After easing my way into the world of dSLR for almost a year with an Olympus E-520, I thought I had evolved enough to earn an upgrade. At the time, I had three Olympus choices (as I had no intention of building my lens collection all over again): the E-620, the E-30 and the top-of-the-line E-3. I chose the E-30, and my reasoning is as follows:
* E-620. A not-so-radical upgrade from the camera I already owned, although there were important improvements.
* E-3. Too heavy, too expensive, too much (besides, I, like every other Olympus owner out there, am waiting to see what this model's successor will be like).
* E-30. On paper, and from the information I gathered on photo forums and other places, it seemed like the ideal camera for me, in terms of image quality, fast autofocus, weight and build. So I went for it.
After several months and many thousands of photos, I am completely satisfied with it. My main subject are birds -- in natural light --, so the well-known Olympus limitations with high ISO and low light were of no concern to me. What matters to me is having a responsive camera that is easy and intuitive to handle (of course the E-520 broke me in), that is accurate, well thought out, solidly built and ergonomic, totally customizable and renders high quality images. Furthermore, a camera that I can carry for hours at a time without breaking my back.
The E-30 has given me all that. It has suffered some (involuntary) abuse, some rain, salt water and a few weeks of below freezing conditions without missing a beat. Initially I had to do a bit of user manual reading because some configurations were different from the E-520, and there were loads of new options in the menus. But it took me very little time to figure out the optimal settings for me, and from then on it was just the occasional tweak according to momentary shooting conditions.
The camera has performed beautifully with everything I have thrown at it, giving me some of my best shots yet. Autofocus (especially in combination with the 50-200 mm SWD) is extremely quick and accurate, which is a huge matter when you are photographing moving subjects.
The images I take with the E-30 require minimal post-processing; normally cropping and eventual light/shadow fiddling and noise removal. This means I can spend more time outside chasing birds and less in front of the computer fixing bad photos. I couldn't ask for anything more.
Get more detail about Olympus E30 12.3MP Digital SLR with Image Stabilization (Body Only).
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