Olympus E3 Performance

Average to above average speed for a moderately-priced pro SLR these days.

Startup time is below average for an SLR, no doubt due in part to the ultrasonic SSWF dust reduction that occurs each time the E-3 is turned on. Buffer clearing time depends on the image size and quality, burst length and the type and speed of memory card used.

Play to Record mode is quite fast, but Record to Play is a bit on the slow side for an SLR.

Unusual Shutter Release Behavior
We encountered some very odd behavior with the E-3, that initially caused us to rate its shutter release delay quite a bit worse than it would perform in normal usage. Our numbers were very accurate, and quite consistent from test to test, but didn't take into account a very unusual behavior of the Olympus E-3: It appears that the E-3 somehow detects the presence of your finger on the shutter button (a capacitive sensor?), and uses that information to "prime" itself for the exposure. Whatever it's doing internally, when you press the shutter button after having first touched it, the shutter fires much more quickly than if you just jab the shutter button without having touched it (however lightly) first. (Note that we're not talking about prefocusing by half-pressing the shutter button here: All that's required to see the improved AF speed is that you lightly touch the shuttter button.) It's just a guess, but our theory is that this is a power-saving feature, perhaps leaving some part of the AF system quiescent until it's about to be needed. Our normal lag-testing procedure involves triggering the shutter by pressing the release button with a switch that starts the lag timer running. The problem was that the timer switch apparently didn't trigger the "finger detector", so the lag times we measured were considerably longer than the camera is capabable of.

We've now re-measured all the numbers in the table above with a finger in contact with the shutter button prior to actually pressing it, producing timing numbers more appropriate to a fast pro-level DSLR. The "finger detector" seems to be a reasonable engineering solution (to whatever it was that was being solved), in that most camera users will have their finger on the shutter button any time they're about to take a shot. The one question we do have though, is what will happen if you're wearing gloves? Billed as a professional body, the E-3 is certainly going to find use in a lot of inclement weather, so gloves are likely to be a factor at some point. We'll try to dig out our winter gear, find a set of gloves, and report back with the results.

Olympus claims the worlds-fastest AF for the E-3, and that may be true in terms of how quickly it can slew the lens to a new focus setting. We don't have any way to measure that part of AF performance reliably. In terms of the E-3's ability to determine that it's properly focused when shooting the same target multiple times, it does seem pretty fast, if not quite the fastest we've tested. Prefocused shutter lag was quite good, at 76 milliseconds.

The E-3's Live View mode, which uses the same "mirror-down" phase difference AF method employed when using the optical viewfinder adds quite a bit of delay, more than doubling shutter lag to 0.563 seconds. Still, it's quite useful for tricky over-the-head or ground-level shots that you just can't get otherwise, or for focus checking on scenes with relatively static subjects. The 10x zoom option for Live View turned out to be very useful for setting critical focus on a tough-to-focus subject (Marti's hair in the Indoor Portrait test).

Cycle time performance is on the slow side of average for an affordable pro SLR model, at about half a second between shots. Continuous mode is quite fast though, at almost 5.2 frames per second with more than 20 frames of buffer capacity when shooting JPEGs (even at the highest quality level). RAW mode is just as fast, but with a 16 frame buffer depth before slowing when shooting with CF cards, or 14 frames with a fast xD card. (And note the at we're using a "Type H" xD card here, the faster variety.) Flash recycling after a full power shot is also quite fast at 4.4 seconds, which is quite good, considering how powerful the flash is.

Download speeds were very fast, fast enough that you probably won't feel the need for a separate card reader.

Battery

Slightly above average battery life for an SLR lithium-ion design.

The Olympus E-3 uses a custom rechargeable lithium-ion battery pack for power, and comes with both a single battery and charger. The rated 610 shots per charge using the optical viewfinder is only a bit above average for an SLR, but the optional HLD-4 battery pack/vertical grip should roughly double shooting capacity. Unfortunately, Olympus does not seem to publish battery life results for when Live View mode is used, but it's a safe bet that it's considerably shorter: When we were working with the camera, we noticed that a battery that was showing adequate (but low) remaining capacity when using the optical viewfinder would often immediately begin showing the low-power warning when we switched to Live View mode.

The table above shows the number of shots the camera is capable of on fully-charged battery, based on CIPA battery-life and/or manufacturer standard test conditions.

(Interested readers can find an English translation of the CIPA DC-002 standards document here. (180K PDF document))

Storage

The Olympus E-3 stores its photos on CompactFlash or xD memory cards, and no card is included with the camera. The chart below shows how many images can be stored on a 1GB card at each size/quality setting.

We strongly recommend buying a large capacity CompactFlash or xD memory card. You should probably consider at least a 2GB card, if not a 4GB one, to give yourself extra space for extended outings, especially if you plan on doing a lot of RAW shooting. (Check the shopping link above, cards are really cheap these days, so there's no reason to skimp.)