On Monday 24 January 2005 16.13, Mark wrote:
Thanks Guys. I'm in the market for a new digital
camers so I'm clearing out the stull I have
accumulated and don't need. Any suggestions on a
camers? I'm leaning towards a Nikon 8700 or 8800.
I scouted the market before buying my second camera,
an Olympus C-8080WZ, and it sure had all the things you
could want, and a lot more, but it just is too fiddly
to be very useful, and its colour rendition leaves a lot
to the user, so you'll never get it perfectly tuned for
outdoor use. At least I have not managed it, even after
having taken a few thousand pictures with it!
Indoor it is very good, it just don't like blue skies, I guess!
So I tend to rely on my old digital, the Konica KD-500Z,
which has a few faults, like a wee bit too strong flash,
a little too brightly exposed pictures, so you set it at
maximum under exposure. The flash you cover with a bit of
tape to soften it - works perfectly! And it starts up
very quickly, darn durable, fantastic colours (far beyond the
Olympus), and I have taken it paddling, in the Atlantic,
without any problems at all! Two batteries was enough power for
two weeks paddling. Due to a design quirk it works much better
with 128Mb cards than bigger cards, but you can use both SD and
Memory Stick, at the same time!
As Konica gobbled up Minolta the design was updated, and I now
think the flash can be adjusted (not sure) and I think you can
change the ASA setting now (not sure). I guess it now can use
Memory Stick Pro, too!
It is now called Konica Minolta G-530 and it can be bought for
about $300 in the US. A steal. It's 6Mb brother G-600 is a
bit more expensive, but otherwise comparable. The KD-500 is
sometimes still available and is then really, really cheap!
At one time a professional photographer wrote to me and asked
what camera I used for my nice photos at
http://foldingkayaks.org/gallery/tord
He was exceptionally impressed by the water reflections, et cetera. He
thought I had used a studio camera, or at least a Hasselblad ... I live
just a few miles from Hasselblad HQ, so it wasn't so bad a guess :-)!
No what I do is underexpose so that I have details in the lightest
object, as the eye hates white flats, but accept pitch black shadows.
Then in Photoshop, or GIMP (the Linux equivalent) I adjust levels
till the output range covers everything, from the lightest to the darkest,
and hey, presto, you've got really nice photos!
This works a bit when you use the Olympus, but you have to have the
white balance set exactly (no fun at all), and the reds and the blues
- especially flowers - will never be exactly right, while the cheap Konica
is almost always dead on the money!
The Olympus takes nice panoramas, is excellent when the weather is overcast,
is not a bad DV camcorder (film as long as you card manages), takes superb
high resolution, nice B/Ws and really at home in a studio - with video out,
remote, et cetera. And you can brag with your 21 (yes, twentyone) buttons to
press and the world's most entangled menu system! And the lens is really
superb, the lack of a good manual focus isn't! And it sure takes a lot of
photos between charging is needed - at least a a few hundred at maximum
resolution (8Mb!).
So, buck for buck KD-500, (G-530) is a superstar! And the G-600 with 6Mb
is not far behind the Olympus, resolution-wise!
Tord
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