Nikon d40 vs olympus e-510?

Question

i have been looking at buying a olympus e-510 ,but people have told me to get a nikon d40 why....come on look at the features olympus has 10mp image stabalisation ,live view,dust reduction filter ect........ why do people advise the d40 seriosly why ...i mean will it give better quality photos without all the perks the olympus has

Answer 1

Olympus E-510 vs Nikon D40x

Nikon’s D40x simply can’t compete in terms of features and gadgets, but combines affordability with great ease of use. The D40x (and the D40) are arguably the friendliest DSLRs around right now and are almost foolproof too thanks to Nikon’s legendary metering system. While the E-510 employs a similar basic 3-point AF system, it of course packs in considerably more features including anti-shake, anti-dust and Live View. But the bottom line is the Nikon remains easier and more foolproof to use, so if you’re a DSLR beginner, the D40x should seriously be considered.

Answer 2

Give me both cameras.... take the names off the front and you know what I think will happen? I will get equally good pictures. Remember it's not the equipment that's most important.. it's your eyes and mental ability that's important in photography. Branding is a marketing phenomenon, and I've noticed DSLRs are all very capable and unless you are a pro with specific needs, any of the budget DSLRs are perfect.

Answer 3

Nikon for me.....

Answer 4

I have a D 40 and I can use any Nikon lens ever made, with the exception of just a few early models, and get sharp images. Four extra pixels doesn't mean anything to the average shooter and unless your making larger than 8x10 prints, you wont be able to tell 6 from 10 mega pixels. All the rest of the features you mention are bells and whistles, items that really have no effect on image quality. I"ll stick with Nikon any day.

Answer 5

The E-510 is a great camera and the 2-lens kit is almost the same price as the Nikon with 1-lens. It does have a great set of features that competing companies are scrambling to catch up to. Olympus is clearly setting the bar but it isn't receiving due credit.

Nikon's name, however, has been established as one of the "big two" camera manufacturers. Their advertising in NA is a little more aggressive too. So naturally, you have some people yelling out Nikon's better without giving any reason as to why. I mean the D40 is also crippled in the area of lenses like Olympus, if not more so.

Some hardcore photographers and camera lovers shoot Four-Thirds down because the smaller sensor is attributed to a higher ammount of noise at the higher ISOs. Also, the 4:3 aspect ratio doesn't respect the 3:2 ratio carried over from the days of film. In addition, some also introduce the crop ratio as a negative but Oly has some of the best glass around, albeit a bit expensive.

... all while Oly shooters continue to churn out beautiful pictures.

Both the D40 and E-510 are very good cameras. It's a silly game of fanboyism as far as I'm concerned. I especially love the contradiction that arises when pros say "it's the photographer, not the camera" yet turn around to bash Olympus.

Follow up:

@ gator: Innovation is what drives technology forward. You can't just say these are mere gimmicks. If that's your ideology then built-in meters, automatic diaphrams, auto-exposure, drive motors, autofocus, TTL flash, wireless flash, and the numerous other technological advancements for the past 40 years are nothing but "bells-and-whistles" that have no effect on image quality. And since you mentioned it: almost every brand can fit older lenses on too with the help of a $30 adapter but you lose the autofocus that you paid for and, in the case of newer lenses, the ability to change the aperture.

Answer 6

There are several reasons why people say that.  A little bit of history explains some of the reasons.

Some people prefer the Nikon because it is a "Professional" brand with a long history as a compact camera model.  Compact cameras, in this sense, refer to the 35mm cameras that were the main alternative to "Medium" and "Large" format cameras used by professional photographers who used film based cameras.  35mm cameras became popular after World War II because they offered an opportunity to have much more portable cameras with interchangeable lenses. At that time Leica was the German 35mm camera most often used by photo journalists and some Japanese companies began making models that were compatible/competitors.

Nikon and Canon were notable for making lenses that fit the Leica's and then creating their own versions of cameras with the Leica lens mounts in the 1950's.  Nikon was one of the early companies to begin making Single Lens Reflex (SLR) cameras and was an early adopter of a bayonet style lens mount.  This was important because the Leica style cameras used threaded (s***w mount) lenses that required the user to unscrew one lens and s***w in another to replace it when changing lenses.  This was a time consuming process that slowed down news, sports and other specialty photgraphers and the bayonet style lenses could be changed much more quickly.

By the early to mid 1960's most 35mm SLR cameras were using bayonet style mounts but only three MAJOR bayonet lens mounts were being used (Exacta, Minolta & Nikon).  Canon adopted a "Breech Lock" style mount that was a quick change type but technically NOT a bayonet mount, they later abandoned this mount to switch to their current style.  

By the early 1970's Lieca cameras had become prohibitively expensive and, in the U.S. market Canon, Nikon  along with Minolta and Pentax  as "also rans" were the most serious competitors for the professional 35mm market.

Pentax eventually replaced their very popular s***w mount style lenses with a bayonet mount in the early seventies but provided backward compatibility by making a s***w mount adapter so that most of their existing.  Minolta continued with their "SR"/"SRT" mount until they introduced more automated & auto-focus models in the late 1980's and soon stopped making cameras or lenses with their SR bayonet style.

The point of all this history is that only Nikon and Pentax, of all the major camera manufacturers have maintained complete backward compatibility for products made back to the late 1950's. And only Nikon has used the same lens mount all that time.

Another reason for Nikon popularity is that it has been considered by many to be the "Cadillac" of 35mm cameras (with Leica as the Mercedes Benz) so there is a certain amount of "snob appeal" to these cameras.  The Nikon brand also has a well deserved reputation for high quality, and for making almost anything needed "For a price".

Interestingly, Olympus is one of the oldest Japanese optical companies (Older than Canon, Minolta and Nikon, I'm not sure about Pentax), and has a long history of making superb equipment for the medical and scientific community.  They are a smaller company than most of their competitors and have been actively making cameras for almost 85 years.  For many years they suffered in the U.S. market possibly because of the distribution systems that existed for imported photography products and marketing mis-steps when they managed to become an independent importer. Until they introduced the OM series of cameras in the 1970's they were virtually unknown in the United States.  However, that line of cameras provided some of the best 35mm cameras ever made and they are small, lightweight and most of the lenses made for them are as good as or better than comparable lenses from almost ANY manufacturer INCLUDING Leica.

I started using OM cameras because they were the lightest, high quality equipment available and I carried the camera and lenses when backpacking. Many reviewers complained about the design of the OM cameras because the shutter speed setting was moved from the top of the camera to around the lens mount but this design, in fact, was one of the keys to making the OM cameras so much smaller than Nikons, Canons, Minoltas, etc.  This allowed the components to be mounted in areas that were normally wasted by the "control on top" design and simplified the construction of the shutters.

Olympus was in a better position than most of its competitors when it set out to design a Digital SLR because it had a relatively small range of legacy products from film cameras.  Because of this they elected to design a camera totally from scratch and DESIGNED IT FOR DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY.  The first thing they did was to select a specific format and size for their sensor.  Their decision on sensor size has been the most controversial part of the design, because they chose a sensor with 1/2 the dimension of 35mm cameras.  This has been controversial because the smaller sensor size is expected to be lower quality ("bigger is better"??).  But this is a very complex issue, smaller sensors are more difficult to adjust to control "noise" but another factor in controlling noise is the heat generated by the electronics.  Bigger sensors generate more heat.  Also photo diodes, the actual sensors, do not behave like film, they are very unforgiving of light rays coming at them from oblique angles so require a different lens design which aligns light rays in parallel as they reach the sensor.  Film lenses (legacy lenses) WERE NOT designed to do this because film generally handles ligh from oblique angles very well.

So Olympus design, in collaboration with LEICA, Kodak and others was based on making a sensor that closely matches the well accepted 4"x5" picture format to maximize the usable sensor area in each picture.  In addition their camera design is very rugged and allows them to design smaller, lighter lenses that cost less (relatively) than their competitors on cameras that demand less power and, therefore get longer battery life. Furthermore, they incorporated dust removal technology to clean the image sensor area on ALL of their DSLRs and they have designed Image Stabilization (IS, also called Vibration Reduction by some makers) into some models of their cameras so it works with ANY lens that can be mounted on their IS cameras (like the E510).

Oh, by the way, the Olympus design allows thousands of legacy lenses from Leica, Nikon, Minolta, Exacta, Pentax, etc. to be mounted onto their camera via adapters.  As far as I know NO Canon 35mm SLR lenses can be mounted on the Olympus without major modification of the camera.

So the answer is do you want a system based around legacy technology or one designed for the 21st century which has some shortcomings, but was designed from the beginning for this technology and is making successive improvements to deal with the problems of their design decisions.

For an explanation of sensor technology check the July/August issue of PC Photo magazine.  For examples of photos taken with Olympus 4/3 type cameras go to my Flickr Page.  Most pictures taken after 2005 were made with E-Series cameras using Olympus lenses.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/robs-photo-...

Answer 7

ppl often forgot the most important thing in photography is the skill, not the camera.

each camera has it's own characteristic.  so, use the one that you feel more comfortable will do, don't just look for the technical specifications alone.

use it, know it, and love it.  make it as your 2nd eyes.