I would like to dialogue with someone who has experience with flash shots of people, and/or has used the continuous shot mode on the 850Z. I understand from reading reviews and asking some authors questions, that red-eye is bad due to the close placement of the flash and lens. I have also read about shutter lag as being bad in the Epson...but I am not sure if it is going to surprise me when I compare it to my 600. Those two things are important to me because I am always taking pictures of my twin toddler sons and other people often in flash demanding situations. I have heard that it is easy to remove red-eye with Photoshop, but since I don't own a copy of it, I don't know if it is a easy as the click of an icon or not. I know using a flash on the hot shoe will probably solve this, but taking the camera everywhere will already be more difficult due to its rather large size without the addition of the flash unit.

I own a Epson Photo PC 600, which I have absolutely loved since I got it. I want a higher resolution, the ability to better frame my shots with the zoom, and the ability to get a number of pictures in rapid succession for sports, in addition to the excellent performance I have come to expect from the 600 and the 850Z was looking like the camera for me. Reading reviews of cameras like the Olympus C-2000 have left me somewhat doubtful.

I wish Imaging Resource had access to the Epsons...I would like to see a review from them so I can gauge it against the others on this site. I have already read excellent reviews from Steve's Digicam's and others, but one of the reviews the author hadn't even taken flash pictures of people subjects.

-- Jarrod Rominske (deepsnow@freewwweb.com), April 07, 2000

Answers

Hi Jarrod,

I've noticed that the red eye can be pretty bad, especially in kids shooting indoors in medium to low lighting. You can remove it pretty easily, either with Adobe Photoshop, Adobe PhotoDelux, or PhotoEditor. Unfortunately, the Sierra program that comes with the camera (Image Expert) does not have a red eye corrector.

If you bought a CD-writer, check the software that came with it, as Photo Editor actually came with a Yamaha CD-RW that I bought. I was pleasantly surprised by all the software that came with it!

To correct for red eye, you select the part of the eye that is red, click "Correct red eye" and what is red in the selected area will be turned black or a shade of gray.

There is also some freeware available to stitch panaromas together, it works quite well. It's called The Panorama Factory and can be downloaded from the web. I don't have the address, though, so you'll have to search for it. It was written by John Strait.

I really like the Epson 850z, but I'm sure I'd like most cameras that had 2.1 Mpixels with a zoom. Just depends on the features you want.

Anne

-- Anne M. Smith (Smith@topo.ucl.ac.be), April 26, 2000.