My Gear
GoPro HD Hero
Bought 2011
Totally awesome picture quality considering the size. The specs are good to, water tight to 60m.
Managed to scrap the front lins of the housing almost immediately, but replacement lenses are available, and are cheap. Nothing is except possibly the camera itself is expensive.
Another issue is underwater filming. The housing has a curved fron lens which won’t do under water. I have bought a flat replacement lins, and an extra housing for pure UW usage.
Further use underwater shows that the camera needs a lot of light! The film gets very grainy fast with depth as the light disappears.
Olympus 3000 Tough
Bought 2011
Bought as a replacement for the 8000 Tough. Had promised myself not to by another Tough because my poor experience with the 8000. Bought this on sale since newer models were coming in.
To my surprise I like a lot. On thing that irritated me no end was that the 8000 didn’t keep the settings when it went in power save mode, which it did after a minute or so. So if you changed it to be in fast serial shooting mode, or flash off or something and it powered down you had to reenter those values which too long time. The 3000 starts with the settings it had when it powered down! Awesome!
The battery is very sensitive to cold. Below 3-4 degrees Celsius it doesn’t last long. The pictures are better than the 8000. All-in-all feels like a good buy so far.
G12
Bought to replace the wrecked G12. Feels like a step up from the G11. The front wheel is nice.
G11
Bought it with a UW-casing, primarily to use while diving. The controls are really nice, almost better than the 7D. The exception is the wheel at the back of the camera that is a little bit too sensitive to push, leading to the flash coming every now and then.
End Note: I put it in my bag wo folding back the screen so the screen was turned outwards. Something sharp poked it and it stopped working. The camera itself was working fine, but there are too many controls that uses the screen so it wasn’t possible to use it like that.
I bought a replacement screen from China cheaply, but installing it was impossible. When I got it in place I think I’d broken it because it didn’t work. Some days later I accidently dropped it to the floor, and then definately it bricked…
EOS7D
Bough 2010
Feels like a small improvement on the 50D, but the things that are better made it worth the upgrade cost. The speed is nice, the autofocus feels better even though I still have some problems with it every now and then. The large file sizes keeps my local hard drive pusher with new golf clubs, but that’s just the way life turned out, I guess.
I’ve noticed every now and then I actually use the ability to crop in harder, compared to what was possible with the fewer pixels sensor on the 50D. It was very good shooting a flight show, where I had a too short tele, but was able to get decent pictures thanks to being able to crop hard. In some photos where heat turbulence covered the aircraft I used a crop of over 100%.
While in Uganda it suddenly stopped working. Canon repair shop said it was totally damaged by moisture, a write-off. No idea how that happened…
Luckily the insurance covered it.
EOS50D
Bought 2008
Really nice camera. The screen is really good, the buffer takes 17 RAW photos which is good enough in 95% of the times. I still feels it’s not that good at high ISO, above 1600 the noise becomes a problem. If you really need the photo it is usable up to 6400, and even 12800 if you really, really need it. Now sold.
EOS40D
Bought 2007
Had an improved screen and better buffer than the 20D. It drowned when the sailing boat I was skipping capsized…
Olympus 8000 Tough
Bought spring 2009.
Tough, but not that tough actually. When kayaking whitewater I have it in a mesh pocket on the life west. The hatch for the power and USB connectors is constructed so that the carry strap can open it if stashed tight in a pocket. Of course that happened while being tossed around up side down in a river, and the camera was ruined. I complained to Olympus and they sent me a new one, which gives Olympus highest rating for customer care. Now I put a pice of tape over the hatch. Still, it’s irritating because you have to put new piece of tape each time you’ve loaded the batteries.
The handling is mildly irritating because at each power on you have to choose which scene setting you want to use. Why can’t it remember the last setting? Several other settings defaults too, for example the setting for taking photos in a serie. This means that it takes a couple of seconds to get ready each time you start the camera. I’ve missed several photos because of this, which is not acceptable.
The pictures are good in good light conditions, but in poorer light I think quality drops quick. It is irritating that it in Sports mode wants to use flash very early, and that you have to turn off the flash every time the camera is powered on.
The photos have a very “plastic” quality, which is very unpleasant. I’ve heard it’s because the noise reduction algorithms.
So all in all I must say I’m disappointed in the camera and would not recommend it unless you really, really need the toughness.
After about 18 months of fairly strenous use as a skiing and white water kayaking camera the autofocus stopped working. This was a really disappointing camera.
EOS20D
Bought 2004 (?)
My first digital SLR. Liked it a lot when I bought it, even if a couple of things soon became obvious. The small buffer ment that RAW was difficult when photographing sports. The small screen was not really usable for anything. But what I found most disappointing was the poor ergonomics. Coming from the EOS 5 I felt the 20D was a huge step backward ergonomically, especially when using the battery grip. The battery grip was almost, but only almost, unusable because of the poor ergonomics.
As of 2011 I still have it, and use it occasionally.
Lenses
100/2.8L Makro – Bough august 2011, first shoots indicates that it’s ver sharp. And macro photo is fun.
11-16/2.8 Tamron – Solid, nice max aperture. Bought when my 10-22/3.5-4.5 drowned (RIP). I like the bigger aperture, but the limited zoom range is a drawback. All in all, I’d by this lens again over the 10-22 if I have to make the choice.
28-75/2.8 Tokina – Ridiculously sharp, excellent value. So so build quality. Actually had one fall apart on me.
70-200/4 IS Canon – Sharper than ridiculously sharp, excellent build quality.
85/1.2 Canon – Aka Grisen (The Pig). Sharper than the 70-200. Worth every cent…
1.4x extender – I use quite often on the 70-200, and the combo is really nice!
Analog
EOS5D – Still my favorite camera. Seems like Canon forgot all about ergonomic when they started make digital cameras. And I still find the eye-manouvred focus really good! Why didn’t they keep that???
Canon XXX – Bought because my EOS5D got stolen in Quito, hours before we were leaving for Galapagos. Couldn’t go there without a camera. But it’s a crappy camera, cheap plastic and really feels it too!
Leica XXXX
Minolta XXX
Scanners
LS-2000 – Still a good slide scanner! Uses a SCSI connection, which means every time I change computer I have to change the SCSI-PCI card too. And the days of the PCI are numbered…
Epson 3200 Photo – A good flatbed scanner.
Printers
Epson
Canon
