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New Olympus Mid Range, Cheap Digital SLR announced
Olympus is filling a large gap in its product lineup, in particular its digital SLR lineup, with the newly announced Olympus E-30 DSLR camera. This 12.3 megapixel camera will actually come close to outperforming the more expensive E-3 in terms of megapixels and it also has a bigger LCD display at 2.7”.
This new SLR will also feature 5 frames per second continuous shooting, an 11-point Auto Focus, and also 12 bit colour depth.
Unless you are a very serious photographer, there is not a lot that separates the numerous competing mid-range dSLR camera and options from each other. For example, a little in price gets a few extra megapixels, incremental upgrades in colour depth, and also faster shooting modes, along with maybe more ISO sensitivity. Therefore the main challenge SLR makers face is finding some other ways to distinguish their offering from the competitors, and it becomes more difficult to do with prices continuing to get cheaper.
Olympus is placing its plans and hopes on its new “Art Filters” system which it helps will stoke the fires of creativity in the marketplace. This feature allows users to set special filter effects in place before you take the photo. This filters consist of Soft Focus, Pop Art, Light Tone, Pale & Light Colour, Grainy Film and Pin Hole, which basically allows user to play around with tones, colours, contrast and brightness in different ways to create a set of unique pictures and styles. Users can also preview the photo and effect on-screen before you start taking the shot.
Professional photographers will obviously know their digital SLR cameras well enough to affix these settings manually, but some of these features may give camera novices a good chance to learn more about what does what on the cameras, and also to be able to experiment with more creative shots while they're learning the ropes.
The cheap Olympus E-30 digital SLR camera is expected to launch in January, 2009. US prices are expected to be around $1300, and UK prices are still being worked on, but should be around 800.
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