I guess I get to be first!

[laingjd]

I look forward to interesting discussions here.......
Olympus E300, 14-54, 50-200, OM lenses.

[Walter Moss]

Lain,

What do you own?

[hartcons]

e-300, 14-45, 14-54, 50-200, fl-36

[Walter Moss]

Arghh! What great shots. The shadows in the bird pic could be lightened, but perhaps it's my monitor.

What made you go Oly?

[hartcons]

I think I used photoshop's excellent shadow/highlight filter (also available in elements 3) on the duck to brighten up the shadows so you could at least see the duck's face (the photo was shot at twilight as SHQ jpeg). Too much of that, though, and you start to bring out noise. I'll revisit the shadows based on your comment next time I re-process that photo. I was just really pleased to have gotten the wings in such a nice position (I guess that's the big advantage of a d-slr vs. a point and shoot)

I started with a d70 (made the mistake of wandering into a ritz camera store in the mall one day back when I was totally clueless) but was having so much trouble with ccd dust and overall getting sharp pictures with good color (especially when the light wasn't good) that I picked up the e-300 when it came out (primarily because of the dust shaker but also because my wife kept getting great shots with her c-740uz). The d70 has more features than the e-300 but overall I generally prefer the results I get with the e-300 (and the really nice oly digital lenses; the nikon digital lenses seem a bit soft to my eyes). Plus the e-300 is lighter (my right hand gets a bit tired after shooting with the d70 for a while) and more compact and less prone to attracting attention. The oly 14-45 is nice and light and the 14-54 and 50-200 are really killer lenses (the 14-54 works almost like a macro lens in that it can focus really close).

[Heika Werner]

Originally Posted by digiscott

had my e300 for 3days,so still on a bit of a learning curve,any tips/advice welcome.

Suggest you start a new topic with this question, digi.

[digiscott]

ok

[Heika Werner]

Originally Posted by hartcons

I started with a d70 (made the mistake of wandering into a ritz camera store in the mall one day back when I was totally clueless) but was having so much trouble with ccd dust and overall getting sharp pictures with good color (especially when the light wasn't good) that I picked up the e-300 when it came out (primarily because of the dust shaker but also because my wife kept getting great shots with her c-740uz). The d70 has more features than the e-300 but overall I generally prefer the results I get with the e-300 (and the really nice oly digital lenses; the nikon digital lenses seem a bit soft to my eyes). Plus the e-300 is lighter (my right hand gets a bit tired after shooting with the d70 for a while) and more compact and less prone to attracting attention. The oly 14-45 is nice and light and the 14-54 and 50-200 are really killer lenses (the 14-54 works almost like a macro lens in that it can focus really close).

As someone interested particularly in nature photography, I would like to know what Oly has in the way of telephoto lenses. the last I checked, their offerings were slim, and the 300mm (which they figure is,what, a 600?) was priced extraordinarily high.

I'm curious, too, about the quality of the bokeh you're getting with the olympus unit and lenses.

[hartcons]

Oly has a crop factor of 2. That puts the oly 50-200 at 100-400. You can get a 1.4x teleconverter to increase that. There's also an oly 40-150 which is 80-300 equivalent. Sigma has a 55-200 (110-400 equivalent) that will fit oly as well. I think oly makes great lenses but I also think bokeh is partly a matter of personal taste (I don't really like the bokeh on some of my nikon lenses for my d70).

Taken with oly 50-200 (it's somewhat heavy and comes with a tripod collar but is hand-holdable at least in good light):


The beast itself:


not sure which lens I used on this one (probably either Oly 14-54 or 50-200):


For checking exif data online I find http://www.opanda.com/en/iexif/index.html (with firefox extension) very handy. Of course photoshop save for web strips out exif data.

[Walter Moss]

Hart,nice.

What's the f-stop range on that big gun? Can you get really out-of-focus areas?