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Out of my depth
Aug. 23rd, 2004 10:02 pmI'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.
