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Electronic Gadgets For You

November 7th, 2008 at 7:46 am

Olympus announces midrange E-30 dSLR

Olympus’ E-30 fills the hole in its dSLR lineup.

With a price gap of about $900 between the Olympus E-520 and the E-3, Olympus has long had a pretty big hole in its dSLR lineup–a hole populated by extremely popular competitors like the Nikon D90, the Canon EOS 40D, and the Canon EOS 50D. But with the announcement of the E-30, it looks like Olympus is entering the ring swinging. As with Canon and the 50D, it almost feels as if Olympus is insecure about the audience for this model. Canon introduced its Creative Auto mode, which seems more geared toward the entry-level, and Olympus delivers Art Filters, a set of six effects–Pop Art, Soft Focus, Pale and Light, Grainy Film, Light Tone and Pin Hole–which the E-30 applies during shooting. On one hand, I can understand (in theory) how applying the effects at shot time, where it can simultaneously compensate exposure, white balance, and so on, can help produce a better result than applying effects afterward in software.