Dslrbooth Review
Elder Raman
I was taking photos a few days ago, and I had it set to Manual. After about four photos, the rest started coming out black. I could see through my eyepiece clearly, and it took the photo normally, but when I reviewed it they were all black.
"Manual" means that it is up to you to set the correct exposure. It's conspicuous that you didn't mention what exposure settings you were using, so I'm not sure that you realize that you have to do that yourself.
Of course, there's no point in using manual if you blindly follow the autoexposure system's recommendations. But if the meter shows severe underexposure, then you're probably underexposing the image and will get a black image.
The obvious answer is that you're underexposing them. What shutter speed, aperture, and ISO were you using? It sounds like maybe the first few were with a setting that was correct, and then perhaps a dial was moved. The effect of this won't be visually previewed in the viewfinder, although the viewfinder status numbers will tell you how the camera is set.
To sum up the issue, you are using full manual mode but have not determined an appropriate aperture and shutter speed that would result in a correct exposure. Other than a few happy coincidences where the ambient light level just happens to match whatever aperture and shutter speed the camera was set to on the day, photos are not going to be correctly exposed unless you do this. Underexpose by more than, say, 7 or 8 stops (say, by going indoors or by night falling) and it'll just look like total darkness.
I think there's an attitude among some beginners that if they're not in full manual mode, they're not doing proper photography. Some people seem to believe that professional photographers always shoot in full manual mode, even if they are taking snapshots of their daughter's friend's birthday party, for example.
Neither is true. Manual mode is specifically helpful for when you want to be able to set a particular aperture and shutter speed. If you are not in a specific situation where you want a specific aperture and shutter speed, you don't want manual mode.
When you shoot in full manual mode you are fully responsible for exposing the picture correctly: making it not too light or dark. The camera will not help you at all. If you shoot in manual mode but complain that the picture is too light or too dark, you are putting the cart before the horse: the whole point of manual mode is for when you know how to set the exposure better than the camera would if you let it choose them automatically. Using manual mode should start with knowing what aperture and shutter speed will result in the desired exposure.
Professional photographers venture away from auto mode because they want to achieve a specific effect by using a particular shutter speed or aperture (or both). That is, they understand what effect a particular aperture or shutter speed has on a picture and want to exploit that. It doesn't sound like you're in this position since you expected the camera to get the exposure right.
If you would like to learn more about the effects of aperture and shutter speed, by all means do so. Also check out the Aperture-Priority and Shutter-Priority modes on your camera, as they allow you to have full control over just one of these settings at a time while the other one is adjusted automatically by the camera.
If you read Amazon reviews looking for the perfect product, it doesn't exist There will always be product failures AND some users are simply absolute morons! Choose a drive with an overwhelming number of positive reviews and you should be fine.
I have used both WD and Seagate external drives with various systems for years and never had a problem. But I would still always go with two redundant drives with a second one stored offsite (your office, bank, relative, etc.) which greatly reduces the possibility of data loss due to equipment failure, fire, or theft.
I did a lot of enterprise risk management consulting over the years and driving risk down to absolute zero is impossible and extremely close to zero isn't practical but a pair of redundant drives in separate locations provides a very good probability of safety for your important files. The most important thing is you must follow a regular schedule in creating these redundant copies and if a problem occurs with one drive, make a backup of it using another system before trying it on the system where the other drive failed.
I agree with John that the computer is where those memory card contents need to go. High performance SD cards are quite inexpensive now (but get them from someone reputable like B&H because the online market is full of dubious counterfeit cards) so that you don't have to worry about transferring data until you get home from a trip.
There are dedicated transfer devices that allow you to save AND view the files like the Sanho Hyperdrive but it isn't something that most people need and although the price is reasonable for what it does, it isn't cheap.
Smartphones can accomplish a wide variety of tasks and do some of them well but transfer/storage of high resolution image files isn't something that the vast majority of the target market needs so not surprisingly that isn't a task at which they excel.
If you don't need to transfer photos in the field, the cheapest storage is to use an external hard drive with your current PC. I have a bunch of 5 terabyte drives, cost around $100 each, and I use them for longer term storage of photos ( two drives per data set so I have a separately located backup just in case).
5 Tb will hold a LOT of RAW files. 8 Terabyte external drives are in the $150 range as SSD prices continue to drive down the cost of mechanical/magnetic storage which is plenty fast for long-term storage of files. I have two internal regular hard drives and two solid state drives in my HP workstation and I use one of the SS drives when working with RAW files. Transfer via USB 3 is fast enough for me with these long term storage files and avoids the additional price premium of using Thunderbolt external drives when that level of transfer speed isn't necessary.
By the time I got out of college auto focus cameras were starting to show up. I bought a slightly used Minolta 9000 (professional) with a 50mm f/1.7 Minolta AF lens during my fist semester of photo school. Somehow I lost touch with the OM cameras, and nobody I knew recommended or talked about them. Not too much after that Canon launched the EOS 650, which changed everything (kind of like the 5D many years later), and made the Olympus OM cameras basically obsolete. Nikon followed closely behind with the Nikon 8008, which was also auto focus. It was a new generation for SLRs. So my love for Olympus cameras was buried, but still alive.
With the kind of photography I do, and living in the rainy state, I mean sunshine state (Florida), I constantly worry about getting my cameras wet. Many cameras are tough, but not many are water resistant. I remember shooting along the shoreline a few years back with my (then) new Canon 5D, and a tiny lick of a wave hit the camera and shut it completely down. It did recover, but I constantly worried. This was one of the big attractions to Olympus for me.
Because the Olympus E-System was built from the ground up for digital, the lenses have some unique features. One custom feature for instance is the ability to have the lens reset (back to infinity) when you turn off the camera. This may not sound like a really big deal to you, but anything that helps save a split second of time and get the shot as opposed to not getting the shot, is a worthy feature. Setting the lens back to infinity means that the next time I turn the camera on, I already know where my lens is set, on infinity.
In body image stabilization is, in my opinion, an advantage over lens only image stabilization. Why? Because Image Stabilization works with EVERY SINGLE LENS you put on your E-5. Not only Zuiko lenses, but also third party lenses as well. I waited for several years, as did everyone else, for Canon to update its wildly popular 24-70 f/2.8 L lens. They have finally done so, but to the disappointment of many, still without Image Stabilization. Not so with the Olympus E-5 because the body, not the lens, does the work.
I think that Olympus has good quality control. Nothing about the E-5 feels cheap but instead feels very well engineered, very well put together and tight. The rubber grip is tight, the dials are smooth and the buttons and knobs feel like quality even though they are plastic.
For a camera in this category (pro or semi-pro) the frame rate at 5 fps is surely lagging. It should be at least 7 fps if not 8. To be truly competitive in sports photography, you need at least 8 fps.
The jpeg buffer on the E-5 is unlimited I believe, but the RAW is not. At this level, I think it should be at least 60 at the fastest frame rate the camera can shoot. The Nikon 1 is a perfect example of this. If Nikon can do it in a tiny, mirrorless camera, Olympus should be able to in its flagship model.
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