2012 – Happy

 Olympus M.Zuiko 40-150mm f/4.0-5.6 R, Panasonic Lumix G 20/1.7 ASPH  5 Responses »
Apr 202012
 

This is Keith. Keith is happy. Keith, say hi to your fans :)

Well, the image of Keith was taken with the E-P2 and the Olympus 40-150 lens. Of course this image is from the same series as “2010 – He Shall Feed His Flock“.

Btw, I’m happy as well. Today I got my Olympus OM-D E-M5, and although I made only a few images so far, I can already say that this is the best camera that I ever had. See for instance the two images below:

On the left side you see the JPEG that came out of the camera. On the right side, with the white border, you see what I made of the RAW file using Corel AfterShot Pro, Topaz Denoise 2 and Photoshop CS3.

Of the few images I have chosen this one, because although it is base ISO 200, the dynamic range of this scene is brutal. Click on the images, both open to full size. Look at the dark ceiling. It was almost black and I have opened it up considerably. There is definitely some noise, but it is very well controlled. At the same time I could bring a little more contrast into the highlights. There is plenty of headroom on both sides.

Of course this would not have been possible with the Panasonic LX5 and the Olympus PEN E-P2, but in fact my Nikon D300 would have been much worse as well. Really, in terms of dynamic range (and also of high ISO noise as I’ve already seen) the OM-D bests the D300, just as I had hoped for.

In case you wonder, I have tried the RAW converter of Olympus Viewer 2, the software that came with the camera. Forget it! It is so painfully slow, I can’t use that program in my regular workflow. In a discussion on dpreview.com I found out that although Adobe does not yet support the OM-D, Corel AfterShot Pro does. You may not know it by that name, Corel only recently acquired it. The program was formerly known as Bibble Pro 5, thus it is no newcomer at all. It’s also reasonably fast and it may currently be your best choice if you need a RAW converter for the OM-D. At 80$ or 90€ it is not even expensive, and usability is fine as well.

As soon as Adobe’s DNG converter supports the OM-D, I will switch back to that again, but for now I can at least work.

Of course I have not tried everything yet, but as far as I can tell now, the OM-D is a perfect upgrade from the D300. As a consequence, not only the E-P2 will go, the D300 and most of its DX lenses will go as well.

The Song of the Day is “Happy” from the 1972 Rolling Stones album “Exile On Main Street”. Lead vocals by Keith Richards. See a live video on YouTube.

2011 – Walk It Down

 Panasonic Lumix G 14/2.5 ASPH  1 Response »
Apr 192012
 

I really ought to show you Keith, but it’s late now and I don’t want to process another image. Tomorrow maybe. Tomorrow it’s supposed to rain anyway.

This image just happened. I wanted to take an image of the bicycle, and then that man walked into the frame. I could have waited until he was gone, or maybe release the shutter with the guy right in the middle.

I did both, and because the second image was just a tad sharper, the Image of the Day is a composite of the two versions.

The Song of the Day is “Walk It Down” from the 1985 Talking Heads album “Little Creatures”. Hear it on YouTube.

2009 – Ain’t Heavy

 Olympus M.Zuiko Digital 45 mm f/1.8, Panasonic DMC-FZ150  4 Responses »
Apr 192012
 

It’s interesting. There were times when the 12 megapixels of the big, heavy and expensive professional camera Nikon D2x or the 16 megapixels of the even more expensive Canon 1Ds Mk II were considered completely sufficient for professional photography. The Canon even delivered usable images at ISO 1600. That was amazing and it was in 2005, just little more than six years ago.

Tomorrow or one of the next days Nikon will announce their D3200 entry model DSLR, and it will sport a 24 megapixel sensor. Amazing again, and I have to ask myself the question: is the Olympus OM-D really the camera that I need? Hey, it has only two thirds of the pixels of the D3200!!!

Shocking? Not really. Megapixels are fine, at least as long as I have 7.5 in a square crop. That’s what I get from the Panasonic LX5.

Ridiculous? I don’t think so. Currently there are 255 entries on this blog with images taken with the LX5, and I believe some of them are even quite good.

Thus if the 10 megapixels of the LX5 (7.5 megapixels in a square) are sufficient for my needs, what would the 16 megapixels (12 megapixels in a square) of the OM-D be? A nice bonus, I’d say, but not essential.

24 megapixels? Wouldn’t they still be better? Maybe. Nikon has really good sensors today, I suppose the pixel quality of the D3200 and the OM-D will be comparable. Maybe the OM-D even has an edge in high ISO, but that would be lost as soon as we downsize from 24 megapixels to 16 megapixels.

And when I look at these figures, all that that becomes increasingly irrelevant.


The Image of the Day and this sequence of images show you my current Olympus E-P2 kit. A small, cheap shoulder bag from Sony, the camera, two Panasonic pancake lenses, the 14/2.5 and the 20/1.7, the Olympus 45/1.8 and the Olympus 40-150, the electronic viewfinder and a small leather case that originally came with the Panasonic viewfinder for the LX5. I have one more lens, the Olympus 17/2.8 pancake lens that I bought with the camera, but I don’t use it and therefore it’s not included.

When I mount one of the pancakes and put the viewfinder into its case, I can put everything into this one small bag. In the last picture you see for size comparison a Nikon D200 with the 18-200 VR lens mounted. DSLR and lens have a combined weight of 1.5 kg, and that’s 500 g more than my whole Olympus kit. Add lenses to both systems and the difference gets more and more grotesque.

The D3200 hurts me on another front though. I suppose the attainable price for my D300 will drop even further. At the moment I suppose I could sell it for maybe 500 € (hardly used cameras go for about 600 €), but that price level will not be sustainable. I never thought that I would sell the D300, but I may. I just don’t use it, and for that it is too expensive.

Btw, as you see, tonight I found the first OM-D in a camera shop. Unfortunately they have it only in silver and with the slow 12-50 kit lens. I’m not interested in the lens, and the Panasonic pancakes look horrible on the silver camera. Thus I’ll patiently wait for my black model :)

The images of the Olympus kit were made with the Panasonic FZ150 superzoom camera, the picture of the OM-D was taken with the E-P2 and the 45/1.8.

The Song of the Day is “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother” from the 1986 Housemartins album “London 0 Hull 4″. Hear it on YouTube.

2008 – Breakdown

 Panasonic Lumix G 14/2.5 ASPH  2 Responses »
Apr 162012
 

Broken roof tiles in a container in front of the neighbor house. I suppose the yellow spot is some thermal isolation material.

It’s mid-April and there’s still no trace of the Olympus OM-D. Well, actually there are traces all over Asia, but nothing here. Not that I can’t await it, but I am happy that I did not follow my original resolution to sell the E-P2 by mid-March.

I’ve really come to like this camera. It’s not as fast as I’d like, it has some user interface quirks, but in general it works very well and very reliably so. Even changing lenses feels much more natural than it ever did with the D300. Everything is small and I literally can change lenses while walking. With the Nikon I always had to put one lens down, detach the other from the camera, put it down as well, take the new lens, attach it, …

Here I have the camera in one hand, secured by a hand strap, the two lenses and the back cover in the other, and I can do it all all without ever needing a table or anything to put something down. OK, I have big hands, but it’s amazing anyway.

The Song of the Day is the Tom Petty cover “Breakdown” from the 1980 Grace Jones album “Warm Leatherette”. Hear it on YouTube.

2007 – A Fine Romance III

 Panasonic Lumix G 14/2.5 ASPH  2 Responses »
Apr 152012
 

No rain today, no sun either, everything is dull and gray. I thought I could as well try the E-P2′s “B&W Art Filter”. I did and in the end I decided to do my own conversion :)

Well, I’ve also made some prettier images, but I found the sign together with the backside of this hotel rather ironic. Sorry, couldn’t resist :D

The Song of the Day is one more time “A Fine Romance“, this time by Billie Holiday. Hear it on YouTube.

Btw, I was surprised that I have used the song not only once but twice, and both time for the same, completely different subject.

2006 – The Well

 Panasonic Lumix G 14/2.5 ASPH  2 Responses »
Apr 152012
 

Now finally the rain is here. I mean, it has rained a few times the last days, but we had always some sunny moments in between. Today – nothing. Only rain.

I made this image from the car, through the side window. It was this hand pump well in the rain, an image that I found somehow fitting :)

The Song of the Day is “The Well” from “The Last Waltz”. Hear it on YouTube.

2005 – Cherry Pink II

 Panasonic Lumix G 20/1.7 ASPH  5 Responses »
Apr 132012
 

One more walk through another part of “unknown Villach”. I know, I know, in a way this is a waste of perfectly good blossoms, but then. the subtle harmony of the pinks somehow attracted me.

And really, you can find thousands of images with pink blossoms on a blue sky background. This is different :)

The Song of the Day is one more time “Cherry Pink”, aka “Gummy Mambo” or, in the version of Austrian brass superstars Mnozil Brass, “Gummimambo”. It’s from their 2004 album “Wenn der Kaiser grooved”. I already had it in “1286 – Cherry Pink” ages ago. Hear it on YouTube.

2004 – Misty Mountain

 Sigma 150/2.8 Macro  6 Responses »
Apr 122012
 

After all that rain we had an incredibly clear day.

I took this image of Villach’s most iconic landmark, the mountain “Mittagskogel” (“Noon Mountain” because it is exactly south of Villach at the border to Slovenia), using my Sigma 150/2.8. It’a an unwieldy combination, but on the Olympus E-P2 this lens really excels. I didn’t have to lug the lens around either, I just stood on our terrace.

The Song of the Day is “Misty Mountain Hop” from the 1971 fourth Led Zeppelin album. I’ve already used it in “1045 – Misty Mountains“. Hear it on YouTube.

2003 – Goin’ Down

 Panasonic Lumix G 20/1.7 ASPH  Comments Off
Apr 112012
 

I didn’t make any images today, this one is from yesterday morning in Vienna. I’m in Carinthia again now and will stay for the rest of the week. We had rain today, tomorrow afternoon it may get better.

The Song of the Day is “Goin’ Down” from Bryan Ferry’s 2002 album “Frantic”. Hear it on YouTube.

2002 – Monday

 Olympus M.Zuiko 40-150mm f/4.0-5.6 R, Olympus M.Zuiko Digital 45 mm f/1.8  2 Responses »
Apr 112012
 

This could as well have been “Red II” or else I could have included the Image of the Day in the last post, but anyway, here we have Monday’s images, posted for Tuesday on a Wednesday morning, while I’m on the train from Vienna back to Carinthia.

Monday was Easter Monday, a public holiday in Austria, and I had spent a hour in the afternoon on a short walk in another “unknown” part of Villach.

Well, it turned out not to be unknown at all, I had already been in that part, a year ago when I explored the other side of the river and crossed it at a bridge for pedestrians and bicycles only.

Villach is not that big, but with two rivers and being at the intersection of two major and a few minor railway lines, it is sometimes a little tricky to maneuver. Wherever you need to go, you always have to consider the bridges.

By the way, the image with the mountain in the background is a rather fine example for the power of RAW. The Olympus E-P2 already has a dated sensor and its dynamic range is definitely less than that of the Nikon D300 (which is dated as well), but it was enough to completely contain the tonal range of the scene.

The JPEG on the other hand had the sky almost white and the snow on the mountain was completely burned out. To get a pleasant sky, I would have had to underexpose the foreground. I don’t think that the D300 would have handled the situation any better. This is just where RAW shines.

The Song of the Day is “Monday” from the 1980 Jam album “Sound Affects”. Hear it on YouTube.

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