Hi All,
First, let me explain that I am a Canon Guy, but one with an open mind...
Yesterday (Monday) evening we (messrs. JapanCamera.NL and me) visited the DigiFotoBeurs, an Autumn/Winter Sales Event for photo-retail-professionals on which all the major players show-off and hope to sell their digital imaging & related products.
Only Monday afternoon the news of the new E-500 was brought, but before I went to the fair, I quickly glimpsed at that news, the bulletin, the camera and it's specs, although not expecting to hold one within a few hours, LOL!
So how was it in real life?
In real life it was a full functional pre-production Body-Only example: no-one was allowed to put ANY lens on it or ANY card in it (the new lenses BTW were not present), but we could look at it's shape, feel it in hand, and fumble with the menu's.
For some reason this body made me think back of the OM-10/OM-20 types, but I am not sure why... size/weight wise this is a 350D/Rebel XT, but lighter, the grip a bit more chunky/beefy, and menu's appeared to be slightly faster.
A nice, bright, BIG! display, but I only saw it in a TL- and halogen lighted, bright event-hall, so just a small observation, no comments about readability in bright sunlight.
As a Canon-Guy, I can pick-up any Powershot/EOS series camera, and feel instantly @Home with menu's and buttons, surprisingly this Olympus gave me that same feeling after only three short browses through it's menustructure and a minute or 10 fumbling with the buttons, very logical and intuïtive controls!
The rest of the feel and touch was a bit (understatement) hampered by the fact that there was no lens attached, but all buttons felt logically placed under my (small) hands.
I truely liked the ISO in 1/3 steps, could get used to that on a 20d replacement
)
As I started this: 'FWIW only', no lens and no card allowed, so I got nothing further to report. Oh yeah, maybe one more thing, it was painted/coloured a nice kind of semi-matte black, and the rubberized parts felt cool and 'sticky'.
...as always, all the above is just *my* €0.02 worth...
My kindest regards and respects,
Max@Home