[Robert Watcher]

I shot these in Jpeg (my standard). There is no cropping, but there is subtle tone adjustment, luminance noise reduction and sharpening using Adobe Lightroom. I don't have Neat Image on my Mac - just my PC work station - - - and so wasn't able to run these through that excellent program. It does a far better job at eliminating noise, keeping detail and cleaning up the image - than Lightrooms NR does. I'm moving this weekend and so will try that once I get settled in the new digs. I'll also try printing the files - which is far more valuable to me than what they look like on screen. The other night I printed out (roughly 8x10) the 3200 ISO E3 and D300 test studio shots from dpreviews.com and found such a small amount of difference between the 2 cameras with that setup - even though there was more of a difference on screen. And when I ran the E3 file through Neat Image the print equaled and probably surpassed the D300 print quality. But the fact is that I have no intention of comparing the 2 cameras - I like Olympus brand and hopefully this camera will be a valuable tool for crating my photographic images. Neither camera would be suited to clean 3200 ISO images - but both cameras are certainly usable at 1600 to 3200 ISO in my sometimes edgy style of work.

This morning (after doing these shots last night) I checked the cameras Firmware and updated it and the lens to the latest version (they were each 1 version out) - so I can see if there is any real improvement from doing that - - - at least I am now up to date.