Olympus E-1 or SONY F828

I have sold all my film cameras and my Canon G-2 digital. I am ready

to buy a serious, high quality digital and have narrowed my choice

down to the Olympus E-1 or the SONY F828. I am looking for a good

travel camera (compact, lightweight), but need high image quality. I

have read good (and bad) things about both cameras. Please give me

any opinions on either camera (ie: build quality, ease of use,

features, image quality, etc.).

 

Thanks.

Go to the big digital sites like dpreview.com, imaging-resource.com, and steves-digicams.com and read the reviews, that will tell you more than you want to know about the feature sets. The E-1 will likely be the better-built camera, but the Sonly is no slouch.

 

Also read the reviews on www.luminous-landscape.com

 

The Sony is really very nice, but is not a substitute for an interchangable lens, DSLR. But it's 8MgPx chip will out-resolve the Olympus E-1. It doesn't mean that you'll get better pictures from the Sony, but they'll have more pixels.

 

There aren't many people who have much hands-on experience with both of these cameras, but Michael Reichman does on the luminous landscape.

 

Me? I wouldn't buy another all-in-one digicam as an alternative to the E-1 or a DSLR. I have a Canon G2, which produces very nice images, but the form factor and the limitations are maddening to me, a long-time SLR and Rangefinder user. Perhaps the Sony is better in this regard, but I'm not interested. My ideal digital setup would be a DSLR and a middle-of-the-road camera like the G2/G5. The Sony is getting too expensive and impinging on the DSLR territory.

 

Skip

I have an E-1 and I'm awfully happy with it. I keep my E-20 as a backup. 5 MP enlarge up to A3 (about 30 x 40 cm, I'll let you do the conversion) without problems.