Digital Cameras for Fungi

[Jim DuLaney]

Nathan,

I recently purchased an Olympus C-3030 Zoom from amazon.com.   It has 
incredible versatility including zoom, wide angle, and macro.   It allows 
for many pixel compressions of jpeg files, all of which are good 
quality.   It has a built-in flash, and it can be mounted on a 
tripod.     I have taken several hundred photos with it of the forests and 
forest floors in the Santa Fe and Carson National Forests.   It is 
automatic, but allows manual override.  It uses smartcards which are 
smaller than a matchbook cover and the 32 meg smartcard allows 330 photos 
on the lowest quality, 40 on the high quality compression.    I print on a 
Hewlett-Packard Office Jet 60R and the quality is extremely close to 35mm 
enlargements from a color lab.    It uses rechargeable batteries or regular 
AA and they last for hours.    The flexibility and convenience of a good 
digital camera makes it a very useful tool.   It also can also shoot short 
movies that run in Quick Time.    It allows viewing all photos on its LCD 
and any can be deleted to save space on the smartcard.

I intend to use this camera to photograph mushrooms in our forests this 
August and have total confidence in it.   The macro button allows the lens 
to be within 12 inches of the subject, but with the manual and digital zoom 
enabled, the subject will indeed fill your image.    The lens is fast 
enough to use in dim light.   I am not sure if the built-in flash will 
illuminate the subject while in macro mode, however.

Caveats:   it is very complex and the accompanying manual is essential.   I 
refer to the manual daily.    I must add it is hard to get accustomed to 
the shutter delay that all digital cameras have after using a Canon A-1 for 
all these years.    There is also an Olympus C-3000 for less money that is 
comparable.   Also, the 1 1/2 inch LCD monitor cannot be seen when in 
direct sunlight, but is perfectly clear in the shadows.

Jim DuLaney 


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