Olympus E-410/510, horrifying magenta highlight problem

Shades of Leica with the purple blacks? No, Leica owned up to the
problem. Olympus is keeping dead silent and letting the guinea pigs,
er, customers sort it out.

I'm not used to this. Olympus releasing cameras with flaws. Most
Olympus (compared to many other brands) work without a hitch. Not
this time. Much speculation as to the cause.

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat.asp?forum=1022&thread=24311898&page=3

 

This is a simple case of RAW converters not recognizing the real clipping
points in the RAW data.

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OMG, OMG, OMG, OMG, OMG, OMG.
OMG, OMG, OMG, OMG, OMG, OMG.
OMG, OMG, OMG, OMG, OMG, OMG.
OMG, OMG, OMG, OMG, OMG, OMG.
OMG, OMG, OMG, OMG, OMG, OMG.
OMG, OMG, OMG, OMG, OMG, OMG.
OMG, OMG, OMG, OMG, OMG, OMG.
OMG, OMG, OMG, OMG, OMG, OMG.

 

As written there, the difference between 3900 and 4095 is minimal
(1/14th of a stop). I doubt this has an impact on image quality. Do you
have any sample images which prove otherwise?

By the way, all RAW images of the Sony R1 I have here have a more or
less strong red colour cast, which I have to correct during RAW
conversion.

 

For starters... It might have an Olympus badge but it's a Panasonic
camera. Made by Panasonic and shipped to Olympus for distribution. I
have no doubt whatsoever there is a firmware upgrade coming real soon.
It's not a flaw either, just a miscalculation in the programming of
the raw converter. Fixed in an instant with any halfway decent image
editing program.

You tried this alarmist stunt last week with a Oly loyality bash up.
How about you find something worthwhile to try and light a fire under
instead of this lame excuse for a "fault"?

Doug

 

I find that unlikely, but of course I don't know. Panasonic
had to buy the chassis and other components from Olympus to
build the only SLR that carries their name. Why would they
need to do that if they could make whole SLRs for Olympus?

Source references for this assertion would be good.

He does the best he can within his abilities.

 

To cut a long storey short...


are we saying there is NO real inherent problem with either of these
Olympus cameras?

They are both on my short list but after the OP's comment I was about to
remove them from the list.

BTW
Do camera manufactures issue firmware updates for their cameras?

I assume if they do u load them into the camera through the USB cable??

 

are we saying there is NO real inherent problem with either of these

I don't know who "we" is, but I'm saying that. This is the
summary of the "horrifying magenta highlight problem":

1. There is no problem whatsoever shooting in JPEG.

2. There is no problem whatsoever shooting in raw and
converting with Olympus software.

3. There is no problem whatsoever shooting in raw and
converting with *any* converter unless highlights are
completely blown and you try to recover the lost highlight
data.

So, the "horrifying magenta highlight problem" isn't
actually a camera problem of any sort, rather a failure of
non-Olympus raw converters to use the correct green-channel
clip point. Now that it's been identified I expect it'll be
fixed in the next round of releases.

On the say-so of Rich? You have to be kidding. If whining,
whinging, and spreading doom and gloom was an Olympic sport
he'd take all the golds. He's an idiot, just ignore him.

Usually, yes.

Varies by manufacturer. What you assume is correct for
Olympus.

 

It's a relatively simple procedure, which you can do yourself.

 

OK.

The 510 is looking good to me.

Thanks again

 

I had a quiick play with a 510 and 410 in a shop and they seemed to work
quite nicely but I did not like how live view was set up, the mirror kept
flipping up and down and made you think you had taken a shot. This was with
default settings but I expect that you should be able to lock it one way or
the other, the viewfinders was also somewhat dull. I think they were pretty
interesting. The 410 was quite attractive for a compact travel/backpack sort
of camera allthough I did not like the positioning of the right hand strap
clip.

 

Forgot to say, be aware that some of the lenes are very expensive so make
sure that the lenses you want are within your budget.

 

You're not wrong Pete :-(

To the potential buyer: anyone buying an Olympus (other than
the old E-1) needs to look carefully at the viewfinder
size/brightness compared with class leaders in this area
like Pentax. The smaller 4/3 format means the viewfinder is
also smaller and the small camera bodies have dimmer VF
optics as well. Small *and* dim isn't good.

As a user of both Olympus (E-1) and Pentax (*istDS) my
choice if buying a new model today would probably be the
Pentax K10D rather than the Olympus E-510 for this very
reason, but others whose opinions I respect have tried both
and settled on the E-510 instead so it's a very personal
choice.

Bottom line is don't buy without checking them out in real
life, pick the one that you like best - both are really nice
cameras. Oh - and don't forget to ignore Rich, whatever you
choose to buy ;-)

 

I have both a DS and a K10D and they are both wonderful cameras to use, I
have a grip for both and a nice range of moderately priced lenses. I do
sometimes think that one or other features in other systems would be nice
but I still keep coming back to the fact that the overall package for each
of these cameras are both excellent compromises for the shooting that I do,
actually the only thing I would look to improve on the K10D would be to have
the focusing system from one of the better Canons, it is adequate but could
be better.

I am actually thinking about selling the DS, a friend has indicated he would
be interested and by adding a few hundred more dollars I could get a K100D
as a second body, might just wait for the new release that might come out in
October (I know something new is coming from Pentax it just might not be a
body).

Cheers.

Pete

 

You hope. Why is it people think they can simply eliminate one colour
shade (the magenta) and it won't effect others?
BTW, you seem to have some knowledge about this. Will Olympus's new
E-3 be made by Olympus in Japan, or will it be made by Panasonic in
China like the E-410/510?

 

Rubbish. One of your clan on dpreveiw posted 7-8 images to counter
the magenta argument last week. In point of fact, FIVE of the images
showed the magenta problem and not only because of blown highlights.
AFAIK, they don't yet lay down mauve ROADS in the United States, but
that was one of the problems in the images posted. There are people
who are not happy with Olympus saying nothing about this, but it is
typical business practice these days.

 

Funny how one person's opinion diverges so much from one forum to the
next.

 

Some cameras that claim 12-bit output use far less levels than that,
particularly Canons. 4096 levels is overkill for most ISOs in most
cameras; the noise is far too strong for mild quantization to be visible.

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