Out of my depth
Aug. 23rd, 2004 10:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fivemackI've just bought, from an advert at work, a second-hand "Olympus E10 digital SLR camera and lenses". I'd paid a bit more than I had for my last digital camera new, and was expecting something about the scale of my low-end Nikon film camera.
What I've got feels more like the total contents of a pro photographer's studio; the camera's an absurdly chunky kilo or so of die-cast alloy. Everything clicks into place or screws on smoothly until it just stops, and then feels totally rigid. There's no perceptible shutter lag.
I've a macro lens which can take pictures at a resolution of 25 pixels to the millimetre (I tried it out on a page of the Yellow Pages; you could see clearly the grain of the paper).
With two extension lenses the size of paperweights, I've got f/2.0 from (equivalent) 28mm to 200mm. The long-telephoto attaches to the camera with cast-metal brackets, converting it to about 420mm f/8 and looking like something from a Bond movie; it comes in a box with die-cut foam inserts just as sniper rifles are supposed to. It does not work well hand-held :)
I also have this enormous sense of "you are not yet worthy, grasshopper", and no particular idea of how to achieve worthiness. My neck-muscles will be well-exercised by long walks looking for interesting subjects - at that magnification, the grain of sandstone is itself an interesting subject, and I wish I'd had this for the froglings on the Whitby moors.
What I've got feels more like the total contents of a pro photographer's studio; the camera's an absurdly chunky kilo or so of die-cast alloy. Everything clicks into place or screws on smoothly until it just stops, and then feels totally rigid. There's no perceptible shutter lag.
I've a macro lens which can take pictures at a resolution of 25 pixels to the millimetre (I tried it out on a page of the Yellow Pages; you could see clearly the grain of the paper).
With two extension lenses the size of paperweights, I've got f/2.0 from (equivalent) 28mm to 200mm. The long-telephoto attaches to the camera with cast-metal brackets, converting it to about 420mm f/8 and looking like something from a Bond movie; it comes in a box with die-cut foam inserts just as sniper rifles are supposed to. It does not work well hand-held :)
I also have this enormous sense of "you are not yet worthy, grasshopper", and no particular idea of how to achieve worthiness. My neck-muscles will be well-exercised by long walks looking for interesting subjects - at that magnification, the grain of sandstone is itself an interesting subject, and I wish I'd had this for the froglings on the Whitby moors.
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no subject
Date: 2004-08-23 02:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-23 02:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-23 03:29 pm (UTC)Other than the CCD, it looks pretty much what you'd get with a current entry-level digital SLR. A glance at the specs suggest it's a tad limited in ISO settings, minimum shutter speed, and minimum aperture; but none of that really affects day-to-day use.
I am jealous of the built in lens, f/2.0-2.4 35-140mm (equivalent) is very nice indeed.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-23 05:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-24 12:52 pm (UTC)Looking at the specs again, it's no slouch of a camera now, either.
Since there's a beamsplitter in the system, the viewfinder loses brightness *and* the CCD doesn't see the full brightness, so you're "t-stop" (effective f-stop) is probably a full stop below the rated one. (A quick check didn't me show what ratio the beam-splitter splits in.)
I'll be looking forward to interesting photos!