Here are some more sample images from the E-30. If not stated otherwise, the image pipeline settings are at default values. These are more casual images, all shot handheld, with Image Stabilization on.

See also my E-30 Image Samples, Part 1 for some general remarks on image samples and on how I;m presenting them here.

This article shows E-30 images grouped in three sections:

• 70-300 mm, F/4.0-5.6 ZD lens
• Cherry blossom season
• Garden Store pictures (subjects with saturated colors)

The 70-300 mm F/4.0-5.6 lens

As you may remember, I have good feelings about this lens; while not a match for the 50-200 mm F/2.8-3.5 ZD or the 300 mm F/2.8 ZD (price: ouch! weight: ouch!), it provides civilized image quality at a ridiculously low price, being relatively compact and lightweight. Still, this is about the camera, not lens, therefore I'm not trying to show off the latter's resolution but rather what the camera does for image quality: tonality, contrast, noise, etc.

A friend's puppy: colors quite warm, which is not surprising: late afternoon in February. Under such circumstances I prefer a general warm tinge to colors compensated towards more neutral; this is why even in this light I keep the manual WB at 5300°K (sunny).

The robin and squirrel pictures are casual shots from walks in my neighborhood. For such subjects, and with a long lens, I almost always use ISO 400 to minimize the effects of quick subject movements and, together with image stabilization, of camera shake. The price paid in terms of slightly reduced image quality (less dynamic range, higher noise) is better than having more motion blur. Judge for yourself.

Spring blossoms on a sunny day

The skies were clear, time — early afternoon, not necessarily the my favorite time for picture taking, but a good opportunity to see how the camera handles color under most "neutral" conditions.

Another picture at that ISO setting; this time playing with the depth of field. I could have used 1/3 EV less of negative exposure compensation, but I am not sure if the whites in the barrier rails would have survived it. An underexposure of 1/3 or 1/2 EV can be easily compensated when an in-camera JPEG is postprocessed, anyway, at an expense of a slight increase in noise levels. Better this than blowing the highlights out.

Vivid colors: in a garden store

This is a great opportunity to see how a camera renders bright, saturated colors. These are often troublesome. On one hand, the RGB color rendition mechanism is limited by definition, trying to represent any mix of wavelengths by a combination of three single-modal components (and no, a different color space does not solve this problem); on the other, an image with the luminosity well within the (averaged) imager's range may get overblown in one of the channels, which asks for the exposure compensation. Well, a good opportunity to put a new camera through its paces, and my wife made me go there anyway...

My local garden store, Homestead Gardens in Davidsonville, MD, has some enclosed areas under a glass roof, diffusing the light quite pleasantly, a friendly environment for photography. The day was slightly cloudy, but not dull. Still, I chose to use ISO 400 in all pictures shown here (with one exception), so that the tonal range was somewhat impacted. Well, there are real-life applications.

While usually I use the Natural Picture Mode, here I shot some frames in Vivid, just to get the hang of it. Here are some results.

The Venus flytrap turned out just fine, and the increased color saturation is OK (even if I could obtain the same effect by enhancing it from the in-camera JPEG). The brightly-colored leaf came out nicely, too, as I remembered to increase the negative exposure compensation (after all, this is a darker-than-average subject). So far so good.

Some orchids can be tough on a digital camera (or on film; anyone claiming that the film captures the color "as it is", as opposed to digital, is just uninformed). This one certainly is. While -0.3 EV of exposure compensation was enough to protect the red channel of clipping, and the tonal transitions are quite nice, a close scrutiny detects some discontinuity (if not quite posterization) in the color gradient shown in the fragment at the right. (This is where a depth of more than 12 bits per color would, most probably, help.)

Now we come to the subject where the E-30 gives up (but I'm hard pressed to find a camera which doesn't). Yes, the blossoms in the background are close to perfect, but the red petals in the foreground are hopelessly devoid of any detail. Worse, in some places the red gets an admixture of purple. Maybe I should have tried a bit more of negative exposure compensation, but I'm not so sure. This is a flower I've been trying to get right since 2001 — not this year.

Another common troublemaker; this time I could see that most of the image uses almost exclusively the red channel, hence the -0.7 EV exposure compensation. The histogram shows no clipping in reds, though, and the subtle red-to-red transitions are rendered surprisingly well (even if they could have been improved with more bits per channel). This is better than I expected, a very pleasing result.

Now, back to the Natural Picture Mode, which I find most to my liking for any applications. First, one more orchid.

This is not a tough subject, and I'm not surprised the colors are just fine, if on a quiet side.

Other less demanding subjects included some trinkets displayed among plants in the hothouse. Less demanding, indeed, as I find man-made colors easier on digital or film-based imaging than many of those provided by Mother Nature. All these pictures were shot in the Natural Picture Mode and the E-30 took them in a stride:

Indeed, the trinket pictures show the E-30 at its best. The colors are subtle yet not dull, and tonal transitions smooth. A most pleasing job.

Remember that these were straight in-camera JPEGs, without any manipulation (except, obviously, for resizing or cropping, as always in my sample presentation). While I (almost) always use this format in shooting, I submit all pictures to some, usually slight, postprocessing. Who said you can postprocess only images saved raw?

My Garden Store Gallery page shows some of the last samples postprocessed, in the 1024×768 (XGA) pixel size; you may want to have a look.

More E-30 image samples

More samples from this camera can be found in other articles at my site:

• E-30 Image Samples, Part 1 — the first set I shot with this camera;
• Samples at various ISO settings, a systematic comparison.