RE: Digital Camera

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "Ross Overstreet by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <ross-o-at-mindspring-dot-com>

Hi Shad,

At least 5 or 6 of us on the list have Olympus C-2000 or C-3000 series
cameras.  The C-2000 series is 2 megapixel while the C-3000 series is 3
megapixel.  The C-3030 is identical to the C-3000 except it can process
images slightly faster (more pics per second) and costs more.  I don't
think the extra expense is justified.  The Olympus digicams are really
great since they have a manual mode that allows you to operate the camera
just as if it was an old-fashioned SLR.  The Oly C-3000 has 4 modes -
Program mode makes all decisions for you and usually does a great job,
aperture priority lets you specify aperture settings and it calculates
shutter and the other variables, shutter priority does the same except you
manually pick shutter, and manual where you do everything.   I always do
manual mode, manual focus, 2 sec exposure, F2.8, and ISO equivalent of 100
when doing TC pics.  You'll find that no CCD on the market will catch as
much of the pale blue glow in the air as film but it still does a good job.
The weakness mostly shows when you are taking pics of small coils with air
streamers.   Digital does great when you have hot streamers that connect
with ground.

Most all the pics on my webpage are taken with my Oly C-3000z.  Check out
the TCBFW links at http://users.better-dot-org/roverstreet

Q:  Can it do time exposure?
A:  Yes - from fractions of a second to 16 seconds.  I've found that 1-2
seconds usually works best.  Hot pixels become a problem after that.

Q:  Can you make 8x10's from 2048x1536 pics (3 megapixel)?
A:  Absolutely - I send the pics to http://www.shutterfly-dot-com and they put
them on real photo paper using a silver halide photographic process.   I
have several 8x10's made from 2048x1536 images and a few accomplished
photographers have looked at the pics and admitted that they can't find any
evidence of digital photography.  8x10's are $3, 5x7's are $1, and 4x6's
are only $0.50 each.  The quality is incredible and you usually get the
pics in the mail about 2-3 days after you submit them!

Q:  Can it do a double exposure?
A:  No, but you don't need to....  If you have Photoshop you can take
seperate pics and manipulate them however you please.
You can even put text or effects on the image and then send it off to
shutterfly for processing.

There really isn't a "bad" camera out there in the 2-3 megapixel, $500+
range.  The competition keeps quality high. Just make sure you get one with
"manual" settings and at least a 1 sec time exposure capability.  Film based
SLRs still have
their place but they are going to become more of a niche thing because
digital has sooo many advantages over film and quality keeps going up and
prices keep coming down.  Make sure you have USB download since USB is
about 1MB/s where serial is about 1MB/min.  Get a 32 meg memory card or
larger (memory is dirt cheap now at about $.50/mb).

SOFTWARE
You'll most likely only use the SW that comes with the cam to dump the pics
to the PC.  The best tool to use for complicated stuff is Adobe Photoshop.
It's really expensive but there is nothing that it can't do.  It's what all
the pro's use.  The best program for viewing, organizing, renaming, and
simple editing is an awesome FREEware program called Irfanview.  I
absolutely love this program.  It even has a cool feature that does batch
resizing (easier that Photoshop) which is great when you take a bunch of
3mp images and want to convert them down to 800x600 for dumping to a web
page.  See http://www.irfanview-dot-com

Cheers,
Ross-O
Austin, TX