Camera
On this day 2003: we reviewed the world's first designed-for-digital SLR
It’s 21 years since we reviewed the Olympus E-1, arguably the only successful attempt to develop a digital SLR from first principles, rather than trying to adapt what had come before. As part of our 25th Anniversary celebrations, we look back at the E-1 as one of the most significant cameras of the past 25 years.
In the early days of digital photography the large number of photographers already heavily invested in film lenses put pressure on companies to continue their existing systems, even though ‘full-frame’ sensors that matched the film format they were designed around were prohibitively expensive for most photographers.
The Four Thirds system was an attempt at a clean slate design, with the intention of developing a new set of lenses designed to suit digital sensors, and built around a sensor chosen because it had a good performance-to-price ratio, not to match the arbitrary dimensions of cinema film stock adapted for photography in the early 1900s. It was a decision that would also allow smaller lenses, particularly at longer focal lengths.
The first open system: the Four Thirds timeline
- Feb 2001: Kodak and Olympus enter patent sharing agreement
- May 2001: Olympus confirms DSLR concept with Type 4/3 sensor
- Sep 2001: Kodak and Olympus announce “Four Thirds” system with Fujifilm participation
- Jun 2003: Olympus reveals E-1 5MP Four Thirds DSLR
- Nov 2003: DPReview reviews the first Four Thirds camera
- Feb 2004: Panasonic, Sanyo and Sigma join Four Thirds
The Four Thirds initiative was started by Kodak and Olympus, with the two companies settling on a 5MP Type 4/3 (17.3 x 13mm) CCD sensor. This sensor size and the use of the 4:3 aspect ratio common in most early digital sensors give the system its name.
They also announced it would be an open standard, with other companies welcome to join, a decision that prompted Fujifilm to announce its interest, followed by Sanyo, Sigma and Panasonic, some seventeen months later. For a while it looked like a critical mass might coalesce, finally bringing about the long dreamt-of common mount, allowing complete interoperability between multiple brands.
In the meantime, although later than the initially suggested Feb 2002 launch date, Olympus developed the E-1, a high-end magnesium alloy DSLR with a 100% viewfinder and that 5MP Four Thirds CCD at its heart. Announced alongside five lenses in mid 2003, the original press release highlights the ‘Supersonic Wave Filter’ sensor shake system that shook dust off the sensor as solving “a problem that has long been an Achilles heel of … digital SLRs.”
Unfortunately, in his review, Phil highlighted that the Olympus couldn’t offer either the speed or the resolution that were typically expected of a camera with the E-1’s stated professional ambitions. This was made more stark by its $2199 original price tag (albeit with a ‘street price’ well below that), at a time when Canon’s 6MP EOS 10D would set you back nearer $1500.
 |
| It took the more affordable E-300 model for the Four Thirds to really find its audience. By the time the E-330 arrived, two years later, Kodak was out of the picture. |
It took 2004’s 8MP E-300, with its much more attainable price point (around $1000 with kit lens) for Four Thirds to really find its audience.
By 2006 Panasonic and Leica were alongside Olympus spearheading the system, with each brand releasing variations of technologies co-developed by the two Japanese companies, including “Live MOS” sensors from Panasonic, rather than Kodak. The Olympus E-330 and Panasonic L-1/Leica Digilux 3 were some of the first DSLRs to offer live view, with the E-330 including a more sophisticated/complex implementation. You don’t have to squint very hard to see the beginnings of the first mirrorless camera, which Panasonic would introduce just two years later.
Despite a broadly sound initial concept, one challenge of the use of a smaller-than-film sensor in a DSLR was that the viewfinders were often quite small and dark (because the sensor size defines the size of the camera’s mirror, which in turn puts a limit on how large or bright you can make an optical viewfinder).
This was resolved with the move to a mirrorless design and the creation of the Micro Four Thirds system, built around the same Type 4/3 sensor format and a lot of technology developed during the Four Thirds era. Perhaps fittingly, the final Four Thirds camera was a direct continuation of the original E-1 line, with the system being officially discontinued 18 months later.
With this in mind, it might seem odd to call a system with a span of just over seven years between the launch of its first camera and its last a success, but I’d focus more on the groundwork it laid. Twenty-one years after the launch of the E-1, the Four Thirds sensor format is still very much with us, and you can trace a direct line from the first all-digital DSLR project to the mirrorless cameras that dominate the ILC market today, even if both Kodak and Olympus have now exited the photography market.
Season’s greetings! We’ve almost reached the end of 2024, and as is our custom, the DPReview team would like to wish you all a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Boxing Day, Happy Kwanzaa, Joyous Festivus, and Happy Holiday to all. We’re incredibly grateful you’ve stuck with us for yet another orbit around the sun.
2024 was an important year for DPReview symbolically. One year ago today, on December 25, 2023, we celebrated the site’s 25th anniversary. For the past 12 months, we’ve been looking back at some of the moments and milestones from that past quarter century. We couldn’t have reached this point without your support.
2024 has also been an important chapter for DPReview as a business. Many of you know we’ve been going through a period of rebuilding. Every person at DPReview, including many folks behind the scenes, has poured their heart and soul into this effort. Why? Because at a fundamental level, we believe that an internet with DPReview is better than one without it.
The hard work is paying off. You might recall that a couple of months ago, we advertised some new editorial roles on the site, and I’m thrilled to report that we’ll have a couple of new faces joining the team early next year.
“At a fundamental level, we believe that an internet with DPReview is better than one without it.”
A huge factor in that success has been our community. Whether you’re a regular in the forums or just pop in to comment under the occasional article, we’re grateful for your contributions. Our forums are a goldmine of information, crowd-sourced from knowledgeable people for over 25 years. Our homepage may get a lot of attention, but the forums are where the magic happens: exchanging ideas, forming communities, and forging personal connections.
In fact, we’re planning to ramp up support for our online community in 2025. Remember those new staff members I mentioned? One of them will be focused on supporting our forums, including our team of volunteer moderators. This will be the first time we’ve had a person on our team dedicated to this task, and to be candid, it’s overdue.
Before you leave today, we’d love it if you’d take a moment to leave a comment and let us know what made 2024 at DPReview memorable for you. Or, if you’re feeling prophetic, please tell us what you’d like to see in the coming year.
From all of us at DPReview – the editors who craft the stories, the tech wizards who keep the lights on, and the business team who keep us on solid footing – we wish you all a happy and healthy holiday season. We’re genuinely excited about what the future holds and look forward to having you by our side as we embark on the next 25 years.
2024 In Review
2024 is just about over, so we thought it’d be a good time to look back and identify some trends that started emerging or kept going strong throughout the year. This isn’t a recap of all the news that happened – we’ll be releasing one of those soon enough – but rather a broad look at the direction the industry is going, which may give us an idea of what to expect throughout 2025.
Global Shutter
 |
Photo: Richard Butler
It’s hard to say that global shutter was a trend in 2024; in terms of consumer mirrorless cameras, there was only one with the tech, the Sony a9 III. Given the benefits it brings, though – the ability to sync with full-power flash at almost any speed, the ability to shoot stills at 120fps, and to use shutter speeds up to 1/80,000 sec to capture the fastest subjects without any blur – we fully expect to see it come to more high-end sports / action cameras.
That’s not to say that the a9 III’s sensor is perfect. Compared to its rolling shutter counterparts, it takes a hit to absolute image quality with its 250 base ISO, which means it has about a stop more noise than most of its competitors.
However, if you need the performance a global shutter offers, it’s likely none of those caveats will be deal breakers. We just mention them to say that we don’t expect to see global shutters in cameras that are focused on image quality above all else, such as the Sony a7R series or a follow-up to the Nikon Z8 – at least not in 2025 or even 2026.
Physical color mode controls
 |
Photo: Mitchell Clark
This year, it felt like every other camera had a physical control for color modes. Fujifilm’s Film Simulation dial, included on the X-T50 and X-M5, feels like the obvious example, but it was far from the only one: Panasonic put a LUT button on the creator-focused S9 – and then gave its users the option to backport one onto other cameras – and Nikon included a button to bring up its Picture Control menu on the Z50II.
Physical color mode controls aren’t a brand-new thing. We saw one on the Olympus Pen-F in 2016. But this is the year they definitively became a trend.
Only time will tell if they stick around. Camera manufacturers will likely be paying very close attention to whether consumers actually value being able to easily change the look of their photos and videos using a physical button or dial. If it turns out they do, this year’s crop of cameras likely won’t be the last we see with a color mode control.
APS-C shooters have more options than ever
 |
Image: Sigma
2024 was the year that Canon and Nikon started allowing more and more third-party APS-C lenses onto their systems. At the beginning of the year, you only had a handful of options if you wanted a third-party autofocus lens for RF or Z-mount. Now, you have significantly more.
The change came from some of the usual suspects, as well as some smaller companies. Sigma and Tamron were the first to announce they’d be bringing their lenses to RF mount, but Samyang slid in under the wire with an announcement that it, too, would start producing lenses for the system.
Most of Sigma’s DC DN primes have been available on Z-mount since early 2023, but this year, we’ve seen a slew of autofocus primes become available for the system from brands like Siuri and Viltrox.
There are still holes in the lineup for each brand, though – neither has a great telephoto option, and there aren’t any fast zoom Z-mount lenses – which is why we’d like to see this trend continue into 2025. If we’re really dreaming, maybe Canon and Nikon will allow more third-party full-frame glass, but we’ll save our fantasies for a different article.
The rise of smaller full-frame lenses
 |
Image: Sony
Speaking of full-frame glass, this year we’ve also seen a trend of smaller, lighter full-frame lenses. Panasonic’s 18-40mm F4.5-6.3 for L-mount is the most obvious example – the company says it’s the “smallest and lightest interchangeable zoom with autofocus for full-frame mirrorless cameras” – but Sony’s FE 24-50mm F2.8 is also a great, compact new lens that makes a ton of sense on smaller bodies like the a7CR.
Even the big lenses have been getting smaller – Sigma’s second-gen 24-70 F2.8 is 10% lighter than its predecessor, a difference that’ll definitely be noticeable in hour eight of shooting a wedding. Sony’s 85mm F1.4 GM II also boasts a 20% weight reduction compared to the original.
Again, this trend isn’t exactly new. We’ve seen a few lenses that have been largely defined by their size; Canon’s original RF 70-200mm F2.8 from 2019 and Sony’s 70-200mm F2.8 GM II from 2022 come to mind. But with further advances in optics and manufacturing techniques, we hope to see even more full-frame lenses come out that are smaller and lighter than the ones that came before… even if they still won’t be able to out-compact Fujifilm’s XF 16-55mm F2.8 R LM WR II.
The AI age
 |
Logos: Open AI, Midjourney, Meta, Stability.ai, Google
Pretty much every industry has had its own deluge of AI-related news in 2024, and photography is no exception. The continued proliferation of AI-generated images and text has sparked near-endless debates about what place, if any, the technology has in photography, with some people even taking the extreme position that the ubiquitous ability to generate images will destroy the art form altogether (assuming those comments too, aren’t AI-generated).
It’s not all existential doom and gloom, though, as some companies have used AI to try and improve the experience of photography rather than replace it. For instance, the new Canon EOS R1 and R5 II have Action Priority AF modes, which use machine learning-based algorithms to determine which subject to focus on during key moments in certain sports. It could be thought of as context recognition, rather than the subject recognition that’s become table stakes for most cameras. The EOS R1 and R5 II also have built-in AI-derived noise-reduction and upscaling functions, should you choose to use them.
AI-powered denoising and upscaling are also making their way into photo editing software, such as Lightroom or the apps from companies like Topaz Labs. And while Adobe has added plenty of generative AI features to Photoshop, we’ve also seen other AI-powered improvements, such as its distraction removal mode and Adobe Camera Raw’s new Adaptive profile and reflection removal feature.
However you feel about the technology, it’s almost certainly here to stay. The good news is that another facet of the AI trend this year has been companies working on improving transparency around AI, creating tools to prove a photo’s authenticity or show exactly how it’s been manipulated, either by AI or through more conventional means. The tech is far from ubiquitous, but it seems likely that we’ll see it spread to more and more platforms as AI becomes even more prevalent.
Have your say: Best gear of 2024
For the past few weeks, readers have been voting on their favorite cameras and lenses released in 2024. Now that the first round of voting is over, it’s time to reveal the winners.
Remember, though, it isn’t over just yet! Now it’s time to pick an overall winner. Make sure to cast your ballot for the 2024 Reader’s Choice Product of the Year – this one’s for all the bragging rights.
Best prime lens runner-up: Nikon Z 50mm F1.4
 |
First up is the 2024 runner-up for best prime lens, the Nikon Z 50mm F1.4, a fast prime that retails for less than Nikon’s own 50mm F1.8 S model. The tradeoff? Although it’s faster than the 50mm F1.8 S, it trades some of the clinical sharpness of that lens for more ‘character’, and you’ll likely see more vignetting and longitudinal chromatic aberration at some apertures. However, it gets you a fast prime at a popular focal length for under $500.
In our poll, the Z 50mm F1.4 barely edged out its sibling, the Nikon Z 35mm F1.4, effectively splitting the vote, suggesting that Nikon’s new F1.4 optics have struck a chord with enthusiast photographers.
Best prime lens winner: Sony 85mm F1.4 GM II
 |
The 2024 Reader’s Choice Award for the best prime lens goes to the Sony 85mm F1.4 GM II, the same lens we named as the best prime lens of the year in our 2024 DPReview Annual Awards. It’s not a fancy, exotic lens, but it’s a solid workhorse that gets the job done and delivers great image quality. It’s also lighter, sharper, and has faster and smoother focus than its predecessor. As we said in our Annual Awards announcement, the Sony 85mm F1.4 GM II delivers “consistent excellence you simply take for granted.”
Best zoom lens runner-up: Nikon Z 28-400mm F4-8 VR
 |
Placing in the runner-up position for best zoom lens is the Nikon Z 28-400mm F4-8 VR, which covers a huge range of focal lengths in a single lens. This lens remains relatively compact in its retracted state, making it an option for travel or a one-lens setup for general use. It’s even dust- and drip-resistant if you get caught in the rain on vacation.
Although the lens’ maximum aperture of F8 at the long end might seem a little restrictive, you can’t beat physics; however, Nikon’s Vibration Reduction technology – along with in-body image stabilization in many camera models – can assist at slower shutter speeds. It may not be as flashy as some of the faster zooms that were on the list, but the Nikon Z 28-400mm F4-8 VR provides a lot of versatility in a single lens, which is probably why it did so well in our poll.
Best zoom lens winner: Sony 28-70mm F2 GM
 |
The 2024 Reader’s Choice Award for best zoom lens goes to the Sony FE 28-70mm F2 GM. While it doesn’t go as wide as the popular 24-70mm zoom range, the FE 28-70mm proves it’s possible to maintain a relatively compact size while sporting a fast, F2 aperture, all with an internal focusing design. Its four linear motors even allow the FE 28-70mm F2 to focus when shooting at 120fps on Sony’s fastest camera.
We had a blast shooting this lens in 2024, so we appreciate why you collectively chose it as the top zoom lens of the year. If you’d like to see this lens in action, check out our video of Richard Butler using it to shoot portraits in New York City, along with a sample gallery that includes many of the portraits featured in the video. Congrats, Sony!
Best camera runner-up: Canon EOS R5 Mark II
 |
Grabbing the runner-up position for best camera is the Canon EOS R5 Mark II. It may deliver the same 45MP resolution as its predecessor, but just about everything else has changed.
The camera’s stacked sensor brings performance improvements to both stills and video, while Eye Control AF, Action Priority AF, and improved subject recognition AF are standout features that we hope to see percolate down to other Canon models. The R5 II also highlights Canon’s efforts to unify its mirrorless cameras with its Cinema EOS line, including codecs, gamma profiles, HDR video technology, and video tools. It’s hard to imagine many things this camera can’t do.
Best camera winner: Nikon Z6III
 |
The 2024 Reader’s Choice Award for best camera goes to the Nikon Z6III, making Nikon the People’s Choice winner in this category for the second year in a row.
The third generation of the Z6 series kicks things up a level. It features what Nikon calls a “Partially Stacked” sensor to deliver some of the benefits of a Stacked CMOS sensor but at a lower cost, delivering improved performance and autofocus while retaining the Z6’s reputation for excellent ergonomics. It also features significant video upgrades with higher quality output and a useful video tool set, reinforcing Nikon’s intent to be a player in the video market.
In our 2024 Annual Awards, the Z6III walked away with two trophies: Best Enthusiast Camera and our 2024 Product of the Year. It looks like it may be trying to make a clean sweep of the Reader’s Choice Awards as well.
Have your say – vote for Product of the Year!
 |
You helped determine the winners in the individual categories, so now’s the time to cast your vote in one last poll! Choose your favorite product from this list of winners and runners-up between now and Thursday, January 2nd. Watch for an announcement of the winning products shortly after the poll closes.
As always, thanks for casting your votes and being a part of our community throughout the year.
Please note that for the best experience, we recommend voting on our desktop site.
Poll Rules:
This poll is meant to be a bit of fun. It’s not sponsored, promoted, or paid for in any way, and DPReview doesn’t care how you vote. Our Reader’s polls are run on the basis of trust. As such, we ask that you only vote once from a single account.
-
Solar Energy3 years agoDLR testing the use of molten salt in a solar power plant in Portugal
-
Camera1 year agoDJI Air 3 vs. Mini 4 Pro: which compact drone is best?
-
world news1 year ago
Gulf, France aid Gaza, Russia evacuates citizens
-
Camera1 year agoSony a9 III: what you need to know
-
world news1 year ago
Strong majority of Americans support Israel-Hamas hostage deal
-
Camera4 years agoCharles ‘Chuck’ Geschke, co-founder of Adobe and inventor of the PDF, dies at 81
-
Solar Energy1 year agoGlencore eyes options on battery recycling project
-
Indian Defense3 years ago
Israeli Radar Company Signs MoU To Cooperate With India’s Alpha Design Technologies
