A new camera,
So ... I bought myself a new digital camera. Many of my friends and aquiantances were surprised by this, since the camera I had was pretty good. However, while the Olympus Camedia C5060WZ is indeed a good camera, I felt it was starting to limit me. Where in the beginning the camera was better than I was, after two years of use I'd outgrown it.
My main gripes with it were these:
- Relatively slow autofocus
This was especially a problem in lower light, but even in full light it could take up to a second (or more) for the autofocus to do its job. This severely limited the possibility of taking pictures of fast moving objects (like, for example, my 5 year old niece). - Fixed lens
A fixed lens means that the only way to get a greater or smaller focal length is to screw on a convertor lens over the fixed lens. As some know I indeed had a 1.7 teleconvertor which meant that on top of the normal 28-110mm zoom range I had an extra range of 170-180mm. It's something .... but not very practical. To go above 180mm I'd need the 3X teleconvertor which would give me a 310-330 mm range aprox, and nothing in between). Same story for wide angle. - A lot of noise in low light
Since I dislike using the flash, this was quite annoying indoors. Mind you, it did teach me to hold the camera still enough to handhold up to 1/10th of a second
So after doing a lot of research, I chose the Olympus E-500 DSLR (Digital Single Lens Reflex) as a replacement. Not an easy choice, its competitors were the Nikon D50 and the Canon EOS D350. I went for the olympus for various reasons I won't bore you with unless you ask me :). Suffice to say that in my opinion it's the best camera in its price range.
Then finally, monday last week I bought it, together with two lenses. Having used it for a week, I'm quite pleased with it. It is a very nice camera, and a nice step up from the C5060. I'm still getting used to it, but I'm already in love with the 300mm EFL tele. I do notice I'll need some more practice before I get back to the quality I had with my other camera. This is only to be expected. Hopefully in not too long I will be able to take better pictures than previously possible. I'm already noticing that the potential is clearly there.
Of course ... now that I have the camera, I'm already drooling over extra lenses. I'm especially looking forward to getting a decent macro lens, but the good one (there's only two available currently) is quite expensive so I'll wait for some more to be released (a further two macro lenses are announced by Sigma). After that I'll probably not be able to withstand temptation and get the 50-500mm (equivalent 100-1000mm) from Sigma. Of course, I'll need a lot more practice at high tele photography ... it's not easy.
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