Here’s a photo of a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label scotch, taken with the Olympus E-620 camera. The focus is on the label at the bottom of the bottle. The photo was taken with the 50mm f/2.0 lens at f/2.0 and ISO 200.
Compared to the E-500 (see similar photos in my review of the Olympus 50mm f/2.0 lens, the auto white balance is tremendously improved, but the “ESP metering” still underexposes the photo. Yes, I know that there are a lot of white and pale colors in the photo, but “ESP” implies a super-smart automatic exposuring which could figure that out. When I look at the histogram, it’s pretty obvious that the scene is underexposed. Thus the ESP metering on the Olympus E-620 DSLR is not as good as a compact camera like the Canon G9 (see the G9 comparison photo here).
We see, however, the E-620 is able to focus accurately on the label on the bottle. The center autofocus point was pointed at the bottom label, and the AF Sensitivity was set to Small in the Custom Menu. I haven't seen any advice on the web about the benefit of using Small or Normal AF Sensitivity, but I will keep mine set to small so it focuses on what I point the camera at. [UPDATE: I set the AF Sensitivity back to Normal, because with Small sensitivity the camera is more often unable to lock focus, even when outside in bright daylight.]
One thing that stands out in this ISO 200 shot is that there is a surprising amount of noise (the Noise Filter was set to Off) which became even more noticeable after I applied an unsharp mask in Photoshop. In fact, it’s noisier than the Canon G9 at ISO 80. I’m not saying the noise will be noticeable when the picture is reduced to normal print size or web-viewing size, but it’s surprising, nevertheless, in a negative way. Of course, it’s possible that the G9 is applying more noise filtering at the expense of resolution, so very careful pixel peeping will be required to see what’s really going on.
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