Olympus E-3 Digital Camera

The E-3’s photos look great. Especially, the colors are gorgeous: saturated, yet some of the most precise we’ve tested in this class (at low ISO sensitivities, at least), with impressive automatic white balance. The camera has a slight tendency to underexpose, but you can easily compensate for that.

The camera disappointingly maxes out at ISO 3,200, but its noise profile looks pretty good; I printed some 11×15 shots taken at ISO 2,000 inside Grand Central Station and found the noise pretty subtle. Nor do Olympus’ noise suppression algorithms overblur.

With the exception of its somewhat awkward design and interface, the Olympus E-3 stands up quite well to competitors such as the Sony Alpha DSLR-A700 and Nikon D300. But if you’re buying into a system, think carefully: Olympus currently offers only 13 pro-quality lenses, and the gap since the last pro dSLR release was about four years. Will that translate into problems for you down the road? Consider it before committing.