Hi there from Spain Soon to be E500 user

[wizardgold]

Just bought a Olympus kit of Ebay and will have it in a week or maybe 2 depending on the postal service here to Spain. Looking forward to getting it working.

I had intended to buy a Canon 400D but the funds ran better to the Olympus which I hadn't even known existed until my son told me he was going to get one. Looks like the E500 is a good quality camera and I don't have to follow the herd to by the Canon or Nikon.

At the moment I am using a point and shoot Sony to take my pictures both for personal use and also to upload to Fotoliahttp://www.fotolia.com/partner/220456 to sell. I have been doing OK with the 4.1 Mega pixel but really lacking the control I need with the depth of field in particular and overall being able to the camera things I want like ISO settings and shutter speed for ex&le. I have built up a portfolio of 235 pictures so far and with the Olympus I will be able to hit the 2000 image target at the end of the year. Use the link above to see the pictures I have taken already.

I see that it is possible to get a remote controller for the Olympus either cable or Wireless. I will get one or the other. I saw that the Canon is able to use an old mic/speaker from a mobile phone to use as a remote, I wonder if it will work with the E500 also.

Another thing I am interested in is the lighting set up. I am in the process of makong a light tent so thatI can do the product and small object photography and I have been looking at the Strobist site to find out more about flash photography.

<font color="0000ff">Question......
Can I connect up the camera to my Mac and see what is there ready to photograph and use that to take the picture? That facility would be great for some fine control and the use of the computer screen as a large LCD panel for the camera.

Looking forward to seeing some responses in this under used looking part of this forum site. Are there any more users of E500's out there?

My own photography site is http://spondicous.com}

 

[dhryffus]

Hi there As far as I'm aware, you can hook the E500 up to your PC, but it won't "live preview" shots for you to a monitor. As an alternative, you might wish to wait for the E510, which may not live preview to a monitor either, but will let you livepreview on the LCD screen.

It's a lovely camera, but you need to get to know it to get the most of it. It doesn't excel at high ISO performance (don't expect to get anything too useful past ISO 800 without post processing), but I find the shot to shot speed and buffer excellent.

If you're going to do lots of manual focussing adjustments, bear in mind that the Zuiko digital lenses manual focus rings are not mechanically linked - that is, you turn the ring and the camera electronically adjusts the focus for you, which is quite a different experience from the direct feedback you get from directly controlling the focussing yourself (and to be honest, not ideal!). Also, Zuiko digital lenses are horrendously expensive, though conversely, with manual adapters, the E500 can use just about any SLR system lenses out there, many of the lesser known brands of which are rediculously cheap to get second hand. It's also a pretty "moddable" camera: you can change the focus screen, use hidden frimware settings to increase its stock standard ISO settings (you can get it to think it's giving you ISO 10,000 - though I think it won't actually do that, topping out at ISO 4,000, I believe. I cover a lot of these on my site: www.gadgetmiser.com - come visit

I'd nevere heard of fololia before reading your post. I tried clicking on your fotolia link, but it just gave me the main homepage, not your images. Do I have to sign up first before I can see them? Can you tell me how well fotolia works? Have your photos been selling, and does it pay decently?

All the best Larry

 

[wizardgold]

Larry

Thanks for the info and I went to your gadgetmiser site and I am still rooting around on there, looks useful to me, thanks.

The info about the focussing is interesting and it looks like I will have to buy myself a lens for macro photography for sure.

As for Fotolia I have been uploading since January but sending in more during the last couple of months. I had 5 sales while my portfolio was at 100 photos and now have 8 sales total although I now have the portfolio up to 250 images.
I think I would have better sales with more photos of people and I am working on that angle now, starting with some self portraits in various costume.

There are people that make 500 a month and more from selling photos this way and I am planning to join that group. The larger the portfolio the more sales happen. I plan on having 2000 photos on there by the end of the year, so far I am on target. I will be able to increase the numbers when I get my hands on the digital SLR.

As you can see on my Spondicious.com site I am also submitting photos to some other microstock sites. There are 6 main ones and today I was in an email discussion with someone doing this longer than me who reckons that it is better to have the photos on many stock sites to increase exposure overall than to be exclusive to one site. So far I have been more or less exclusive to Fotolia with my work , but the difference is only 17% increase if exclusive.

This link will take you directly to my photos, the handsome git in there is me - LOL.

http://www.fotolia.com/p/220456/partner/220456

looking to hearing back from you

David

 

[dhryffus]

Hi there David

I had a look around your site and your pics. You seem to me to take lovely pictures with your point and shoot (I would hope one day to do half as well - and I already have an E500

!).

A certain Ken Rockwell continually says "your camera does not matter" - though try telling a carpenter that a better drill doesn't matter. From your photos and what you have explained about your plans, I think you certainly have reached a stage where you need a new drill

(and let me say that I suspect many lesser photographers buy such tools even when there is no need, and all power to them, for who am I to begrude them that joy?

)! To Ken I say: your camera may not matter, but aren't they also just dandy to research, pore over, hunt out, and finally own?

This is much better than gambling, and much cleaner than gardening!

As many of your pics appear to be taken in properly lit environments, I think the well known shortcomings of the E500 are probably not going to cause you any problems in the least. I imagine very few people submit ISO 3200 shots to fotolia

! The strengths of it will work well for you - the way I see it, apart from (relatively) poor high ISO performance, it does most everything else a Nikon or Canon DSLR will do, but without the premium $$ attached to these brands, and now, with the impending new model, I expect many E500's will become available either second hand, at clearances, or on that great, evil, poverty inducing place, ebay

.

I just remembered, given your earlier question about remotely releasing the shutter, that you can get a third party remote control shutter release for about AUD$20 on ebay, which you will probably find very useful if you get an E500.

You might also consider another great but sadly and unjustly neglected company's SLR: Pentax. Their entry level K100D has just as many, if not more, features as Oly, including in-built shake reduction, which should be very useful for your needs. It also has a larger (APS sized) sensor than Oly's 4/3rds system, making it even more like a Canon or Nikon in every way - but price. Like the E500, I've also spotted the K100D brand new in camera store bargain bins, relatively speaking of course (as low as $AUD640, here in Sydney, Australia).

Could I ask the ballpark of how much the 8 photos you have sold have netted you? Those people who make $500 per month must sell hundreds of pictures! Also, it you intend to take more people pictures, won't it be a great pain getting copyright release forms from all of them?

Cheers Larry

 

[luxborealis]

> I take issue with the gross generalisation that =B3Zuiko digital lenses are > horrendously expensive=B2. It sounds more like a doomsday novel then a help= ful > piece of advise... > The whole reason I got into Olympus was because I could buy 2 excellent > quality zooms to cover from 28mm to 400mm (35mm equiv) at f/2.8-3.5 for a= bout > 2/3s the price of similar quality lenses from Canon or Nikon. As a bonus,= both > lenses use the same filter size. Furthermore, the 50-200mm (100-400mm) ha= s > been rated as one of the sharpest zooms =AD ever! > This idea that Olympus lenses are expensive is pervasive yet, for the mos= t > part, incorrect. Yes, the top-quality pro 300/2 style lenses are expensiv= e, > but on a quality for quality basis, the Zuiko lenses are comparably price= d. > The zooms tend to have better zoom ranges as well, particularly in the > wide-angle range. >=20

 

[dhryffus]

Hi Terry

I should have said "appear horrendously expensive to me" (but then again, I do run a site called Gadgetmiser.com

). I certainly wasn't commenting on the quality of the ZDs. I am aware that even the Kit ZD 14-45 has an excellent reputation (I'm sure you've been here: http://www.wrotniak.net/photo/oly-e/std-zoom.html , and look here http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=kit+zuiko+14-45+compared+niko n+c anon&meta= ) and let me assure you I would love to have as many as I could afford if money was no object!

And believe me, I feel the same way about Canon or Nikon, or just about any other brand of modern digital SLR lens. I get most of my lenses from scouring second hand/pawn shops and ebay, so the RRP of any type of brand new lens appears to me horrendously expensive, for the type of (exceedingly, unintentionally - almost comedically - poor

) photography I do.

The exchange of cash for utility is entirely a subjective assessment that we each make, and the value we glean from non-essential acquisitions (or even how we determine if they are essential or non-essential, relative to the price we are prepared to pay is, especially for stuff like nice cameras, deeply personal. Many would wonder why we would bother with a $700 SLR when a $200 point and click will do. To them, all SLRs, whatever the type, would appear horrendous expensive, and the fact that you can pay easily as much again for a decent lens even more scandalous. We in turn would probably not appreciate why they might prefer Prada over Woolworths, Mercedes over Hyundai, Omega over Casio, or Ian over Mike (wooooooosh - sound of obscure reference flying way over the heads of any single serious photographer reading this)!

I read a book by a dentist once who was advising other dentists on how to price their services. He said that if anything costs more than a pizza, most people will call it expensive. So, don't try to lower your price. Since people will call it expensive no matter what you do, you might as well make the price really really expensive. In the same way, all I was really opining on was that ZDs (and let me extend that to cover every other current digital lens available) cost more than a super supreme with anchovies (but let me also say that when I tried to attach this to my E500, the cheese gunked up the mirror, and the pictures, though trippy, and perhaps even artistic, were also terriby out of focus - rather like the contents of this post).

I do like Olympus, their approach to cameras and photography, and thank you for the good information on the quality/price of their lenses relative to Canons and Nikons.

Cheers Larry

 

[wizardgold]

I have been busy on Ebay. I paid up for the E500 and added a remote control to use with it along with an adapter for the OM lenses,some macro tubes and a 2GB compact flash card.

I am bidding on a 500mm OM mirror lens as I want to be able to take windsurfer pictures from the beach.

On Fotolia on the few sales so far most have been of the low resolution version available so I didn't make a pile of money on those, but I did have one extended licence sale which was worth a fiver to me.

I have been in contact with a guy who reckons that having your photos on more than one stock site is the way to go. So I am trying to get accepted on iStockphoto but finding difficult due to reviewers having different opinions on the photos I submitted. One photo that was accepted on the first try was rejeced on the second try. Maybe I will wait until I have the E500 working before trying again.