The UZI has been surpassed

I looked at my camera statistics of all of the photos in my albums (plus the 200 or so that I haven't processed or junked at the moment), and it looks like the DSLRs have now passed the UZI, in terms of total shots. The UZI still is the champ when you look at any one camera instead of grouping the 3 DSLRs together, though the E-1 has fairly healthy numbers of its own. Given, I have mostly switched over to the E-3, it may stay the single camera champ for some time. I also noticed that I've already surpassed the E-510 with the E-3.
C-2100UZ, bought 4/2002, 10,325 pictures, 43.2% of total
E-1, bought 12/2004, 8,309 pictures, 34.7% of total
E-510, bought 6/2007, 1,668 pictures, 6.97% of total
E-3, bought 8/2008, 1,787 pictures, 7.46% of total + 2 week loan in 4/2008
Other cameras (D-510Z, F1, S10, SP-550UZ) shot 1,870 total pictures

In terms of lenses, the 14-54mm is the champ at 55%, the 50-200mm is at 16%, the 50-200mm + EC-14 is 6%, the 50mm is 10%, the 11-22mm is 5%, and the Sigma 30mm at 1%. Of course it is weighted in that I've had the 14-54mm since I got the E-1, but I only got the Sigma 30mm a few months ago. For example, I haven't shot with the 11-22mm yet, but I've shot with the Sigma 7%.

A few months ago, when I checked, the DSLRs hadn't quite passed the good old UZI. I still take the UZI and E-1 out for shooting, just to remember the fun I had with those cameras.

Just because they are old dinosaurs, it doesn't mean that they don't deliver good pictures:





Now, the last is also a dinosaur that takes good pictures, but I'm afraid it doesn't get much shooting time:

Interesting bunch of numbers.

Quite awhile ago, just prior to my joining this OTF forum I was still very active with film cameras, then I stumbled across OTF and liked the pictures that our "Lucy" posted with her c-3020z, so my wife bought me one.

My next digital camera was an Oy c-7000z. This was followed by a whole bunch of the old "UZI" broken cams from ebay. Ended up with 4 working ones and a box of parts. Gave 2 of them away to relatives, kept 2 and the parts box.

Repeated this UZI broken cams experiment with the c-3020z camera, made a twin cam stereo version, gave some away and still have one that needs some TLC as I think the rotary switches are in need of a severe cleaning.

I have not done the intensive history that you have done, but recently I was trying to make up my mind as to purchase either a DSLR or a point and shoot. A big influence here was that I had Finlay found a home for all of my old 35mm stuff that I had. I still remembered why I had bought all those 35mm len's and wondered if I wanted to go that route with DSLR.

Having too much time on my hands, I decided to look thru both the folders that contained all the old 35mm film pictures/ 2-14 sq. and scans that I had copied to digital. I also looked at all the digital pictures I have taken to date. I did not keep track of numbers, but I came away with the fact that better than half of all my pictures dating back over the years (60+ years) were people/events subjects.

As you know, I like to fool around with what else can be done with cameras, so there are a lot of my past pictures that are stereo, extended depth of field, etc. etc.

All of this looking at past pictures still left me with the question as to what the future use of a new camera would bring. I want very much to do a series of historical sites that are near me. So the new camera was a c-8080wz which is good at landscapes, easy to carry with very little support gear.

Currently, I am just starting the series on a very large park(16 miles) near me. On this list of projects is a very old, now abandoned canal system along with its 70 Mile long greenway and I also hope to document the headwaters of the Genesee River, take pictures along the way to its termination at Lake Ontario. Another very long distance to photograph, so having a very good P&S seemed the way to go.

I enjoyed reading your post and I guess the quantity of numbers produced by each camera has a lot to do with how long you have them, at least that has happened with me.

Paul

Even if you have transform the camera, to look as a Robocop , I believe you

--
C-21OO A-2OO ,Manfrotto for Ever

http://dhost.info/ax1/

Michael,

You don't list any stats for the C-8080. It surpasses the UZI in image quality and creative ability, I think. Why doesn't it get much use?

I'm taking my C-8080 on vacation later this spring and leaving the E-3 at home. I have an underwater housing for the C-8080 and it's easier to carry after all the scuba gear and camera gear I need. The E-3 would double the weight of camera gear I'd want to take along. It's a dive trip and I'll also want to shoot topside.
--
Dave

Be kinder than necessary because everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle.
http://whaleshark.smugmug.com

Who cares about underwater !!

dave gaines said:

Michael,
You don't list any stats for the C-8080. It surpasses the UZI in
image quality and creative ability, I think. Why doesn't it get much
use?
I'm taking my C-8080 on vacation later this spring and leaving the
E-3 at home. I have an underwater housing for the C-8080 and it's
easier to carry after all the scuba gear and camera gear I need. The
E-3 would double the weight of camera gear I'd want to take along.
It's a dive trip and I'll also want to shoot topside.
--
Dave
Be kinder than necessary because everyone you meet is fighting some
kind of battle.
http://whaleshark.smugmug.com

Click to expand...

--
C-21OO A-2OO ,Manfrotto for Ever

http://dhost.info/ax1/

dave gaines said:

Michael,
You don't list any stats for the C-8080. It surpasses the UZI in
image quality and creative ability, I think. Why doesn't it get much
use?
I'm taking my C-8080 on vacation later this spring and leaving the
E-3 at home. I have an underwater housing for the C-8080 and it's
easier to carry after all the scuba gear and camera gear I need. The
E-3 would double the weight of camera gear I'd want to take along.
It's a dive trip and I'll also want to shoot topside.

Click to expand...

I don't list any stats for the 8080, because I haven't shot with it that much (160 shots total before this weekend). I bought the camera used because I was interested in it due to the cult like following (after owning two other Olympus cult cameras, the UZI and E-1).

Maybe my 8080 is worse than normal, but I find the focusing on the camera to be so bad that it is unusable for the shots I want to take. I'm not talking about comparing the 8080 to a DSLR like the E-1/E-3 which is unfair. I'm talking about comparing the 8080 to the UZI, SP-550UZ, and Canon S1, all of which can focus faster than the 8080. When I first got it, I took the camera to a small renaissance faire, which was outdoors and in good light. I found that by the time the camera focused, I often times missed the shot of the performer.

But your post got me thinking, so I took several of my cameras to my mother-in-law's to take some of her garden shots. I took the E-3 and 14-54mm, the 8080, and the UZI. I also took the E-1 and my other lenses (such as the 50mm), but I didn't use them. I did three passes, first with the 8080, then the E-3, and finally the UZI. Now it wasn't a completely controlled situation in that I wasn't shooting the same shot at the same angle, and presumably the quality of the light changed as well.

Unfortunately, I found that there were some tulips I just could not focus on with the 8080, no matter whether I used normal focusing, or the two macro focusing modes. I did the usual p&s technique of finding vertical contrast, and still I could not get the 8080 to focus on that flower. I have several shots where the camera just gave up and did not produce an image. I was about 2 feet away from the flower, so it should have been easy. I struggled with focusing all of the time with the 8080, while only occasionally did I have to do the zoom trick with the UZI (if it is having trouble getting a focus lock, zoom slightly in/out), but still it was much, much easier to use than the 8080. The E-3 of course grabbed focus immediately.

Now in terms of color rendition, the UZI and 8080 did have some trouble with strong red colors, which I had forgotten about until I looked at them in detail. The 8080 saturates the greens somewhat more than the others (probably similar to the E-1). Now that I've started to do some post processing (thanks to the E-510 and its flat color curve), I can do some slight tweaks at PP, and get nearly equivalent shots.

Hi Michael,

Thanks for the reply. I was out using the C-8080 for the first time in a long while after 18 months of using the E-3 and 14-54 lens. The E-3 is very fast and it took some time getting used to the slow response of the C-8080. But I was on the bike in a mountain canyon and carrying the C-8080 was a lot easier. After a few minutes of re-adaptation to the C-8080 I managed some good shots of butterflies and wildflowers in the wind.

I think the C-8080 needs some learned techniques to enhance it's focus abilities. Before buying the C-8080 4 years ago I'd been shooting a manual focus 35 mm camera for 25+ years and never had an auofocus camera. So I didn't know it was that slow until I read it here. Yes, the C-8080 takes time to focus and shoot and you lose some shots of people in the process.

There are two things I do to improve focus speed. Maybe you know these but I'll cover them for anyone who needs the info. First, I use spot focus instead of the broad view, focus averaging. I aim the spot at a distinct line in my subject that's perpendicular to the long side of the frame. That is, a vertical line in the horizontal frame. I think you know about that method, as you said. The camera focuses by finding maximum contrast on a distinct line and it's easier to pick that line and aim at it when the camera is set to spot focus.

The second thing I do is pre-focus. I aim the spot and half press the shutter button. Once the camera locks focus, I reframe as needed and wait for the expression or event I want to occur. This also locks exposure. When things look right I press the shutter all the way and it shoots almost instantly. For people shots this works a lot better than waiting for the camera to focus from the start.

In macro on open subjects like a bug with legs or a wildflower, sometimes the camera tries to focus on the background and that gives a false focus or no focus in Supermacro mode. I just let the shutter button go, re-aim and refocus. It usually finds the line I want right away.

Last weekend I did have a bit of trouble with focus while shooting macro at close range on a butterfly that was flapping it's yellow wings on a tall flower that was blowing in the wind. Flower and bug was moving side to side and flapping so the camera had trouble setting focus. I had to refocus several times. I could have locked focus at one distance once it found initial focus and then switched to manual focus. I do that by pressing the focus mode button once it locks focus. The camera switches to manual, focused at that distance. The next shots would be focused by moving in and out to see focus visually. That really speeds focus on multiple shots.

If you pre-set exposure with the AEL button it gives you more control of where the meter chooses exposure and also speeds things up. The spot you focus on may not be the spot you want to meter on, so using AEL button solves that situation. For mulitple shots the correct exposure often does not change so this works well.
--
Dave

Be kinder than necessary because everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle.
http://whaleshark.smugmug.com

0lyboy said:

Who cares about underwater !!

Click to expand...

What do you mean, "Who Cares?"
I do. )



C-8080 and WCON 08D at 22 mm, ISO 50, f/3.5, 1/100 sec.





--
Dave

Be kinder than necessary because everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle.
http://whaleshark.smugmug.com

Great clinic on focusing, Dave. Even though I already knew about and have used these techniques, it's really useful to have it all laid out in one brief and clear description. I'm going to print out your tutorial and slip it into my C-8080 reference manual. It's a manual that can certainly use a little help.

I'm finding that the C-8080 can demand full participation from its shutter-presser, but that the rewards are generally commensurate with the effort. More than I had realized going in, this is not Everybody's P&S.

Don