These emails went back and forth for several months, with Olympus tech support suggesting different focusing modes, focus point sizes, cleaning the contacts, resetting the camera, cleaning the AF sensor, and similar fixes. None of these things helped. Even so, the problems were intermittent, and I thought that I was doing something wrong. My E-500 had also never misbehaved in this manner. I always had the E-3 set to focus priority, and it indicated focus lock before taking the picture. But I’d get home, bring up the pictures from the day in Aperture, and some of them were anything but focused. I started paying close attention to the viewfinder image after this occurred a few times and began noticing the camera mis-focusing even after it indicated focus lock.
The real wake-up call occurred during my first wedding shoot for friends that run a studio. Wedding photography involves high-pressure, low-light photography with little room for error, and the camera absolutely fell apart in these circumstances. They hired me based on a shoot I did for them with my E-500, and I think that they had serious concerns after seeing the photos from my E-3: many of them were poorly focused, and I was seriously embarrassed by the results. It was similarly disappointing visiting the Atlanta Botanical Garden with a friend that shoots a Nikon D2x. Both of us were using Sigma’s 150 f/2.8 macro. In some of the more dimly lit areas (~LV 6), my E-3 would rack the lens in and out several times before giving up on trying to focus. My friend’s D2x nailed focus within a second or two.
At this point, I put the camera on a tripod, shot a few pictures of a typewritten page using the remote that showed the camera mis-focusing, and sent the camera to Olympus service with those pictures. The test involved mounting the camera and 50–200 f/2.8–3.5 on a tripod about three meters from a typewritten page hanging perpendicular to the lens axis, defocusing the camera, and triggering the shutter with the remote. The camera was set to focus priority with anti-shock enabled and the interior lights varied across a range of brightnesses. Olympus said that they couldn't find anything wrong with the camera but cleaned the AF system and loaded new firmware.
The camera didn't focus any better after this, and I once again put it on a tripod and shot 100+ images of the focus test chart placed about 50 cm from the sensor in a range of lighting levels (EV 2 to -2) with the 14–35 f/2.0. The results weren't pretty, and I sent them in with the camera. The camera focussed within two or three cm of the target at EV 2 and 1, and things fell apart at EV 0 and below with the camera wildly missing the mark. Olympus said that the test chart gave misleading results and nothing was wrong with the camera—it passed their tests with flying colors. However, they sent me a new body due to all the trouble I was having with mine. This was at the end of May 2008.
I pulled the camera out of the shipping carton, installed a battery and CF card, attached the 14–35 f/2, put the focus point on the bridge of my wife’s glasses glasses, and took some photos like this:
The camera was in S-AF,
focus-priority, single-point mode with the point on the
bridge of her glasses. Note that the actual plane of focus
is about a meter in front of her. The laptop power supply
is razor sharp despite the focus point being on the bridge
of her glasses. I manually racked the lens to infinity and
the close-focus distance multiple times, put the focus
point back on the bridge of her glasses, and hammered out a
dozen photos like this! Every time, the camera lit up the
focus confirmation light and snapped a mis-focused image
like this.
So the new body didn’t focus any better, and this was
hammered home during an after-work portrait shoot with the
14–35 f/2.0 in July 2008. Out of ~250 images, only ~25 were
in sharp focus, and I credit MF override for most of them.
The rest were off by a few cm. I had read as much as I
could find on autofocus systems by that point, including
this tutorial, and was consciously
keeping the active focus point on a high-contrast edge
like the edge of his eye or the bridge of his glasses.
None of these things helped. I often got a focus
confirmation in the viewfinder when the image was
clearly mis-focused, and letting up on the shutter
release and recomposing didn’t fix the problem. I
consider this simply unacceptable performance for any
camera/lens combination, let alone a $1800 camera and a
$2200 lens one.
I found that the camera focused better on some days than
others. It always seemed to miss to the front, and the
error appeared related to the light level: the brighter the
light, the closer to correct focus it got. Indoors, in dim
lighting (~LV 6), it would miss by a 50+ cm, but it was
usually only off by few cm in good light. But even that
degree of error ruined too many pictures.
It was interesting comparing my E-3 with friends' D300s.
The D300’s AF system is in a completely different league
than the E-3’s: it rapidly locks focus in any kind of light
and will track moving subjects in light levels where the
E-3 simply thrashes, such a bride walking down the aisle or
people dancing at a wedding reception. Even my mom’s Canon
40D with a cheap, slow, consumer zoom spanked my E-3s with
high- or super-high-grade glass.
Olympus said that they had tested the second body before
then sent it to me but sent a third body after reviewing
several wildly out-of-focus sample pictures from the second
one. That exchange left me without a camera for the
weekend, and I used that time to plot out a switch to a
Nikon FX system. I was in the midst of selling all my
Olympus gear to fund that switch by the time the third
camera arrived. I verified that the replacement E-3 focused
reasonably well before putting it up for sale.
I credit Olympus support with a quick, courteous response
to all of my inquiries and a genuine interest in helping me
resolve these problem. Olympus service consistently
delivered repair turn-arounds in about a week. Too bad they
couldn’t get the camera focusing properly. But I’m left
thinking that Olympus really needs to rethink their AF test
procedure: it’s simply not indicative of how the camera
performs in the real world.
Plenty of folks have complained about the poor AF
performance of their E-3s on various online forums. Other
folks are pleased with the performance of their E-3s, and
some of them had problematic cameras in the past. I’m not
sure if Olympus has a widespread quality control problem
with the E-3’s AF system or whether I was seeing its true
AF performance and the satisfied customers either have low
expectations or aren’t pushing their cameras that hard
(e.g., not shooting low-light event photography).
Follow-up:
I’ve been in touch with several E-3 owners, including the
fellow that purchased my E-3 (this was his second body, and
he was having AF trouble with the first). All of us had
sent our cameras to Olympus one or more times to be tuned
to factory specs and didn’t see any improvement in AF
performance. Most likely, we’re seeing its true
performance, which simply isn’t that good.
Sample discussion forum threads on this topic are here and here.
I’ve since shot a few weddings with my D700 and various
lenses, and it performs like a champ. Out-of-focus pictures
simply aren’t an issue. The problem is evidently not
located a few cm behind the viewfinder.
Pure speculation follows:
I've always found the autofocus section of this article interesting. I did some
searching and found that Honeywell invented autofocus
and owns all manner of autofocus patents. They
successfully sued Canon, Nikon, et al. back in the early
'90s for patent infringement and won a nine-figure
settlement. There are typically only a few good ways to
solve a particular engineering problem. If Honeywell
patented all of them for autofocus, and Olympus chose
not to license those patents, then this may have left
them to devise and implement a not-so-good way.
Again, pure speculation, but it's a simple explanation that
explains the facts at hand. Please contact me if you’re in
the know about these things.
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