Powershot Pro 1

After a long time of reading and learning I finally got DSLR - Olympus E-520 with two kit lenses. Until now I've used (and still keep) Canon Powershot G5). I've lost the joy of photography with the Olympus DSLR. I've tried everything - Jpeg, RAW plus Jpeg and all the options. Every picture taking session is a new struggle and fear - how good will it turn out. I am quite familiar with Photoshop Elements 6 and ACR and mainly my images are for Microstock.

The Canon is very simple to use, the results of Jpeg's out of the cmaera are vey good and require just a little PP in the Photoshop. Pictures come out almost always razor sharp.

But the G5 is aging and I need a bit more. Looking back I find the Powershot Pro 1 to be very interesting. All in one camera, great optics and portable.
I would like to hear your comments and see samples of images of the Pro 1.

the pro1 had it flaws too, although it was a great camera. the lens-distortion was quite high at wide angle and there was some heavy vignetting. but together with the oly C-8080 it had the best image quality from all the cameras at this time. just look at dpreviews review:
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canonpro1/

and also have a look at the dpreview-samples.

as far as i remember there were also some dust issues with the "L"-lens. canon fixed it with some adhesive tape, but i am not sure how the cameras are going to behave after such a long time.

unfortunately the pro1 used quite a noisy sensor. everything above iso100 was not really usable. it would be cool to see a similar camera from canon with updated technology, faster auto focus etc. maybe there is some new model in work and will be introduced at photokina? who knows!

Ron:

You should use the search to find one of the many recent Pro1 discussions with sample photos. There are a lot of people who strongly like, and a lot who dislike the Pro1. I just used mine this week to take product photos, excellent results.

At this date, even if you decide on one, it could be either difficult or costly to find a good one. Mine still works great, but has been in for 2 repairs so far at about $147ish each.

I hate to say it, and I know it's not nearly the same camera as a Pro1, but you should consider a G9.

Ron Zamir said:

After a long time of reading and learning I finally got DSLR -
Olympus E-520 with two kit lenses. Until now I've used (and still
keep) Canon Powershot G5). I've lost the joy of photography with the
Olympus DSLR. I've tried everything - Jpeg, RAW plus Jpeg and all the
options. Every picture taking session is a new struggle and fear -
how good will it turn out. I am quite familiar with Photoshop
Elements 6 and ACR and mainly my images are for Microstock.
The Canon is very simple to use, the results of Jpeg's out of the
cmaera are vey good and require just a little PP in the Photoshop.
Pictures come out almost always razor sharp.
But the G5 is aging and I need a bit more. Looking back I find the
Powershot Pro 1 to be very interesting. All in one camera, great
optics and portable.
I would like to hear your comments and see samples of images of the
Pro 1.

Click to expand...

Well in my opinion, the Pro1 is the best digicam Canon ever produced.

The lens was razor sharp, distortion and CA were minimal. The body was compact (almost too small!) the viewfinder and LCD were excellent. The 8MP resolution was plenty.

Best of all was the image quality. It produced beautiful images that were tack sharp and noise free through ISO100, and was still perfectly usable at 200. NR software took care of higher speeds. I don't think the image quality of the Pro1 has been approached by any other Digicam, by any manufacturer. You have to go to a DSLR with a large sensor and a high quality lens to do better.

The Pro1 only had two problems in my view: restricted ISO range (endemic to all digicams) and lack of image stabilization. Unfortunately, Canon chose to abandon the "prosumer" digicam market, rather than follow up the Pro1 with a camera with IS.

You can see plenty of example pics in the Pro1 review here, and in people's threads.

...it's a great camera for still life, landscape, portrait and macro photography. It is too slow for action photography (sports, wildlife, etc.) though with patience and firing off hundreds of shots I occasionally get an acceptable image. AF is agonizing slow compared to my 350D. But, it goes everywhere with me and it is the camera I use the most. Most of the images in my galleries below were taken with the Pro-1. I have snapped over 40,000 images with it so far!!!

But, I do edit all of my images (cropping, levels and unsharp mask mostly).

Doug
--
http://www.pbase.com/photodug

Look - I'm no fanboy and I shoot with literally dozens of different brand cameras, and I manage to get superb results from all of them. And I love my G series (have every G camera made).

The fact that you can't get good results from the Olympus E510/E520 series is unbelievable - as I've found this camera to be absolutely superb and so have countless others! This camera is capable of richly defined colors and the internal in-body IS has really become a big positive.

Don't know about you, but I shoot RAW, convert with either ACR or Silkypix and here are some E510 shots - with the wonderful weatherproofed 14-54 lf2.8 zoom (equivalent to a 28-108 MM) lens. All shot in RAW, AWB, Aperture Priority. The outdoor shots ranged from ISO 100 - 200, the indoor available light shots were taken at ISO 800 - 1600, and the indoor w/flash (FL-50) shots were taken at ISO 400, camera in manual mode, flash in TTL mode bounced. If you can't get good results...it most certainly is not the camera (hint, hint).







































As always - good shooting....

You should really take a look at the pictures Marco Nero made with the Pro1.
http://www.pbase.com/nero_design/root

Bert
--
Owner of a Canon EOS 350D and some older stuff

I really have to agree with Ben. The Olympus is an excellent camera and you need to practice with it more. There is no point and shoot that will give you the image quality of the 520. If your photos aren't coming out the way you like, perhaps you need to ask for some help on the Oly forum here. That 520 is capable of great things. You just need to know how to use it.

--
Todd Walker...Canon TenD, Canon GNine, Canon EssDee500
http://www.toddwalker.net
http://flickr.com/people/twalker294
http://www.twphotography.net