Olympus E-510
Live View LCD
In body IS
Zuiko 14-42mm
Zuiko 40-150mm
Tamrac Express 6
no-name Tripod

I just got the camera last week, so i haven't had a chance to take a lot of pictures with it yet. But so far, what I have done, I've been very happy with.




Larger version with stars and constellations labeled

oh, i forgot to mention, if you are using premium pubstats, you can remove the sleep(5) line, if you haven't already.

and your function already supports what you want.

to use the premium pubstats, you have to specify that. if you don't, it defaults to the free setting

in the memberGreen file, you were using an invalid array association (at least in the lastest version of the SDK) for checking if a player was online. if this version doesn't work for you, change 'status' back to 'online'.
and the reason why you said that one name would work, and the 2nd name wouldn't is because there is a 5 second limitation between calls to the pubstats server if you aren't paying for premium status, so the immediate 2nd call was throwing an error, which made the SDK return that the user was offline. put in a 5 second delay, and it works as it should. oh, and put in the "<br />" so the names appear on seperate lines.

memberGreen.php

Last edited by glyphon, Tue, 15 Jan 2008 05:04.

if you can't hand hold a 1/320 shot, you need to see a doctor

corrected the error at in the LFS_Cars array.

Quote from Dajmin :

ME's story was just too short

did you skip all the side quests? i haven't played ME yet, but from what i've heard about it, if you do the side quests, it is a very long game...or are you considering those as no part of the story?

I personally use photoshop. I'm guessing the program on the mac you are refering to is iPhoto. I've never used Lightroom, but it is supposed to be designed specifically for such tasks.

What about the software that came with the camera? It should be able to handle these tasks.

Quote from mcintyrej :

The Fujifilm camera's are good, I used one to take this picture...

I agree. Both my compact P&S digital and the slr style P&S digital camera are fujifilm cameras.

i took these with my Fujifilm S5000, the slr style P&S (resized for forum)

After much research, conversations with people online and off, more research, more conversations, and even more research, I've decided to go with the Olympus E-510. I considered a bunch of cameras, including some that were suggested in this thread that I hadn't considered before, like the Pentax K100D, but ultimately the E-510 was the best option for me in terms of price/performance/features.

thanks for everyone's advice. i'll comment more when i get my camera, hopefully by the end of this week.

lets see, i went to highschool with a Leif Erikson.
that's all i can think of for people i know with famous name sakes.

for actual celebrities, lets see, almost got into a wreck with Dave Justice (former baseball player), because he whipped out of a parking space without looking. and DJ Danger Mouse was my RA in college

could someone comment on what exactly flash synch is? its something that i've seen numbers for all over the place, but not what it is or why its important.

ISO 64000 you say? that's impressive

Quote from halo :

IMy personal advice; dont look too much only to the bodies of the DSLR, it is temporary, it will probably change in few years, look for more permanent member; lenses, lens variation and if they satisfied you.

that's a great point, and a point that i'm slowly beginning to realize the more i research camera bodies. some bodies seem to be able to handle certain situations better than other, and some have more features than other, and they all the ones i've seriously looked have been capable of taking high quality pictures, but not all the cameras have the same availability of lenses.

last night i started looking at lens options more seriously, and it might end up leading me to a different camera than i was initially thinking.

Quote from STROBE :

Although of course, most of this thread is redundant now anyway since harjun decided to ignore the cries of "an SLR isn't what you're looking for" and get one regardless. Who'd have thought, huh?

i've found the last 2 pages far more informative than the first 2

Quote from XCNuse :

Keep in mind that with adapters you lose the entire purpose of an auto anything on the camera, once you put an adapter in, you get full manual, and at best (luck), you'll get a meter reading.

By the way lol, 50mm is in no way wide angle

yeah, i know that with adapters all auto functions are lost. and the 50mm lens is wider than the telephoto lens is all i meant.

also, i could have called the telephoto lens a zoom lens, because it is...says so on the barrel Sigma Zoom-K. but i didn't refer to it as zoom because that's not really description i wanted to convey about it

although, i didn't know that's what "zoom" meant. good to know.

Last edited by glyphon, Fri, 4 Jan 2008 05:33.

ah damn. it wasn't a nikkor. its a fujica (ax-3). and it seems to use a camera mount that didn't really catch on...fujica-x.

the wide angle lens is a 50mm f1.6 Fujinon. supposedly a very nice little lens. the telephoto lens is a 100-200mm f4.5 Sigma. Don't know much of anything about this lens.

i saw on bhphoto there is a fujica-x to t-mount adaptor. which doesn't seem to be used by anything current. there's a t-mount adaptor for a bunch of other mounts, but that can't be good to use an adaptor on an adaptor. guess i'm not going to be able to use these lenses with whatever i get, which is a shame.

wow...the k100d w/ lens is $499 and there is a $100 rebate through the end of the month :eek:

that's almost retardedly cheap!

and it uses standard AA batteries, which is very nice.

Pros
• the pricing
• using "normal" batteries so emergency replacements are easy to come by
• large selection of lenses, potentially including 2 i own

Cons
• Only goes as low as ISO 200
• Images seem to have a little more noise than similar competition
• IS seems to be not as effective as other models

Last edited by glyphon, Thu, 3 Jan 2008 23:41.

Quote from DeadWolfBones :

Word is you can also natively mount some old Nikkor lenses.

really? I've got one of those from the 80s. at least i think its a nikkor. both it, and the minolta (from the mid 90s) slrs were given to me by my parents when they upgraded to a newer camera.

the nikkor has a standard lens and a zoom lens. granted, neither of them are auto (the minolta one is), but still. having those 2 lenses potentially available is a huge bonus to the pentax. i'm definitely going to have to look into that.

i'm not very far into the review at dpreview, but it seems as if the sony alpha has the same anti-dust mechanism as the olympus, with the difference being sony mechanism activates at power-off, and the olympus activates at power-on.

reviewers seem to dislike the vibration cleaning at power-on, as it extends the power-on time to a little over a second, but, in my thinking it is better to apply the cleaning before you take any pictures, rather than after.

granted, with the olympus, you can manually activate the filter anytime you want, so i'd imagine that you can do the same with the sony.

yeah, but the sony alpha is a bit more expensive. i can get the e-510, with 2 lenses for less than the cost of the sony body.

i haven't read about the sony yet (but, i'm about to), but i'd guess that the only thing that makes it more expensive is the sony name. but maybe i'm wrong. i'll find out shortly

edit, i was mistaken. the E-410 w/ 2 lenses is less than the sony body. the 510 w/ 2 lenses is about $100 more than the sony body (at b&h)

edit2: oooh, the sony takes minolta lenses. i actually have a minolta film SLR. i'll have to figure out if it uses the same mount as this sony accepts. if so, that might just push the sony into the lead.

Last edited by glyphon, Thu, 3 Jan 2008 21:30.

Quote from XCNuse :

@stewart; really! wow, finally canon has a cheap lens! lol to bad they won't give us the zoom lens yet though, my sister has been looking for a zoom lens for her XT for two years now, and the cheapest I could find was $200, but it didn't have IS, which is a MUUUUST for anything beyond 100mm

that's actually one of the reasons why i'm considering the E-510 over the D40/D40x and the XT/XTi...the E-510 has IS in body, so every lens that is used with it will have IS. And from the reviews that I've read, the lenses included in the kit for it are some of the better lenses available. they obviously aren't exceptional, but are good lenses.

out of the box, the images from the E-510 are soft, from the noise reduction processing, but that can be adjusted to improve the image quality a good bit.

one of the negatives is lens selection. There seems to be about 2 dozen lenses available for it, as it's mount is a newer standard over those used by the Nikons and Canons.

but, i still have about 2months till i get my bonus, so i've still got time to research and think about what's going to work best for me.

Quote from XCNuse :

By the way, the D40x and D40 are the SMALLEST SLR cameras you'll ever find except for rangefinders,

actually, the Olympus E-410 is smaller
just for comparison, here's a few camera sizes and weights. although, that's just the bodies. lenses will obviously add size and weight, and that all just depends on the lens itself. oh, the e-410 also has LCD live preview, for those that said dSLRs don't have that

E-410 :: 130 x 91 x 53 mm (5.1 x 3.6 x 2.1 in) 435 g (15.3 oz)
D40 :: 124 x 94 x 64 mm (4.9 x 3.7 x 2.5 in) 522 g (18.4 oz)
D40X :: 124 x 94 x 64 mm (4.9 x 3.7 x 2.5 in) 522 g (18.4 oz)
400D :: 127 x 94 x 65 mm (5 x 3.7 x 2.6 in) 556 g (19.6 oz)


i have to agree with the popular voice here...get yourself one of the SLR style point and shoots. the better ones of those have good zoom (30-300 (10x) isn't uncommon), they have good auto features, and have manual adjustments, for just about any setting you'd need. and like was mentioned, they can do video, which dSLRs can't. and a lot of the SLR style cameras can also use filter attachements.

Quote from harjun :

then what camera do you recommend...the EOS 400D?

No, he's saying the D40x isn't worth the price over the D40.

nope. regular LEDs work fine, depending on the room you play in. if you can adjust the settings on the camera enough to remove all sources of light except for your tracking points, then that's all you need to do.

the reason IR LEDs are suggested is so you can filter out visible light better, and still have a good light source.

i put together a very basic 1-point tracking system last night. i bought a webcam ($30usd) and a small LED flashlight with a clip ($10usd). that's all that was needed. the software is free.

i wanted to try some thing quick, easy, and cheap before putting too much time and energy into this. just to make sure that it works. and it did. i'll eventually build a custom light setup, as the casing of the flashlight blocks too much light when my head is turned too far. but even with that issue, it still works well enough for LFS movements.

Quote from JTbo :

XFG is front wheel drive shopping cart, I believe you did meant XRG which is at least 200kg heavier than AE86 and 100kg heavier than one of my IRL cars that has around same amount of power but same weight distribution as XRG.

oop. i did mean the XRG

AE86 weight: 1089 kg (2400 lb) :: 53%F:47%R (89.07 W/kg)
XRG weight: 1167 kg (2572 lb) :: 54%F 46%R (89.11 W/kg)

going off of of those stats, the two cars seem to be very similar.