Olympus E-510/E-3 now do IS with manual lenses.

A common complaint about the Olympus in-body IS system was that they
didn't enable its use with older manual lenses (like Pentax allowed on
its DSLRs). With today's firmware, the E-3 and E-510 now have that
ability.

http://www.olympus.co.jp/en/support/imsg/digicamera/download/software/firm/e1/

I don't know if the firmware enables support for the viewfinder's
"in-focus" indicator light, but this is a step in the right direction
for people who want to use legacy lenses on Olympus hardware.

-alan

 

from what i've read, there is still no focus confirmation.

 

Isn't this dependent on the camera and lens communicating with each other
via microchip? If a lens isn't "chipped" to communicate with a DSLR, which
legacy lenses aren't, a firmware update will have no bearing on this
functionality, yes?

 

manual focus lenses on nikon dslrs have focus confirmation, so it's
definitely possible (and it's quite handy too). i have no idea if
there's some other limitation in the olympus focusing system, or if
it's a stupid marketing decision (probably the latter).

 

Pentax's K10D does FC and IS with any lens, manual, whatever. The
frigging annoying thing with Olympus is that they can adapt ANY lens
to it with appropriate adapters, but its viewfinder system DEMANDS FC
because it sucks (E-series except for E-1/3) and Olympus doesn't
support FC with anything but their own digital lenses. They didn't
even allow adapting old Olympus system lenses to be adapted until
people screamed at them to put out an adapter. Marketing missteps
seem to be their stock in trade.