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by Tom Lee Published 01/05/2003
The Wedding
The camera underwent a different test at two of my recent weddings. I decided to give the supplemental 0.8x converter lens a run for its money. This is an afocal lens attachment which screws to the front of the standard zoom giving a much wider field of view from about 28mm(equivalent). The lens is designed specifically for the camera and cannot be used with any other marques than the E-series Olympus cameras.
The focussing mode has to be changed using the macro button and selector wheel to modify the way in which the lens fixes on the subject. This will allow focussing distances of just 3 inches and makes for some unusual effects. The wedding images show the versatility of this attachment for both close up work and wider church interiors. Both of the images were shot with available light at an equivalent ISO160 and no flash was used.
Another benefit of the camera is its light handling and low operating noise. Although not shown here, the camera is almost silent in operation and allowed me to take images hand held at low light levels immediately behind the back row of the congregation without them knowing.
Short Telephoto
The short telephoto attachment gives a maximum lens length of approximately 203mm and the Mersey waterfront was chosen to test its capability. Focussing for this lens is set in the same manner as for the wide-angle lens, however the lens is designed for use at the maximum end of the focal length. Operating the zoom facility on the main lens allows for some adjustment, but will give rise to vignetting if moved too far.
Our Editor has extensively tested the Nikon D100 on the Mersey Waterfront and I took the opportunity to test the E20 at the same time. The two panoramas were therefore ideal for comparison of performance. Apart from slight noise in the sky area, the camera stood up well and produced a 60x12 inch panorama. The image was shot in manual mode (4 seconds at F11) with white balance set to 6500k and an equivalent ISO160.
Summary
An adequate backup camera system, which can handle most of my shooting requirements, and will allow me to have peace of mind should my main camera system fail. The additional lenses also give me some creative versatility that is not possible with my primary equipment for the limited investment.
Tom Lee FSWPP In The Laboratory
We checked out the E20 on various laboratory tests.
Tom's comments on the speed of operation were confirmed. The shooting latency was measured at 0.15s for a prefocussed shot and 0.61s for an unfocussed shot. We enquired of long-term E20 user David Simm who has used the E20 extensively for weddings, shooting as many as 870 images in a 12 hour wedding session. He is a fan of the camera but accepts that you have to work at the camera's pace. On colour testing we shot in RAW mode and corrected the image for greyscale neutrality. The resulting target was slightly biased towards magenta in the blue tones, green in the flesh tones, reds and oranges. The mean error was inside the errors produced by printing processes (at 3.7DE2000 and 6.6DE Lab for the techies).
Greens were slightly over-saturated and the high errors were in the blues and greens. Hue values were less accurate than saturation values. Overall the colour performance was excellent.
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