Although not without flaws, the Olympus E-510 and Olympus E-410 bring Olympus' DSLR cameras in line with the competition. While previous Olympus DSLR cameras featured noticeably more noise than other brands, the E-410 shows less image noise than its predecessors while the competition started showing a bit more noise and loss of details with the introduction of their 10 megapixels DSLR models. Still, the E-410 does have inherently more noise than the competition but leaves the trade-off between noise and details to the user. This allows excellent image quality up to ISO 800. At ISO 1600, details are either lost to noise or to noise-reduction.

 

The Olympus E-410 is a feature-rich camera with an effective dust-reduction. Only its 3-point auto focus system and viewfinder size are less than average in terms of specification. Nevertheless, the focusing system is fast and accurate. What the E-410 also does is trade-off ergonomics, mostly due to the lack of a hand-grip, for a size that is significantly smaller than other DSLR cameras.

 

The final recommendation is a difficult one. What this camera uniquely offers it is small size. For those with an existing investment in Olympus lenses, the larger and more comfortable E-510 can be considered instead. It even includes built-in stabilization and additional external controls. However, there are great alternatives among the competition with better image quality at high-ISO and larger more comfortable viewfinders. Among those are the Canon Digital Rebel XTi, the Pentax K100D and the Nikon D40X.