"The bad news: no matter what setting we used, we couldn’t get the panorama function to operate. After much head-scratching we consulted the instruction book, and buried within the text was the news that this function only works with Olympus x-D cards. Ours was a Fujifilm product."
What's all that about then; some camera features dependent on the brand of memory card you stick in!? How on earth do they rationalise that?
really you guys aren't up to reviewing digital cameras in any meaningful way. That low light pic? shocking considering it was downsampled for the web page. CCD sucks donkey balls for that even Nikon has abandoned it in their new DSLRs after being F'd in the A for years by Canon using CMOS. Most of my work is in very dark conditions, its one of the biggest issues I look for. (of course sticking 10MP on a tiny sensor isnt the cleverest move, but its like the marketing of Pentium IV... ooh clock speed shiny)
"oooh it does 7x zoom". yeah. yawn. who cares. focus more on the crap wide angle - which is 37mm (equivalent) and bloody crap. Considering a lot of usage for handbagcams comes from parties and the like, please show trying to take a picture of a family gathering in a 10' square living room without having to stand outside. Anything greater that 28mm at the wide end is a pain for most events.
if you want to look at how to properly review a digital camera's performance go to dpreview.com. Aside from a few spec this review told me nothing, you may have just talked about how pretty it looked or how you saw Paris using one for her latest dodgy pic collection.
Should have reviewed the u1030SW...much more interesting camera.. #
Posted Thursday 10th April 2008 12:05 GMT
and the problem with your memory cards is that there are FOUR types of xD cards:
- standard grade, which are slow and have no extra functions enabled
- Type M : which are faster and enable panorama features (even Fuji's cards work if Type M I believe)
- Type H : High-speed, for faster shot to shot, and panorama (rare to find, and expensive)
- Type M+ : coming out in the next month, will enable high-res video recording without the current 10second max record time, until card memory runs out.
I suspect you had a cheap standard grade card, which has been outdated for at least two years. Anyone with a recent Oly wants a Type M or M+ to get access to the features.
The Oly 1030SW is the camera you should have reviewed though - a 28mm wide-angle lens with internal 3.8x optical zoom, shockproof, waterproof, and same sensor. A much more interesting and unique camera...
Olympus digital cameras are one of the easiest cameras to use I've come across #
Posted Thursday 10th April 2008 12:43 GMT
I like olympus camera's for their simplicity, good value and good quality pics, oh and pretty robust too. I've had a few now and my next one will be olympus too, glad to see they've stuck with keeping the UI simple :)
My first digital SLR (not interchangeable lens) was the Oly 1400L. It had a Sparc processor and was running an embedded version of SunOS. As an oldtime kernel hacker I really liked that and really liked that the embedded timestamp was in UNIX epoch (secs since 8AM 01/01/1970) format. Wonder what they are using now.
Canon EOS Rebel T1i Black SLR Digital Camera Kit w/ 18-55mm Lens (15.1MP, SD/SDHC Card Slot)
Nikon D90 Black SLR Digital Camera Kit (12.3MP, 18-105mm, 4288x2848, SD/SDHC Card Slot)
Nikon D3000 SLR Digital Camera Kit w/ 18-55mm Lens (10.2MP, 3x Opt, SDHC Card Slot)
Canon EOS Rebel XSi Black SLR Digital Camera Kit (12.2MP, 4272x2848, SD/SDHC Card Slot)
Canon PowerShot SD1200 IS Grey Digital Camera (10MP, 3x Opt, MMC/MMCplus/SD/SDHC Card Slot)
Olympus µ1010 compact camera
Ian K
Eh? #
Posted Wednesday 9th April 2008 14:52 GMT
"The bad news: no matter what setting we used, we couldn’t get the panorama function to operate. After much head-scratching we consulted the instruction book, and buried within the text was the news that this function only works with Olympus x-D cards. Ours was a Fujifilm product."
What's all that about then; some camera features dependent on the brand of memory card you stick in!? How on earth do they rationalise that?
eddiewrenn
random #
Posted Wednesday 9th April 2008 15:13 GMT
Anyone know which airport that is? Looks really familiar but I can't place it - Geneva?
v. random, nice camera tho!
Andus McCoatover
Schiphol??? #
Posted Wednesday 9th April 2008 15:24 GMT
If so, it's changed a lot since I was there a few years ago (like, 20...)
Schiphol - used to be fascinated by the ceiling clock.
Craig
Speed of shooting #
Posted Wednesday 9th April 2008 17:51 GMT
Wouldn't that improve if you used a better memory card? Several seconds in between shots sounds terrible...
I'm guessing a slow memory card may have also caused the panorama problems.
Martin Usher
Curious name? #
Posted Wednesday 9th April 2008 17:51 GMT
Not really -- just cute. 10MPixels, u1010 (binary, see) -- "MicroTen".
They pay people to dream up this stuff.
The BigYin
Shutter speed #
Posted Wednesday 9th April 2008 17:51 GMT
I have an older mju and the delay between pressing the button and the picture being taken is rather long. What is this one like?
The delay makes mine useless for action shots.
David
Cornwall #
Posted Wednesday 9th April 2008 17:51 GMT
And the Photo of the woman in the hat looks like a nice stretch of Cornish coast near Polzeath.
vincent himpe
xd card #
Posted Wednesday 9th April 2008 22:40 GMT
XD cards from olympus have a 'marker' in the flash id sector.
you can have panoramic and 2 or 3 other features that only work with true olympus brand xd cards.
you can not access the flash id sector using a normal cardreader. you need low-level access (not filesystem level)
and it looks like brussels airport ...
The Mighty Spang
give it up #
Posted Wednesday 9th April 2008 23:25 GMT
really you guys aren't up to reviewing digital cameras in any meaningful way. That low light pic? shocking considering it was downsampled for the web page. CCD sucks donkey balls for that even Nikon has abandoned it in their new DSLRs after being F'd in the A for years by Canon using CMOS. Most of my work is in very dark conditions, its one of the biggest issues I look for. (of course sticking 10MP on a tiny sensor isnt the cleverest move, but its like the marketing of Pentium IV... ooh clock speed shiny)
"oooh it does 7x zoom". yeah. yawn. who cares. focus more on the crap wide angle - which is 37mm (equivalent) and bloody crap. Considering a lot of usage for handbagcams comes from parties and the like, please show trying to take a picture of a family gathering in a 10' square living room without having to stand outside. Anything greater that 28mm at the wide end is a pain for most events.
if you want to look at how to properly review a digital camera's performance go to dpreview.com. Aside from a few spec this review told me nothing, you may have just talked about how pretty it looked or how you saw Paris using one for her latest dodgy pic collection.
Jim
Schipol #
Posted Thursday 10th April 2008 05:39 GMT
Hence the sea of blue KLM self check-in things.
Camera a little too consumer for my tastes, currently using a Canon G9 & 10D (flooded with salt water and still going strong!)
Stu Reeves
Whats so hard? #
Posted Thursday 10th April 2008 10:44 GMT
Just say
mu ten ten......Not hard really....
Robert Hill
Should have reviewed the u1030SW...much more interesting camera.. #
Posted Thursday 10th April 2008 12:05 GMT
and the problem with your memory cards is that there are FOUR types of xD cards:
- standard grade, which are slow and have no extra functions enabled
- Type M : which are faster and enable panorama features (even Fuji's cards work if Type M I believe)
- Type H : High-speed, for faster shot to shot, and panorama (rare to find, and expensive)
- Type M+ : coming out in the next month, will enable high-res video recording without the current 10second max record time, until card memory runs out.
I suspect you had a cheap standard grade card, which has been outdated for at least two years. Anyone with a recent Oly wants a Type M or M+ to get access to the features.
The Oly 1030SW is the camera you should have reviewed though - a 28mm wide-angle lens with internal 3.8x optical zoom, shockproof, waterproof, and same sensor. A much more interesting and unique camera...
Simon B
Olympus digital cameras are one of the easiest cameras to use I've come across #
Posted Thursday 10th April 2008 12:43 GMT
I like olympus camera's for their simplicity, good value and good quality pics, oh and pretty robust too. I've had a few now and my next one will be olympus too, glad to see they've stuck with keeping the UI simple :)
Charles Richmond
Oly CPUs #
Posted Friday 11th April 2008 23:09 GMT
My first digital SLR (not interchangeable lens) was the Oly 1400L. It had a Sparc processor and was running an embedded version of SunOS. As an oldtime kernel hacker I really liked that and really liked that the embedded timestamp was in UNIX epoch (secs since 8AM 01/01/1970) format. Wonder what they are using now.