Finally bought a DSLR! (pointless but excited content)

I got an Olympis e600 for £330. Not exactly sure if this was a good deal or not because it was totally on impulse. I'd decided on one of the Olympuses when shopping previously, I think I was going for either the 420 or 520 tho.

Seems pretty nice anyway, but it still can't quite capture the soft natural light in my living room – slighty disappointed, but I guess it's just a tough job.

If you compare it to what your eyes can do you will always be frequently disappointed!

i'm planning on buying the 520, but as far as i can tell the only down size of the olympus cameras are they aren't the best in low light.

Well it's not that it didn't capture a challenging lighting situation which I completely understand.. it was more a question of colour balance leading to ambience etc.

I must say the camera is smaller and lighter than most I've seen, and the pancake lens looks pretty cool. However the menu system doesn't seem at all intuitive, and I've even had Oly compacts before which should give me a headstart. Maybe it's cos I don't know much about DSLR.

it was more a question of colour balance leading to ambience etc.

Look into the white balance options on the camera or maybe try creating a custom white balance.

Look into the white balance options on the camera or maybe try creating a custom white balance.

or shoot raw and tweak till it looks right…

or shoot raw and tweak till it looks right…

That's what I was gonna do.. or maybe use other tricks like depth of field to suggest the feeling of the room to the viewer.. 🙂

White balance did help, but creating custom white balance is a bit beyond me right now.. I've brought the camera and the manual down with me this week so I can sit in my hotel room and study.

usually involves taking a photo of a sheet of white paper/cloth totally filling the frame and telling the camera to use the white balance data for that photo. As the camera knows the entire photo is white it can work out the correct white balance

white balance is tricky to do unless your monitor is profiled

you can put a 5% grey card in the shot (slightly better than white i believe) or in a test shot and use that card to tell software tat it is the white balance reference point)

Capturing that soft ambient light? Maybe underexpose a little, tweak the white balance as suggested, and use a nice solid surface with the self timer to use a smaller aperture and longer shutter speed for a good depth of field. Or go completely the other way, thats the joys of photography, there are no right answers…

Congrats.

I've got an E3 and E620 (same as E600 pretty much apart from a couple of "art filters"). Considering the 620 is nearly £500 its a great price.

You have a "one touch white balance" option. You can set the function button. Take a shot of a white sheet of paper that fills the frame and accept the custom balance. Frankly though, the white balance is the easiest thing to sort out in software if you want to.

Keep practicing with it, it takes a while to get used to a new camera.

If you want a portrait grip for it Jessops are doing them for £25 at the moment. Allows you to put a second battery in and gives you portrait shutter release and dial. That's a steal given the non offer price is £200 more.

If you want any Olympus specific tips give me a shout.

Loads of info & tutorials here: TalkPhotography.co.uk[/url]. Loads of people here use TP.

You'll have to sign up to view the tutorials, its free.

As for exposure, I carry a 18% grey lens cloth (£4), or set the exposure on my hand, although I cannot remember how much compensation is needed, and each will be slightly different.

Shooting in RAW format contains more data, so if it slightly under/over exposed you can possibly correct it without any loss in detail.

Congratulations on your Olympus purchase, happysnapper sounds just like Andy Elliott from Talk photography, who is another big Olympus fan.

I'm an Olympus fan too, I previously had an E-500, which my daughter us using now but I'm using my Fathers Panasonic DMC-L1 at the moment (both are 4/3 system lenses) which I'm beginning to understand a little more.

Glad I didn't buy a turkey 🙂 It was actually Currys Digital that had them, – a place I would never ever normally shop – and they weren't on clearance either.

As for the lighting, I did notice that the flash seemed to cause problems – without it, it wasn't too bad, but not practical of course.

As for tips, well I don't quite know – I'm going to have to read and digest the manual first, then spend a long time taking photos 🙂

One thing tho – xD or compact flash for you guys?

I did notice that the flash seemed to cause problems

and

but it still can't quite capture the soft natural light in my living room

forget soft natural light if you add flash – it's like shining a very bright torch at the subject. If you wish to achieve soft flash lighting you'll have to diffuse it, but it's better not to bother and work with what you have.

xD or compact flash for you guys?

if you have a choice – BOTH 🙂

Simon – agreed. For my old film camera that got nicked, I used to have a 50mm lens with f1.8 apeture. That was great for not using a flash, as was 3200 ASA black and white film 🙂

Why xD and CF? CF is cheaper and has big capacity, but my laptop has an xD slot on it and Olympus ones support panorama pics directly onto the camera.

Olympus ones support panorama pics directly onto the camera.

that may be OK for playing but I recommend one of the heavyweight panorama programs for better results. Also I'd recommend using the camera's USB port rather than taking out the card – it's more robust, with less pins

The panorama feature is only available with the genuine Olympus XD cards! I hate it when manufacturers do this sort of thing, I'm not upgrading to latest software in my Panasonic because they stop you using aftermarket batteries in the latest version!

CF is bigger cheaper and will be around longer than XD, although being able to drop XD straight into your computer is a nice option.

Oh and I'd agree with Simon about trying not to take the memory out of the camera too often, the more times you do it the more chances of something going wrong.

Oh and what do you lot think of the 70-300mm lens. I always wish for super zoom when I'm out taking pictures. How practical is effective 600mm? I mean if you see a bird in a tree say can you realistically expect to get pics?

I stick with the smaller 40-150 which in 35mm is 80-300 more than enough without any stabilisation, my Panasonic only does it through the lens not the body.

Although to be honest I'm getting more and more into using wide angle lenses, when I was younger all I wanted was superzooms and these days I want to get as close as possible to get the best angles.

Silly stupid me sold a 15mm Voigtlander wide angle lens recently and am regretting it in some ways now.

these days I want to get as close as possible to get the best angles.

Bit of a problem with wildlife tho.

Couple of years ago we were at a spot where a river popped out of a gorge into Lake Superior. It was late Autumn and superly still and peaceful.. there were otters mucking about in the water and eagles soaring overhead.. then some kind of woodpecker in the trees. Totally failed to get any of it on film with my compact!

Think you'd struggle at 600mm without a tripod.

Thing to watch out for on the cheaper zoom lenses is the max apature usually drops with the loger zoom extension so you may end up with a small max apature (i.e. f6, f8 etc) at the 300mm zoom lenght. This would require a slow shutter speed or higher ISO setting to get a good exposure. A slow shutter speed at 600mm hand held is going to cause motion blur.

Mm good point. I could also use a macro lens actually.

Cards – put both in. Use CF as the main card though, they're much faster (XD is very slow) and go above 2GB (the largest size XD goes to). XD is a dying format but it is useful to have an extra 2GB of memory in the camera just in case. The panorama function on XD is not really useful. Better to use software as sfb suggests.

The 70-300 is great. My gf's got one and it's great for the price. The 9-18 is also very good for ultra wide angle.

Comments re aperture on the standard range lenses are right, you need to watch the smaller apertures. In practice this affects focus speed rather than the actual shots (depth of field is naturally smaller at telephoto distances anyway). I believe the 70-300 is 5.6 at the long end. Have a look on Flickr and dpreview forums as well as four thirds user and e-system user group for examples. The 50-200 is the next lens up which is a cracker but it is more cash.

You can rent lenses though the e-system user group. It's a good way of giving them a try. There are also second hand ones available through that group and four thirds user.

Four thirds user
E-System User Group[/url]

BTW, I'm not Andy Elliott although I did meet him at the weekend. He's got some great wildlife shots. Just picked up a PanaLeica 25 1.4 and Oly 14-35mm. Fantastic lenses.