8GB of XD?

[dspphoto]

Hi Larry,

I just wanted to say thanks for consistently bringing good information to the Olympus threads. I bought my sp-350 largley based on your experiences with it and with the exception of the shutter lag, which drives me mad, I haven't regretted it. Click my photos to see my first attempt at shooting underwater in Belize two weeks back. There is room for improvement, and I'll need a wide angle and strope soon, but there are some respectable results I think.

So, ya, thanks very much.

Dano

 

[torrey]

Nice shots Dano. You've got alot of color in there! I didn't expect the internal flash to be so bright. I don't have a strobe yet either, so I'll have to rely on the internal flash as well when I go to Cozumel next weekend. Did you go by Larry's suggested settings, or venture on your own?

 

[Larry C]

Very pretty shots, Dano. Looks like a nice dive. I'm jealous. I'm glad I could be of help. Being new at this stuff, I've just been stumbling along myself, and I'm happy to pass on whatever gems manage to filter through my ignorance and inexperience. The best solution to shutter lag on the SP is manual focus and manual flash settings. I'm still trying to figure out a way to switch from auto to manual focus settings without the camera defaulting to 9 feet and me having to scroll down before I shoot at the more usual 2-3 feet. If anyone has discovered this, let me know please.

 

[dspphoto]

Nice shots Dano. You've got alot of color in there! I didn't expect the internal flash to be so bright. I don't have a strobe yet either, so I'll have to rely on the internal flash as well when I go to Cozumel next weekend. Did you go by Larry's suggested settings, or venture on your own?

Ya, I didn't expect much from the internal flash either so I bought a magic filter and spent the first couple dives snapping away with only ambient light. Then I decided to try out the flash and was pretty much blown away. It has a fairly short usable distance for sure, but by the end of my trip I was managing to balance it with ambient pretty well.

I pretty much experimented with my own settings, but I definitely followed the advice about setting up "my mode" and using it.

Very pretty shots, Dano. Looks like a nice dive. I'm jealous. I'm glad I could be of help. Being new at this stuff, I've just been stumbling along myself, and I'm happy to pass on whatever gems manage to filter through my ignorance and inexperience. The best solution to shutter lag on the SP is manual focus and manual flash settings. I'm still trying to figure out a way to switch from auto to manual focus settings without the camera defaulting to 9 feet and me having to scroll down before I shoot at the more usual 2-3 feet. If anyone has discovered this, let me know please.

Thanks for the tip. I hate all the scrolling, and if there were a quick way to get into manual focus mode I'm sure we would all rejoice. Isn't there a way to assign quick functions to certain buttons? I need to read up on it more. Or just go ahead and drop in on a housing for my real cameras...

Thanks again Larry.

Dano

 

[Larry C]

You can use the custom button setting and set any of the functions to whichever button is convenient. My issue is that once you've switched to manual focus, it seems to always default to about 9 feet. You then have to scroll all the way down the first bar to get down to 1 meter. If I'm shooting MF to make my shots faster, it defeats the purpose to have to fumble the buttons and scroll for 2-3 seconds. I might as well be in AF and holding the shutter button halfway down. Also, for SMacro, I want the manual focus to be at 2-6 inches. I have to scroll through two or three screens to get there from the 9 foot setting. With my upper middle age eyes, I have trouble reading the setting or judging when the little "focus square" in the middle is in its best focus. So far, I haven't had any luck with presetting the distance at a lower setting and saving it there. It always seems to default to 9 feet.