MANUAL FOCUS PROBLEMS WITH OLYMPUS E-10 & E-20 CAMERAS

It is clear that several people are experiencing problems when trying to use manual focus on Olympus E-10 and E-20 cameras. It is also clear that those who are experiencing such problems are often finding it difficult to get the problem resolved. The first impulse of those who have cameras with focus problems is to think they are not focusing the camera correctly. They start carefully trying to eliminate any possible mistake they may be making. Finally they start trying to document the problem in a way that will convince the repair people that there really is a problem with the camera. There clearly are problems with the manual focus on some of these cameras. What is needed is an easy way for people test for this problem and also to provide documentation of the problem if it exists in their camera. The purpose of this document is to offer such a test for anyone who might find it useful.

I have developed a test target that can be downloaded from my web site and used to test for focus problems. Please feel free to copy and distribute it as freely as necessary in order to resolve focus issues you may be having.

MY SAGA WITH FOCUS PROBLEMS ON MY E-10

I got my E-10 in late May of 2001. I loved the camera and was getting lots of wonderful pictures, but I was also getting an unbelievable number of out of focus pictures. From the time I discovered this until late September, I kept switching between AF and MF to insure that a got some shots that were in focus. At that point I wasn’t sure which focus mode was working and which wasn’t working. I tried everything I could think of to set the camera focus for infinity in MF mode, but no method seemed to work reliably. In late September I finally was able to take the time take enough shots under controlled conditions to determine what focus methods were working and what were not. Not wanting to be without my camera just then, I waited until the first of December to send it in for repair.

When I sent the camera in for repair, I also sent a written document detailing exactly what focus methods were working and what were not. The document also included sample shots of various modes. I also sent a CD-ROM with all the test shots I had taken in late September. It was late in January 2002 before I got my camera back. As soon as I downloaded my first shots, it was obvious that the camera wasn’t fixed! I took and downloaded more shots which clearly confirmed that it still had the manual focus problem. I was beginning to wonder if I had lost the ability to focus a camera. It had been some years since I had used a manual focus camera, but I had used manual focus cameras extensively in the past and had never had any problems focusing a camera before.

I was about ready to ask a friend who is a professional photographer and others with experience focusing cameras to test my E-10 for me. That is when I started searching the web and found extensive discussions of this problem. I put together a second document with my latest test shots and documentation of the problem that I had found on the internet. I sent the camera back a second time with this new document attached to the first. This time Olympus replaced the camera with a new E-10 that they assured us had been tested for this problem. The new camera arrived with the same problem.

This time I wrote up a very strongly worded description of the problems and sent it directly to a president, three vice presidents, and a product manager at Olympus America. In it I threatened to start a class action lawsuit if they didn’t resolve the problem for me and for others who are having the same problems. I was contacted by a Digital Technical Support representative at Olympus America. He advised me to send the camera directly to him, and he assured me that he would personally see to it that my camera would be quickly repaired or replaced with one that was working properly. When there appeared to be unreasonable delays in getting a camera returned to me, I sent an e-mail to the representative demanding a refund of my money so I could use it to purchase another brand of camera. The representative called me in response to my e-mail and told me that technicians from Tokyo were working on my camera and that they were going to have to send the camera to Tokyo for further tests. He offered to send me a new camera and assured me that they would keep working on the problem and keep me advised.

When the new camera arrived, I tested it and found it to be working properly. I intend to keep following this issue to see if other people who are experiencing this problem are getting it resolved in a timely manner.

CLEARLY TWO LEVELS OF PROBLEMS

We are clearly dealing with two levels of problems. The first level includes the actual defects in the cameras and the defects in the manufacturing process that lead to the production of defective cameras. These make for interesting speculation, and I enjoy participating in that speculation as much as anyone else. But, there is little that we can accomplish with that speculation. I hope that the engineers in Tokyo are now working to resolve that level of problems.

The other level of problems center around the difficulty many of us have encountered trying to get Olympus to recognize and resolve the problems with our specific cameras. This is the level where I feel I have something constructive to offer. We clearly need a way to prove to ourselves whether or not we have a defective camera. If we have a defective camera, we then need to be able to prove it to the people at Olympus who must resolve the problem for us. Based on ideas from some of the discussion groups, I created a test target that can be easily shared and printed for use in testing cameras.

THE TARGET

You may click on the test target to see a high resolution version of the target. Right click on the test target and select "save target as..." to save it to disk for printing.

Complete instructions for using the target are included at text on the target itself. For the most definitive results it is necessary to set the camera so that the photos taken will show any focusing errors most clearly. To accomplish this, set the zoom to 36 mm and the aperture to f 2.4. I use the camera mode "A" so I can control the aperture, and allow the camera to control the shutter speed. In every case I attempt to adjust the camera for the best focus on the small letter "T" in the center of the target. I look at the horizontal lines in the resulting pictures. The area of the photo where horizontal lines are the narrowest is the area where the camera actually focused.

RESULTS OBTAINED WITH A DEFECTIVE CAMERA

Note that the area of the target where the horizontal lines are the narrowest is far to the right of the letter "T". This indicates that the actual focus point of the camera was significantly closer to the camera than the focus point as indicated by the image in the viewfinder.

RESULTS OBTAINED WITH A CAMERA THAT IS WORKING PROPERLY

Note that the narrowest portion of the horizontal line is very near the letter "T", indicating that the camera actually did focus where the viewfinder indicated that it would focus. I found that with the good camera, the actual focus point did vary some from one test shot to another. The variation was relatively small, with the actual focus point falling directly on and on both sides of the desired focus point. (With the defective camera, there were also variations in actual focus points, but in no case did the actual focus point come close to the desired focus point.) Because the actual focus points with the good camera include points on both sides of the desired focus point, I concluded that these variations are a result of differences in the way I saw the letter "T" when I was trying to focus on it.

The variations I saw with the good camera show that it can be difficult to get pictures that are as sharp with manual focus as one can get using auto focus. This could explain why some people insist that operator error rather than a defect in the camera cause the problem. A testing method, such as I have proposed here, which provides a way of "measuring" any error introduced by the camera, should help prove whether or not any given camera is defective.

Please drop me an e-mail if you have any questions or comments about this test. I would like to hear from anyone who is having problems getting their camera fixed properly. If you send me an e-mail, please put "E-10 Focus" in the subject so I don't mistake your message for junk e-mail and delete it without reading it. Thanks, Phil

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J. Phil Arnold
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