Design and Operation

Olympus EVOLT E-30	Canon EOS 50D

The Canon EOS 50D and the Olympus EVOLT E-30 are conventional DSLRs, with handgrips for the user's right hand, control dials for the right thumb and index finger, a viewfinder hump, and so on. The 50D has Canon's Quick Control Dial flat on the back. It's common to other Canon DSLRs and even some of the point and shoots, and true to its name, its fast to use for a variety of tasks, notably exposure control, navigating menus and flipping through images in playback. Canon adjusted a couple years ago, and added a four-way controller to its DSLRs. It's a small, raised button the user pushes up, down or sideways, and it's an intuitive control for selecting an autofocus point or navigating around an enlarged image in Playback mode. The 50D also has a vertical dial cresting out of the front of the grip, for the user's index finger.

The Olympus E-30 has horizontal dials front and back, and a five-way controller on the back, made up of five separate buttons. The Olympus implementation is a little clumsier and less attractive than Canon's system, but it's equally efficient in use.


Both cameras have buttons for direct access to a range of settings, including ISO, exposure compensation, depth-of-field preview, menus, live preview, playback, erase, image information, white balance, meter pattern and exposure lock. The 50D and the E-30 use “sticky” buttons – the user can tap the ISO button, for instance, and then use a dial to adjust ISO without holding down the button. On both cameras, some buttons activate more than one parameter, and the front and back dials adjust separate things.

Olympus EVOLT E-30	Canon EOS 50D

The Canon 50D and Olympus E-30 have very different procedures for setting custom white balance. We utilize custom white balance on a number of our lab tests, so these systems fundamentally influence our use of a camera. Canon's custom white balance works from saved exposures. You take a shot, then refer to that shot through the custom white balance menu item. It's a very flexible system, because via the menu, you can refer to any image on the memory card, so you could theoretically have scores of custom white balances on a card, each in the form of an image taken under specific lighting. That can get cumbersome, because you have to navigate to the image you want – and it's no easier than finding any other image.

Olympus provides a quick method for setting a custom white balance. If you hold down the Function button while pressing the shutter, the camera takes a shot and balances it. It's simple to do, though it doesn't save more than one white balance setting at a time. We prefer the Olympus system.