Graduation Control Feature

Olympus has added onto the E-3 a Graduation Control feature. Its biggest advantages are for those who shoot jpeg's they are able to adjust the luminosity of shadows within the images. It is similar to the Highlight / Shadow adjustment within Photoshop. Basically it helps give your images more dynamic range. But as those shadows are lifted up, you almost always introduce more noise in the dark areas. So if you are shooting at any ISO you will end up with more noise than if this feature is turned off.

Overall this is a very useful feature, but it really is early in development in my opinion, overall I think that this feature will be very important in the future of all SLR cameras, for increased dynamic range.

LightBox Review & other playback tips

One of the greatest features of shooting digital is the ability to instantly review your shots. No longer do you have to go back to the darkroom and wade through your film, only to learn that a roll of film was not correctly loaded in your camera, I still remember doing that once in West Africa, when I was shooting the remains of a Massacre, good thing I had many rolls of film. Or you had the Diopter off on your camera, or even the wrong ISO set on your body, let's face it we have all done that way to many times!!! But those who review regularly are called "Chimpers" these poor guys who want to get the perfect shot are made fun of, and well, I have even participated from time to time in the hazing. But really, occasionally reviewing only makes sense. If you plan on shooting 500 exposures I would not recommend looking at the back of your camera for each shot, but the occasional look is ok.

Olympus has included a very useful feature on the E-3, which I almost looked over as a gimmick. It is lightbox mode. It allows you to quickly compare two shots to make sure you got what you were looking for. For example, you take the first shot in play back mode (the green arrow on the back of the camera) and then press the focus point selector button, it looks something like this [...], and that brings up the next exposure. Next you can use the arrow dial to select whichever picture you want. Next, you simply use either main dial to zoom in on the exposures; you know the dials that control the Aperture and shutter speed selector on the camera.

However, you may be asking how do I compare two different parts of two exposures? Simply press the function button (Fn) one time and that allows you to adjust the right frame to the place where you want to compare. Or if you press the function button a second time it will move both frames as the same time to compare multiple places on the shot. This really is a very useful feature of the E-3 and has gotten a lot of use on my camera.

Second, this has nothing to do with light table mode, but you can quickly zoom into the exposure 10X while in play back pushing the Fn button. It in my opinion is better than using the zoom dial on the camera.

Lastly, with the LCD playback function on the E-3 you may have a hard time seeing the focus details on the LCD. So what I recommend is that you turn on sharpening to +2 in camera if you shoot RAW. (However, if you shoot Jpeg's you will most likely want to make it -2.) It really shows a lot more detail on the LCD. This is simply changed on the rear LCD of the camera. (The 10X zoom comparision on the rear of the camera where the lamp on the right is much sharper, is a second frame but in camera sharpness is set to +2, they both are sharp, but you can't easily tell, within the LCD)

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