The Equipment Chronicles, Ep. 1

Telling a story requires equipment. If you want to pass on an oral tradition, it requires your mouth, vocal chords and diaphragm.

If you are telling a story with images, you can create the images using a vast array of mediums, from pencil sketches to watercolor to oil painting to collage, you name it. No matter the technique, humans seem to have a base instinct to create visual imagery.

To present that information to the world in the digital age, you are going to have to digitize it. Scanning is a useful technology but most of us are constrained to a flatbed scanner that measures the size of a sheet of paper and that is where digital photography enters the scene.

In the process of planning how to represent the projects that would be built by A Company that Makes Everything™, an evaluation of camera equipment became necessary. I wanted to have beautiful imagery that honored the work by presenting it at a high fidelity.

Evaluate the equipment you already own

The only camera in the stable (other than a variety of smartphones, which take amazing point-and-shoot photos but don't give you as much control) was an older Olympus E-10 DSLR clocking in at 4-megapixels. A fine camera with quality glass and given the previous owner, who is a talented local artist, I'm sure it was a reasonable, high-end choice at the time.

As a rank amateur, I thought I would take the camera out for a day and see what I could come up with.

Failure is interesting so in the interest of disclosure, out of 237 photos shot over a 6 hour period, all but 32 deserved immediate deletion and those deletions were performed with zero hesitation. Rounded down, the success rate, defined by me as photos that aren't terrible (YMMV) was around 13%.

The consensus was that this camera was fine for taking pictures for the web and most of its inadequacies lay with the operator but ultimately, this camera could not perform all of the duties that were required of it.

First of all, we want to be able to shoot video in 4K and this camera was not even close in that department. Also, the desire was to be able to take small bits and pieces of photographs and still have a lot of pixels to work with. Even though the pixel density was low by today's standards, a noticeable difference between the Olympus E-10 and smartphones (iPhone 6 Plus and Samsung S7 / S8) was the control over focal depth, ability to selectively focus and the quantity of light captured.

Special deal on the cameras I decided to replace!

If you are interested, the Olympus E-10 is available for an extremely reasonable price. It comes with a telephoto lens and a screw-on wide angle lens. It also has a 512 MB Compact Flash card and an AC power adapter as well as Camedia 4.1 software.

If you are a student who wants to learn how to use a DSLR camera without spending a bunch of money and are ok using a little bit older technology (i.e. CF card, old USB port, etc), this is the deal for you. I will ask for proof because I want it to go toward someone's education.

Contact me (@hyperubik) and we'll work out what shipping will cost. You send me the shipping amount and I will mail the camera and accessories to you.

In addition, I have a Canon PowerShot SD870 IS Digital Elph with a battery, charger and two nice cases. You supply your own SD card. Same deal as above. Contact me and we'll work out the shipping.

These are the pictures that I took with the Olympus E-10.