Review of the Olympus E-500

With the arrival of Olympus’s third E-system camera, we see a return to traditional values, with a camera that looks like a traditional SLR. And it seems like a tasty one too. Not only does it have 8 million pixels, it offers something different in terms of digital photographic theory.

Olympus has always ploughed its own furrow, both in camera design and technology. The digital age has given the company a new edge – Olympus was an early and successful adopter of the new technology. A couple of years ago the emerging SLR market offered Olympus the chance to take its lateral thinking into a new direction, with the Four-Thirds system.

The E-500 marks something of a backtrack, over the radical design of the E-300, although Olympus promises to continue to experiment with form and design in the future. So here is a traditional-looking camera with many of the features that attracts Olympus users in the first place.