Forum members,
I just purchased my first (while second technically - first never used F707) SLR digital camera.

I went with an Olympus Evolt E-500, it cost me here in Calgary $490 with lens, body, brand new with 1 year warranty on the body and 3 years on the lens, also paid $35 for a compact flash card 1 gb, so a total of $540.

This camera has much more options then I have previously ever had on a camera. It is going to take some toying around to figure it out!

Has anyone on this forum had one before? What is your opinion on this camera?

Should I have went with the Nikon D300 which was much more, or did I make a good choice?

Thanks,
Chris

You never used your 707? what a sweet camera that is, I wish I still had mine.
You got your self a very nice little SLR.
It doesn't take too long to learn.
Lots of helpful people on this forum if you have any specific questions.
What kind of photography you into?

You really can not go wrong with buying an SLR these days, they are all made very well.
It can be hard to choose what features you like and how it feels in your hands. I did the very lengthy Canon V Nikon comparison before deciding on my 30D and I love it.

Your going to find out very quickly if you love your camera, and I think you will.

No, I never really used my F707 except to take some pictures at the last Montreal Expos games a few years ago!

My favorite type of photography is nature, travel, and things like that. I like to take pictures and add them on wikipedia.

I also need it to take high quality pictures of my watch movements on occasion!

Well there are a lot of options, a lot more options then the Sony F707 it seems. I am going to play around with it over the next couple days and see if I can get it into working mode :)

I am going on a trip most likely in the next month or two and I need to be a professional by then.

Thanks for your input.

I got my e-500 last June. Took some great shots right away using the auto mode. It has lots of pre-set options for shooting in different conditions, but I usually use the aperture priority mode now.
Very happy with the purchase, finally got back into photography after my film SLR gave up the ghost. I had a first generation point and shoot digital camera in between, the difference between that and the Olympus is night and day. My only wish would be that I had a faster telephoto lens, but I'm not quite ready to fork over $1000 to upgrade yet!
A word of warning about the compact flash card. Get a good brand name card with at least 2GB for shooting in RAW, no-name cards are not freindly to this camera. I recommend shooting in RAW, you have the most options for editing and saving some of those less than perfect exposures.

thanks for the advice, i will purchase a 2 GB card online :)

he gave me a sample of the repetitive photos you could take with the flash card, it was amazing but I have never needed that feature before.

i have no idea but my photo's are turning out blue :(

i don't even know how to get to the LCD screen so I can see what I am shooting...... I hate reading instruction manuals for electronics,never had to do it before!

If your photos are turning out blue you need to change your white balance setting.
Unfortunately you do need to read some of your manual, its part of becoming pro. You need to know everything your camera does. Read a chapter and experiment with the camera. You don't need to read it all at once.
You could also download the pdf version of the manual then you can do searches inside the manual.
I find this helped me a lot with my new camera.

check costco for CF cards, i know the 4gb ultra 2 cards are going to be on sale later this month, and they already have the best prices on cards, hands down.

i have no idea but my photo's are turning out blue :(

i don't even know how to get to the LCD screen so I can see what I am shooting...... I hate reading instruction manuals for electronics,never had to do it before!
does that camera have liveview? it's a relatively new feature in dSLR's. likely you need to have it on a specific mode, like Av or something. My camera doesn't have live view, but the only time i could ever see using it would be for something like setting up a frame while the camera was on a tripod.

also, once you get a bigger CF card, always shoot on burst mode... i take 2-3 photos everytime, just in case one isn't focused properly, or is a bit blurry from shake, or whatever. it can be hard to tell, even on my 2.5" lcd.

thanks for your input.

another question i have, and one major reason i bought a digital SLR, was in the hopes that I could use the camera to take extremely close photos of watches, to see every detail on the watch very closely.

i see on the net they have macro lenses, do I need to purchase an advanced, additional lens, to take excellent up close, detailed shots of something preciseo

i would like to make the image bigger then the subject itself, is this possible?

thanks

You will need a macro lens.
Some brands use ratios some use X factor.
1x will get you normal life sized macro
2x will get you twice normal life sized.
Ratio lenses will be 1:1 or 2:1 the higher the number ratio or X will have larger then life sized details.
Numbers can also have fractions like 2.25:1 or 0.5X or 1.7X
Some general use lenses will have a macro mode so you can focus close but not good for bringing tiny watch details to life.

Congrats on your SLR purchase! :D

If you want to learn a bit about some basic elements of photography, you can pick up any beginner photography book from the library and do a bit of reading. Even the contents of an older book about SLR film cameras will be ~80-90% relevant to digital cameras of today, as far as photography techniques and terminology goes.

Beyond that, just keep shooting to your heart's content :)

Can anyone tell me, my camera seems to have lost the ability to focus and all of my photos are blurry?

Does anyone know why this could be or how I could fix it?

thanks

Are your set on manual focus?