glenbarrington

Personally, I did not find Lightzone to be more intuitive than Lightroom. But then I've never been a fan of the zone system, especially for color. The speed and responsiveness of LZ was OK, I guess, but it wasn't as fast or responsive as PSE5 or ACDSee Editor 4.

 

In my opinion, it is a clever niche product that does an OK job, but it is not something I personally care to use. I'd say, give it a fair try before you buy it. If you like it, fine, but other than the unique user interface, I don't think it really adds anything you can't get elsewhere.

I was a US Air Force Photographer from 1968 - 1972, good training, interesting assignments, lousy equipment. I literally was issued a 1949 Anniversary Speed Graphic that was older than me. So most of us used our own equipment. However, they never balked at getting us whatever supplies we wanted and never complained about any 'training' materials that we may have used. We also frequently had the only air conditioners on some bases aside from the base commander.

 

I have no idea if it has changed or not. But I don't regret it one bit.

Don't whistle, hoot, or yell, 'HUBBA HUBBA' as the bridesmaids walk down the aisle. However it IS OK to make kissing noises in a respectful tone at that time.

Unfortunately, there is some logic to David Wagle's point. Can't say I'm happy about it though!

I use it a lot. I haven't found anything I like better and I have looked at quite a few.

 

It isn't perfect, it definitely has a few quirks, but I doubt you will find anything more powerful for less than $200 USD.

 

Just a hint, you can achieve some powerful effects not already in the extensive effects list by placing the same photo in the line up two or more consecutive times, each version with different editing. Then by using a rather fast fade and by controling the display time of each photo, you can create all sorts of effects that make the viewer think he/she is seeing a single photo display.

If you are shooting jpgs and using 8 bit, I don't see much reason to upgrade until you get a new PC. It isn't clear to me if PSE2 will work with Vista.

 

if you intend to start shooting raw or using 16 bit, you are pretty much going to have to get a new editor. Though for 16 bit, I prefer ACDSee's standalone editor, Editor V4 (Idiotic name, pretty good editor) over PSE5. It does everything PSE5 does and all tools work in 16 bit mode. Trouble is, the ACDSee product won't work with RAW.

I think it is also a question of which user interface you prefer. Me? I like Lightroom over ACR because I feel the UI gives me more control in a format that I feel is intuitive. For me, this alone was worth the price of Lightroom.

 

I personally love the idea of non destructive editing. I can go back at any time to a previous version, or all the way to what it looked like at the time of import. True, CS2 has history to rely on; but like all editors, you have to save an image at some point that clears history. Not so with LR.

 

All our praise or whining can only do so much for you. For you to know for sure if Lightroom is right for you you need to download and use the trial. There is no wrong answer to your question, just choices.

Q1 - Yes

Q2 - Pt1 - I thought Album had already been retired from the product line up

Q2 - Pt2 - Yes, I'm sure Adobe makes too much money from PSE to get rid of it and Lightroom will spur increased sales of PSE not restrict it.

Q3 - Yes everything and more. It does some things differently, but the basic functionality is there.

 

LR will not replace an editor. You will still need PSE or PS for things like layers, any edits that require selection, etc. Basically it is a photo manager on steroids, NOT a dumbed down editor.

 

It is also an excellent raw developer as well (the best I've encountered) and a presenter package for the finished product(Printing/slideshows/Web). the only way to be certain it is right for you is to download the 30 day free trial.

Well, iso 800 is iso 800 (pretty much!) With the kit lens, you also only have a max aperture of f/3.5 and this max aperture shrinks to f/5.6 at full zoom. I think once you start to use the camera in ernest, you will begin to appreciate Oly's decision to emphasize image quality over speed in their kit lenses. (make sure you check your settings, the default iso is 100 to 400 in full auto I believe. so you may want to manualy set the iso to 800 or 1600 in low light situations.)

 

This is another reason to save your pennies for the Oly 14-54 or the new 12 - 50. These lenses have faster maximum apertures, faster focusing, and as a result, make the viewfinders brighter as well. They really improve low light handling in general.

I own an E500, I could have affforded any camera I wanted. I'm not sorry I bought the E500.

 

Go to this web site:

 

http://fourthirdsphoto.com/

 

This is a community site just for the 4/3s Users. You will see that many people are shooting weddings and running photo businesses with the 4/3s cameras. The image quality is quite high. 16X20 inch enlargements are quite possible with this camera. Are they as good as a full frame digital? No. Are they as good as the APS Canons and Nikons? Overall, I'd say so, though each brand has its own set of image strengths and weaknesses.

 

The achilles heel of 4/3s is low light. This is not a camera you want to do concert photography with or astronomical photography. It can't hack it. Noise IS an issue at over iso 800 or so. However, even then, noise is quite managable to iso 1600 with noise management software such as NoiseNinja or Noiseware. If you need the absolute lowest noise possible, buy a Canon DSLR.

 

The kit lenses are pretty good. I think better than their Canon counterparts. But they ARE kit lenses, that means they were built to a price, you can do better. I just bought the 14-54mm f2.8 which in Oly circles is considered the workhorse for the serious photographers. (around $425 USD - not an outrageous price). Olympus has always had a reputation for quality lenses.

 

As you may know, Leica now makes 4/3s lenses for the new 4/3s camera it jointly developed with Panasonic (which is jointly sold under both the Leica and Panasonic label). Like all 4/3s lenses, they will work on every 4/3s camera made. Those in the 4/3s community consider this a major validation of the 4/3s concept. Sigma also makes 4/3s lenses that work with all 4/3s cameras.

 

Your parents may not have known what they were doing, but they did well in my opinion.

Since my original post, above, I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that Lightroom is just too hard to use as a workflow manager. I'm really doing a lot of extra work to get decent prints and that just shouldn't have to be. I think I might have been blinded by the high 'cool' factor that LIghtroom has.

 

I'm now leaning towards a significant reduction in the amount of use that Lightroom will get, and I am looking towards relying much more heavily on ACDSee. Sorry to have mislead the OP.

Currently ACDSee Pro is built around the V8 engine (ACDSee V8), which of course is not the latest version of ACDSee proper (at V9). I have not been happy with the ACDSee V8 raw capability. I tried the trial version of ACDsee Pro, and the raw results are just not up to the competition in my opinion.

 

I've been a long time user of ACDSee and am currently on ACDSee V8, and have purchased Lightroom because of its very superior raw capabilty.

 

ACDSee is clearly superior as an organizer (no competition in my eyes,ACDSee is MUCH better). Lightroom is clearly superior as a raw developer and 'touch-up' editor for jpgs. I prefer the Web tool and slide show capabilities in LR though neither is as good as ProShow Gold for slide shows.

 

A lot of windows users are having trouble getting decent prints from Lightroom, however not ALL are having this problem. I'm personally having serious printing problems with Lightroom.

 

Though I REALLY like the feature set of the Lightroom Print module, frankly I get better more consistent results from ACDSee V8. Once Adobe gets a patch out that fixes my printing problems, I will be pretty happy with Lightroom.

 

I have heard that a new Version of ACDSee Pro built around the V9 engine is expected to be released sometime this year. If they can get their raw development process improved, I think ACDSee Pro will be serious competition to Lightroom. Once it is released, I will try it out and make a final decision then. But rightnow, I'm leaning towards Lightroom.

Somehow, I've got a couple weddings lined up for this summer even though I am

not a professional and did not seek this work out. Also I have come into some

extra money that I thought I'd buy a second Olympus 4/3s body and an additional

lens. It's been 30 years since I last shot a wedding and then I used a Mamiya

C330 (I was young and had a strong back!). I'm fairly certain, if I wanted to,

I could book quite a few weddings each year and I am seriously thinking about

it.

 

Currently, I am using the Oly 2 lens kit of a 14 - 45 mm (35 mm equiv 28 - 90

mm) and the 40 - 150 mm lens (35 mm equiv 80 - 300mm). I am reasonably

comfortable that the image quality of these lenses will be up to the task

though they aren't very fast lenses.

 

For a new lens, I'm torn between the higher IQ of the 14 - 54 mm 35 mm equiv

(28 - 108 mm) Zuiko which will duplicate the shorter kit lens, or the also

higher quality 11 - 22 mm Zuiko (35mm equiv of 22 - 44mm). The 11 - 22 mm

Zuiko is about $250 USD more than the 14 - 54. Both will be a full stop faster

than the kit lenses.

 

My questions are these.

 

1) How useful overall would the extra wide angle be in a wedding situation?

2) Would you rather have a higher quality (and faster) modest WA to short tele

or would you feel that a medium WA to almost normal would be a better addition

to the lens mix?

 

I'd like to do as good a job as possible for these kids, but I'm just not

certain which new lens would be a more cost effective choice. I'm comfortable

that my other equipment needs have been met.

While it is true that you can't 'raw convert' a jpg, the raw conversion tools work on all files that Lightroom recognizes. In other words, to manipulate a jpg, you use the same user interface as you would with raw, LR is mart enough to approprately manipulate the file in whatever manner is appropriate for that file.

Regarding PS as a Plug-in for LR. The SDK is expected to be released in the next month or so and programmers will then have the ability to develop 3rd party apps for the LR environment. I suspect you will actually see editors adapted to become literal LR modules. It can't come too soon in my mind.

When viewed as a "frontend" and a "backend" to an editor, I think Lightroom provides extra value to the workflow. The problems arise, I think, when people confuse LR with an editor. True, it DOES do some things that an editor does, but it's real strength is to PREARE a photo for editing and presentation. It is not supposed to do the actual editing.

Clearly, we haven't heard the whole story.

I am a strong proponent of the older technology that the SunPak 383 represents. (Thyristor Flash units)

 

They are generally more powerful than the dedicated flashes and about two thirds cheaper too. (I just bought a SunPak 383 for $79 USD). What a lot of people don't realize is that these devices offer a form of flash automation that is almost as easy as the dedicated flash units.

 

How it works is, you put your camera on manual exposure, set the camera to the fastest shutter speed your camera will synchronize with flash, and set the ISO you want to work with.

 

Then you set the ISO on the flash unit and the flash unit will give you a choice of f/stops (aperture) and the maximum distance that you can effectively light. Set your camera to the desired f/stop and start shooting!

 

There is a little window on the Flash unit, that is the thyristor. It acts like a light meter and based on the ISO you told the flash you are using, literally shuts the Flash unit down when it determines enough light has reached the subject.

 

While they aren't foolproof (what is? Including dedicated flash units?), they work very well. They work well enough that many Wedding and other commercial photographers prefer to use them.

 

Why? They are inexpensive, they work on virtually any camera that allows you to manually set the aperture, they usually are more powerful than the more expensive dedicated flashes but the thyristor reduces the chance that the light will over power the subjects that are close to the camera, and they are versatile you can bounce light off the walls, or ceiling, fill up a small room, or light an intimate head and shoulders shot.

 

In my opinion, if you are serious about improving your flash photography, your first external flash unit should be a thyristor unit. Then, if you still feel you need some of the unique features of a dedicated flash unit, you might be able get by with something other than the top of the line dedicated flash since your high power needs will be met by the Thyristor unit.

 

That's my take. Hope this helps.

Andrew,

 

Since each photo oriented product produces must be able to stand on its own as a photo Ppost procsssing package, there is no question that you will find considerable feature overlap between PSE, Lightroom, and CS2. However the tools of each product and the way they are implemented are clearly differentiated by title.

 

What lightroom offers is a choice of a new 'front end' and a new 'back end' to your Post processing experience with a whole new user interface. It works equally well with PSE or with CS2 and works pretty well with third party editors as well.

 

If you are happy with your current PP workflow, then you might not be a candidate for LR. However, many people are NOT happy with Bridge or PSE Organizer. This is a logical product for them to investigate.

 

Me? I like it, overall, and I have purchased it.

I haven't seen any reference to anything like that. If it has that feature, I don't believe there is anything controllable by the user.

Raw development only works on images in the Olympus file format called .orf (Olympus Raw file) These are known as raw files and raw files are the native format for all cameras,however while all cameras USE raw, not all are capable of making the file available to the user and automatically convert the raw file to jpg.

 

there are many advantages for the serious photographer in shooting raw images over jpg. too many to go into here. A good internet search on raw files should get you that information.

I bought it today, WOW! This is everything I had hoped it would be.

 

Well, almost. You can forget using PSE3 with it. To guarantee compatability with LR Develop module, you need to have an editor that can use ACR 3.7

What storefront service provides the biggest 'bang' for the buck? i.e. what's

the best one? Why is it the best? I'm more interested in hearing WHY you

like it than I am in hearing WHAT service you use.

 

This is the most intimidating part of coming up with a business plan, in my

mind. And probably one of the most important.

Both the Vivitar 285HV and the Sunpak 383 can be used safely without a voltage regulator. (I'm talking newer ones here not 20 year old beaters and yes, they've been in production that long!) I use my Sunpak without a Wein SafeSynch on my E500 without problems.

 

One word of caution. AVOID the 285 without the HV designation. That is the original version produced without regard to voltage issues. They haven't been produced for many many years, but there are still some floating about on the used market.

 

That being said, I do own a Wein SafeSynch, it's cheap insurance that in a pinch, I know I can use any flash I come across. Also the hotshoe connection and the tradtional PC connection will work simultaneously so I can quickly set up and fire a second flash unit if I need to.

One last thing. With a Thyristor flash unit, you are not restricted to 1/180 second, that just happens to be the fastest shutter speed that the E500 can use with flash. Other cameras may have a faster or slower maximum shutter speed for flash.

 

The Flash unit doesn't really care what the shutter speed is, since the flash fires in about 1/1000 of a second, the shutterspeed doesn't really play much of a part in claculating proper flash exposure.