Lightroom preset for the Olympus E-3


Having had the need to process a relatively large amount of images, I came up with a Lightroom preset for the Olympus E-3. My aim was not to recreate colours of the in-camera jpg, as I did not like it that much. Rather, I tried to find "pleasing" colors. Ok, I use my E-1 with saturation set to CS2, so perhaps this is what I was after. ;)

I have started with the LR default and eyeballed the oly original. I tried to reproduce blues from oly jpg file, but I did not like the saturation of the reds and oranges. It turned out that the shadows needed a bit of adjustment too, but I am still not completely sure about this. As of now, this is my working profile for the E-3. After I receive my sample of the GM patch card, I shall produce a new one based on that. Comparison shots follow - hover mouse to see the differences between the E-3 original file, the LR default and my version. Note that due to slightly different sharpening (and thus saturation), the comparison is not exactly accurate, but only, say to 98%.

You can download version 1.0 by clicking here (I recommend a "Save as" - Safari opens it up for me as plain text. You can import this to LR by right-clicking in the presets pane.)

[These shots were taken in the studio using Hensel flashes. The lens is the one we consider reference in the ZD/ED range, the 50mm f2 macro. Live View was a great aid to focusing. We metered the scene for even illumination and kept aperture at f10 to avoid diffraction (also did a comparison with the Canon 1Dn mkII, with which we found the E-3 to be on par, btw). That said, you might notice a tiny bit of burning in at the speculars, which we considered normal (the Canon had it as well, maybe with one or two pixel less at native resolution).]

Lightroom defaults compared to the in-camera jpg (hover for LR version)


ISO100|50mm f2 macro|1/250s|f10

csgzs profile compared to in-camera jpg (hover for csgzs profile)


ISO100|50mm f2 macro|1/250s|f10

csgzs profile compared to LR default (hover for csgzs profile)


ISO100|50mm f2 macro|1/250s|f10

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