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"Olympus 810"

By lylehsaxon (Fri Jun 02, 2006 at 09:54:23 PM EST) (all tags)

Oops... another few yen landed in my pocket, so I rushed off to empty my pockets towards another new camera - this time an Olympus 810 - a cool looking camera that is interestingly nearly opposite my Ricoh R4 in what it can and cannot due, but that was the idea in buying it after all! .....

The Ricoh has a lot going for it - it's fast to start up, fast to take pictures, and fast to process them, allowing for fairly rapid image recording. What's not to my liking is how it works in artificial low-light situations, which is where the Olympus works well. But after taking about 1,800 pictures with the Ricoh, the Olympus feels really really slow! It takes a couple of seconds to take a picture and takes a few seconds to process each picture taken. Rapid recording of a high volume of images is best left to another camera... unless this issue is due to the memory card being slow, in which case it could be remedied by buying a faster card....

In any case, at the moment, I'm thinking that I'll be dividing the use of these two cameras along those lines - speed for the Ricoh and available light night pictures for the Olympus. What I really want, by the way, is a camera with a good f1.4 (or f1.2 or f1.8) lens that is still convenient to use otherwise. In the highly competitive camera market, price is a big issue and the lens is where the manufacturers are saving money. They have to buy the CCDs and can's hide the pixel count, but since most people only understand the focal length of lenses and not the aperture, that's what gets shortchanged....

Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/

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"Olympus 810" | 9 comments (9 topical, 0 hidden) | Trackback

Digital cameras are only... by Metatone (2.00 / 0) #1 Fri Jun 02, 2006 at 10:27:06 PM EST

now just getting to the point where resolution is less of an issue.

Hopefully, they will begin to catch up on the other parts of photography now. Low light is an obvious one. One that bugs me is the dropping of the viewfinder for the little display screen. There is no way to tell what is in focus on a little LCD.

Not that compact film cameras ever had a good lens on the cheap versions, but at least they made some specials with a proper lens.

Olympus C-4040 & C-5050.... by lylehsaxon (2.00 / 0) #2 Sat Jun 03, 2006 at 01:36:15 AM EST

My Olympus C-4040 and C-5050 cameras both came with an f1.8 lens, but they also cost twice as much as the Olympus 810 and Ricoh R4. The C-4040 is making horrible noises when each picture is taken, so while I use it from time to time, it's not long for this world. The C-5050 is a great camera, but the switch is defective and it keeps shutting itself off when I try to use it, so I lose one or two pictures out of every three. Seeing the shortcoming of the newer designs however, I may have it repaired... if I can find time to take it over to the Olympus service center....

The best next step would be to get one of the new SLR's I suppose. I have the Pentax *ist-D, which is good except for the highly irritating design shortfall of it not showing all of the picture in the viewfinder! Something like 95% is typical I think but the Pentax seems more like 90%. I really wish they would show 100%! What good purpose could there possibly be of not showing you the whole picture? Some technical reason I hope... it would be a crying shame and disgrace if they do that in anticipation of people having the edges cropped when they have prints made....

Lyle
The shortest way home is the longest way 'round....
[ Parent ]

it's not full frame by joh3n (2.00 / 0) #3 Sat Jun 03, 2006 at 04:45:10 AM EST

because the sensor isnt the size of a 35 mm frame.

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I am a crime against humanity
-theantix
[ Parent ]

: Full Frame... by lylehsaxon (4.00 / 1) #4 Sat Jun 03, 2006 at 04:56:17 AM EST

The professional Nikon digital SLR's are full frame - but they cost something like $8,000! Back in the days of film, prints were never 100% of the negative, so it appears the manufacturers designed the viewfinders to only show the approximate area that would end up in the print. As the prints I've had made here from digital images also are not 100% of the image (as they should be), I think it's the same old story....
Lyle
The shortest way home is the longest way 'round....
[ Parent ]

f1.4? by ObviousTroll (2.00 / 0) #5 Sat Jun 03, 2006 at 10:47:34 AM EST

I'm a couple of decades out of the camera-phile biz, but don't lenses like those cost big bucks?

I mean, I agree - low-light is still where digitals fall apart, but how are you going to make an f1.4 lens that isn't 6" across?

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Knock, Knock.

Manual maybe.... by lylehsaxon (2.00 / 0) #6 Sat Jun 03, 2006 at 09:57:43 PM EST

I suppose the only way to get a decent f1.4 lens onto a digital camera is to buy a digital SLR and then use a manually focusing lens. The autofocus becomes more difficult with larger apertures as well, which is probably another reason manufacturers are getting away from large aperture lenses. I have a 50mm f1.2 for my Pentax SLR, but on that camera it becomes (effectively) a 75mm lens (the lens was originally designed for 35mm film), although the f1.2 rating is unchanged. Being unhappy with the finder on the Pentax I was looking at other manufacturers, but I suppose I may as well stick with Pentax and the f1.2 lens I already have.... Using that lens, I took this picture:
http://www5d.biglobe.ne.jp/~LLLtrs/PhotoGlryMain/PhotoGlryA/YotsuyaRampart.html
- which would not have turned out at all with my newer compact cameras. It was quite dark when I took that, and even at f1.2, it was a very slow shutter speed (1/8th I think) and at the highest ISO rating. Maybe Pentax will make a camera with a better finder?

Lyle
The shortest way home is the longest way 'round....
[ Parent ]

Maybe our budgets are just different. :-D by ObviousTroll (2.00 / 0) #7 Sun Jun 04, 2006 at 02:16:21 AM EST

I googled around and the Pentax SMC P-A 50mm f1.2 is about $700 USD.

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Knock, Knock.
[ Parent ]

Books & Cameras.... by lylehsaxon (2.00 / 0) #8 Sun Jun 04, 2006 at 03:45:44 AM EST

Mine is old actually - I've had it long enough now that I tend to forget how pricey it was! I've also gotten lazy - the bulk of the Pentax SLR makes it impractical to carry with me every day and I just use it for more intensive recording now.

I skip spending money on a lot of things, like eating out and meeting friends for a drink (unless they're comfortable drinking outside under the roofless sky), but if there's a camera or a book I really want, I'll gleefully spend food money on it. You just get hungry again after all, but a camera will take tens of thousands of images over a period of years....

Lyle
The shortest way home is the longest way 'round....
[ Parent ]

: Heh. I know how that is. by ObviousTroll (2.00 / 0) #9 Sun Jun 04, 2006 at 04:17:16 AM EST

I can remember happily living in a soon-to-be-condemned pesthole while dropping every spare dollar on computer and camera gear.
Now that I'm up to my neck in the mire that is suburbia, I have trouble understanding how I managed to live on tuna and grilled cheese for weeks at a time...

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Knock, Knock.
[ Parent ]

"Olympus 810" | 9 comments (9 topical, 0 hidden) | Trackback