I saw this at CES, but because of those pesky NDA agreements I couldn't write about it until now. Olympus formally announced it new 7.5 MP E-300 digital SLR today and it has a new twist. The camera comes with a Live View LCD that gives you the through-the-lens image of what the sensor sees. This is old hat for point-and-shoots, but it is a big step for SLRs.

Interestingly, the sensor that provides the image on the LCD isn't the same one that captures you pictures; the e-300 has two sensors. That does drive the costs up a bit, to $1,000 just for the body. We will let you know if the image quality is worth it when we get one into the labs for testing.

Of course, you can still use the plain old optical viewfinder as well, and for real-time manual adjustments this is still clearly the better option. Still, this make using the auto mode a lot easier. It should ship in March. You can get the whole e-300 story here.