Olympus E-520: Update to a Top Seller

Olympus E-520 vs. Nikon D60

It is widely known that the Nikon D60 utilizes the same Sony 10.2MP CCD sensor found in the Sony A200/A300 and the Pentax k200D. Any differences you might find between image quality of the D60 and competing cameras using the same sensor will therefore reflect the differences in processing electronics employed by each camera maker and perhaps the differences in the lenses used on each camera when the image was captured.

A Sony A200 is currently in the lab for evaluation, and we will be comparing images from the A200 with Olympus E-520 images in an upcoming review.

ISO Comparison Olympus E-520 vs. Nikon D60
ISO	Olympus E-520	Nikon D60
100
200
400
800
1600
3200
Click on any of the above image crops for the full image. Note: Full size images are between 3.8MB and 5.2MB!

In past comparisons of Olympus images to either Canon or Nikon, the Olympus proved to be noisier at higher ISO settings than either Canon or Nikon. In the E-520, we now find the Olympus sensor very competitive with the Nikon sensor through ISO1600. The Nikon reaches higher to ISO 3200, with much more visible noise, but the slightly smaller E-520 4/3 sensor really compromises very little in noise compared to the Nikon D60. This is most likely due to the improved image processing electronics brought from the prosumer E-3 to the new E-520.

The Nikon D60 tungsten white balance preset is very slightly warm compared to the Olympus E-520, but it is more a matter of preference than the strong orange-reddish shift seen in the Canon XS/XSi. This is not a comparison of Auto White Balance, but of cameras manually set to tungsten. Clearly if you plan to shoot "household" tungsten with a Canon camera you need to use custom white balance as the current tungsten setting is way off the mark on all three Canon cameras. Another option is to shoot Canon indoors without flash in RAW and compensate in Photoshop or another RAW processing program. The Nikon tungsten results are very usable as captured, and they can be easily tweaked in post-processing to match your preferences.