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.