New camera too! -- Olympus e510 dSLR, a few pics

[surfstar]

Finally decided to step up to a dSLR after my last trip to Yosemite. Took over a week narrowing down the models within my budget, reading reviews over and over... settled on the Olympus e510 b/c it came with two good quality kit lenses and has in body IS. Got it for a steal at $540 shipped (new!). Used it on a few outings, just trying to get used to taking photos and not snapping pics like on my old P&S cameras. Here's my better ones of 250+ photos taken so far...

All pics are straight out of camera JPGs, resized - the third one was cropped a little; no other post processing.

 

[Frank D]

Goog, sharp photos. Did you shoot in manual mode or one of the auto or program modes?

 

[surfstar]

First pic was in a scene mode - "sunset". I wanted to compare that to my own pics in aperture priority mode - I liked the camera's settings better on that one.
The rest were in aperture mode. The kit lenses are very sharp, esp from ~f8-11. Just need to play with it some more to get used to all these options and setings...

 

[ekpolk]

I got a new one two about a month ago. It's the Canon G9, all metal, "semi-pro" viewfinder camera. I actually prefer SLRs, but at this point in my life, compactness is the prime directive. I see the G9 as sort of the Leica of the modern day (understanding that you can get comparable Leicas still, but for about 10x the price). BestBuy carries the G9 for $500, but I browbeat the manager into selling it to me for $400, as I'd found it on line for less than that, but still prefer to put my money into the local community.

Anyway, this thing is amazing 12.1 megapixels, more modes than I know what to do with, metal body, solid feel, and of course, absolutely superb pics. Love it.

 

[surfstar]

ekpolk, have you checked out the e4xx series by Olympus? They are the smallest SLR on the market, nearly pocketable. Might be something that interests you...

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/olympuse420/

 

[ekpolk]

Yep, those Oly SLRs are sweet. But I really wanted to go for top performance in the very tiniest package I could find. I was willing to trade the flexibility of lens interchangeability for the compact dimensions of the G9. It has surprisingly sweet optics, a very effective image stabilizer, and that 12.1MP rating is nice too.

 

[Dave Hess]

Wow, I love just how beautiful the California coast is.

 

[surfstar]

Some more pics I took last week with the new cam...
Gap Fire pics (if you didn't see that thread)

and a couple from the 4th - we sat real close, which wasn't good for fireworks pics - no foreground to help frame, but we were there for the show.