LizFrazier

To rsnyder- =D>
As if recommending the travel agent who sold those cheap tickets to Tanzania wasn't enough. You mentioned here and I cannot find the post, so I started a new thread, that you got an Olympus 740UZ digital camera for father's day I believe. So trusting your opinion as I do, I immediately started researching again, for the fourth time, and decided this was for me. Thank you again. We just got our camera and are testing it and absolutely love it. Yesterday we took a movie on it for a few seconds. We've put the pictures on the computer, the TV, and they turn our so clear.
I want to say that Rocco's pictures kind of clinched it too. The difference in Digital and film is remarkable.
We will carry only a small chip the size of a penny and weight of a penny, and we can store 256+ pictures on it. It can go through X-ray just fine. No extra lenses or even a camera bag is necessary. No attachments. Ours too is a 10X Optical Zoom. Those Wildebeests don't stand a chance in September.
Just do it! If you are considering it, you won't regret it. We did get a little later model since it was just out, the 750UZ. Liz

rsnyder

Thanks Liz for the feedback on the camera. What setting/mode do you usually use for outdoor daytime shots? I am still learning about the camera. The wife and kids went to the extreme and got me the 256 k chip, charger, card reader, etc. My frustration (minor) with the camera is the time it takes to come into focus compared to conventional camera. The black bear in the back yard the other evening was not exactly comfy with us wispering from the back window as he/she trashed the birdfeeder. Thus I wanted to rush shots. But, I am greatly encouraged with your comments and will get out more with it shortly. You made my day!!

Dick

LizFrazier

Dick-
I've only used automatic setting on any camera. I envy Kavey and wish I was that smart, but alas I have to do the best I can and automatic works for me. We JUST got it. Have only experimented with stuff in our yard and house. We live in a senior development and we don't have wild animals as you do. How thrilling. A bear in your back yard. My husband tried to get a picture of a moving car and almost missed. He said what you said. So back to the manual, they say try to anticipate where action shots will be and take a picture early. Go to movie mode for the bear. I had my husband dancing in the house for our movie. He made me erase it immediately of course. (He really was more just flapping his arms and skipping). But it worked. I don't know how much memory it uses though. We may not be able to use it much in Africa because of storage. How much storage would you take for Africa?
That little manual won't tell you much. You have to use the one on the CD, the only thing is what will I do in Africa? I can't remember all those things. But we're not taking our SLR with us. I'm shopping for the bigger MB chip now. I ordered a rapid charger from www.thomas-distributing.com. Its a MAHA 100 minute rapid charger and comes with a cigarette lighter connection. We got 8 of the 2100 PowerEx batteries. I want to get the 256 chip but should I go for the 512? Decisions, decisions! You got it all at once. How lucky, you were saved weeks of research by a smart wife.
I started out with the 2288xsomething resolution but switched it to 640xsomething because I don't intend to enlarge any. (That took a day to do of course, it kept going back to the factory setting.) We just want to email photos and store our album on the computer for our own use.
Keep me informed if you learn something that works good. I am just so excited with it. We both just marvel that this little thing does all of that. And no film! We usually carry 20+ rolls. Not this time. No X-Ray worries. I think that is the best part. Let me know if I can help. Liz
P.S. in about two months you will see the results.

LizFrazier

One more thing I found that is really interesting for me. Go to www.dpreview.com click on forums, then Olympus chat and you can get lots of help. Many samples of photos people took. Just tons of info. I did some searches for things I wanted to know and its amazing how much is in there. That's where I found out about the rapid charger and the larger rechargeable batteries.
Anyone else please comment here too. On the dpreview they have all of the cameras and you can get loads of info on their threads. I haven't posted there as they want you to search first and see if its covered. It is, trust me. Tons of stuff. And the photos they take are incredible. Many of them are pros of course. Liz

Clematis

Hi Liz, I love the story of your husband dancing! In answer to your question about storage, we thought we had enough and we didn't. We ended up with 5 flashcards (we have a different camera), one of which is a 1 gb. A total of some 2000 pics over about 10 days of safari within 3 weeks of African travel and we were erasing the blurry shots as we went. We had to buy extra cards in J'burg airport, which was a little over twice the price it would have been here. If you have a Costco the prices are best. Have fun with your new camera. The best part is that you don't have to pay for learning!

rsnyder

Liz, thanks for the tips. As I work more with the 740 zoom the more comfy I get. The garter snake at our wood pile is getting a bit tired of my antics as I try various settings/angles, etc. I still have to get used to the short time the camera requires to focus when I use the zoom but the quality of the pictures is great even on our home computer. Looking forward to seeing your pics from the trip and again thanks. Dick

sundowner

To take as many photos as you want you can buy a portable hard drive to download the pictures off of your CF card. You could have 2 CF cards and when one is full, switch to the other card and download the photos off of the full one. dpreview has reviews on these hard drives as well. They are designed for this so they are portable and small. You can get different size capacities as well. Once you get home you move the photos to your computer.

http://www.lexarmedia.com/digfilm/index_sd.html is a link that shows and estimate of how many photos should fit on each card. I don't know how much it varies per brand. I believe this brand has a longer warranty than most and they also have image recovery software in case you delete your photos in error.

LizFrazier

Clematis-
Wow, you hit a nerve! Here I was sitting having just ordered a 256MB chip, thinking I would have way too much for our short trip. Gosh, now I have to research for days about all of this other stuff.
Sundowner-
Thanks for adding your input. I wasn't even aware of putting the photos on a hand held device. So two hours of research and I am overwhelmed. The 512MB chip isn't out yet from Olympus so I'm not sure just what to do now. I did to go dpreview and look at the other chats and got a bunch of information to look over. There seems to be good and bad about it HD devices. Plus many varieties and types. Whew!
I always thought I took more pictures than anyone. On every safari I've been on people thought I overdid it on film. But nothing compared to you folks. Nothing.
So, its back to the old drawing board and I see this little camera I thought I got a good deal on, is the cheapest part of this. I'll probably spend 3 times that by September.

Clematis

Liz, please don't be overwhelmed. First of all, you may have a different style - you may shoot less. Also, we probably shot more because the camera was purchased just days before the safari. In general, when people are shooting digital they shoot more because it's so much cheaper per shot and you can always erase (if not immediately, then later that night). I didn't believe people when they said take more film than you think you'll need. (or flashcards) and that's why we ended up paying twice the price at the airport. I want to say that it's better to have several smaller flashcards than one big one. In fact after the 1 gb one, all the rest were 256 mb. There are advantages to having smaller flashcards - you don't have all your memories on one card, it's easier when you go to transfer it at the lab to CD or to load up their preview machine, etc. You have a lot of time to practice so you will probably use less flashcards. Have fun with the new camera!

LizFrazier

Clem-
I am so greatful that you and SD posted yesterday. I really was completely oblivious to this part. What an eye opener. I really don't think I would have bought the camera if I had known how much it involved, simply because there is such a learning curve. I'm not the cute young chick you think I am. There is a real possibility this camera will outlive me.
So, have you thought of the hand held HD storage device? Looks real neat, but there are a few and of course the features are varied. Even the guides I had in Africa used to laugh at me because I took pictures of literally everything! 20 rolls still did it. I even sold film. Oh well, that was then, this is now.
Since 256MB is the largest card Oly makes right now, I guess I can either buy two more or a hand held. You see we only use a camera when we go to Africa. We didn't even use our camera on our cruise to Alaska a couple weeks ago. So I guess our style is probably different, thanks for pointing that out. We don't know what we'd do with 2000 photos. But then I was on the Serengeti one time with the migration, and I was really overwhelmed. I could have spent hours just sitting there looking at them. As far as I could see the plains were just black with them.
Oh, were you comfortable erasing over there? I read that you shouldn't use the camera to erase pictures because of the possibility you might remove something you wanted to keep. Also how long did your batteries last each day and what kind were they? i.e., 1700-2100.
Now I'll have many questions but I know others will also find this helpful.
Anyone else with things rsnyder and I need to know? Please share.
Where is Kavey when you really need her? She knows everything. Or at least she can explain what she knows so I can understand it. Liz

sundowner

Hi Liz - one thing you could do to test your cards and batteries is just go in the backyard and just shoot over and over until the card is full. You don't even need to aim. Then you will know appx how many images your card will hold. The actual picture you take determines how much space it uses so your yard will be similar to Africa as opposed to inside the house. Once that card is full, re-format it and begin all over again until you run the battery down. This will help you decide how much stuff you need. One other thing about digital - I can't help but review the images on the screen after I've taken them. So if you are likely to do that too, be sure to do this while doing your battery test. The review of images on the screen uses alot of battery power. On a photo workshop I took my batteries lasted 2 full days on one charge. I charge them that night and they ran out by noon the next day. I was shocked and thought something was wrong with the camera or batteries. I got to thinking about it and realized that I had been viewing my shots alot and that ran down the battery.

Since you mainly use your camera for your African safaris and you already know the number of photos you are likely to take, another card or two might work out perfect for you. Not to mention being the easiest way to go.

As far as deleting images - I wouldn't try to delete them in the field in 'the heat of the moment'. But I wouldn't have a problem deleting them in the evening. You can practice deleting them also.

Good luck!
Cindy

LizFrazier

Thanks Cindy-
Good advice. I haven't gotten the new 2100 batteries yet. They've been shipped and should be here tomorrow. It is so darned hot here now, mid-July in Vegas is an oven. I send Max out side with the camera and he comes back in 5 minutes with 4 pictures. It is WELL over 100 degrees all the time now. I think the coolest during the night is the 90s. Good thought though and we will have to do practice more out there.
The thing is to actually have unlimited time with the migration and maybe seeing a crossing at the Mara River, I know I will take continuous pictures. Oh, I also discovered how to set the camera on automatic focus, which uses a lot of battery power, but takes faster pictures for a digital. So I won't have to pause with the clicker half way down waiting for it to focus. Sorry to be so basic, but thats where I am. Thanks for the help. Great folks here. Liz

Clematis

See Liz (who will always be a cute young thing in my mind), you are learning camera tricks already! The one thing that threw me with the digital was how it needed seconds to reset before you could snap the next picture. In those seconds an animal can move pretty quickly so remember it's not a SLR with motor-drive. You will get used to that though. Yes, we did get comfortable deleting with our camera. These were the very blurry grabs that happen on safari and it was obvious they wouldn't be missed. We did it even in the landrover but it's best to wait until your mid-day break. Practice with this at home. The battery, we don't have the Olympus so I don't know if specific battery info will be applicable but we tried to have the camp charge it every night (after 2 game drives). It's good to have two batteries if you can, just in case.
If you are most comfortable with automatic settings, that is what they are for. The movie mode probably uses up a lot of space. We have it on ours but never used it because we also have a video camera. The great thing about digital is that practice is free (unlike film cams)!! Don't be precious about it, shoot a lot now at different times. Remember to practice just before sundown and early in the morning and test the flash, everything. You will discover more and more about your camera the more you practice daily!

wj1

Ok, I have my camera and I have tons of memory. The photos look great on the computer. But I can't get the darn things to print out very well. I thought I bought a good printer (Canon S900) but the quality is poor (or least the way I'm doing it). I don't think anyone would mistake the photos for a 35mm shot. Is everyone out there printing their own photos or do they send them off to be printed? I'm so frustrated that I'm about to chuck the digital camera and bring film instead on my next trip in September. Any advice?

rsnyder

wj1,
I have not tried the service yet but as another poster on a different thread mentioned, Walmart is a place to consider for printing. I stopped in the other day and noted various options for downloading digital images. From online to various disks and cards. Seemed simple to me and the price if I recall for a 4x6 print was something like 30 cents. That is the basic size I would use for the photo book with the option to enlarge those really special shots.
Dick

Kavey

Liz
Sorry not to have been around.
We've had an accident in the family and I've been at the hospital for the weekend and am now busy with work for clients that I just can't cancel on.
I won't be around much, but I will pop in - I miss the Africa talk too much to stay right away and I'll still need break anyway.
Anyway, just wanted to suggest looking into the X Drive - we use this to download CF cards into when full and then download to PC from that when we get home.
Lots of love
Kavey

sundowner

wj1 - were you trying to print a 4x6 or larger? I have only printed a couple of dozen prints on my home printer (HP7350 I believe, $199 at most places) in 4x6 size and they were amazingly beautiful. The only bigger one I printed was on the wrong side (wake up!) of the paper on an 8x10 and it wasn't very pretty.

I haven't tried any of the local printing places but I've read that the ones with Fuji equipment turn out the best prints.

Let us know if you try one.
Cindy

wj1

Kavey, I hope everything is OK and your family member is making a good recovery.

rsnyder, thanks for the info. I may try it.

Sundowner: Yes, I was just trying some simple 4 x 6 prints and they did not come out well at all. I can't remember the file size but I know it was the largest size I could make off my camera (a 4 megapixel camera only 6 months old) so that shouldn't have been the problem. I sat on the phone with Canon on Saturday and didn't get very far with them. Do any of you have any ideas what I should do next? I really want to take this camera with me on my trip but if I can't print the photos, I'm wondering whether I should just go ahead and bring my 35mm. Thanks!

sundowner

wj1 - I am also fairly new to digital photography but I have spent hours and hours reading about all of it.

I would say at this point you don't know if your problem is a camera or printer problem.

One idea is to take CF card to one of the local print places and see what happens when they try to print one of your images.

Another idea is to post a question (or do a search) on one of the websites with specialty forums for your camera.

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/index.php is a Canon forum and you can find one for your camera.


www.fredmiranda.com has forums but I'm don't remember the categories.
same with www.robgalbraith.com

Good luck!

Kavey - I'm sorry to hear of the accident in your family. I hope for a speedy and full recovery.

Cindy

wj1

Sundowner, thanks for the idea of taking the chip into the local photo shop. I think it's the printer (because the photos look great on the computer screen and on TV) but I don't know for sure. Thanks for your help.