The Olympus E-300 ( Olympus Evolt E-300 in North America ) is an 8-megapixel digital SLR manufactured by Olympus of Japan and based on the Four Thirds System . Announced at photokina 2004 , it became available at the end of 2004. It was the second camera (after the Olympus E-1 ) to use the Four Thirds System, and the first intended for the consumer market.
8-399: The camera's appearance was unique, as it lacked the ubiquitous SLR pentaprism "hump". Instead, a Porro prism system was used; it fitted sideways within the camera, with a sideways-swinging mirror, and located the viewfinder eyepiece to the left (seen from behind) relative to the lens centerline. The body was largely of ABS plastic over a metal frame; the lens mount was metal, and there was
16-442: A metal covered area on the left top of the camera. This area also contained the onboard flash, which popped up and forward at the touch of a button. The onboard flash popup mechanism is manual. In low light scenarios the flash will not pop up automatically but the photographer must press the button and pop it up before taking the photo. The E-300 uses Olympus' patented Supersonic Wave Filter dust reduction system to shake dust from
24-455: Is a five-sided reflecting prism used to deviate a beam of light by a constant 90°, even if the entry beam is not at 90° to the prism. The beam reflects inside the prism twice , allowing the transmission of an image through a right angle without inverting it (that is, without changing the image's handedness ) as an ordinary right-angle prism or mirror would. The reflections inside the prism are not caused by total internal reflection , since
32-431: The camera 's focusing screen . This lateral inversion is done by replacing one of the reflective faces of a normal pentaprism with a " roof " section, with two additional surfaces angled towards each other and meeting at 90°, which laterally reverses the image back to normal. Reflex cameras with waist-level finders (viewed from above), including many medium format cameras , display a laterally reversed image directly from
40-411: The beams are incident at an angle less than the critical angle (the minimum angle for total internal reflection). Instead, the two faces are coated to provide mirror surfaces. The two opposite transmitting faces are often coated with an antireflection coating to reduce spurious reflections. The fifth face of the prism is not used optically but truncates what would otherwise be an awkward angle joining
48-495: The focusing screen which is viewed from above. The same optical paths can be realized with three mirrors, in an arrangement called the pentamirror . While substantially lighter, the light enters and exits the mirrors' glass several times, each time losing brightness and instead scattering. The pentaprism is typically much heavier, but only has one entrance and one exit, providing a notably superior optical performance. Additionally, pentamirrors can conceivably go out of alignment while
56-520: The sensor during startup and when requested by the user; this largely eliminates the problem of dust accumulation on the surface of the image sensor. The E-300 was replaced by the Olympus E-330 , a similar model with live preview , in January 2006. [REDACTED] Media related to Olympus E-300 at Wikimedia Commons BODY FEATURE : In-Body Image Stabilization Pentaprism A pentaprism
64-407: The two mirrored faces. A variant of this prism is the roof pentaprism which is commonly used in the viewfinder of single-lens reflex cameras . The camera lens renders an image that is both vertically and laterally reversed, and the reflex mirror re-inverts it leaving an image laterally reversed. In this case, the image needs to be reflected left-to-right as the prism transmits the image formed on
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