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if you want built in IS then you're after Sony or Olympus. Should be simple thereafter...

what looks good is right, but be aware that the effect at 100% magnification can be a little different from the look on the scaled image! There's loads of advice in assorted websites about this, and the effects you can achieve with "out-there" values. You're using quite strong values IMHO. I gather the standard the Reuters agency accepts to "sharpen," rather than enhance the contrast on submissions, is a radius of 0.4 and amount of 300%.

thanks aaron, good to know people care about my pain. i guess if i moved to digital my holidays would be shorter and more efficient 'cos i might be able to just take one perfect picture and go home. come to think of it, i don't know why i don't just buy a lot of postcards and slap them in the album. i may just give up halfway up the mountain. i'll call it "downhill thinking" and set myself up as a guru. anyone want to join my culture of early baths? and as for jas, everyone knows time is doughnut shaped...

everytime i take my best photo something goes wrong at the developers

nice wife, ed

i think this is one of the drawbacks of photography. it play to the narcissist in us, pushes us to believe that we can be captured by something we created, that we should be capable of perfection in photographic terms, and that we ought to judge ourselves on that basis. its as if being in a nice place at the right time (and at the right angle) defines how you spent your life. it seems to me that reactions to photographs are much like all art forms, and that this is art, not science. it may be that you judge something because of the memory of shooting, because its shape is mum's-breasty, because the colour is like you football team, because the camera is new and the image justifies all that money; and your chums see it in a whole new light. it's refelcted in the comments in the galleries, where reactions clearly differ in intensity of feeling from analytic to emotional, and i don't think this is just about the humour of the viewer.

(getting longer, must take pills)

dan

its a matter of nature that some people have a tendency to express themseves rather forcefully. as indicated above, this can often come accross strongly when there's no mitigation from smiles and body language. entering a group is always slightly intimidating, and any of us with social skills will recognise that a little reconnaisance is helpful in order to get to grips with whomever you're dealing with. none of us would like all of our friends to be spineless, attitude free, flanderses, and welcome the odd abrasive touch or strongly held opinion. this is a discussion board, not a commune, so vive l'arguement, just keep it different.

i'd just like to add that i agree with everything everybody says.
dan

nobody writes to me anyway. PM just makes me feel more unloved.

it's a competitive world Mike, but the happy thing is that most people (apart from the mildly deranged) want only one of everything. most people can certainly only use one of everything and therefore are inclined not to pay over-the-odds for the second one. what this means is that, for every item in relatively abundant supply, the snipers will eventually fall by the way until only you are left to bid. for items in less abundant supply, sadly there is a law of supply-and-demand that dictates that you're gonna have to pay more. it's about free trade, and i think it trumps any governmental involvement, as long as there's no consortium or monopoly of snipers (this is geting a bit x-files so i'll leave off before i start to check my lampshades for bugs). i think the only exceptions are going to be those peole who use ebay to stock their shops with desirable second hand goods. in this case, you can get a bargain still. consider the fact that most people are still after a profit, and have overheads to cover, and you'll see that they can't possibly bid on ebay up to the second-hand value of the item they might want to later pass on...so then, get onto mifsuds or whatever, check out the secondhand price of the item you're after, and bid a little less than that for your top price. if you're lucky, nobody will compete, and you get a bargain. if you're unlucky, then somebody else just paid over the odds, and you saved yourself getting ripped off. if you can't afford the second hand price of the item then you can't afford it, and the internet can't make it not-so.

that's condescending, matt.

(that's satire btw, please don't get angry)
sleep well.
dx

jessops are short on crumpler other than teh small disital bags, and these are just like anyone else's (aside from the silly names) jacob's have lots tho' and they're on public display for you to pick up and play with if you want! i think they're relying on brand to sell to you. as you say they have a reputation for quality, and they think we're gullible enough to go for it! well i am anyhoo!

ceri:
well said, the irritating "no reserve" epithet on an item where the bidding starts at retail value really p*sses me off. i guess that's the pedant in me tho'
dx

other point about 50mm primes is that they're harder to use. if you stick to your 28mm then you can fire off landscapes and dramatic rule-of-thirds shots to your heart's content but without any consideration beyond that to the subject, the framing etc. a medium zoom allows you to crop ok, but encourages a peicemeal approach to the photographic world. i say you've gotta master the 50mm before you get lazy and start relying on the easy stuff.

just a point about whether you can place more than one bid: you can, but you don't want to. if you bid twice then you end up bidding against yourself, and this defeats the objective of proxy bidding...
there is a frustrating phenomenon where people (often retailers it would seem, with fast internet connections) will hang on to the final seconds of the sale and pip your best bid by 10p. it's kind of frustratnig to see this happen, and the only way to stay sane about it is to see ebay as a way to offer a price for a second hand item, and hope that you get it cheaper. it's important to remember what you're prepared to pay before you start, and stick to that, and know that whatever you're bidding for is probably going to come around again at some other time. the joy of the internet, it's really quite big you know.

CCS do toploading bags that i think should give room for your needs. they also run to lots of accessory pouches in matching colours. i used these CCS bags for sometime, but have now switched to a crumpler bag which i think is A1, but not quite to your brief.

yes. yes. but you get what you pay for!
bigger problem might be the quality of printed images in B&W, my experience is that inkjets seem to produce blurred, rather dichotomuosly black'n'white, and colour-cast prints, but i believe there are some specialist papers that might address this.

all this is very erudite, but i think we're getting lost in sophistry. the thread was started as a query involving changing from one format to another, and this, pragmatically, is best addressed by the equvalwency approach taken by most manufacturers. the main gist of the debate other than that about whether "magnification" and i'm using inverted commas deliberately here, seems to be whether theoretically there are advantages or disadvantages to different frame sizes and whether this places constraints on resolution etc. in essence, we're dealing firstly, in a world where theory and practice don't equate, and where the main test of performance is the objective one (if the image is good does it matter if it shouldn't be?). in terms of whether there is a valid concept that resolving power needs to be higher for a smaller sensor, i might note that IMHO, in order to focus on a larger plane, the light passing through the lense needs to have passed a greater distance for any given focal length. thus the size of the image will be greater. the magnification, laterally, of errors will increase proportionately to the magnification of the image, laterally, as one moves further from the lens. thus, an error occurring in the lense will occupy as great a proportion of the image at any given point that it is focussed. the disadvantge, again only MHO, of smaller CCDs is that the smaller "pixels" must be of greater sensitivity, and therefore are probably more likely to be affected by noise/interferance, generating errors at the point of transduction. (dunno if that's a word, but i like it!)

well said simon, i got by with my 50mm 1.8, a 28mm 2.8 and 75-150 f4 for some years before falling prey to that many-prime illness. also worth noting how cheap the 300 f4.5 seems to be now. useless for close-up work, and cumbersome for travel, but fine for animal snaps from a hide with a tripod, ar any moderately paced (ie not motorsport) sport you might want to do. i'm going to go and crave some wide angle primes now.

not true that all tele-zoom are mc. also not necessarily true that quality with more glamorous lenses is better, although i would agree that the floating element design and lack of abberations at short focus can be helpful. again, i don't believe that this is limited exclusively to the wider lenses, but is a feature of teh newer designs, which tend to be wider in themselves, but this is time's march, not an observation i would extrapolate simply due to the max. aperture value. some (vaguely) objective tests of performance can be found here, and information about zuiko history is avaliable here
i agree (and hope i made clear) that mc is not definitively helpful. many of my lenses are not multicoated, and i have no problems with them at all.

the low peak is lovely. try lakthorn dale in spring; it's quiet enough and very english. there's a nice walk up via teh adjoining valley. swallowdale is bvery well visited, and a bit hectic for photo's, but maybe if you were interpid enough to get there very early on a summer day you might find room to take some shots.

ok, all true, but to add clarity to 3 & 4 is to answer both together. th2 degree of "magnification" from a given focal length depends on the size of the image at the focal plane. this means that if your sensor is the same size as a 35mm film pane then the zoom lens 28-300mm will have the same "magnification" effect as it does on your 35mm slr. if the sensor is smaller (as is usually the case) then the "magnifying power" of the lense will be proportionately larger. this is not a novel concept, for medium format photographers a standard lens is in the 80mm range, representing a short telephoto for 35mm photog's; for 35mm film, a 50mm lens corresponds roughly, and indeed for APS film (smaller than 35mm) this corresponds to around a 30mm lens. so to adress q4, the reason (particularly compact cameras) quote zoom ranges as multiples is to avoid confusion between cameras with different sensor sizes. if you imagine x1 to be the 35mm equivalent of a 50mm lens, and x2 a 100mm lens, you will have a rough idea of what will be aceived, but don't imagine your existing lens, on the new bdy, will achieve this per se.

point is, price matching is actually just a reflection of the rather large profit margins that (large) retailers can make from these tech' goods. i guess the fact that jessops could be offering the items at a lower price, but are prepared to ask a higher price, is indicative of exploitative practices in the first place. why should we feel gratitude that they are prepared to ask an initially inflated price, but deign to cut to a lower price just to keep business. without supporting the internet retailers (ie buying from them) the incentive for jesspos to remain competetive is eradicated. in terms of repairs and service, the internet companies have as much to lose in terms of reputation as jessops do, and jessops only real alternative to replacing defective items is to post them back to manufacturers for servicing. another thought, how many time have you been offered a ridiculously overpriced, and frankly exploitative, warranty by an internet shop, and how often by a high street chain. the "service" offered by larger chains is often just another con...(please be advised that i temper all this with a lot of respect for many of the staff in the jessops stores that i frequently use for expertise and polite service, a premium i'm prepared to pay for!)

drifting back up the discussion, the worry about the ebay frauds is that obviously people are hacking into nice legitimate sellers accounts. even the feedback ratings are of no value. forwarned it is clear that there's something that doesn't match (sellers with long lines of ww11 memorabilia in germany suddenly shipping pro-digital cameras out of singapore and requesting "email first for details!") i suppose the golden rule is that if it seems too good to be true...

comedically, i was recently spammed by someone alleging to be my bank, and explaining that, due to a computer error, they needed to check my account number and PIN code, and would i be kind enough to send it to them. sheesh!
dan

"the faster the better" probably isn't a good philosophy for zuiko lenses. teh glass quality is renowned throughout the range, and the 3.5s are often not inferior models, just earlier incarnations. it might be more worthwhile to consider whether the lens you're looking at is multicoated (mc badged) as this reflects on the quality of finish (only on newer lenses) but even then is of equivocal significance. obviously the advantage of a wider lens is that you can see what you're shooting better in low light conditions, and can push it just a little further in the dark... however most lenses are at their best when not wide opne, and this applies to the zuikos as much as any other(experience and reviews) you can't really take advantage of wide lenses in the ranges you're discussing anyhow. a 28 or 24 mm lens can be (just about) handheld at 1/30, for me making it suitable for most lighting considtions even with 50asa velvia, and a 200-300mm should probably not be handheld at any speed if you want credibly sharp snaps. unless you intend some fairly specialist indoor photography, or want all your photos to be the shallow depth of field, dramatic-portrait, type, you could easily get away with the f3.5 zuikos without any worries. of course, if you want glamour...

there's one on ebay at the moment (as abpve it's 49mm, there are no 50mm zuiko's out there), haven't seen one before, so competition might be fierce1 good luck

nice, you can get good money second hand for a 50/1.2 (see www.skipwilliams.com/olympus/zuiko_ebay_history.htm for an idea) and then trade it in for teh 1.8 or 1.4, which give as good if not better images anyway. wityh all teh spare cash you can get hold of a 28/2.8 and 100/2.8 and you're laughing (although having moved on to a om4t from om10 (avoiding the need for a manual adapter altogether) and fallen even deeper in love, i might hold my money earned in abeyance until a bargain comes along) check out the superb www.star.ucl.ac.uk/~rwesson/esif/om-sif.htm and www.mir.com.my/rb/photography/hardwares/classics/olympusom1n2/shared/zuiko/index.htm for even more olympus factoids and goodies. dan