grnofslt
11-24-2005, 09:02 AM
I've been searching for a digital camera for a couple years now. I currently use a 12 year old Minolta 9Xi which for the money I paid was the most awesome camera I have ever owned. Prior to getting the Minolta, I owned an Olympus OM-4T which also was a phenominal little machine. I've chosen my new camera to be an Olympus Evolt 500 for a number of reasons.
1. Zuiko lenses have always been exceptionally good
2. Olympus' light metering systems have always been accurate and their new updated ESP has 49 segments that it reads light from where my Minolta's matrix metering system only has 14 so that would appear to be fine tuned a bit
3.Olympus seems to be the only camera company who makes digital SLR cameras with some sort of anti dust filter for the CCD. I spent an e vening in an AOL chat room talking cameras and heard the discussions about how to clean the CCD. I feel that this is worth changing my camera system even though I have about $5000 of Minolta glass
4. The E-500 also has an 8.1 megapixal CCD which while not as large as the Nikon 12.x CCD, it is larger than the 6.1 megapixal CCD of the Minolta Maxxum 7D.
Even though I am buying into a completely new system I will be keeping my eyes on Minolta waiting to see what they come out with. My reasoning is that with their Maxxum 7D they kept the controls very similar to my 9Xi which had front and rear control dials for over riding the fully programmed exposure control while keeping the same exposure value (increasing or decreasing the shutter speed while in Program Mode would cause the aperature to change accordingly).
I stayed away from the Minolta Maxxum 7D this time because of the cost (over 1200 most places street prices), small file size (6.1 mega pixal CCD), no special efforts to manage dust on the CCD and I would be afraid to be splashing liquid about inside of the camera to keep a most important component clean. I do admit that I really would love image stablization which the Maxxum 7D has, but I did without it with my film camera, I can do without it now for a while anyway.
Now to my point… What camera system would you buy into for your first digital SLR camera and why. I am asking this because even though I have made up my mind about the system I am getting, I am still looking for opinions from the street, that is those of you who are working with digital photography
Regards, Billy J
1. Zuiko lenses have always been exceptionally good
2. Olympus' light metering systems have always been accurate and their new updated ESP has 49 segments that it reads light from where my Minolta's matrix metering system only has 14 so that would appear to be fine tuned a bit
3.Olympus seems to be the only camera company who makes digital SLR cameras with some sort of anti dust filter for the CCD. I spent an e vening in an AOL chat room talking cameras and heard the discussions about how to clean the CCD. I feel that this is worth changing my camera system even though I have about $5000 of Minolta glass
4. The E-500 also has an 8.1 megapixal CCD which while not as large as the Nikon 12.x CCD, it is larger than the 6.1 megapixal CCD of the Minolta Maxxum 7D.
Even though I am buying into a completely new system I will be keeping my eyes on Minolta waiting to see what they come out with. My reasoning is that with their Maxxum 7D they kept the controls very similar to my 9Xi which had front and rear control dials for over riding the fully programmed exposure control while keeping the same exposure value (increasing or decreasing the shutter speed while in Program Mode would cause the aperature to change accordingly).
I stayed away from the Minolta Maxxum 7D this time because of the cost (over 1200 most places street prices), small file size (6.1 mega pixal CCD), no special efforts to manage dust on the CCD and I would be afraid to be splashing liquid about inside of the camera to keep a most important component clean. I do admit that I really would love image stablization which the Maxxum 7D has, but I did without it with my film camera, I can do without it now for a while anyway.
Now to my point… What camera system would you buy into for your first digital SLR camera and why. I am asking this because even though I have made up my mind about the system I am getting, I am still looking for opinions from the street, that is those of you who are working with digital photography
Regards, Billy J