn (Function) Customizable
	[…] (AF point adjust) Lets you select which autofocus point to use.
	Auto exposure/ autofocus lock Hold to lock down the current exposure or focus.
	Playback Takes you into Playback mode.
	Four-way controller For navigating menus and options.
	Off/on Should you ever feel the need to turn on your camera, here's the switch to flip.

Top Controls
	Shooting mode dial Manual, Shutter priority, Aperture priority, Program, Auto and a number of scene modes.
	Light Temporarily illuminates the monochrome LCD.
	White balance Changes white balance setting.
	Exposure compensation (±) For altering exposure compensation.
	ISO Runs from 100 to 3200.
	Front dial For altering settings.

In addition to buttons, toggles and dials, the E-30 has a couple of neat controls and options tucked away. The level gauge reads an acceleration sensor in two directions to let you know when your camera has a perfect level both vertically and horizontally. If you're doing tripod work, or you don't have access to a spirit level, this could come in handy. If you're shooting in a setup where the vibrations must be kept to a minimum, the anti-shock option lets you set a time delay between the mirror being raised and the shutter released to stop any chance of motion. This can be set to between one and 30 seconds.

The level gauge tool, in normal mode on the left, and Live View on the right

The E-30 also allows for a decent level of customization. The most evident is the Fn button, which can be set to face detection, one-touch white balance, test picture (takes a photo and shows it on the LCD, but doesn't save), My Mode, Depth of Field preview, switch to a saved autofocus point, switch to manual focus, shoot in RAW, or show the level gauge. Unfortunately, the need to take manual white balance readings is usually far more pressing than the usefulness of these other features, and using the Fn button is the only way to take a white balance reading, so you'll probably end up leaving it on that option the majority of the time. My Mode includes two groups of custom shooting settings that can be saved at a time, always a handy option. The camera can set the dials and focus ring to work in either direction, if you have a preference. There's also an option to alter how long after pressing a control button that you have to change the related setting (if you hit ISO, for example, you have three seconds by default to alter the sensitivity level). In the custom menu, you can set this alternatively to five or eight seconds, or else hold, where you have to keep the button depressed in order to alter a setting.

Menu (4.75)

The menu system has a series of tabs running along the left side, each of which offers a page or two of options, some of which lead to even further choices. It's not a bad menu system, but the lists can be a bit long, so getting to the desired choice can be a chore. The system would also benefit from a higher-resolution screen, which would make the menu sharper, but it's still reasonably bright and easy to read.

Menus
	Overview As you can see, the menu system for the E-30 is based around a series of tabs on the far left, with options in each one, which occasionally lead to addtional subsets of choices.
	Shooting Menu 1 Contains many of the commonly altered settings for shooting, most of which can also be accessed via the quick menu.
	Shooting Menu 2 More controls over shooting, including various bracketing modes.
	Playback Slideshow, editing and printing controls.
	Custom Menu 1 For setting up custom controls of the camera, including metering, dial directions, remote controls and other choices for tweaking the camera to your heart's content.
	Custom Menu 2 Date, time, LCD brightness and the like.

Manual & Learning (5.75)

The Olympus E-30s manual is pretty decent. It's well laid out with clear illustrations and a good table of contents and index. Where it fell short was adequately explaining some of the features (like gradation), and in placing the table of contents after the basic guide, so you have to hunt for the contents page before you can start looking for what you really need.

Olympus E-30 Manual

If you're looking for more information, Olympus has a series of online tutorials for their SLRs at Olympus Digital School. There aren't any specifically for the E-30 yet, but there are some good general lessons on the site (though a few border on advertorial).

Controls	Page 11 of 18		Speed & Timing
Olympus E-30 Digital Camera Review Navigation
Intro	Product Tour	Color	Noise
Resolution	White Balance	Sample Photos	Playback
Hardware	Controls	Design & Handling	Speed & Timing
Nikon D90 Comparison	Canon 50D Comparison	Canon Rebel XS Comp	Pentax K2000 Comparison
Conclusion	Specs & Ratings