The Orchid Source - Orchid Forum

I recently wrecked my old Olympus C5050Z 5mp. I needed something new, but had just a few dollars to spend...and I didn't want to go with an SLR...changing lenses...cleaning sensors. After a little looking I found an Olympus SP-565-UZ on sale for under $250 and thought I'd give it a try.

10 megapixel. Effective 28mm to 550mm zoom lens. Anti-shake. Macro, and Super Macro getting as close as 1cm. Lots of nice auto-settings, but has all the manual controls as well. Wide ISO range 64 to 3500. I also like it that its one of the few cameras available that is still powered by four AA batteries...meaning that in an emergency you can find batteries anywhere. Most apparent downside is the aperature is only 3.5f to 8.0f. So far, I'm satisfied, without spending a couple G's.

By GOOOLLY! With all those features and that awesome lens the price must have had an extra 0!! Either that, or the seller must have had a senior moment!
With that lens and Super Macro too, that is an incredible price!

i hope it does as well for your future piccies as your dead camera did in the past.
20x optical zoom ! how can something so good cost so little ...?

Hi Ed,

I just bought a new camera also, a Panasonic FZ28 which has 10 MP and a 18x zoom. I'm just learning it today, but the price was good ($279 at Costco) and it's rated very well by everything I saw. It has countless features, many of which I will probably never use but also nice auto settings. It will be more than enough for my photography!

fwiw, ed and g, keep your iso at 200 or less to eliminate noise. the small sensors in the point and shoots produce a lot of noise at iso 400 and higher. fortunately, you should not need the higher iso for orchid pic taking. i have had both oly (the oly 5050) and panasonic p&s cameras with good results as long as i kept the iso low.

enjoy your new toys!

ellen fl

ellen is right-on. I keep the ISO set on 64 for all my orchid photos and anything I want for quality, and I shoot with a tripod always, because of the slow shutter speed. For other photos...family candids, etc...I'll set it as high as 200 for stop action.

Good to hear about your Panasonic Guillermo, I looked at those too. It took me awhile to choose between cameras...there are lots of good ones out there now.

Please educate me here........what is noise and what is the impact on the photos?

Grain.....it shows as grainy photos.

as irma said, noise is the digital equivalent of film grain. if you need to use a higher iso, you can always get rid of the noise in post-production. i use a program called noiseware. however, you usually lose some detail using noise reducers . . . even the in-camera ones.

g., download a high iso pic to your image processing software and zoom the pic to get an idea how much noise/grain you get. excess light adjustment in post-processing also increases noise.

ellen fl