Lumina,
Just chiming in. If you still have lenses that you used with a film camera, often those will still work with a digital SLR (Nikon, in particular, has made this possible). Might be worth checking in so you don’t have to buy new lenses as well.
I’m a Nikon girl, just because it’s the long-time photojournalist camera of choice. I have no idea why, but every media outlet I’ve ever worked for has stocked primarily Nikons. I’ve been shooting with Nikons since 1984! Yowza!
i don’t have any of the lenses/equipment associated with the film camera anymore (a little pesky thing called “property division” about 10 years ago ;) ... but i’m not opposed to buying lenses if the quality is better with those.
i just want the most freakin’ amazing detail ... it’s common for me to take a shot and only one one little tiny bit of it cropped in close in the end result ... or to want to get in so close that you can see the whiskers on a bee ...
i have a little squirrel friend at my job who gets within about 2 feet of me now (he lovez him some pecan halves!) and i’d like to zoom in on him and get those beautiful little paws wrapped around that pecan and the utter devotion in his eyes while he’s eating them (he talks to me, too) ... he actually meets my car in the parking lot in the mornings ... comes right up under my open car door ... but i can’t make a shot straight down on him and i need to be able to focus on him from a side angle that gives me perspective and yet detail ... so an amazing zoom feature is greatly appreciated too ...
That’s a great picture, Zen. The closest my camera can get is about 2 inches. But, at a cost of less than $300, it handles all our picture taking needs quite well.
i’ve done extensive reading and product comparison and found a surprising twist. there are claims that the extra-high megapixels are actually creating “noise” in the images and that 6.0 mp is the optimal resolution.
i’ve done extensive reading and product comparison and found a surprising twist. there are claims that the extra-high megapixels are actually creating “noise” in the images and that 6.0 mp is the optimal resolution.
anybody else heard that? opinions?
I haven’t heard exactly that, but I’ve heard that very large megapixels are unnecessary for the average person to get good quality pictures. My own camera is 6.0, but I previously had a Sony that had I think something like 3.0 and I can’t tell any difference in the quality of the pics I’ve taken with each camera at the highest resolution. They were both excellent. Or at least excellent enough for me.
well, i just ordered an olympus SP560-UZ (i think) and i’m excited. i used a kodak 812 IS for about a week and was not happy with it in terms of battery life (it only holds 2 AA and i went through 4 sets of 2 with only about 300-400 shots) ... and some image quality issues ...
the quality of the olympus output promises to be better and it has a better zoom ... (it’s 8 MP and 18x optical zoom, with 5x digital zoom for what was reviewed as a “seamless 100x” zoom) ...
i really wanted a panasonic lumix, kriss, as i had seen one in action from a friend and they are very highly reviewed. proprietary batteries and limitations in video mode (no zoom in video?) detracted me.
i just can’t afford a good SLR yet, but i’m hoping that this olympus will develop my technical skills and keep me shooting until then ... as zen said, a good carry-around version is a good thing ...
...the quality of the olympus output promises to be better and it has a better zoom ... (it’s 8 MP and 18x optical zoom, with 5x digital zoom for what was reviewed as a “seamless 100x” zoom) ...
Really glad you finally got one, Lumina. Let us know how what you think after you’ve used it a while.
i really wanted a panasonic lumix, kriss, as i had seen one in action from a friend and they are very highly reviewed. proprietary batteries and limitations in video mode (no zoom in video?) detracted me…
I don’t know about the video mode as I’ve never tried to use it. We actually have a really great Sony video camera that we use for videos. As to batteries, you don’t have to use the batteries that they recommend, which are the Panasonic Oxyride batteries. You can use just regular AA batteries and they work just fine. But the Oxyrides last longer, so we try to use them most of the time - though you can’t find them just anywhere. We haven’t found battery life to be big problem, but always carry extras.
i didn’t realize the kodak even had video until asked at a conference i was attending last week. i checked the settings and sure enough, i even had choices on resolution. I went low-res (it will be projected and it’s mostly a talking head sort of thing) and was able to record a fine version of an 80-min presentation which will be used for web delivery of training and popped it on a few thumb drives to boot.
this feature immediately became one of the must-haves for me ... (i don’t have a digital video recorder) ... and the convenience of it being the same piece of equipment was great ...
i want to play with the RAW format and wonder if i need a synchronized monitor to do so? anyone done color correction or editing with RAW?
apparently, this format retains more original data but makes for huge files ... the jpg compression scheme may be fine, however ... i’d just like to do some experimenting ...
