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Connectivity
Software (6.00)
The E-520 comes bundled with OLYMPUS Master 2 software (capitalization courtesy of Olympus), which is your standard photo organizer/ basic image editor, but with a few more powerful tools included. Like most other software of this type, it attempts to organize your photo albums in a rather iPhoto-ish manner, and provides some straightforward ways to edit photos. Resizing, cropping, adding text, brightness and contrast tweaking are all there, along with sharpening and blurring and all the editing tools that are available on camera. Olympus has tucked in some slightly more powerful functions as well, a nice change from the sometimes restricted nature of most bundled image editing applications. Distortion correction, hue and saturation tweaking and gamma correction are provided, which are rather handy if you want to get your hands a little dirty, but aren’t quite ready for Photoshop. Most impressively, there’s a proper multi channel Tone Curve tool, which allows the user to alter brightness, contrast, shadows, highlights and individual colors. However, we struggle to conceive of a situation where someone knows how to use a Tone Curve and doesn’t have access to Photoshop, Photoshop Elements or at least Gimp, a free and powerful image editor.
Jacks, ports, plugs (2.00)
Rather than having standard mini-USB and RCA out, the E-520 has Olympus’ proprietary output port. About the size of mini-USB, a specialized cable to provide both a computer connection and AV out uses the small jack. Of course, this also means you have to carry this cord rather than a cheap and easily replaceable industry-standard USB.
When connected via USB to a PictBridge compatible printer, the E-520 can print files directly, without the need for a computer.. You can print with either the Easy Printing or Custom Printing options. A button on the top of the camera controls Easy Printing, and you simply press said button to print off a single copy. Custom Printing gives you more options, and more control. First, you set the print mode, which defines if you want to print a single photo; all your photos; multi print (which produces multiple copies of one photo on a single sheet); an index image of all your pictures; or print in a user-defined order. You are also given control over the size of printer paper, type of border and the size of the multi-print images, if appropriate. The images can also be cropped down at this stage, or have date and time information printed on them.
Battery (7.00)
The lithium ion battery is 7.2V and 1500mAh and is rated at 500 charges and discharges by the manufacturer. It lasted very well through out extensive and time consuming testing. Be careful though: using Live View can drain the battery at a significantly greater rate than using the viewfinder.
The E-520 can take both CompactFlash and xD cards, the latter of which is a format used by Olympus and Fujifilm. There is also a handy button that lets you transfer an image between the two with a single click.
The E-520 accepts Compact Flash and Olympus' xD format memory cards
Dust Reduction – The dust reduction feature activates every time the camera is turned on, as indicated by a small flashing blue LED on the top of the body. The Supersonic Wave Filter (helpfully labeled as SSWF) fires a 35kHz pulse that dislodges anything stuck to the lens, and captures it in an “adhesive dust absorber” according to the website. It is not mentioned if this absorber needs replacing or cleaning.
Face Detection - The E-520 does have face detection technology which only functions in Live View mode, as it requires the information provided by the light sensor. Even while shooting in viewfinder mode, Face Detection can be turned on through the menu system – it just doesn't do anything. It would have made more sense to disallow the option except while shooting in Live View mode. When it is used, the Face Detection system seems to work quite well, but is still saddled with the slow focus time associated with Live View mode.
Image Stabilization - Depending on what you want to use it for, the E-520 has three different types of image stabilization. First, and primarily, is IS1, the standard image stabilization, which counteracts movement by stabilizing the image sensor using the Supersonic Wave Drive, the same motor used for focusing and dust reduction. The IS2 and IS3 settings only compensate for motion in one direction each. IS2 compensates vertically, but not horizontally. This is designed so that the camera can pan rapidly to follow quickly moving horizontal objects, but not suffer from shaking up and down. Olympus offers the example of photographing a moving car as a situation where you would want to minimize vertical movement, but not horizontal. Conversely, IS3 stabilizes left-right and not up-down for tracking objects that rapidly move horizontally.
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Overall Impressions