One of the grand things about the Olympus E1 was the quality of the ‘out of the camera’ jpg file. They used a compression ratio of 1:2.7, whereas finest quality for most other cameras is 1:4 or even 1:8.


For the E3 Olympus have changed the designation of the different compression ratios for jpg files. This is confusing enough, but they have also removed the option for the finest setting from the menu file quality selection menu!


What was called SHQ (super high quality) is now called Superfine. If you want this to be available to you when you choose your file quality (and experience shows that the E3 really does produce very good jpgs, so it is worthwhile); here are the steps to do it.


  1. 1.Choose the Menu button on the bottom of the camera

  2. 2.Scroll down to the ‘spanner’1 menu

  3. 3.move the highlight to the right and scroll down to G

  4. 4.press the right arrow then scroll down to Set (this has a little file format symbol to the left of it).

  5. 5.on the left hand option it will be highlighting L (large) press one to the right where it highlights F (Compression: Fine).

  6. 6.Press the Up arrow, so that the F changes to SF (and the message below to SuperFine).

  7. 7.Click the OK button to save the setting

  8. 8.Click on the Menu button again to get rid of the menu


You will now see the option in the file format selection menus