Camera, what to buy

[Anonymous Poster]

<font color=blue>...For $300 it takes pictures like the attached ...</font color=blue>

You've got me sold... very impressive.../w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

 

[MikePA]

<font color=blue>How is the low-level light aspect on the C-2100, especially like indoors as a basketball gym with poor lighting...? Any graininess of the pictures?</font color=blue>
If you let the camera pick ASA 400 there can be graininess, so I usually force ASA 200.

<font color=blue>Does the 1.7x teleconverter screw on..., can you use other 35mm lens with an adapter...?</font color=blue>
The 1.7x teleconverter is actually a Canon product originally meant for a video camera. With a step up adapter, it screws onto the front of the camera. Vignetting starts if you're at less than 8x zoom. No, no other 35 mm lenses will work. Although, Nikon and other 35 mm camera makers are making digital bodies to allow people to continue to use their existing lenses. However, if you have to ask the price of the digital body, you can't afford it. /w3tcompact/icons/shocked.gif

To give you an idea of the effect of 10x zoom plus the teleconverter, attached is a composite picture taken at the field house on the campus of Univ of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. We were sitting in the very top row. The pictures are not of the same scene on stage, but the pictures show how close you can get.

I'll look for some reg and high resolution. I normally take in the medium resolution which results in a 400 - 500k file. These print nicely up to 5 x 7.

 

[Anonymous Poster]

Mike... that difference blows me away....

Just moments ago, I received an e-mail from Olympus concerning their new products to be released after Jan 2002... They politely said "to keep checking their web-site for "release information" as "pre"release information was not available... /w3tcompact/icons/blush.gif

I am sold on your quick demo in med resolution mode... /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif
{I end up taking everything now in hi-res mode so I can crop them for best results and for my needs...}

 

[Chillimau]

WOW, Guys!!

Thank you very much for all the suggestions and ideas. I will check out those web sites. My new 'puter has a USB port, haven't used it for anything yet. You all have some really good pictures for reasonable $.

Our pictures will probably be mostly of the kids around the house, and progress on the land. I could really see using this more than the 35mm.

I didn't realize these were like computers in their development cycles.

We had planned on waiting till after Christmas, sounds like that may be a good time to be looking. Will let you know what we find and I'm sure we will have some detailed questions.

Sounds like a good place to start would be about 2 meg pixels with good optical zoom and some type of standard memory stick.

Back later...

 

[MikePA]

The composite I posted was created by using two pictures that were each reduced to 640x480. This takes each original 500k file (middle quality) down to 50k. Then I saved the composite using a jpeg compression of 45% to get them under the TBN size recommendation. So there was a whole lotta compression goin' on! /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

I always copy the original files from the camera into a folder and never edit these originals since each saving into a compressed file format, like jpeg, results in loss of quality. Any picture I need to edit, I save as a .tif file (a non-compressed format) first and perform the editing. If the picture is destined for the web or one I want to email, I convert the .tif file to a 640x480 jpeg file. While to describe the process sounds convoluted, the software I use, Thumbs+, performs the saving and resizing with batch processes.

Until I bought the Olympus C2100, all my digital cameras had been Sonys, from the original floppy disk version up to an S70 which records to a memory stick. I was very pleased with the Sonys but the limited optical zoom and the media they used was frustrating. I did not want to get the Sony model that recorded to CDs because of the size of the camera as well as the size of the media. So, I went looking around for an alternative and learned of the C2100 on dpreview. The C2100 uses SmartMedia to record to and while SM isn't my first choice for the recording media (I prefer Compact Flash), I was willing to use it to get the 10x optical zoom. The C2100 is getting hard to find, but the E100 is available for about $500. The tradeoffs for the E100 are the lower resolution (2.1 versus 1.3) to get 15 fps plus it uses SM, CF or a PCMCIA card. If the next generation of the C2100 has 10x optical plus 4 or more meg resolution, I will think about buying it. If it doesn't, I'll stick with my C2100.

 

[Bird]

Hoss, that 3.5" floppy was the primary reason I wanted the Sony; didn't want to have to get to the back of the computer to hook up cables to transfer pictures. However, when I bought the Olympus (came with cables), I also bought the Flash Path adapter, so I've still never used the cables. A bit expensive, but it's worked very well so far.

 

[Anonymous Poster]

My Kodak uses the Compact Flash, but I'll jump ship as soon as Olympus releases the "E2100"? {my dream camera} or it may end up be dual-media as the E100 {started out @ $1495!}

It's so hard/time consuming to keep up-to-date on alot of this stuff... what are the major differences between the Compact Flash & Smart Media...?

I've said it before, I've got a number of Photo editing programs, but no time to sit down and really learn any one really well... I keep bouncing around using certain features from each I already know...

 

[MikePA]

<font color=blue>It's so hard/time consuming to keep up-to-date on alot of this stuff... what are the major differences between the Compact Flash & Smart Media...?</font color=blue>

Compact Flash cards tend to have greater capacity sooner, i.e., there was a 64 meg CF before a 64 meg SM. I also think the CFs are sturdier.

 

[Anonymous Poster]

Well then... whats so smart about Smart Media?... {I can see this turning in a George Carlin moment... /w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif}

 

[MikePA]

But seriously folks.../w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

I think they were called Smart because initially (and still can) they could be used in different electronic devices, e.g., cameras, MP3 players.