meissner

<p>Lets see last summer, one of the renaissance faires I went to turned into a torrential downpour for about an hour. I had the E-3 with the 14-54mm lens, and kept on shooting (we don't need no stinking plastic bags :-)). Later in the same trip, I went on the Maid of the Mist boat ride at Niagara Falls where you go into the falls itself, and do get rather wet, and took both the E-1 with the 11-22mm and E-3 with the 50-200mm lens. Both cameras are still fine today.<br>

Now, I do suspect that if you routinely go into harsh situations, that sooner or later the seals will fail, just like some jeep owners have to get pulled out of really remote locations because they keep pressing the envelop.<br>

That being said, the E-3 is a full sized DSLR (probably about the size of the mid range Nikon DSLRs unless you use the portrait grip), and the splash proof lenses aren't that small either. So, I'm not sure whether it will give you discrete like the micro 4/3rds cameras that you might be thinking of (E-Px, G-x).<br>

Olympus does make a line of weather sealed point & shoot cameras (the tough series), though a generation or two before, when I looked at the tough series, I felt the image quality was lacking (comparing it to other p&s cameras, and not DSLRs). A lot of people would like Olympus to come out with a splashproof micro-4/3rds camera.</p>

<p>Generally my use is for the E-3 is:</p>

<ul>

<li>14-54mm, typically 50-60%</li>

<li>50-200mm, typically 25% (with/without the EC-14)</li>

<li>50mm, typically 10%</li>

<li>11-22mm, typically 5% (I'm not that drawn to wide angle, though when I rented the 9-18mm, it did allow me to get a few shots that I like)</li>

</ul>

<p>The following lenses tend to be used less often in specific circumstances:</p>

<ul>

<li>Sigma 30mm (low light, no flash shots)</li>

<li>Olympus 70-300mm (typically with EC-14 for the ultra long range)</li>

<li>Olympus 40-150mm mark 2 (mostly I carry this because it is small in case I need the telephoto, but often don't use it)</li>

<li>Olympus 14-42mm (kit lens from my E-510, but the E-510 is sold now)</li>

</ul>

<p>On my E-P2 it is mostly the m14-42mm lens, with the 14-54mm or 50mm being the 2nd and 3rd choices.</p>

<p>Another site to check out is new55, which seems to be trying to recreate the process from scratch: http://new55project.blogspot.com/</p>

<p>While a full fledged laptop is big and bulky, another option is a netbook with a large disk and the smallest screen you can stand using. I just went over to newegg.com, and saw you can get a netbook with a 250GB disk in it for $300 compared to $267 for a Nexto 250GB extreme at B&H. A netbook is handy if you ever get to a place that offers internet wifi to check up on things (but don't plan on backing up across the internet, since the bandwidth is likely to be a killer).<br>

Note, the big names in the portable storage space are Hyperdrive and Nexto, both of which have fairly fast copies, and long battery lifetime. However, some of the competitors take a long time to copy and their batteries don't last too long. If you are going to be away from the power grid for an appreciable period of time, you might want to consider the units with the longest battery time and fastest time for copying.<br>

One thing that I ran into with a Vosonic unit a few years ago is the track for Compact Flash is pretty small and unlike most CF devices, it wants you to install the card with the label pointing down. I jammed in the card and bent the pins. So, if you have CF media, be careful in these units.<br>

Another thing is since these units have laptop disk drives in them, and it is possible to knock a unit off the table and make the disk stop working (been there, did that). Newer laptop disks are more rugged, but you probably want to get a shock bag to protect the unit from vibrations when the disk is turned off, and being careful to avoid vibrations when it is writing (I had some transfers fail when some kids were jumping on the concrete next to where I was sitting and I could feel the vibrations in the bench). Taking two units (or a netbook + PSD) and writing to both for redundancy would be a good idea.<br>

In terms of writing to CDs/DVDs in the field, many places only seem to write to CDs and the 640-700MB of a CD is awfully small these days. If you are going to be writing DVDs, it may make sense to have 4GB cards, since one card will write one disk, and you don't have to worry about spanning DVDs.<br>

For a long trek, it may make sense in addition to netbook, buy a compact portable DVD writer. Then burn two copies of your cards, keep one, and every so often, mail the other DVDs home in appropriate packing to survive the mail system. That way if your gear gets lost or stolen, you still have a partial record of your trip. You could also mail portable disk drives instead of DVDs.</p>

<p>I do tend to get the Olympus extended warranty (not the store warranty) for cameras that I plan to keep for awhile, because the extended warranty includes a free camera cleaning, and I send in the camera a few months before the camera goes out of extended warranty. I figure this way, the cleaning prolongs the use of the gear by a few years and the warranty is generally cheaper than paying for the cleaning separately. Also, usually by then, the rubber grip has started to separate, and the cleaning gets it back to the original condition.<br>

However, you can lose on the deal. I had an E-510 that I sold which I had the extended warranty on but had not yet used. Given, Olympus warranties are not transferable, I didn't get the value of the cost.<br>

Since I can buy the extended warranty any time within the original warranty period (1 year for new cameras), I usually shop around and can sometimes find it on sale.<br>

In terms of store warranties, I tend to avoid them, though when we were using video tapes on our TV, we did get the unit repaired several times during the warranty period. Most store warranties are however only a profit center.</p>

<p>I was alerted to this thread by a poster on the 43photo.com forum, and I just joined photo.net so I could post my thoughts and experiences. I go to renaissance faires and science fiction conventions in costume and have recently been thinking about disguising the camera.<br>

First of all, it depends on how serious you are about re-enactment. It didn't sound like you were on the serious side of re-enactment at the moment. If you were, the only period way to go forward is build your own wet plate camera setup. In looking around, I did discover a commercial photography studio in Gettysburg (where else?) that does wet plate photography: http://www.victorianphotostudio.com/Victorian_Photography_Studio/Home.html.<br>

Using google, I saw a daguerreian society: http://www.daguerre.org/<br>

Next step rather than doing wet plate, is to move a little forward in time to 4x5 large frame photogrpahy with a wooden view or field camera. You can either get normal film and process it (either your self or by using one of the remaining labs that do large format processing), or you can use the Fuji instant film (FP-100B) that is available if you want to share your photos during the event. If you hunt around ebay/craigslist, you can usually find used cameras for a few hundred dollars that are working. The 3 bodies I've bought so far were in the $100 range, and with some cleanup, two of the three would probably be usable. I imagine the large frame and pinhole forums here would be helpful.<br>

Outside of buying used cameras, you do have some options:</p>

<ul>

<li>B&H sells a do it yourself 4x5 kit, and either get a lens or use it as a pinhole camera: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search?Ntt=4x5+sheet+film&N=4291574011</li>

<li>There is a new 4x5 camera kit that will hopefully soon start producing the kits: http://www.diycamerakit.com/</li>

<li>If you are handy in a woodshop, you could build your own: http://www.instructables.com/id/old-fashioned-view-camera/</li>

<li>Here is another DYI guide: http://home.online.no/~gjon/lffaq.htm</li>

<li>You could buy one of the current 4x5 bodies, which starts getting into serious money: http://www.shen-hao.com/indexen.html, http://www.chamonixviewcamera.com/, http://www.canhamcameras.com/, http://www.toyoview.com/, etc.</li>

</ul>

<p>If you have a DSLR, you could mount the DSLR into a 4x5 camera instead of the film: http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/article_pages/canon-view-camera.html<br>

Getting away from period cameras, we get to disguising your camera in a bellows frame. I am in the middle of this project right now. I attended a steampunk convention on May 1st, with my Olympus E-P2 inside of a Kodak Pony Premo #4 (which was made between 1906-1912) 5x7 frame camera: http://www.the-meissners.org/albums/2010-pimp-my-ep2/index.html#hidecamera<br>

<img src="http://www.the-meissners.org/2010-small-albums/2010-pimp-my-ep2/small/2010-05-03-08-59-013-hidecamera.jpg" alt="" width="800" height="623" /><br>

<img src="http://www.the-meissners.org/2010-small-albums/2010-pimp-my-ep2/small/2010-05-03-09-00-014-hidecamera.jpg" alt="" width="912" height="707" /><br>

Some thoughts:</p>

<ul>

<li>Depending on your digital camera, it might not fit in a bellows camera. When I bought the 4x5 bodies, I discovered the E-3 DSLR just was wider than 5". I then looked around for a 5x7" camera to give me some more room. At the moment, the E-P2 is sticking out the back, until I can fashion a holder to move the camera further into the bellows. </li>

<li>Even if there is enough room to hold the camera, a lot of digital cameras have the lens off center, which can complicate things. </li>

<li>One of the things I've learned is the older cameras had smaller lens mounts. When I took the lens off of my 4x5 (Scenca, Graflex) and 5x7 (Kodak) bodies I discovered the hole was fairly small. I originally wanted to use my larger lenses for the E-3/E-P2 in the bellows, but the opening is around 40-45mm, and my 67mm lens would likely vignette. So for the moment, I'm using the smaller camera. </li>

<li>Another thing to watch out for is lens movement. With the E-P2 I found if I put the lens as close to the bellows as possible, the camera might not autofocus because the bellows would interfere with the lens movement. </li>

<li>Besides using a used donor body, or one of the kits I mentioned above, another possibility is there is a faux bellows camera made as a display piece for the home with a tripod. It might be easy to mod this and produce acceptable results: http://www.wildorchidquilts.com/u28229.html </li>

<li>In doing the mods, it is very helpful if your camera has an lcd that shows the picture before you take it (i.e. traditional p&s, or DSLR with live view). </li>

<li>Having a camera that takes a wired shutter release is also helpful </li>

</ul>

<p>Good luck, and have fun!</p>

<p>I have seen in one of the other forums (dpreview.com probably which is down right now for upgrades, possibly 43photo.com, but I couldn't find it there) that somebody took apart an Olympus off-camera flash cable (FL-CB05) or 3rd party equivalent cables (including Canon, since the pins overlap), and separated the 5 wires inside. They then used scotch tape to tape the wires to the equivalent pin on the hotshoe, and carefully slid in the EVF. You mount the flash on a bracket, and you have the ability to use the EVF (or microphone adapter) and flash at the same time. In using a bracket, you do give up some of the smallness of the E-P2.</p>