Although the E-500 has many professional features, it is still below par for a professional camera, mainly because of the small viewfinder, lack of custom functions, lack of USB 2.0 connectivity, lack of a vertical grip, long power-on delay, output quality at medium to high ISO settings, only 3 AF sensors and not very high number of frames per second (2.7). If those aspects are not important to you, I’m sure very good results can still be obtained, especially because of the excellent lenses.

Another six for those who are into non military and non airliners.

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4 Stinson L-5B Sentinel OO-PBB
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Glyn

A recent picture of this aircraft, which belonged to HRH Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, restored in its original colours.

I’ve considered getting this lens too but, especially after reading reviews complaining about the slow autofocus, I decided to get the AF-S Nikkor 4/300 instead with a 1.4x converter. This lens is tack sharp and has much faster focus than the 80-400.

On the plus side of the 80-400 are the VR (vibration reduction) capabilities and good optical quality.

Jamie,

There are many good DSLR’s on the market, each with their own pro’s and con’s and supporters of course. In my opinion some of the best and most unbiased reviews can be found at this site http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/ , complete with comparison examples of camera’s in the same category.

And yes, I have a favourite too (Nikon D2x), but this doesn’t mean that I disqualify other makes and models. My advice: read as many reviews and user reports as you can. Decide which aspects are the most important to you. Make a shortlist and try to handle as many of the camera’s on your shortlist as possible and decide for yourself.

Good luck and enjoy!

I have a Canon EOS 300(film, the old stuff!) and a 75-300USM zoom. Could I get the shots with this lens?

By all means, go out and try for yourself. For some positions/angles 300mm might be too short, but with careful planning you should be able to grab excellent shots. When I started aviation photography more than 40 years ago, I’ve even managed to get nice photo’s with lenses as short as 50mm and 135mm. Some cropping afterwards could be necessary. Therefore select the slowest films (fine grain) which allow you to use the shutterspeeds you require under the circumstances.

Is there anything i can do to sort it?

Honestly I don’t know. Probably the best thing to do is to contact Opeka customer service ( mailto:Support@opteka.com ), but be prepared that the repair cost could come close to the new price of this lens. Good luck!

Delta before you buy anything, check out the New Olympus E500. This camera is priced in the EOS 350D Nikon D50 range but has the features of the 20D. Not only this, but the Olympus kit lens are far and away the best on the market, and the build quality, is second to none. Just ask the shops how many come back for repair. Also the Olympus is the only manufacturer that can offer wide angle.

The new Olympus camera’s are indeed well worth looking into, as well as the latest offerings by Pentax, Konica Minolta, etc. However, compared to Canon and Nikon, those firms still don’t offer camerabodies in the professional digital league. Also as a consequence of this, the range of lenses to choose from is a bit limited, with hardly any alternatives from 3rd party lens manufacturers.

Olympus is not the only manufacturer offering wide angle lenses. Canon and Nikon offer an extensive range of wide angles, some especially designed for their DSLR’s (like the AF-S DX Nikkor 12-24mm that I own). Also firms like Sigma, Tamron and Tokina have wide angle lenses in their programs especially designed for DSLR’s.

A histogram is a graphical representation of the distribution of all the light values in a picture. The darkest parts are on the left and the lightest parts on the righthand side of the graph. If a histogram would show a distinct peak on the righthand side you’re obviously overexposing and you should compensate the exposure with a minus correction. A peak on the lefthand side means that you’re underexposing. An ideal histogram would show a peak somewhere in the middle and no “spikes” on either side. A more extensive explanation can be found at this site http://www.nikonians.org/html/resources/guides/digital/histogram_101/index.html

I’m not familiar with the Fuji Finepix S5000, so it could be that this camera doesn’t have the feature to display histograms. However most more advanced digital camera’s, including all DSLR’s (like Canon 350D, Nikon D50/D70, Konica Minolta A1/A2/A200/7D , Pentax), do offer this extremely valuable feature.