Olympus C-5060 VS. Canon G5
I have owned a Canon EOS for 10 years now, and have always been happy. It is time for me to purchase a digital camera so that I can throw in a big purse and go shoot w/o lugging a lot of accessories around, etc. I do want some bells and whistles, and seems as though the Olympus C-5060 & Canon G5 fit my needs pretty well.
I shoot a lot of landscape, animals, outdoorsy shots, some portraits, as well as abstract photos-including close-ups, macro, etc. I want clear photos for enlarging, and crisp color.
Any feedback, opinnions, or constructive criticism on these cameras is welcome.
I shoot a lot of landscape, animals, outdoorsy shots, some portraits, as well as abstract photos-including close-ups, macro, etc. I want clear photos for enlarging, and crisp color.
Any feedback, opinnions, or constructive criticism on these cameras is welcome.
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Comments
Go hold them in your hands.
Operating System Design, Drivers, Software
Villa Del Rio II, Talamban, Pit-os, Cebu, Ph
I like the accessories that go along with both, as well as the manual options. I am wondering if either have the ability to just point and shoot - and not fumble with the menus if need be.
Thanks
The point and shoot camera's sensor sizes are about 1/2 the area of the APS sized sensor in the EOS 300D, EOS 10D or even the Nikon D100. The larger sensor size means that the images have MUCH less noise - At ISO 400 or higher the 300D will absolutely destroy the G5s image quality. If you only want to shoot 3x5s at ISO 100 without cropping you may be happy with the G5.
I think the 300D can be had for around $800 to $1000 - more than the G5, but you will still be happy with the 300D for the next few years - Maybe you should offer to buy my G5.................hmmmmm..............
If enlargements - 8x10 or bigger - are your goal - the 300D images will bitch slap those from the G5 - even if the G5 images are shot as RAW files which the G5 supports. I do not know if the Oly can shoot RAW or not.
How do I know this - I shoot and use a 10D and G5. I bought my wife a 300D to replace her nikon CooPix 5000. No contest - and my wife agrees with me too. Keep your Canon glass and grow your system with the digital SLR - There still are no point and shoots that can compare to the digtial SLRs. Plus the EOS digtal SLRs shoot and focus like you expect them too - not with the delay and focus and then shoot you get with the point and shoot cameras. The ONLY advantage of the G5 is that it will fit in a large shirt pocket and it is a little cheaper.
This was shot with a G5
This was shot with a 10D - same sensor as the 300D --
If you look into the Wide Angle Thread - you will find a thread by Fish titled "Pathfinder is a Bad Influence" Fish is absolutely correct!
Moderator of the Technique Forum and Finishing School on Dgrin
I did nothing but reasearch both the G5 & the Olympus for months prior to purchase...at the end of the day only 2 things swayed me to the olympus...AA batteries & a very fast 1.8 lens. The 5060 has neither of these features so i would peg these 2 cameras as a photo finish. It is a very hard choice as they are both excellent..i have played with a G5 & in my opinion i like the Olympus's on board menus better, nice & easy to operate.
Are you aware there is now an Olympus 8080 ?
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/specs/Olympus/oly_c8080wz.asp
Either way you will end up with a good camera...dont be talked into an SLR. They are a different teapot of eels...i would dearly love one & have been tempted but it would defeat the purpose for me. I carry the 5050 in my backpack as i run to & from work (except this morning which was possibly a tragedy equal to or greater than that day long ago when russell perkins split his head open on the slide at school & i was at the dentist, veronica james said you could see his brain wiggle everytime he had a thought...just one of those sunrises that looked like the japanese flag & I MISSED IT !!)
These 2 cameras are just a good size in between from a pocket camera to an SLR & the photo quality rests about in the middle as well...a good compromise. Plus you dont get any lens envy.
Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabis, ad caput tuum saxum immane mittam
http://www.mcneel.com/users/jb/foghorn/ill_shut_up.au
"The Edge... there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over."-Hunter S.Thompson
buuuttt.........why do i ride a bike that isnt as quick or nimble as an R1...cant roost & slide like a WR 450 but will kick both of their arses if they ever stray into each others paddock. Versatility my good man...versatility.
I have a humongous dslr and a bunch of lenses and an itty-bitty little DimageX for putting in my pocket when riding or wearing a Tux and it is not appropriate to be all laden down with camera gear. My choice then was based on an unbeatable price, tiny size, and the right feature set. Otherwise I would have gone for a Canon of some sort.
Operating System Design, Drivers, Software
Villa Del Rio II, Talamban, Pit-os, Cebu, Ph
I did not mean to step on your toes or offend - I use the G5 in the tank bag on my 650s - small, easy to carry, less stuff to mess with, and it takes nice pictures. But like you said - the image quality is not up to the DSLRs - but sometimes that does not matter. The new 8 mpxl cameras may be getting closer to the DSLRs but their sensors are STILL 2/3rds not APS sized so they still will suffer from more noise than the 300D.
But Jaxs is a SLR user in film and already may have Canon glass - thus the answer I gave him. But like you - I carry a G5 in my backpack everyday.
Canon has announced their new 8mpxl Powershot Pro1 point and shoot also - might be worth looking at too as well as the Oly 8080
Here is the link for the Powershot Pro1 http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/specs/Canon/canon_pro1.asp
I am sure Michael Reichman will review it in the next few weeks - he has already reviewed the 8mpxl Sony and the Oly C8080 - He was not a fan of the Olympus C8080 ( And Hugmongus I have nothing against Olympus - I used OM-1s, OM-2s, and OM-4s for years )
Hope fall is coming for you and will give you some cooler weather.....
Moderator of the Technique Forum and Finishing School on Dgrin
Please excuse me for asking such 'dumb' questions, but this will be my first digital camera, and want it to fit all of my needs exactly...
thanks in advance
With the olympus you can simply (like most cameras) turn it on & put it on 'P' & the camera will choose a good setting. Also you can store 8 personal settings at what ever you want for a manual setting...just flick the dial to personal & hit what number you want. The other thing i have been doing of late is to use the 'bracket' mode whereas the camera takes 5 different shots at the same time all at different settings so you get to choose if an over or under exposed shot is sometimes better than 'normal'
As for immediate speed i just leave the camera in a type of sleep mode, uses very little battery & hit a button to wake it up for a quick shot. In this mode the camera is also locked. This gets around the startup time.
I think the new 8 Mp's are getting too big for me...a camera has to fit in a bike jacket pocket or else i wouldnt use it.
Highly recomended on your side? over the G5?
thanks
Its our cyclone season now (hurricane)We have a massive anti-cyclone closing in on us right now. I call them that as the winds are strongest on the outside. Its been brewing in the Coral Sea for a week...still may form into a normal cyclone. We are expecting winds of 110 mph & massive tides this morning but its 5.20 am & the place is black outside & dead calm...quite spooky.
Good Luck !!
Why the AA batteries over the Lithium-Ion rechargeable?
Dig cams love their batteries...if i run out of power i can just go to any shop & buy a set or often i carry 4 AA's for extra backup. Cant be done with a manufactures battery.
5050
3x optical zoom
20mm macro
1/1000 shutter
35mm wide lens
f1.8-f10 lens (i can only find f1.8-f8 but 1.8 takes a nice photo in the dark)
AA Batteries
iso 100,200,400
5 white balance settings + manual
5060
4x optical zoom
30mm macro (the metric system will win eventually you know guys)
1/4000 shutter (thats pretty damn fast !!)
27mm wide lens
f2.8-f4.8/f8
rechargable lithium iron battery
iso 80,100,200,400 & manual
higher pixels on LCD screen
9 white balance settings + manual
less lag i am told
If i had to buy now i would buy the olympus...just one thing that G5 owners said they didnt like was the lens barrel being visable in the viewfinder...i cant remember it though but it did piss a few off. I think the olympus is also a bit smaller than the G5
Hell....i just love my camera
Like the Olympus, the G-series cameras are excellent point-and-shoots, if that's what you prefer. Set it to Auto and it does a nice job of automatically white balancing, exposing and focusing your shot for you.
I think the G3 is a well made, dependable camera that takes excellent shots. You might read reviews of both cameras in which you're interested at www.dpreview.com or www.stevesdigicams.com.
Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabis, ad caput tuum saxum immane mittam
http://www.mcneel.com/users/jb/foghorn/ill_shut_up.au
Speaking as an owner of a C2500L, which does smartmedia and CF, I'll skip SM. I've had a number of chip failures in the 4 years I was shooting with the C2500L, and every single one of them was SM. I've never had a CF fail.
When I was shopping for the replacement for the C2500L the only media type I put on the list was CF. Lots of options, cheap, and durable. (So then I went out and bought a microdrive; we'll see how much "durable" means. :-)
Except for the SM failures I was very happy with my C2500L, up until I got the 300D. It's amazing how much less sensor noise the 300D has.
jimf@frostbytes.com
Yep an SLR is a much better camera & I may buy one one day down the track, but have a long way to go to learn the olympus 1st.
I admit to having been very wary of the microdrive; I like solid state. But it's half the cost per gig, and I needed space bad with the 300D grabbing 6M per shot in raw mode. An unexpected bonus is that it's noticably faster than the 22x CF card I bought first. I gather it works at about the limit of the CF spec's data rate whereas most CF cards operate well below that limit. I can't shoot continuously but it doesn't lag nearly as much as the docs say it'll lag, and in the end I can shoot faster than I could with a manual wind SLR.
So speed plus relatively cheap high capacity are double-plus good.
By all reports you want to be kind of careful handling it though. I am not so much concerned while it's in the camera, since dropping the camera would be a lot more expensive than just the drive :-/, but I've fumbled with it during removal/replacement on occasion. Extra care is required.
cmr164 pushed me towards the microdrive; Charles, if you're reading this, how long have you been using yours?
The thing that that's been bumming me out is how long it takes to pull the data off the microdrive and onto the laptop. I can shoot like a half gig of pictures in ten or fifteen minutes when I'm doing portraits, then I spend about as long pulling it off the drive and onto the laptop. I'm going to be experimenting with a firewire reader to see how that works; the Lacie USB 1.1 reader I'm using now is slooooow but I am not sure if it's the reader or the drive. It's kind of a cheapo reader so I'm betting that that's the problem.
jimf@frostbytes.com
Good god man! They are ATA devices. You can pick up a PCMCIA adapter for less than $10 bucks and the speed will be almost as fast as your notebook drive.
I probably have a spare I could give you. I owe you anyway for the help
Operating System Design, Drivers, Software
Villa Del Rio II, Talamban, Pit-os, Cebu, Ph
If only ... but the 12" G4 Powerbook has no support for PCMCIA. I actually have several adapters that I used to use with my Linux laptops (in fact, I just discovered another one in my file cabinet at work this morning) I just can't use them :-(.
jimf@frostbytes.com
I borrowed a co-workers firewire CF reader. It's about five times faster than the USB 1.1 reader, pulls a full gig in something like 5 minutes. My USB reader is about to become a spare.
That's still only a bit more than 3M/sec, and I gather the card is supposed to be able to do upwards of 13M/sec. Oh well.
jimf@frostbytes.com