Appeal to Olympus Europa regarding the E-400

Dear Olympus Europa,

by the end of 2006 you introduced the E-400 camera to the european market. This camera was a preview of things to come in spring 2007. Europe was probably used as a testbed for this, to some, stop-gap, camera. While the camera is a little gem, the firmware has been rushed and is incomplete feature wise.


Soon, at PMA 2007, the E-410 was introduced to the whole world and included many features the E-400 lacked. Of course, the biggest differences were the Live View sensor and the use of compressed raw format resulting in better buffer throughput.

However, it is my opinion that certain features in the E-410 can easily be implemented in the e-400 without the latter cannibalizing sales of the E-410. I think I can safely assume the E-400 is end-of-life, but should at least go out with one last update. Of course, one can argue that people who want the mentioned features should just get the E-410, but since the majority of features mentioned have been implemented in older models than the E-400 (e.g. E-500, E-330) and for some reason "dropped" from the E-400 feature list, I feel E-400 users deserve an update of the e-400 firmware.

Here are the features that should and could be implemented in the E-400 without spending too much effort from Olympus R&D:

  • the option to disable the AF illumination when using the internal flash
  • the addition of the noise filter function
  • the addition of auto-ISO independent of flash usage
  • the addition of "anti-shock" aka mirror lockup function
  • enable the "focus confirmation" LED and sound for legacy lenses (refer to this post on dpreview)

These additions will make the E-400 a complete, non-crippled camera that can be used in a versatile and creative way.

So, please Olympus, grant my wish and give the e-400 a worthy end.

regards,

Marco
PS: While you're at it, please resolve the bug that occurs when you erase/format a CF card and switch off your camera: the filename numbering is reset to "0" instead of continued like it should.

edit 13.08.2007: This plea is also available (with more comments) at Fourthirds Photo
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