Olympus E-450: Lightweight dSLR for the not-rich

Small, lightweight, professional, but geared towards amateurs. Sounds like that chick from Paramore. But wait, no! It's a little Four Thirds dSLR from Olympus, which Olympus touts as being one of the lightest in the world, at 380g -- a fact we checked out to be pretty accurate.

It's a 10-megapixel model sitting at the lower end of the Olympus dSLR portfolio, and lacks some of the higher-end features such as video capture. But at around £450 it's aimed at you -- yes, you -- the guys who don't have much cash but want to break into the world of dSLR photography, so Olympus reckons it's made it dead easy to use.

The 69mm (2.7-inch) LCD display supports Live View, and the camera itself includes the TruePic III+ image processor (seen in the high-end E-30 dSLR, just so you know), 28 shooting modes, ISO ranges of 100 to 1,600, interchangable lenses of course, and it can shoot just over 3 frames per second.

It'll support both CompactFlash and xD-Picture Card memory, and will be on sale in May, body-only or with one of two lenses. Its predecessor -- the Olympus E-420 -- snagged a respectable 7.5 out of 10 in our review last September, so there's reason for you amateurs to be interested in this new model. We've got a bunch of photos in the gallery above, so check 'em out.

Update: This is a Four Thirds camera, and not a Micro Four Thirds model as we previously reported. Micro Four Thirds uses the same sensor size but has a smaller lens mount. Olympus recently unveiled a concept Micro Four Thirds camera we're expecting to see later this year.

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