Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2006/04/04
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]<<At 06:20 PM 4/3/2006, you wrote: >I suppose that in time it will all be clear to me, but with the loss >of 300,000 brain cells a day, I hope that it will happen before I'm >reduced to a gibbering idiot. If the long awaited digital Leica ever >comes out with no more controls than an M3, I'll buy it in a minute. > >Failing that, I might buy an ergonomics textbook for the engineers at >Olympus. > >Larry Z Larry -? Do as Ted suggests and KISS - keep it simple!? If you shoot in RAW, none of the other settings matter.? RAW is your digital negative.? It captures exactly what the camera sees with no adjustments or changes.? Save the RAW file and play with it later when you are learning Photoshop.? If you think the camera is complicated, wait until you see all of the options you have in PSCS2.? But it's fun!! Have fun! Tina ------- Tina and all, I don't mean that I can never master the Olympus DSLR user interface. After all, I started computer programming in assembly lang uage 50 years ago (really) and I can almost work my HP Reverse Polish calculator. What I'm really pissed at is the fact thal all my hard learned film camera skills don't really translate well to the new camera without first recasting them in the digital context. It's like figuring out what I want to do in English, then translating to Japanese (where the camera was designed) then to Chinese (where the camera was made) before pushing the right buttons. Case in point: When I want to take a close up portrait in film, I focus on the eyes, open the lens wide to blur the background, set the shutter speed higher to compensate for the wide lens opening, compose, then click away. It's almost instinctive. With the digital, I must first recognize that the shot will be a portrait, then select the portrait mode. I have no idea what part of the face the lens is focused on or what the background will look like. I just have to trust that the electronic elves inside the camera will get it righ t. So far I have not been disappointed. At least for most of the shots I've made so far, the elves have done a good job. Once in a while I'm surprised by the flash popping up because the head elf decided that the light was too low and I neglected to inform him that I didn't want to use flash today. Picture quality has been excellent. No complaints here. But having worked in the applied industrial design field for many years, I do have to say that the interface is not intuitive. It is not just a question of offering a lot of possibilities, but of presenting those possibilities in a logical order which follows tha photographer's though process. This is a camera whose control interface was deisgned by engineers, not by users. What happened to all that Olympus OM experience? The OM SLRs were paragons of convenience and usability. The E-500 is more like the Leica III series than the Leica M. Too many fiddling little adjustments although the picture quality is just as good. Oh w ell, I suppose in ten years, the Olympus 4/3 cameras will be thought of as classics. Right now I'm going to follow Ted and Tina's recommendation and shoot everything in RAW. This will transfer decision making to the complexity of Photoshop, the program with the steepest learning curve in the history of computerdom. I can hardly wait. Larry Z