Jason Tag Photography » lenses

Thinking about a new camera

admin — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 22:51:24 +0000

I’m thinking about buying anew camera. I’m at odds with myself at the moment whether I should pickup a Cannon or the Olympus E-520. I currently have three lenses for the Olympus system that I like and if I took the Cannon route I could buy the camera with a lens included but I would probably need to upgrade my lenses in a few months. Both Cannon and Olympus make cameras in the same relative price and quality range and any new camera I would buy would need to be at a minimum of 10 megapixels. I’m currently shooting on 8 megapixels and If I’m going to get a new camera I might as well upgrade to higher resolution images.

At the moment I can’t decide, the cannon lineup looks great and I might even be able to swing a new Cannon Rebel XSi at 12.2 megapixels or the comparable Olympus E-30 which is about $400 more but for the Cannon I would spend that extra $400 later on lenses…. But then again Nikon also has some great offerings as well… so for the time being I’ll keep looking around and we’ll see what happens. Stay tuned!

Been thinking…

admin — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 18:49:28 +0000

I know what you’re going to say, and I agree, thinking is dangerous!

I’ve been thinking a lot about my camera and in particular, thinking about buying a new camera. Over the weekend I did some headshot type stuff for a friend (who is also a photographer) and we talked about the idea of new camera vs. better lenses.

That’s what got me thinking. Her point was that the camera I have is fine. It’s in good working order and I’ve been taking good shots with it for the past year and a half. So maybe I should look at new lenses instead. Right now I’m using the Zuiko 14-45mm lens that came with the camera as my main lens. I like it but when I use my 50-150mm long lens I like the results much better with that lens but I have to be like 15 feet away from the model in order to use it. I like being close, being right there so the model doesn’t feel alone. Of course it’s also nice being able to talk without yelling across the vastness of space that the long lens requires.

The lens I’m looking is a 14-54mm f/2.8-3.5 Zuiko lens It looks like it’s a good lens and with an f-stop range of f2.8-3.5 would be quite a jump from my current lens which is at f3.5-5.6. The price is quite good at around $425. I hope that I can do it in the next week or so but we’ll see what happens with my finances…

Next Camera Purchase

admin — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 17:51:45 +0000

I’ve been thinking a lot about my camera, which is a year old Olympus E-500. It’s a great camera but I’m starting to see it’s limitations. So I’ve been looking at other cameras. One camera that has caught my eye is the Nikon D80. It looks like a great camera. I have not held it but I have seen images from other photographers using this camera. If that’s any indication I think I’d like to pick one up someday. Image resolution is 10.2mp. A big consderation for me when looking at any new camera is image resolution. I almost bought Nikon’s D40 but saw that it was actually a 6mp camera. But it felt really good in my hands.

Of course I’m worried about having to also buy new lenses and a flash if I switch to Nikon. I like my camera but my only gripe is that the viewfinder is rather small. That makes it diffucult to use the manual focus because you can’t see how you’re focused very well. I end up zooming in to where I want to focus, focus, and then pull out. Then I take the shot. It slows me down a little bit.

If I did keep it in the family I would pick up an Olympus E-510. It looks like a very nice camera. It’s 10mp which is better than my current 8mp camera. And it looks like it ships with similar lenses to what I have. Although if I bought one I would have to check it out first to see whether they fixed the viewfinder or not. for me that’s the biggest point.

Then there’s my dream camera….

When I saw that Canon had come out with a 21.1 mega-pixel camera I though it was a typo that should have said 12.1mp. I was also shocked because the largest resolution I’ve seen from Nikon is around 12mp. I could be wrong about that though. Canon’s EOS 1DS Mark III looks like a hell of a camera. The reason why it’s my dream camera is because it would actually take somewhere around $15,000 for me to re-outfit myself properly with this camera. New lenses, bigger memory cards, flash units. I wouldn’t mind spending that kind of money on this camera if I had it to spend.

For now I’m content with with my camera and content to dream of better days when I can afford truly great gear…

Sweet dreams Indeed,
Jason Tag