Rome - the camera geek edition

[neadods]

The new digital camera I bought was an Olympus FE-210. It ate a fair number of batteries, but that appears to have been a combination of my taking old batteries and the fact that it punks out when it heats up - and it heats up quickly if you leave it on, even if it's put to "sleep."

After eating my entire vacation's worth of packed batteries in Pompeii (a combination of heat and age, I think), my brother gave me a pair of the lithium AAs, and those stood me in good stead for several days, taking over 200 pictures, even when hot. Then with fresh regular AAs (and a cool camera) it lasted another day and a half. Definately happier with the lithiums.

Anyway, aside from that, and my inability to set the #@(@)*! date and time so it wouldn't nag me every single time I turned it on!, it was a very good camera. Seriously, a very good one... that like cars that take premium gas, wants to have the premium batteries.

First of all, it was amazingly sensitive to light - IF you turned off the flash. Here are two pictures of the door to the Pantheon.

This is with the flash, at twilight:


This, taken a second later, was with the flash turned off.


And this, boys and girls, is why I had the flash off for most of the trip. It made the pictures brighter!

Then there was the zoom feature. This is a mosaic that John Paul had installed when he was shot - he credits Mary for his survival, and she is looking at the place where he was shot.


This? Is where I was standing at the time. Look for the hand upper rightish for where the mosaic is.


By the way, the icon was made of a picture snapped in the Vatican's map room.

Comments

[maypanic.livejournal.com]

I'd say you made a good choice on that camera. The stones of the Pantheon glow with their own golden light- as long as you can hold the camera steady enough (I can't without support), natural light is usually preferable.
The map room! Isn't it incredible? I could've spent days in there.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I liked the Egypt room best of all, I think. And the views out the windows, oddly enough; there was a huge thunderstorm while we were in there, so everything was all misty and rainwashed.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

PS - one of the settings on the camera is called "shaky hands" and it did seem to considerably reduce blur. I have no clue how it worked.

[shawan-7.livejournal.com]

Yes, I love my Olympus as well. As you say, it eats batteries -- they all eat batteries -- but at least they are batteries easily available worldwide. I'll take your hint on lithiums though.

So far, sounds like a great trip.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

The lithiums made a HUGE difference! Definatly the batteries I will travel with from now on. I do have to memorize how to set that friggin' date and time, though; that was really starting to annoy the hell out of me.

[fyrdrakken]

Switching out to rechargeable batteries for my last camera (enough to always have a set of spares riding in the camera bag waiting to be swapped in) was the kind of move that had me wishing I'd done it years ago. (Though now I have one that uses the special batteries, which makes it very good things that they last for so long and that I bought a spare to keep charged.)

And after my previous camera broke, whenever I turned it on I had to set the date and time every damned time I was about to use it, before I could actually take a picture. (Well, not had to, but I really prefer to have the "date taken" be accurate for sorting purposes.)

[neadods.livejournal.com]

I don't think mine's broken, I think I just haven't memorized the sequence yet. There's some button I haven't yet pushed to set it in stone.

But then, with all the battery swapping, nothing was set in stone.

[ladyfox7oaks.livejournal.com]

O_O Wow, just... WOW...
Will definitely have to keep this in mind when I finally break down and get a digital camera myself...

WOW...

[neadods.livejournal.com]

It's a good camera, and cheap for its kind - it was about $125, with a 1 Gb chip that I got on sale at Staples for $20. That, with the proper batteries, is supposed to be good for about 500 shots.

[acciochocolate.livejournal.com]

We have found that the best thing for digital cameras are the rechargeable batteries. I used them all four days in my new camera at Dragoncon, and never ran out of battery. Very thrilling, compared to all the times before when batteries have died at crucial moments, and one didn't have spares, or the spares were no good. At any rate, I highly recommend rechargeable batteries! :)

And it sounds like your trip was a blast!