14. Shutter System

The E-510’s shutter system follows the time-honoured focal plane design with a vertically bladed shutter typical of reflex cameras. Although the entire device is entirely mechanical, the actuation is of course electronic programmable to generate speeds from 60 to 1/4000 sec and it does this in as stepless a manner as possible.

With today’s digital cameras, shutter speeds can be middling when they were often quite difficult to obtain with film SLRs. The programmability nature of the electronically timed shutter system now allows speeds like 1/100, 1/650 or even 1/3 sec without much difficulty. However what is not often talked about is that throughout any DSLR’s shutter speed range, not all of them are accurate or consistent. This is particularly true at the very top end with blistering speed settings like 1/4000 sec and the E-510 is no exception. That is why shots taken at such speeds can sometimes have indifferent under or overexposures.

Shutter life

Like all DSLRs, the Seikosha-developed and supplied shutter system has a limited operating life. In the case of the E-510, the life is rated at around 60,000 captures and this is where you have to be careful. The word ‘capture’ here does not refer to the E-510 being actually used to capture an image but rather the actuation of the sensor. You may be toying around but the moment you fire the shutter for fun, the capture is recorded in the built-in shutter counter.

For practicality reasons that piece of statistic can be put into a more realistic perspective. For me, I normally run through around 600 captures for each event that takes about three hours to complete even if not every one of those are usable. Because of the fact that I shoot in Continuous mode – which is 3 frames per second – that means that in effect, I only have 200 frames that might be usable. The remaining 400 are repeats that make up a selection I would eventually dump. Nonetheless whether some or all or none of the images are usable or not, the camera records the 600 captures.

Given that the E-510’s shutter life is around 60,000 captures, that means that all I need to do is to cover 100 assignments for me to have to seriously think of overhauling it or alternatively upgrade to another DSLR. As of now, I have already carried out seven assignments, leaving me with about 93 more to do. That’s not too encouraging or heartening to know.

However it is noteworthy to point out that the E-510 was neither designed nor meant to be used as a working tool for professional photographers and therefore it should never be assessed along those lines. In other words if you like to know what defines a pro-grade DSLR, shutter life is certainly one of them. In contrast, the E-3’s shutter life is in excess of 150,000 captures. That’s two-and-a-half times more durable.

In most cases, the shutter life listed in the technical specifications is often quite conservative. It is highly probable that the ‘actual’ operating life is quite a bit more than 60,000. In the case of the E-3, the true shutter life is most definitely lengthier than 150,000 although that is what is often quoted.

The programmable nature of the E-510’s shutter is such that it defines the permissible operating speed range in accordance to the exposure mode you choose to use. This of course is bound by the exposure sensitivity of the metering system. For example when you use the E-510 in its full Auto mode, the shutter doesn’t go any slower than 2 secs but in others – like Program, Aperture- and Shutter-Priority AE including Manual – it extends all the world to a maximum of 60 secs, which is probably more than what most people will make use of.

Long exposure heat protection

If you are used to film SLR cameras, you will also notice that with film, you can open the shutter for as long as you like in Bulb mode. Simply put, there’s nothing to stop you from keeping the shutter ajar even for the whole day if that’s what it takes to capture the shot! With film, reciprocity failure is often the end result but other than that, nothing untoward happens to your camera.

With pro-grade film SLR cameras like the OM-4/4Ti, a long-time exposure in Aperture-Priority mode can keep the shutter opened for up to 7 to 8 minutes – something I have tried and succeeded in getting a rather nicely exposed shot given that I was shooting at f22 using Kodachrome 25 in near pitch darkness outdoors and mind you, under torrential rain in a place called Buchan. On the other hand should I switch over to Bulb mode, the OM-4/4Ti’s electronic-based metering system is turned off and you’re on your own. If you open the shutter for as long as you like, there’s no battery drainage at all.

On the other hand DSLR cameras are a totally different beast altogether. For one none of them can ever operate mechanically and without relying on battery power. Even Bulb mode is no longer mechanical. To keep the shutter open, power is needed to ensure that the instant-return mirror stays up and the shutter curtains moved apart.

There are two deadly issues here then. Firstly battery power is continually used whenever the shutter stays fully open in Bulb mode. Secondly as power is continuously channelled through the system, the sensor – being so close to the shutter – may start to heat up. There is a threshold beyond which heat can actually damage the image sensor. The extent or nature of the damage may be permanent or temporary but regardless, the DSLR will be rendered inoperable at least for a while. Clearly this is unacceptable to any camera maker including Olympus.

To offer the Bulb mode and protect the sensor as well as prevent excessive battery consumption, Olympus estimated that most users won’t be needing anything longer than 8 mins at most. Beyond that duration, the E-510’s entire system will force a shutter shutdown, meaning that it will close off everything and complete your exposure whether you like it or not.

One thing you will like about the E-510’s shutter mechanism is that it is soft but sensitive enough. You can certainly define the tactile pressure needed to keep it in mid-step to lock down the exposure and autofocus before you press it all the way down to fire. Shutter lag – something of a huge bugbear that afflicts digital compact camera users – is so minimal that you hardly can detect it.

Confusing shutter lag with non-locking autofocus

However there are people who confuse shutter lag with hesitant autofocus locking. Between these two, there’s not a lot to distinguish them because the shutter just won’t fire in either case. If you have set the E-510 to a focus-priority mode such as Single (as in S-AF) the shutter won’t fire at all unless one of the three AF points can lock on to the subject.

If the lighting condition is so dim that the AF system finds hard to discern the image, it won’t lock on and if that’s the case, it could appear like shutter lag. In a situation like this, it might be preferable to shift to a release-priority mode like Continuous (C-AF).

The E-510 offers four different shooting modes namely, Single, Continuous, Self-Timer and Remote.

Single and Continuous firing modes

The Single mode is fine for most instances of ordinary photography. You press the shutter and the E-510 fires once. Combining this with Single-AF makes the most practical sense for 80% of your shots particularly if the subject is either motionless or inanimate. Landscape photography is often the best example and so are buildings including people who remain still as in portraitures.

The Continuous mode allows the E-510 to fire up to three frames in a second (as in 3fps). If you hold the shutter release button down beyond a second, it will keep on firing. In RAW format, the E-510 allows a maximum of six continuous frames. On the other hand JPEG format permits a limitless sequence for as long as there is available storage space in the memory card.

Most of you should know that this mode is a better bet when the scene before you comprises lots of motion or action. Sports photography is one instance where the Continuous mode enables you to reel off several frames from which you can then pick the best of the lot. When you have fleeting action to deal with, it’s difficult to determine when exactly you should fire the shutter. With Continuous mode, you have that luxury of having multiple shots to decide which is best.

The Self-Timer mode isn’t just good for group photographs where you, the photographer, need to be in the same shot. You can take advantage of the hands-free mode to take sharper images when you can mount the E-510 on to a tripod and shoot without risking any movement caused by your own hands. That is one reason why very often you’ll notice that two settings are available such as 2 and 12 seconds.

The 12-second setting is there to give you ample time to rush and join the group before the E-510 fires the shutter. The 2-second setting on the other hand is perfect when you are not required to have yourself in the frame.

There are two other ways to trigger the E-510 and both are remote. One is to use the optional RM-1 wireless remote controller, which for rather inexplicable reasons, is not bundled with the kit. As opposed to using the 2-sec Self-Timer setting, the E-510’s Remote feature allows you to be in the group and shoot without rushing.  The other is to connect the camera to your computer via the USB cable and run the Olympus Studio software. The software will then utilise the E-510’s LiveView to enable you to view and shoot.

Technical Data:

Shutter type: Electronically-controlled mechanical variably selected vertical focal plane; Shutter speed range: 60 to 1/4000 sec in P-A-S-M modes, 2 to 1/4000 sec in Auto mode; Longest shutter speed possible: Up to 8 min in Bulb mode; Shutter release type: Soft-touch electromagnetic two-step with AF Lock built into mid-step; Drive modes: Self-Timer, Single, Continuous and wireless Remote; Continuous shooting rate: Up to 3 frames per second amounting to no more than 6 (frames) in a single sequence in RAW mode; Self-timer countdown duration: Selectable between 2 and 12 seconds; Remote shutter release operation: Wireless via optional RM-1 optical remote controller (0 sec and 2 sec shooting modes), cord option available and/or USB remote control via Olympus Studio software; Shutter flash sync speed: 1/180 sec with Olympus E-System FL-series, 1/320 sec with legacy Olympus T-series units or up to 1/4000 sec in Super-FP mode;

15. Exposure control

The intransigence of the digital market has meant that pretty much the only two things that count in a DSLR for so many people are optical sharpness and sensor technology and in between, there isn’t much that appears to matter. The principle of photography since its inception – be it film or digital – isn’t a technical matter. For all the exotic equipment around, the fundamentals revolve around how a camera behaves as a tool in delivering light as a quality interpreted as either colours or all the tones between black and white and to achieve this accurately and consistently.

As the world heads very decisively towards even more automation with advanced predictive technologies, users are increasingly losing touch with the ability to feel the environment with one’s eyes as if his senses allow him to touch the countless scenes that lay before him where he could look, dream up a previsualisation of what the image could look like and then utilising the camera as a tool, execute it precisely. That’s where it’s important to possess a camera – a digital if you like – that is faithful in reproducing a photographer’s ideas and to do that, it also has to be responsive and intuitive.

When all’s said and done, there is no room for banal talk about the sharpest lenses in the world or a sensor with the most number of pixels. Both do not figure as primary sources of the ultimate expression of photography as a communicable art form. They play a peripheral role but nothing else. Where you will find the greatest cameras that people can truly remember and those that stand the test of time will possess an extraordinary ability to produce images with powerful display of light and colour.

The E-510 comes from a long line of history that is characteristically Olympus by tradition, heritage and strength well before even the OM System during the Seventies. Through time, the inheritance at Olympus from decade to decade has been about the quest to understand light. The era of the OM System merely brought it effervescing very successfully and in the process became very well known for its optical capabilities as much as for its colours.

Rated at ISO 100 and measured using an aperture of f2.0, the E-510’s exposure sensitivity ranges from EV 1 to EV 20. In practical terms, you can use the EV table to work out what this range actually means.

At EV 1, the light level is such that at f16, you will need the E-510’s shutter to be opened for as long as 2 min 8 sec to get the right exposure accurately. At EV 20, the lighting condition is significantly brighter to the extent that at the same aperture setting, the E-510 will need to shoot at 1/4000 sec, which is its maximum possible shutter speed.

The EV table below is customised to display the E-510’s exposure operating range and the types of combinations of aperture and shutter speed settings that you will find useful:

Diagram 13: A selective EV table showing the Olympus E-510’s exposure meter sensitivity range including the optimal performance band

At the outer boundaries, the E-510 at EV 1 shows clearly that you can still obtain perfectly accurate exposure readings all the way to 2 mins 8 secs (or 128 secs) all the way to 1 sec. With relevance to both the Zuiko Digital 14-42mm and 40-150mm lenses where the peak optical performance is usually found at f8.0, you will see the operating exposure range bound by an orange box. Therefore given the lighting conditions measured from EV 1 to EV 18 and the appropriate combinations of aperture and shutter speeds given in the above table, you should be able to extract the best possible performance from the E-510. Take note that the EV table measurements are based on the use of ISO 100 at f2.0.

Exposure modes

Like just about every DSLR, the E-510 provides the regulation offering of four primary modes of exposure operation. They are Program (P), Aperture-Priority AE (A), Shutter-Priority AE (S) and Manual (M). There are also Program Scene modes of which the five key ones are available on-dial while the rest are buried in the E-510’s menu accessible via the LCD panel. And of course, Olympus also provides the Auto mode but more of that later.

When set to Program mode, the E-510 doesn’t just display its recommended aperture and shutter speed combination but via the Command Wheel, you can turn it to the left or right until you get to the combination you want. What it’s doing is of course allow you to run through the EV curve for the optimal setting you prefer.

AUTO is somewhat different in the sense that the E-510 locks the combination in without allowing you to do anything. This is a mode that is designed for those who are new to DSLR photography and wish to merely use the E-510 to point and shoot.

Illustration 14: The Olympus E-510’s Exposure Mode dial and Command Wheel

Image courtesy of Olympus Imaging Corporation, 2007

The Aperture- and Shutter-Priority modes are partially automatic. You select the aperture or shutter speed (respectively) and the camera delivers the other according to the light level its metering system reads.

In Manual mode, the E-510 leaves both the choice of aperture and shutter speed settings to you. Therefore you can follow the built-in light meter’s indication of under- and overexposure and set both accordingly or alternatively you can do your own stuff.

Of these modes, the one that I use most often is Aperture-Priority not because it’s the most accurate but because it offers me the best combination of speed (as in reflex terms), intuitiveness and control. Since I think largely in terms of depth of field, this mode arranges my thoughts best and helps me to make decisions that suit my style of photography. And if I need to I can still deliberately make my images darker or lighter by way of using the E-510’s Exposure Compensation button or move in and use the AEL/AFL button to lock in.

Metering patterns

The late Ansel Adam’s tool of the trade wasn’t so much the view camera he used but the Weston light meter that travelled with him wherever he went. He could be using any view camera but without the light meter, his biographical details would have been different. In other words it didn’t matter whether the camera lens offered a wider or narrower range of apertures or if it had seven or ten elements in any number of optical groups. Ansel’s dependency was the light meter for it helped him to develop the style of photography he was to be best remembered.

Light metering and how you understand what to do with the readings define the tones of any photographic image. They have the capacity to render a photograph rich and detailed and therefore produce a sense of depth and dynamism. Alternatively they can also make an image light and airy, poetic or finely fettered. From one extreme end to the other, it is the metering systems and how they work that pave the way for you to define the characteristics of the histogram.

In his latter years, Ansel was able to develop a technique that was better known as the Zone System where he could previsualise a scene in terms of ten tones of grey and from there, he could look at any landscape and knew how he wanted it to look like in print. And invariably however he deliberately darkened or lightened the exposure, the print would turn out exactly the way he had envisaged.

The E-510 offers five metering types that tap into your consciousness or desire to create or your penchant for utter convenience. You can begin as a DSLR novice and know that the E-510 will deliver without much involvement from you or you can test out your skills and put your range of experience to work. Either way the E-510 does not disappoint. After all with the exception of Digital ESP, the tools that it offers remain tools – it’s up to you to make the best of.

Digital ESP

The E-510’s Digital ESP predictive metering first began in the late Eighties when Olympus revealed the film-based version plainly called ESP in the then-new OM-40 Program. Back then, the key challenge was to develop an intelligent metering system that would address tricky lighting conditions of which backlighting was the most important. Even then, Olympus had refined ESP to work not just in Program but also in Aperture-Priority and Manual exposure modes, something of a first in the market then.

With the current generation of Digital ESP, Olympus has capitalised on the E-510’s newer technologies to take advantage such as the 49 individual metering zones to perform more advanced algorithms to intelligently forecast a finer set of readings. By and large, it is superb in the sense that it contributes substantially to a very natural palette of colours especially during the daylight.

While I wasn’t a pervasive user of Digital ESP, the weakness of its Spot or lack of Multispot option has convinced me to begin using it. The results have been quite excellent and even more so when combined with Program when using either the built-in or external flash but more of that later.

Digital ESP uses the 49 zones to calibrate by measuring differing contrast levels in adjacent zones to determine which to ultimately focus its metering on. With the zones spread across the entire image area, the E-510’s much-improved TruePic III image processor is now faster and more accurate in its ability to measure whatever exposure corrections that are needed from the normative 80% grey to produce images that are punchier, deeper and more vivid. So while Digital ESP retains its fundamental ability to surmount backlighting, it does quite a bit more these days.

Creativity metering

If you’re keen to use the E-510 on anything that is more creative and hands on, there are four others namely Centre-Weighted Average, Spot, Spot-Highlight and Spot-Shadow. Of these centre-weighted average is probably the least complex to use but under a tricky lighting condition, it would require wisdom on your part to know how to correct for it. Centre-weighted average metering covers almost 80% of the entire image area concentrating its efforts towards the centre. In average lighting situations, this might be the best to use if you want some personal involvement in choosing your own settings.

Like all metering modes that go by the same name, Spot is the same as any averaging modes except that it reads light from a far more restricted area within the image. In the E-510, that’s 2 degrees at the centre of the focusing screen, making it narrower even than the circular marking at the centre of the viewfinder image. As such it’s more a tool for those who not only have a broad understanding of exposure management but those who have the technical nous to use it artistically.

Using the Spot metering mode doesn’t make you a better photographer and you might actually end up getting ‘better’ exposure quality with the E-510’s Digital ESP instead. The point with taking advantage of a technical tool like Spot is to know what you want and then know exactly how to go about it in order to achieve it. Previsualisation, if you understand it, is a very useful key in helping you utilise Spot to great advantage. 

Enhanced spot metering

If Spot alone is not enough, the E-510 also offers two variants that are bias weighted. Both of these are highly advanced metering modes that to my knowledge, most working pro photographers don’t even know how to use. All but diehard past Olympus OM-4 users even know what I’m talking about. It’s not often mentioned in photo periodicals and countless online product reviews don’t even elaborate what they can and cannot do.

Spot-Highlight, for example, is a spot reading mode that adds on +2 EV to the area of the image that the normal Spot would measure light from, overexposing it by quite a fair margin. If you find that the whites (highlights) in your photograph look ‘dirty’ – more like middle grey – then the Spot-Highlight mode will lighten the tone enough to reproduce the highlights as they should appear. However when that happens, the rest of the image will also be overexposed.

Spot-Shadow is similar but works in the opposite direction. The E-510 removes about 2.7 EV from the averaged spot reading to render a marked underexposure. As a tool, Spot-Shadow turns shadowed and lowlight areas much darker than the mid-tones that most light metering systems return. Hence you experience a richer imagery with deeper tonal densities. And of course your shadows will look more like shadows.

When the Olympus OM-3 and OM-4 came out the industry labelled them ‘technical cameras’ and by and large, this is an accurate definition. The reason for that is that both cameras offered facilities that challenge your abilities to master but once you do, there’s basically no turning back. These cameras became unforgettable classics of all time and till today remain the penultimate benchmarks for the finest metering systems in the world.

The E-510 has an extraordinarily tough act to follow and to a large extent it doesn’t come anywhere near either camera but to be fair, it was not designed to. Nonetheless features like Spot-Highlight and Spot-Shadow are highly technical tools that certainly demand respect. Unlike Digital ESP, you can’t possibly expect outstanding results if you don’t know how to use them.

Creativity alone is no justification to use either modes – you need proven skills but if you plan to learn how to use them, you can consider yourself fortunate that it’s not film you’re dealing with!

The sad part

While it’s a nice bonus to have the Spot (let alone Spot-Highlight and -Shadow) metering mode, the way it is designed to work in the E-510 falls short because it is not as intuitive as Olympus could have made it out to be and as improbably as it might be, a comparison with the OM-4’s implementation shows a huge gap in terms of usability.

The lack of intuitiveness is because Spot doesn’t work like an overriding tool when it should. With the E-510, you make a choice to switch from one to another. With the OM-4, you’re always in centre-weighted average but just a quick stab of the Spot button captures a reading that you can then apply highlight or shadow keying via two other adjacent buttons. This procedure is fluent and instinctive in a tactile sense. It is logical and quite frankly you couldn’t get any faster than that.

The E-510’s weaker approach isn’t a matter of having gone digital. After all Olympus has proven with the C-8080 Ultrazoom how instinctive and intuitive Spot metering works. With the C-8080, a separate Spot button allows you to move as quickly as your eye can see via the viewfinder. And if you use it more than once within the same image you get Multispot, something that no past and present Olympus E-series DSLRs offer.

I guess in some ways these omissions and lower level of intuitiveness proves one point; that the E-510’s market positioning falls somewhat short of serious prosumer. With the potential that features like Spot metering offers, the E-510 is closer to being a prosumer DSLR with the quality to match more expensive competitors but ultimately it isn’t.

Like all DSLR cameras these days, the E-510 falls into the trap of over-offering options that hardly make a lot of sense. For example you could override the meter reading by using the Exposure Compensation to under- or overexpose by up to 5 EV. That is too much but it does look impressive on paper and many online product reviews like that sort of thing.

Then you can also set your compensation in either ½ or â…“ EV increment, which again, merely adds complexity to your workflow. The chances are that you’ll end up fiddling mindlessly, adjusting from one to the other and back again from one frame to the next. Alternatively you might have settled on an option that you could just as easily forget to revert. All these just don’t make a lot of sense to me as I would have preferred to have kept things simple because by doing so, you improve the quality of your workflow.

Endless mindless automation

There are no less than eighteen (18) different Program Scene modes available in the E-510. You really couldn’t have dreamed for more and by and large, I think that Olympus has probably outdone itself here more than any other camera maker. But I don’t see the point – not in the E-510 at any rate.

I think that the five offered with the Exposure Mode dial are good enough for a DSLR of this calibre. While the E-400 or E-410 might justify having them, it’s hard to understand where Olympus is heading with as many as eighteen especially when they can cheapen the E-510’s hard-earned image.

The names Olympus use to label the Program Scenes are self-explanatory and so it shouldn’t be difficult to find the best mode to fit the occasion or situation and with eighteen, you’re spoiled for choice. If you’re a novice and the idea of purchasing the E-510 is based on outright quality images, then these will suit you to a tee.

In actual use, the E-510 has been consistently underexposing slightly. This doesn’t just happen at ISO 100 (when in fact it is actually ISO 125) but all the way to ISO 800 and 1600. It’s almost as if the TruePic’s exposure map has been shifted down by about â…“ EV for all ISO settings but it’s far from disastrous. The images turn out a bit richer or more vivid particularly in broad daylight.

For indoor lighting situations the slight underexposure is a bit more telling but that’s easily sorted out – if you want to – by shifting the Exposure Compensation to +â…“ stop especially if you plan to shoot in this manner for your whole session. Otherwise for the odd shot here and there, use the AEL/AFL button or press the shutter release button midway to lock the exposure as you point the E-510 at the area of the image you want best exposed.

Technical Data:

Light metering type: Open-aperture through-the-lens (TTL); Metering options: Digital ESP, centre-weighted average, single 2% spot, Spot Highlight and Spot Shadow; Metering pattern type: Digital ESP utilising up to 49 separate zones; Exposure metering sensitivity: From EV 1 to EV 20 in Digital ESP mode and from EV 3 to EV 17 in Spot mode (both measured at ISO 100 and set to 50mm (EFL) focal length and f2.0); Spot metering area: Centred 2% of total metering area; Exposure modes: Program (P), Program-Shift (P_S), Aperture-Priority AE (A), Shutter-Priority AE (S), Manual (M), Program Scenes and Bulb (B); Program Scenes: Five on dial and seventeen accessible via menu; Exposure compensation range: ±5 EV in ½, â…“ and/or 1 EV steps either way; AE bracketing options: 3 frames in â…“, ½ or 1 EV steps; Exposure lock: Available via AEL/AFL button or mid-step shutter release; On-dial Program Scene modes: Portrait, Landscape, Macro, Night+Portrait and Sports (Action); Menu-based Program Scene modes: Portrait, Landscape, Landscape+Portrait, Children, Night, Night+Portrait, Sports (Action), High Key, Low Key, Digital Image Stabilisation, Macro, Nature Macro, Candlelight, Sunset, Fireworks, Document, Beach/Snow and Panorama