I find it hard to believe that I put the Olympus E-1 kit up for sale on eBay. I’ve listed the E-1, the 14-54mm zoom and the FL-50 flash in separate auctions. Having the D300 arriving tomorrow, I feel committed to the Nikon system and don’t see any way that I’ll be buying the E-3 or any successors.
In the electromechanical age of the DSLR it’s very hard for niche players to be truly competitive at the high end because of the technology investment, so Nikon and Canon will generally be offering state of the art cameras. I saw the E-1 and four thirds as an important early DSLR technology, but I don’t see that it’s lived up to it’s promise of superior results with smaller size. There’s been steady improvement in matching legacy lenses to sensors, culminating in Nikon’s D3. I just don’t see myself adjusting to the bulk and weight of the D3, but once they migrate the 35mm full frame sensor down to the D300/D80 body size I’ll expect that I’ll be upgrading again. I think that Olympus set it’s sights to low when it specified four thirds at the beginning of the DSLR age. They looked at what would be needed to match 35mm film. Their system has done this very, very well. However the larger sensor cameras are moving beyond 35mm with sensitivities that were never possible with film. Resolution has surpassed film as well. No one has put together the high sensitivity with high resolution, but this will be coming someday as low resolution/high sensitivity- high resolution/low sensitivity systems will be created just as we had in the film days.
Colin at AuspiciousDragon.Net came to the same conclusion back in August. I waited for the E-3, hoping for a revelation, but have seen nothing to distinguish it from the D300. I didn’t spring for a Leica M8 as Colin did, finding the price too steep for the advantages over film when I want to shoot what for me is rangefinder style. I have no problems with SLR viewing, but I find city shooting with the SLR to change the environment too much. The Leica M6 is perfect for that and has been my companion on business trips when photo equipment is minimized for the urban environment. As the digital SLRs pull away from film in quality, though I may need to make a hard decision about the future of the Leica equipment in my collection.
