mr cat said:
some amazing pictures there - what camera did you use..??
Thanks
Look more closely at the text on the web page and there's a little hint about the camera: "All photographs taken with an Olympus E-10 digital camera unless stated otherwise."
Heavymental, I don't know what the going rate for E-10s is these days - there are a couple on ePay for around 300 Euros (about GBP 210). IMO it'll blow a Nikon 5700 or Oly 5060 out of the water. OK, so it has "only" 4Mp but that's more than enough unless you want to make huge posters. It's a proper SLR (ie, you look through the lens) with a proper optical viewfinder which, coming from a 35mm SLR background was essential for me. I just can't live with electronic viewfinders. Unlike most SLRs though it doesn't have interchangeable lenses. The 35-140mm zoom is it. You can get various converter lenses to stick on the front to extend the range though. I've got the TCON-300b (3x teleconverter) which takes it upto 420mm telephoto and I've just ordered a WCON-8B (0.8x converter) from eBay which will take the wide-angle down to 28mm (from 35mm). All focal lengths are 35mm equivalents (the lens on the E-10 is actually a 9-36mm lens). Also, it doesn't have a moving mirror like most SLRs. Instead it has a half mirror which splits the light one way for the sensor and the other for the viewfinder. This makes it a very, very quiet camera in use (provided you turn the silly motor wind sound effects off
). It also means, unlike other SLRs, that you
can use the LCD as an electronic viewfinder which is useful sometimes, especially for candid shots as you can angle it upwards and hold the camera at waist level, looking down at the viewfinder rather like a Hasselblad, which makes it less obvious you're taking a picture.
Bad points about the E-10 are:
- it has quite a noisy sensor so using anything other than ISO80 equivalent is not advisable for great pictures. It only goes up to ISO 320 equivalent. So, basically, it needs a lot of light. However, I haven't ever found it to be a problem.
- it's infuriatingly slow to look at pictures on the LCD in review mode.
- as with all SLRs, it's relatively heavy and can be a bit of a PITA to carry around everywhere
However, I see no reason to upgrade mine. It still does an excellent job. If you want to get into photography it would be an excellent buy IMO. For £2-300 you'll get a really quality digital SLR. If you were going the s/h route I'd look at a used Canon D30 aswell. Probably cost similar money and also a stunningly good camera. Again, "only" 3Mp but it will put most modern 6Mp cameras to shame.
Michael.
