Digital Camer for Photographing Work

Hi Paul,

I like the Olympus Camedia cameras. At any price range they are great cameras with nice software. I have two--a 1.3 megapixel and a 3.2 megapixel. They both take great pictures.

-Jim Gott- San Jose, CA

Paul,

Ditto on the Olympus brand. A friend who is a semi-professional (with emphasis on the professional) says that for the "point and shoot" variety, you can't beat the Olympus 5050. It's a 5 pixel job with a great zoom lens. I bought one for myself, my son-in-law and daughter-in-law. All three are used for diferent purposes and we all think they're awesome. The one drawback is that they're a little pricey but "you get what you pay for"!!

Jay Sweeney in NH

I'm sending you as a seperate post my material for the digital photography class I teach. It's a good introduction to digital and photography in general along with some good links you can use to find out more information.

This will be the last chance for anyone to get this since I'm leaving for three months. We are volunteer teaching for the US Army Corps of Engineers in Fort Myers, Florida. If anyone else wants this info, perhaps Paul can forward the Word document on.

I would certainly be interested in it!

- Andrew

Make a fresh pot of coffee and go look at

where you'll find all the technicalinfo, reviews, comparisons etc you'll need to start to make aninformed choice. 2 megapixels is enough for posting to theinternet, 3 or more if you want to print larger than 4 X 6.Lurk in rec.photo.digital for a while. Of all the NYC mailorder houses, B&H and Adorama have good reputations,with the rest YMMV. Have fun. Brian, in Cedar

Please Sir........ me too

Merry Christmas and Thank You

ERich advised....."teaching for the Army Corps of Engineers in Fort Meyers, Florida."

*********************************************** Please, Please don't teach them about pouring concrete. Except for my backyard, they have just about paved and dammed all of South Florida, and I saw a command car on my street this morning. ;( Arch

Fortiter,

The C-5050 is not your typical "point & shoot", but has a full spectrum of manual controls as well. Currently, I'm considering the purchase of a C-5060, (the replacement for the C-5050).

Barry

How about posting the word doc at ABPW as an attachment?

Nope, we teach water safety in the local elementary schools. How to wear a life jacket, never swim alone, swim with a buddy, and so on. We hear the darndest stories. Such as: You can't drown in a swimming pool! Or, I drownded last year but my daddy saved me. Too often, there is some kid in the class who has lost a sibling or parent. The teachers always warn us so we can be a little more sensitive.

Between the 4 couples that do this, we taught about 22,000 kids last year. I know this is doing some good.

Earle Rich In transistion Mont Vernon, NH Alva, Florida

Tough with a munged up e-mail address.

Earle

I wouldn't worry about the type of card the camera has. Sony memory sticks are being made by other suppliers. They are used for other purposes than cameras, so will probably be around a long time.

Earle Rich Mont Vernon, NH

The new xD card developed by Fuji and Olympus is said to have faster write speeds. Some Olympus models, the C-5050 and C-5060 for starters, accommodate more than one type of card. The C-5050 handles SmartMedia, Compact Flash and xD. The C-5060 handles Compact Flash and xD. The SmartMedia is not available in some larger sizes and because of this, some feel it may have a limited run. Personally, I would spring for a digital camera that handled another type of media.

Barry

Earle sent me a copy his digital photography handout. He said that I could post it on news:alt.binaries.pictures.woodworking It is posted there for any that wish a copy. Just right click on the word.doc and "save as" in a folder.

Double ditto on Olympus. I've been using the C-3040 (3.2 mgpxl)for about a year or so and it's quite nice. Has fully automatic, semi and fully manual controls; zoom with glass lens; remote control; and some stuff and features I doubt I'll ever use. One thing to be sure to get along with the camera is at least one set of rechargeable batteries - the digital cameras drain batteries like gangbusters.

Will also ditto the comment from your friend - I used to be an advertising photog and have thought very highly of the Olympus pocket cameras for upwards of 20 years - tho I used the Nikon and Hasselblad lines for my commercial work. They've always had some of the best glass lenses on the market (even on their pocket cameras).

_____ American Association of Woodturners Cascade Woodturners Assoc., Portland, Oregon Northwest Woodturners, Tigard, Oregon _____

Point and shoot is referred to around here as a PhD camera. "Push here, Dummy."

The range of manual overrides should be large, otherwise you'll not be able to favor or diminish depth-of-field in macro work, or, one of my pet peeves, do any type of action photography. D*mn delayed focus.

----------------------------------------------------------- Hi, I just went through this exercise after my wife TOLD me I was getting her a digital camera for Christmas. So most of my shopping efforts went into researching the latest in digital cameras and trying to translate my 35mm knowledge into digital. She wants a "point and shoot" auto focus snapshot camera for birthdays etc. I would like one with more control and capabilities to enlarge somewhat (5 X7in). I wanted a minimum of 2 MegaPixels, 3X optical zoom + digital zoom. If you only have digital zoom, then you need more pixels if you want to enlarge, since the digizoom takes the center of the image and blows it up, so there's less dots per square inch. Also wanted a macro for close up shots.

I ended up with 3 candidates: Nikon CoolPix 2100/ 3100 (2MP/ 3MP), Olympus D570 2MP, and Canon Powershot A60/ A70 (2MP/ 3MP). Pricing was similar on all 3 with the 2 MP models just under $200 USD, and the 3MP versions about $100 more. I ended up with the Canon A60. It uses the same electronics as the higher lines of Powershot (A70, etc) units. It uses a Compact Flash memory card with 16 MB standard. I opted for an additional 256 MB, as I figured that should allow me to go on vacation without needing to hunt a download source. It also has all the Canon modes you'd find on a good 35mm (back light, portrait, low light, "red eye", etc) plus a video clip with sound; also will do sepia and black and white as well as color.

The down side of all these cameras is the learning curve. The instruction book for the camera is about the size of a Reader's Digest, with 222 pages. That's just the camera itself. There's also another book for the computer processing software, plus another book for the "solutions" book. Be prepared to learn a lot if you want to get all the capabilities from the box you buy. Luckily, there's an "Auto" mode, that will take most of the chores out of your hands and you get what Canon thinks is best for the existing conditions.

So far I haven't had a chance to really put this thing through its paces, but I'll know more after the Holidays are over. Just my experience so far. YMMY

Ken Moon Webberville, TX

a couple words of advise Go to rec.photo.digital and do some reading. People that are unhappy about a product tend to say more than people that are happy. There is always a negative bias on the net. So a popular product that seems to have lots of postings complaining about it may really not be that bad because it is hard to tell how many out there have it but don't have any problems. Buying a camera is like buying a car. You will get all kinds of free advice even about what color to get but take some salt with that advice.

I have the canon S50 and it works well. It has a decent macro ability and the controls are OK and it will fit in a pocket if need be. I purchased it when I got my mother a computer so I could email her pics occationally. It was not my first choice which I can't afford.

When you buy a digital camera try and get something that will protect the little screen. These have a tendency to get scratched easily.

For stills a digital camera will work but the shutter lag will drive you nuts if what your shoot>I am looking for reccomendations of digital cameras for photographing my >turnings. >