Travail's of the Snapper !

[chris h]

Carrie,

Thanks for the comments although I’m afraid the image has been degraded by the upload size, lots of tones gone out of the sky.

I’ve had the Olympus for a year and I’m impressed with the results although I find all small digi-cameras a pain to reconfigure when out in the field. I leave it on auto and do the alterations in Photoshop. However the camera copes well with most shots i.e. the Dunfermline abbey shot of the stone arches that’s just raw out of the camera. A major plus is the fact it doesn’t have an expensive proprietary battery but just uses cheap AA NiMh batteries which you can get anywhere and charge in the car. I had a Fuji 4900z and I can buy 40 AA rechargeables for what the standard Fuji battery cost.

A great camera but the screen menu’s can’t be adjusted by ‘feel’ as on a conventional camera but then again with a conventional camera you don’t have the shots on screen ready to work with ten minutes after you get home. This fascination for zoom lenses on digital cameras amuses me give me a 20mm wide angle lens any day it’s a much more creative tool.

[carrie]

I'm sure all the images we see are are goiing to suffer for the online trip, unfortunately. One can still appreciate the shot though.
I can appreciate the battery issues, my camera takes the expensive double packs. though I can buy rechargables, which I will.
In 2 weeks I'm taking my camera on a trip to Haiti, I'll let you know how she performs and hopefully have some nice shots to share, too.
Thanks Chris

[chris h]

By double packs do you mean the grey double AA's that came with the camera marked CR-V3. I've never used them although I'm told they have a long life, should really carry them for emergencies I suppose.

[carrie]

Yes, the CR-V3 double packs. They ARE expensive, but long lived. Cost about $14 plus change in my neck of the woods. An excellent backup for those times when you aren't sure what you have is gonna last, but I wouldn't think you'd want to leave them lying around TOO long.
Ah batteries (sigh) one of those kinds of things I never worried about when I used to paint...now it's computers, software, wacom tablets, digital cameras, and alas.....batteries. Smile.

[chris h]

Reminds me of happy days with a 5-4 and 10-8 plate cameras, as long as you'd got 2 slaves to carry the tripod and camera so ones creative juices flowed unhindered. Thats what I told the students anyway !!

[carrie]

So close to my skin you don't even know. I bow down to the artists who did all their own...um, prep work. It is and always has been a hinderence.
My new mantra is: " I learned the hard way, by hand, all I have to do now is learn new tools; I already know the tough stuff. I can see that you do too.

[chris h]

But great fun printing monochrome, I used to dish develop colour as well but that was masochism of a high form. Luckily machines for processing started to appear thus saving me from a premature demise from chemical inhalation !!

I only used a 10-8 plate camera for a short while (Agfa gave me some boxes of free film) However moving the camera across country was similar to the Pyramid building scene from Charlton Heston in the Ten Commandments !

I did several master classes with noted snappers and the message was 'Become so familier with your tools that they become invisible and let you get on with the creative bit. Most amateurs are 'equipment' driven.

Ref Haiti, has the place cooled down ?

[carrie]

Pyramid displacement rings a bell. I used to paint hugh paintings (10'x8'6") and transport them from NY to Europe and visa versa. Now I carry my work on a CD. I can testify to the vast improvement in time, money and ease of this new method.

Um, no, Haiti never seems to cool down unfortunately. But I'm used to it.