Olympus Evolt E-510

Well, I finally got my new toy and I’ve been wanting it for a long time now. I’ve wanted a DSLR camera ever since they first came out. It was a painful wait too, took about a week to get the camera just to find out I had to wait another week because the guy forgot to pack the batteries. I finally got it all however, and also got a weekend to play with it. I must say, I absolutely love it. I’m a secret camera-freak I guess, so finally buying this is just awesome.

I figured I’d write a little unprofessional review of it, as well as test out wordpress’s new features (yay image captions).

It is any enthusiast photographer’s wet dream. Automatic bracketing (in different ways too), 3 FPS shooting, 10 megapixels, RAW capability, in-body image stabilization (nifty feature), full-automatic mode as well as Aperture/Shutter priority modes, full-manual and even programmed ’scene’ modes. Can take Compact Flash and xD memory cards, so space isn’t an issue. There’s a whole bunch of custom lenses, optics, flashes and other accessories for it. It can become a money sink pretty damn fast.

Zuiko Digital 14-42mm lens

The one I got was a Body + Lens combo, so it came with a Zuiko Digital ‘four thirds’ lens (14-42mm). The auction also included an extra battery in the deal too, so overall it was a steal compared to what you’d pay for one normally. I got all that for the price of the body only basically, you gotta love ebay sometimes.

So far the pictures it has taken, even in full-auto ‘SHQ’ mode, are amazing. Using aperture priority mode with RAW, oh man just forget it. Amazing quality, even if you aren’t a professional. You don’t need to be a photographic genius to take good photos with this.

The lens it came with is great too, using around f8 gets the sharpest photos out of it. It can zoom up to approximately 3x and go to a very wide angle as well. The ‘four thirds’ lenses are a bit different in that they aren’t based on 35mm standard, so 14mm on this lens is about the equal of 28mm on a normal 35mm standard lens. In my uneducated testing, the 25mm mark is about equal to 35mm and 35mm is about equal to 50mm (don’t take my word as perfect though, I’m probably off a bit).

One thing that is still holding me in awe, is the overall speed of the camera. It takes barely a second to turn on, automatic focusing in ideal conditions (good light) is nearly instant, writing speed (to slow xD cards) is even bearable. The focus is much more tedious inside when it is dark and using the flash. The flash will pop up and sprinkle light onto the area to try to focus, and sometimes it just takes awhile. Manual focus indoors might be a better option.

The only thing is it is obviously large and isn’t going to fit this in your pocket, unless you’re still sporting some of the baggiest pants on earth. So it is going to make a great companion to my existing SP-310 which I’ll have no trouble taking anywhere due to size. My 310 will also continue to be my macro shooter, I’m amazed at that cameras ability to do macro shots. I’m sure with a macro lens, this E-510 could take amazing macros as well.

I would recommend this lens to anyone looking for a near professional-grade DSLR but don’t want to fork out $2500+ for one. You can get this for about $550 with body + lens + battery. If you ask me it is an excellent deal. It has amazing reviews around the block and comes highly recommended everywhere I look.

I’ll have a bunch of photos posted tomorrow that I took with it to show off what it can do.

I also in no way see this camera as an extension of my body, no matter how bad it looks.

Lens Extended

Categories: Digital Work • Humor • Information • Photographs
Tags: camera, digital camera, digital photography, e-510, giddy like a school girl, new toy, sp-310
Go back to the: Top of post • Top of page • Blog Home Page

Man, there are some stupid ‘conditions’ out there, and I think RLS takes the cake. RLS is defined as such:

“Restless legs syndrome is a condition that is characterized by an irresistible urge to move one’s legs (occasionally arms or torso).“

I guess people aren’t allowed to be uncomfortable anymore or fidget. What are we going to treat next with medicine, excessive blinking? This is where Mirapex comes in, to solve RLS with medication you don’t need!

Now it is one thing to be suckered into getting medicine for this, when you’re probably just moving your legs because you’re nervous, deep in though, etc. It’s a completely different thing to accept all its side effects.

• Dizziness, lightheadedness, or fainting, especially when standing up
• Drowsiness
• Hallucinations
• Weight gain
• Weight loss
• Nausea
• Trouble in sleeping
• Twitching, twisting, or other unusual body movements
• Unusual tiredness or weakness
• Several unusual adverse effects of this medication may include compulsive gambling, hypersexuality, and overeating.

Please tell me how ANY of these adverse effects taken directly off of wiki, are worse than dealing with your legs moving around? Yes, I’d much rather have an extremely elevated sex drive, want to waste my money gambling, hallucinate, be drowsy and feel sick all at the same time. Maybe then my fantasy of gambling while halucinating that the chips are singing at me while vomiting at the same time!

This is just pathetic, guess the drug companies need to make more money off of suckers.

Categories: Humor • Information • Rants
Tags: medicine, Restless Leg Syndrome, RLS
Go back to the: Top of post • Top of page • Blog Home Page

Our good friend Cherry is going to be joining us here at Leghump. So ‘Welcome Cherry’! ^^

She should be posting soon. Also, there might be another friend joining us (Tyler), but we aren’t sure yet what he wants to do. I guess we’ll have to go smack him around some.

Categories: Information • Odds and Ends • Quick Post
Tags: Cherry
Go back to the: Top of post • Top of page • Blog Home Page

Well Bren and I decided it was time for a new theme, and we both wanted something sleek, sexy and black. This was inspired by the .Mac web galleries, as seen in this sample gallery from Apple.

Personally I really like it, was a bit weary of a black background making it hard to read but I think we got the colors, well, grays correct.

If you have any feedback, see a bug or anything wrong, please leave it in the comments and we’ll fix it.

Categories: Information • Odds and Ends
Tags: blog theme, css, new look
Go back to the: Top of post • Top of page • Blog Home Page

Well this is interesting. Apparently either I have the Touch-of-Death with Windows computers, or UnrealEd (Epic’s map editor for their games) likes to eat computer’s hard drives for lunch.

I have this lender computer that was put together with parts laying around my Uncle’s house and it had two hard drives in it; so a C: and D: drive. Equal size, about 20 GB each. The D: drive I installled UT2004 and other games on, in hope of messing around with games on Windows; remember, I’m a Mac guy here. One day while messing with UnrealEd to make my map, I started getting lots of crashes.

So I decided first that Windows XP needed a reboot and I tried that. Computer booted fine until about the blue screen that shows right before the login screen. Then it got slow as molasses, took forever to finish loading. Lagged for about ten minutes while the D: drive made horrible noises. Consensus was: “It’s dead Jim”.

I was set back, but I reinstalled UT2004 back on the C: drive because I wanted to keep working with the map. That worked out right until now. Out of no where, the C: drive started making horrible noises too, different but still horrible. Computer basically froze up, so I forced it to reboot. Got stuck at the BIOS screen and while “Scanning IDE devices …” Second consensus was: “It’s really dead Jim”.

Great, the computer is official hosed. Two dead drives in two weeks, both while using UnrealEd and at my hands.

So what is the lesson here? Backup your files people, backup often. Get a simple USB hard drive, large enough to fit your most essential files; if possible get bigger to fit even more things. Hard drives (and other computer components) can fail at any time without warning. Happened to my brother (and his wife, they use same computer), they lost everything. No backups either, and doesn’t have money to pay for $400 data recovery. I was lucky this wasn’t my main computer, or else I’d be SOL because I didn’t back it up.

I send this warning out to anyone that doesn’t backup regularly. Don’t be stingy about it, don’t think you’re safe. Backup and backup now.

On a side note, bren is pretty sick so she hasn’t been around much the past couple days, but she’ll be back in full-force soon. Hope you get better soon bren, miss ya. <3

Categories: Information • Rants
Tags:
Go back to the: Top of post • Top of page • Blog Home Page