A good camera for rostrum work?

[RICHARD007]

Hi

For the last few years I have been using a modest little Olympus C-5000 zoom to photograph posters of varying size including very large Italian film posters (200x 180 cm)The zoom 7.8 to 23.4 mm zoom had little distortion as long as it was squared up correctly and you give a generous border that would be cropped in photoshop. It also had a infa red remote, AV out, a TIF file option, personalised settings and rechargable batteries - all essential.

Now its on its last legs I'm looking for a replacement. Olympus suggested I buy their E620 or E30 SLRs with 11:22 and or 14:54 lenses but this is way outside my budget. Can anyone suggest a suitable alternative for this kind of work that takes advantage of the latest megapixel specifications but at a reasonable price?

[Barney]

this is way outside my budget. Can anyone suggest a suitable alternative for this kind of work that takes advantage of the latest megapixel specifications but at a reasonable price?

It would help if you told us your budget, what's reasonable for one may not be for another.

[RICHARD007]

Yes of course. Ideally I would spend as little as possible -say under £500 inc. lens. The main criteria is that I can take good product /2d shots in a studio enviroment.

[alanS]

Panasonic LX3?

PS - you can actually get a DSLR and at least one lens within your budget.

Canon eos 1000D + 18-55 and 55-200mm lenses.
Olympus E420 or E520 + 14-42 and 40-150mm.
Sony A200 with 18-70 and 75-300...

the list goes on.

[Barney]

Yes of course. Ideally I would spend as little as possible -say under £500 inc. lens. The main criteria is that I can take good product /2d shots in a studio enviroment.

If that's your sole requirement then I would click here have a look at the cheapest DLSR body only and look to get a 50mm f:1.8 lens for it. You should be able to get a combination of the two for £250-£300. This will give you much better results than you will be currently getting. The only caveat is that the cheaper Nikons will only manually focus with the 50mm lens, but that shouldn't be a probelm, I'd be looking to manually focus anyway.

[parisian]

Barney is absolutely correct - your other alternative is the Micro 4/3 system with the Panasonic G1 and lens for (just) under £500.
I'm sorry to say that you are unlikely to find a 'TIFF' option on any new camera - they take either RAW or JPEG images. You will need best quality and will need to shoot RAW files. This will then need a RAW convertor to allow you to work on them in Photoshop. Later Photoshop versions have Adobe Camera RAW included which will do for you and all new cameras that shoot RAW files have at least a basic convertor in the box.
Hope you are successful.

[PeteRob]

Could look at a G10 as an alternative.

[PeteRob]

Sorry 2 posts - bought a Ricoh Caplio GX something (8?) for my wife to copy family history documents - I think that had both a TIFF output and a text option that would give photocopier type output - no mid tones just black and white for docs. Don't know if more modern Ricoh compacts do. It was a nice little camera.

[RICHARD007]

Thanks everyone! I appeciate your help.

[Still_Togging_Along]

You could purchase a s/hand Olympus E1, this definitely generates TIFF files, plus as time and funds become available, you can add lenses and upgrade the body. Whilst I now have an E3, I have kept my E1 as it's compact, as tough as old boots and whilst 5.1Mp seems low, the image quality is excellent. Whilst RAW files do offer greater levels of exposure correction, they are not much use if you are away from home, using a computer which doesn't have a RAW file editor already installed on it.

I too miss the ability to output files as TIFFs, so you have my sympathy on that score!