Last Updated: 3rd June 2026
While creating an image database with Kodak film simulations, my thoughts wandered to photography with the E-3 from Olympus. The E-3 is a professional DSLR from 2007 and known for its image quality. Being from South Africa, I have a native awareness of the color nuances found in Africa. While visiting family and friends in South Africa, I made a habit of visiting places that inspired my color preferences. My childhood connection with nature in Southern Africa and the refined Kodak image qualities of the Olympus E-3 guided my digital color palette over the years. Do you have a similar color connection to the country or continent you call home? For example, I always associate flowers or happy colors and deep blue skies with Switzerland. That said, I know the E-3 has a Live MOS sensor and not the popular "Kodak" CCD sensor found in cameras like the E-1, the E-300, the E400, and the E-500.
The Olympus E-3 with the Zuiko 50-200 mm f/2.8-3.5 lens. I converted the RAW+ file in Workspace.
I recall having exposure difficulties when taking the E-3 to South Africa for the first time. I never found the cause and filed the incident as a learning curve. It felt strange to spot the problem so many years later in Workspace. Olympus added a new AUTO option to the gradation function. I seemingly applied the new option without resetting it when done. Having used various versions of Photoshop, I couldn't verify my camera settings as we do with RAW+ and Workspace. Everything changed as I set the gradation option back to "normal" in Workspace. See the indoor example below.
I subsequently converted more RAW+ files from various Olympus DSLRs. In most cases, the changes were noteworthy after updating camera settings like picture mode, tonal adjustments like gradation, sharpness, noise filter, and color space options. I also identified several exposure-related mistakes I made in the past. Imagine tweaking or updating your camera settings 15+ years later.
The images in this article are from my E-3, the Zuiko 50-200 mm f/2.8-3.5, the 14-54 mm f/2.8-3.5, and the 25 mm f/2.8 compact. My RAW+ files from 2010 were converted and edited in Workspace. The included photos are part of an image look I used for my 2026 Workspace videos, focusing on color and monochrome profiles. The following E-3 images and my new film stock database were designed as an inspirational collection of different colors and visual characteristics. While doing no color updates, I did adjust the tonal and exposure values of these images. I like to invite you to practice evaluating your scene's color palette as you would with layers, framing, and foreground objects. For example, would you add more cyan to blue skies, have more natural greens, or do other changes?
