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Re: [OM] Mid-Iowa ZuikoFest - AG's results

Subject: Re: [OM] Mid-Iowa ZuikoFest - AG's results
From: Joel Wilcox <jfwilcox@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2009 08:37:15 -0600
On Sun, Feb 1, 2009 at 11:10 PM, Ken Norton <ken@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> This week's "Featured Picture of the Week" is a collection of shots taken on
> Saturday during the outing with Joel.
> No film images, though.  Haven't had a chance to get them developed yet.
>  That's where the "good stuff" is, though.  These are just the digital
> "proofs".  :)  All told, I took about 800 pictures--I'm sure Joel's success
> rate was a bit better as he probably took half the pictures I did.
>
> Same place as usual:
>
> www.zone-10.com

Hey, I recognize a few of those sites.  I'll try to get my act
together here and pony up a couple images now that I know what I have
to go against!

Hey, thanks for putting a big flaming circle around my anticipated
success rate, Ken.  HA!  I took fewer photos because I was mostly
fiddling around with settings all the time and moving back and forth
between cameras.  I'd like to think that would improve the success
rate, but not very likely.  Have I now sufficiently lowered
expectations?

I used both E-1 and E-3.  Since I used Zuikos +adapter exclusively on
the E-1, and since I found the Z 300/4.5 to yield my best results, I
feel as though I got by best photos of the eagles with the E-1.  I did
use the 300 on the E-3, but not too much and, I believe, only with the
2XA TC at that time.  I was hoping that that combination (=1200mm in
film terms) along with IS would yield sharper results.  But I think
it's just an inherently soft combination.  It's not recommended by
Olympus even though they mate and it tends to exacerbate the CA of the
300.

The DZ 50-200 didn't give quite as much reach as I would have liked at
200mm.  Nor was I very accurate in following the eagles in flight.
Using the single focus point setting I just couldn't stay with the
birds well enough to make the focus accurate.  It's not that it
doesn't focus well or quickly, it just ended up focusing on something
other than the bird.a lot of the time.  I think I would have been
better with this lens to have focused manually, waiting for the birds
to enter the "focus zone" -- which would have been reasonably
successful.  Another possibility might have been to use a broader
spread of focus points (five) rather than just one or the whole
eleven.  A good reason to do it all over again!

But what a great day to be out.  A little wind early on died out and
the temperatures as the sun rose were largely in a perfect winter
range of mid-20s F.  Later in the day it reached into the 40s.
Beautiful, full sun the entire day.

I found out that Ken is a bit of a snob about the Kodak sensors.  I
have to say that right out of the starting gate I prefer the capture
of the E-1 myself, though I know that camera better and have tweaked
settings in it to get what I really like.  There are so many more
options with the E-3 that I haven't really tested the settings that
might be likely to yield something similar to what I've got coming out
of the E-1.  It's pretty much soft and bland right now and I rely on
RAW development processes to get me to something closer to what I
like.  I think the E-3 is somewhat more accurate in a clinical sense,
but the E-1 is currently more beautiful and "photographic" right out
of the box.  My E-330 was apparently a lot easier to "tune" to a
result similar to the E-1, but the E-3 is a different beast and I need
to live in the menus for a while it seems.

Joel W.
-- 
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