The E-3's menu system can be accessed by pressing the menu button located
beneath the camera's LCD. The main menu has three groups of icons. There
are two shooting groups, two tool groups and the playback icon. |
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The first shooting menu lets you format any
storage media you may have in the camera; reset any custom settings stored
in it; choose a mode for your images such as vivid, natural, monotone and
so forth; gradation, for controlling the dynamic range of light and dark
areas in an image; picture quality; white balance; ISO setting; and noise
filter level. |
| Metering options, flash compensation, autofocusing
mode and area, anti-shock technology, and exposure, white balance, flash
and ISO bracketing are available from the second shooting menu. |
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From the playback menu, you can determine how
images will be displayed on the DSC's LCD when in slideshow mode. You can
show them one at a time or in groups of four, nine, 16 or 25 photos. Also
from this menu, you can toggle the unit's automatic location feature, perform
basic editing--including editing of RAW files--in the camera, copy images
between a CompactFlash card and xD card in the DSC, protect images from
accidental erasure and print images directly from the camera. |
| The first tool menu lets you customize a number
of features about the camera. This is where you can define the rotation
of the focus ring, for example, define what focus mode will be used when
the AEL/AFL button is pressed, set the number of frames that will be shot
in low sequential mode, set the quality and pixel count for images captured
with the camera and define the ranges for its bracketing features. |
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Basic settings for the bytecam can be accessed
from the second tool menu. It's where you set the unit's date and time,
for instance, and choose how files will be named, the language in which
menus will be displayed and the standard used when the camera is connected
to a TV. |
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| In addition to the menu system, you can interact
with the camera through a Super Control Panel. The panel can be displayed
on the unit's LCD by pressing the Info button found below its display. I
found this feature to be a tremendous asset and a terrific alternative to
the menu system for quickly changing the camera's key settings. |
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| The main software program included with the
E-3 is Olympus Master 2. Both Mac and Windows (photo above) versions are
packaged with the camera. Compared to most of the freebies packaged with
digital cameras, it is a robust program that lets you organize your photos,
as well as edit, print and e-mail them. It includes a module for creating
panoramas from multiple images and one for uploading videos to YouTube from
inside the program. Since the E-3 doesn't shoot video, you'll have to obtain
video from another source to use that feature. It will also download images
from the E-3 when it's connected to a computer via USB and update the firmware
in the camera. |
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Olympus Master will display thumbnails of RAW files in ORF format, as well as those in other common formats, such as JPG and TIFF. Thumbnails in ORF format are labeled "RAW" so they can be easily identified. RAW files can be fine-tuned with the application's general purpose editor (photo on left) or with an editor designed specifically for working with ORF images. |
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| In addition to Olympus Master, there's a
trial copy of Olympus Studio ($99.95). It contains many of the editing and
organizational functions found in Olympus Master, but its tools are more
finely calibrated for the professional photographer. It also allows an imagesmith
to perform operations on batches of files and to better compare photos with
a lightbox function. |
The Mac interface for Olympus Master, for
the most, part mirrors its Windows counterpart. In the photo above, pictures
are displayed in Calendar Mode--a nice way to find images based on when
they were shot.
Olympus Studio for the Mac also looks similar
to its PC brother. Performance wise, though, it ran more sluggishly on my
MacBook with an Intel Core 2 Duo processor running at 2GHz than on my desktop
with a 2.2GHz AMD X2 Dual Core 4200+ processor.
| | Store | Seller Ratings | Description | Price | |
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 |  | in stock | $1,299.00 | | | |
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Interface & Software
