Olympus announces all-black E-P2 kit and two new Micro Four Thirds lenses

I was wondering what Olympus might announce before Photo Expo. I expect some updated  models for the Four Thirds cameras. I couldn't guess what they would do for the popular PEN series. Lenses for sure but another body? They're pretty well covered with the E-PL1, E-P1 and E-P2. I'm very happy with the E-P1. It's an incredible camera. Anything "up" from here wold be evolutionary. The all black E-P2 is a beautiful kit, though.

What I do miss, compared to my E-510, is the 40-150mm lens. Sometimes I like a bit more reach. Olympus came out with the 14-150mm and I was seriously considering it. A MFT 40-150mm was more of what I had in mind. It's the lens that's attached to my E-510 most often so I have that focal range mindset. I tend to shoot "long". So, the MFT 40-150mm is now on my must have list.

What I'm really hoping for is a price drop on the FL-14 flash unit. That's a pricey thing for the power and features it has. I can get a Metz 48 with more features for not much more and a Metz 36 for far less. Maybe that will be the next surprise.

Coming from Olympus OM's all I can say is "thank you" to Olympus for the PEN and E series. There was nothing quite like the OM cameras and lenses. They were beautiful to look at and great to use. The same holds true for the PEN's and the E's.

Olympus announces all-black E-P2 kit, two new Micro Four Thirds lenses | Digital Camera Resource Page News

Carol Sudhalter at the Louis Armstrong House Museum...

I had the great pleasure of seeing Carol Sudhalter present "Women's Works - Two Queens Composers" at the Louis Armstrong House Museum this weekend. Most amazing were Emme Kemp and Sarah McLawler, two great women of jazz. The entire ensemble was brilliant. My thanks to these brilliant artists. Bravo!

Normally I never link to an entire collection of images but this is an exception. There are far too many to pick and chose the best and there's a lot of interest in the images.These are small, low res, images so if any press people need larger images please drop me a note. A photo credit would be nice. The Louis Armstrong House Museum is a very special place.

There are many new images in the Gallery and Thinking In Images this weekend!

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Cosina - Voigtlander and Micro Four Thirds

Now here's great news: Cosina has joined the Micro Four Thirds group. For those not up on camera companies Cosina has been making cameras for quite some time but we rarely see them here. About a decade ago Cosina bought the venerable Voigtlander and has been diligently keeping that fine line of cameras and lenses going. I had the great pleasure of seeing and handling these fine cameras at the last Photo Expo. If you think the Olympus PEN's are "retro" (yet modern) you haven't seen the latest Voigtlander's. We're talking Leica M "retro" here and it's all good.

The Micro Four Thirds cameras can use lenses from other cameras (manually) using adapters and Cosina has an adapter for their lenses. Now, it seems, Cosina just may start making lenses with the Micro Four Thirds mount and, hopefully, a Voigtlander Micro Four Thirds camera. I was hoping Leica was going to build a Micro Four Thirds camera but it seems they're more comfortable designing lenses for Panasonic. Sigma makes a few Four Thirds lenses but no Micro Four Thirds lenses.

For years we had the megapixel race, Then it became the race for "full frame" sensors (emulating the 35mm format) and now it seems to be a bit of both. A digital camera is more than just these two factors. Olympus and Panasonic proved that a smaller sensor, quality lenses and precision programming can create excellent images with a compact camera. Some of the new digital SLR's are huge - bigger than some of the 35mm motor drive rigs I used years ago. A camera too big to carry gets left behind (unless you're on assignment). Micro Four Thirds has the right balance between size and quality for so many images.

Photo Expo is coming and I'm looking forward to visiting the Voigtlander booth again. Maybe they'll have some news, maybe some lenses and hopefully a Micro Four Thirds camera or two. If there's any company that can pull this off Cosina can. Of course, that will be right after I visit the Olympus booth. I've used Olympus cameras for years and I keep coming back for more. There's something special about them that goes beyond parts. They have "soul".

OLYMPUS News Release: COSINA Joins the Micro Four Thirds System Standard Group

Cosina Voigtlander
Micro Four Thirds

Return of the Pellicle

There's a word you don't see every day - pellicle - as in pellicle mirror. A pellicle mirror is a semi transparent mirror - a (light) beam splitter. Sony has announced the A53 and A55 SLR's where the mirror assembly is stationary, 70% of the light passes through to the sensor, the remaining 30% goes to metering and the electronic viewfinder. Interesting. The idea is that, since there is no moving mirror, the camera should be smaller and there should be continuous, and faster, focusing and capturing.

I wonder what descriptive name will be used for this arrangement? Technically it's still an SLR, just without a pentaprism and a moving mirror. It took a long time to come up with descriptive names for interchangeable lens compact cameras. Olympus neatly side-stepped this with PEN and Micro Four Thirds.

The idea is not new. Canon had the Pellix and F1 Pellix way back and pellicle technology is still in use today. In most SLR's the mirror often has a semi-transparent section for metering and auto-focusing. The difference is the mirror flips. The problem with pellicles is that they divide the light stream. This isn't much of a problem with sensors - you just adjust them so that the ISO's line up. In this case the EVF has to be gained up, a lot I would think.

Now, the thing is that SLR's with flipping mirrors have the advantage of giving you an exact view of what the lens sees - at the speed of light. We don't really notice the "blackout" except during long exposures. The sensor also gets 100% of the light, as does the viewfinder (since it's optical). We've more or less adapted to this blackout period. It also makes it easier to frame and focus in low light. EVF's can be quite wonky in low light.

I'm curious to see how this plays out. Camera design has been pretty stale until recently so the more unique concepts the better. I'll check it out at Photo Expo but I'm pretty set in my Olympus ways...

Micro Four Thirds - Photo Expo

Photo Expo is coming and Olympus has been pretty quiet about anything related to Micro Four Thirds or Four Thirds cameras. Not that the PEN's need anything new other than lenses and accessories. I'm very interested in seeing the new 14-150 MFT zoom lens. I haven't had a pressing need for a electronic flash unit or even a viewfinder for my E-P1. The E-P1 is easily the best digital camera I've ever owned - and I've had quite a few cameras. The E-510 comes in second (although I'd like to update the body to an E-620 body eventually).

That's the thing about these Olympus cameras - they work very well. There's a few minor details here and there I'd change but not enough to be overly concerned.

What I am hoping for, still, is better software. Master was ancient, Viewer 2 is better and Studio is in need of updating. Olympus seems to forget that some of us do shoot tethered and professionally. At the very least, make a plugin for Lightroom that allows this. The Olympus Updater was definitely a step in the right direction.

What's interesting here is the competition. Sony and Samsung have compact interchangeable lens cameras now - with larger sensors. Since we've gotten past the megapixel race now it's sensor size that's the hot topic. These new cameras are certainly good by all reports, but a camera is more than just parts and specs. More so with digital cameras, it's how it all works together. Olympus and Panasonic seem to have found the right balance.

Even more interesting is video cameras based on this new concept. We have compact interchangeable lens cameras that can shoot video but are not optimized for that shooting technique. Soon we'll have compact interchangeable lens video cameras that can shoot still images well. It's a great idea.

Photo Expo will be here in a few weeks. I'm sure Olympus and Panasonic will be sending out "hints" soon...

New life for an old PC with Ubuntu Linux

I like Ubuntu Linux. At version 10 Ubuntu has matured into quite a good operating system. Add the easy installation and practical and well thought out Linux apps included with the distribution package and it's a very viable alternative for a PC long past its prime. (Of course, it's good for new PC's, but try and find one with Ubuntu pre-installed.)

There was an old Compaq laptop collecting dust in the house. It was well "past it". The battery was marginal, the hard drive was flash drive small and it had just enough memory (512mb!) to run XP, when it decided to run XP. This was a troublesome laptop even when new. It had the amazing ability to corrupt itself senseless about every 6 months. Rarely did it make the 1 year mark without having to be completely wiped and reloaded.

To put this into perspective, there are more powerful netbooks, maybe smartphones, these days.

So, I decided that this was the perfect test for Ubuntu. Things certainly couldn't get worse. I downloaded Ubuntu 10, burned a CD, tossed it into the Compaq and rebooted. It took time for the Compaq to start up from the CD but it did - and everything worked. Even running from the CD things were snappy. I decided to do a complete installation on the hard drive and wipe out XP entirely. In less than an hour, Ubuntu was installed, configured and updated and running perfectly. I set up Firefox and Evolution and that was about all it took to make a obsolete laptop into a current, big, heavy, desktop bound, internet laptop. I rebooted several times and each time the computer worked quickly and perfectly. The new desktop is very nice and modern looking, the menu bar and task bar are very well thought out.

This laptop is too underpowered for heavy desktop apps, although it will run anything Ubuntu preinstalled well. Where it shines is web apps, like Google's apps. Times have changed. Casual computer users rarely need the heavy horsepower of desktop apps. They want to browse, send and receive email, chat, share, and all this can be browser based. It's now a great cloud computing device.

There's a lot of chatter that it's hard to learn to use Linux. Nonsense. Ubuntu has made an interface that's so user friendly and well thought out just looking at the main screen for a few minutes and exploring the menus will be enough familiarization. The Firefox icon looks the same and a icon of an envelope means "email" to anyone. Granted, Linux apps can have odd names, but Ubuntu groups the apps into sensible categories. The app store is pretty good, too.

The point is that an old computer can be re-purposed easily and inexpensively. So long as the hardware is sound - try Ubuntu. A special thanks to Canonical, Ubuntu and Mark Shuttleworth for this excellent Linux distribution.

New Images in the Gallery - August 17, 2010

The weather was great today and I managed to capture a lot of new images for the Gallery, Thinking In Images and The Slide Report. It was interesting to see how the Slide would handle some pretty intense, bright light compared to the E-P1. The answer is "ok", as in the dynamic range of the tiny sensor and JPEG processing mean that I have to be more aware of the lighting or highlights can completely disappear. It's perfectly acceptable for grab shots but RAW definitely has the advantage. On the other hand, the Slide sometimes surprises me with its intense colors.

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2010 Kawasaki Ninja 250R Review - Motorcycle.com

It's been a while since I wrote about motorcycles...

The Kawasaki Ninja 250 and 500 are always on my short list of motorcycles to get - someday. I like small, compact, nimble motorcycles ever since I had the Ascot way back when. I've had a few four cylinder motorcycles over the years, none of them sport bikes, and they bored me silly. They moved well enough and I tricked them out a bit. The engine sound alone put me off. The bulk and weight, especially on the street, made me think "why?" With the low speed limits in my area ten tenth's riding comes at a lot lower speeds than a race track. Even a scooter is powerful enough for these speed limits.

Handling is another matter altogether. Anyone can go fast in a straight line. There's no trick to that. Get into the twisties and a skilled rider can give an unskilled rider a run for the money at any speed. I proved that often enough with my old, tricked out Ascot. It wasn't much for acceleration or top speed but on a twisty road I was fearless. There was no little mass to shift and it was too narrow to touch anything down. That broad torque band made it easy to hold a gear when others were shifting like mad.

But the real point of this article is where are all the quarter and half liter motorcycles? What we have now are scooters in that displacement. I'm not knocking scooters but I can't quite see myself canyon carving on a 250 or 500 scooter wringing the hell out of the automatic transmission. I have a few mountain roads in mind where an automatic would be downright dull.

I'd rather have a two wheeled ride that I can maneuver through city traffic with a touch of "brio" and wind up on parkways and scenic roads below the three digit speed numbers. Unfortunately, these small displacement sport bikes are usually reserved for other countries.

One reason is that motorcycle licenses are not "staged" in the US. (You've got "learner" and "go for it".) This took me completely by surprise when I finally got my motorcycle license decades ago. You could take the test on a scooter, pass, and buy a race bike. That's ridiculous - and deadly. I barely got over 15mph and second gear during my road test, traveled less than a mile on empty streets, and the most daring part of the test was making figure 8's and circles without putting my foot down. Granted, I knew how to ride (and survive) long before I took the test but it left me thinking "this is wrong". Nobody should be able to ride anything with a crazy horsepower to weight ratio without a serious amount of experience. Its not just for the safety of the rider, but of other people, too. It's not that motorcycles are dangerous. It's inexperienced riders that are dangerous. (To be fair, new drivers scare me silly, too. There should be restrictions there as well.)

This brings me back to these small Ninja's. People may call them "beginner bikes" and that may be so. However, a skilled rider can get a lot out them as well. There's life below the ton mark and the streets and highways are not race tracks. Not that you can't race a Ninja 250 - on the track. People have been tricking out and racing Ninja 250's since the first one landed.

Given a choice between a small displacement motorcycle and a small displacement scooter - I'll take the motorcycle every time. Thanks Kawasaki for keeping a good thing going.

2010 Kawasaki Ninja 250R Review - Motorcycle.com
Kawasaki Ninja 250 On The Track

Do you tend to under or over expose your photos? | Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Killer Tips

I use Lightroom for my RAW conversions and image editing. Since the first version of Lightroom I've come to trust the RAW conversion to get it right - and it does. No matter what I throw at it, Lightroom creates the right balance between highlights and shadows, sharpness and color saturation for my Olympus cameras. I'm not trying to recreate the "punch" of a JPEG. I want a softer palette. I want the final image to have "my mark". Olympus cameras don't have quite the dynamic range of other high end digital cameras. Close - but not quite - and certainly not enough for me to consider other cameras.

This is a great article. I know my E-510 at ISO 100 tends to be more like ISO 125. Depending on the lighting I tend to go under by about 1/3 stop in full sun. The E-P1 has a bit of a broader dynamic range and ISO 100 seems to be more spot on. The E-510 creates images that are a bit more saturated and rich with a tick of underexposure.

The thing is it's really more about my style of shooting. I tend to let the shadows go black in some images as part of the composition. I want the saturation and highlight detail to hold. "Noise" is not an issue - Lightroom takes care of that. I can't remember the last time I actually saw "noise" unless I deliberately provoked it. (Sunset, aiming towards the sun, -2EV - but this was for a dramatic effect and easily corrected.)

JPEG is a whole other matter. It's not that the Olympus cameras don't create great JPEG's. It's just that I find them more sensitive to tinker with. There's less data to work with. RAW may be a slower workflow and create larger files but it's more "digital darkroom to me. My Slide (smartphone camera) creates nice JPEG's but they're a tick more processed than I'd like. Lightroom handles these images well.

In the end, photography is as much as about art as it is about science, maybe a little alchemy and magic, too. The more we learn about techniques the more we make them our own.

Do you tend to under or over expose your photos? | Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Killer Tips

New Images in the Gallery - August 16, 2010

It was a cloudy and muggy day, and now thunderstorms. I took a quick trip to the park and riverbed this afternoon. I didn't expect much for a Monday afternoon. It just goes to prove there's always something going on if you look.

I've also added quite a few images to Thinking In Images...

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New Images in the Gallery - August 14, 2010

From steamy and hazy days to nice late summer days with clear skies - the weather certainly has been unpredictable. It's been perfect weather to walk around with the E-P1. I'm not sure what magic Olympus has done with this camera but it's the most film-like digital camera I've ever owned. It very much reminds me of my old rangefinder days.

I've added a few sequences to Thing In Images, as well. Enjoy...

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Gray wolf back on protect list in Montana and Idaho...

I have a thing about wolves - I like them. I can relate to the whole "wolf thing". There a sort of touchstone for me, a totem animal. It truly upset me when they were removed from the endangered species list. People had hunted them to near extinction for all sorts of reasons. I don't want to get into that debate other than to say that every living, breathing creature needs to eat to survive. Nobody eats a wolf. There's a big difference between hunting for game and hunting for sport. Hunting for protection is a whole other matter. To kill an animal because it just might do something in their nature bothers me. More so from a helicopter.

I live in a big city - by the water front. There's a big wildlife ecosystem here. I've seen snakes, mice, rats, squirrels, chipmunks, raccoons, opossums, bats, geese, ducks, herons, falcons, hawks and, occasionally swans. I've heard of foxes and coyotes coming 'round for a visit although I haven't seen any yet. Add in the endless stray cats, a few stray dogs and every kind of small bird. I'm sure there's more. Overall, it's nice. Sometimes they can be a nuisance but it's not that big a deal. When I travel to more remote regions I've come across bears, deer and raccoons, opossums, badgers, coyotes, foxes and even more chipmunks and snakes. That's nature.

The greater point here is that nature is all around us. It's here to stay. Build all you want but, when you're on another animal's territory you're going to end up co-existing. Or not. When you tip an ecosystem there are risks. So let's be sensible here. Life without animals (and we're in that classification) would be pretty dull.

Gray wolf back on protect list in Montana and Idaho

New Images in the Gallery - August 9, 2010

Recently someone or some group put a gate and steps down to the river bed. This is a rough, natural beach area in an old cove that used to have a pier, ferries and barges. People were scaling the sea wall anyway. This is a great thing. Nothing brings people together better than a walk on a water front. Young and old, people from all over the world can come together and enjoy the moment. Differences no longer matter. Nature tends to make things right.

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