Olympus E-30

Sharpness

Image Sharpness and Chromatic Aberration

Focal Length:

14.0mm

26.0mm

54.0mm

Click blue squares to change sample crops below
f/2.8 f/6.3 f/22
f/3 f/8 f/22
f/3.5 f/9 f/22

Image Stabilization (11.79)

The Olympus E-30 uses sensor-shift image stabilization technology to compensate for shaking hands. We test this by shaking the camera at high and low frequency, both in horizontal and vertical directions, using a precisely controlled laboratory mechanism. Lo and behold, the Olympus performed remarkably well. This may be one of the few benefits of having a small sensor, in that the camera can adjust it much faster to compensate for motion.

The first of our tests simulates the amount of shaking that you might find when holding the camera in two hands, so there’s only a moderate amount of wobble. You can see that the camera is more effective horizontally across the slightly longer exposure as opposed to vertically, which is good, as horizontal shake is more prevalent when holding a camera. With both directions, the sharpness levels off around 1/60 and 1/30 of a second, a standard exposure level for indoor shooting. If you have the image stabilization on at this point, you get a sharpness approximately equivalent of a 1/200 exposure without image stabilization, a dramatic improvement.

With faster shaking, about the same as you would encounter when using the relatively hefty SLR one-handed, the improvement was even more noticeable, both horizontally and vertically.

What it boils down to is that the image stabilization on the E-30 is extremely effective. Regardless of the conditions you’re shooting in, or your exposure time, if you’re not using a tripod you will want to turn this feature on. Even at 1/500 of a second, where you usually won’t see any blurring, there’s still a noticeable improvement.

If you only want the camera to stabilize in one direction, for panning either left/right or up/down, you can set the image stabilization to level two or three. The former will only stabilize vertical shake, which makes it good for following objects moving parallel to the ground, and the latter only stabilizes horizontally, for targets rapidly ascending or descending.

If you are using Live View, holding down the IS button on the camera’s back will engage the stabilization motor so you can see a preview of how it will effect your image without actually needing to take the photograph. However, this also creates a slightly unnerving noise.

Image Stabilization Comparison Table			Expand
	Low Shake IS Off	Low Shake IS On	High Shake IS Off	High Shake IS On
1/500
1/250
1/125
1/60
1/30
1/15
1/8

Where camera manufacturers Olympus, Sony and Pentax differ from Canon and Nikon, is that they offer their image stabilization in the body of the camera rather than the lens. This means that all lenses retain the benefits of shake reduction, and their prices can be kept lower. The Olympus mount system is known for being able to take other lenses with a simple adapter, so the E-30 lets you manually set the focal length of a non-Four Thirds lens, and the image stabilization will still work.