Olympus E5 – a fresh new DSLR

Synonymous with the restart of activities after the summer holiday, the autumn is a period well-known for the avalanche of new products that are released on the IT market. Camera producers make no exception.

The Japanese from Olympus took advantage of this and decided to refresh the Digital SLR niche, which had not received any new cameras from Olympus ever since the E3 model launched in 2007.

After a 3 year break many of the Olympus fans probably expected a model with a lot of improvements that would put the E3 behind. In reality the Japanese producer chose to enhance performances using as much as possible the same technical specs.

Design and build characteristics

Taking these aspects in consideration it is not surprising at all that the E5 does not bring anything new compared to the previous model when it comes to its aspect. Actually the D-SLR niche market is one in which all products tend to look similar because of the particularities of this type of products.

E5, a new Olympus DSLR after three years

Technical specs

From the point of view of its components the Olympus E5 uses a Live MOS 12.3 MP sensor, which offers a maximum resolution of 4032 x 3042 pixels for photos. Their quality promises to be a bit better compared to that of the previous model due to the use of a TruePic V+ image processor.

Professional photographers that work in the domain of fashion will be thrilled by the Dramatic Tone filter, which offers an increased contrast and specific skin nuances. This is only one of the 10 dedicated filters for editing photos according to their specific features.

Back View. Note that you can flip the LCD display

Photos can be viewed on the 3” LCD display which has 920.000 pixels. The good thing is that it can be rotated for an optimal visualization of the photos.

With the E5, Olympus adapts to trends and allows HD video recording. Even if the 720p (1280 x 720 pixels) on offer is inferior compared to the 1080p format we are still speaking of superior video quality shot at 30 frames per second that is easily a rival for the similar offers from Canon.

Here's how the LCD looks from the front

Both photos and video clips are stored on the SD/SDHC/SDXC Compact Flash memory cards. In addition to this, like other producers, Olympus completely quit the xD format.

From the point of view of its maneuverability it is worth mentioning that the Olympus E5 has a size of 116.5 x 142.5 x 74.5 mm and weighs 800 grams. Even if it is not exactly easy to use, especially when you are running out of time, the relatively big weight will not be a problem in most cases.

Availability and price

You can purchase the Olympus E5 DSLR from Amazon, body only, for just $1690. It’s not much for a semi professional DSLR.

Olympus E5 DSLR video review: