Fireworks with the Pen

Labor Day weekend in Cincinnati means one thing... the annual fireworks show on the Ohio River.  This is one of the bigger pyrotechnic displays in the country where two barges and two bridges are stuffed full of things that glow, sparkle and go boom in the night sky.  The display runs for well over 30 minutes and is expertly choreographed to music by a local FM radio station.

This year my family was invited to a fireworks party held at a house about four miles upriver from the show with a great backyard view of all the goings on.  Armed only with my Olympus Pen, the 14-42mm lens and a small Slik carbon fiber tripod with a Manfroto ball head I decided to see what kind of shots I could pull in.  I brought the small Pen instead of my Canon DSLR as I knew there would be a lot of people at the party, space would be tight and I didn't want to be obnoxious and rude trying to shoot with a full system with so many people around.

The Pen has a wide variety of automatic modes, most of which I never touch as I almost always shoot in aperture priority.  In this case though I decided to use the dedicated "fireworks" mode which set the camera might as I would - wide open at f/5.6 (at 42mm), 4 second exposure and -1 exposure compensation.  All images were recorded in RAW so I didn't have to full with the white balance.  (This was one advantage I've found with the Pen over my old Canon G10.  If you used any of the preset modes on that camera it would always shoot jpegs.  For some reason Canon decided if you need to use the preset modes you must not be serious enough to want the exposures recorded in RAW.)

Being so far away from the action and with very little reach from the lens (only 84mm in 35mm terms) each image captured lots and lots of extra space.  But I was really pleased when I pulled all the shots into Lightroom and cropped down to just the fireworks part of the image.  The resolution was still outstanding!  Each of these shots probably has 60-75% of the extra black space cropped out.  In addition to cropping each image had the blacks pumped up a bit, the clarity turned up as well as the vibrance.  The result are shots that look very close to what we saw in the night sky.  A good night of shooting.

Enjoy!
Tom Laux
September 8, 2009

Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF1

I've been writing an awful log in this blog about my experience with the new Olympus Pen E-P1 Micro Four Thirds system camera that I've recently invested in.  Panasonic has also been in the Four Thirds game for a while now and they just announced a new Micro Four Thirds camera, the Lumix GF1.  This camera seems to be looking to fill the same niche as the Olympus Pen does, that of a very high quality but small sized near professional system with inter-changeable lenses, Live View, HD movie recording, etc.  It looks like they've one-upped Olympus a bit by including a built in pop-up style flash as wells as an optional Live View shoe mounted finder.  (My Pen has an optional finder that is strictly glass and is only in scale when used with the 17mm pancake lens.  I also need to put on the very stylish flash gun to use that option - no built in flash on the Pen.)  Amazon is taking pre-orders for the camera and it looks to be priced in line with the Olympus.  I'll be curious to read the reviews and comparisons that will be done between these two systems.  To date I've been nothing but pleased with my Pen but could I have jumped the gun too soon?  We'll find out.  One thing I do know for sure is that having another Micro Four Thirds system on the market is a good thing as that should translate into a slew of new lenses that are sized appropriately for this format and won't require the use of an adapter.

Enjoy!
Tom Laux
September 3, 2009

Last Week Shooting

A business trip last week kept me pretty busy but I did manage to take along my Pen and do a little shooting.  The last three images here were taken in North Park, a local park just outside of Warrendale, PA, a suburb of Pittsburgh.

The weekend brought the rare chance for me to run a cross country race (most races in our area are strictly road races, usually of the 5K and 10K variety).  The open race was followed by a high school cross country invitational meet so I stuck around for a little while to watch the kids run and do a little shooting.  Not knowing any of the boys in the race I decided to slow down the shutter speed and record the motion of the race rather than get images of any one boy.  My Pen outfit worked pretty well for that type of sports photography.  There's very little shutter lag so I could grab shots when I wanted them, but if I was trying to  get all the detail of the race this camera would have come up short.  The zoom only extends to 42mm, equivalent to 84mm in full frame DSLR terms, so not nearly enough reach, and zoomed out the fastest the lens will go is f/5.6 so much of the background stays in focus turning the action shots into more like "snapshots" without the ability to isolate the action.  But if I were planning on that type of shooting I would have brought my Canon and 400mm lens.  In this case I was happy shooting more artistically instead.

Enjoy!
Tom Laux
August 31, 2009

Zoom with your Zoom

The last blog I wrote talked about not using a zoom lens and how much I love shooting with prime lenses.  Well this week I was on a business trip to Pittsburgh, PA and each evening after work I headed to a local park for my daily run and then a little shooting.  The park was great for running with a nice 5 mile loop and some hills to add a little work.  For the photography side though it was typical mid west in the middle of the summer... green, green and more green.  Just not very interesting.

So, with my cool little Olympus Pen in hand I traded out the 14mm prime for the 17-40mm zoom lens and played with the zoom.  All of these shots were taken at about 7:30 PM as the sun was getting low in the sky, kept the ISO low at 100 and stopped down the lens a bit (usually about f/8 or so) so get a slower shutter speed.  On most shots I was aiming for a shutter speed of about 1/2 to 1 second and then zoomed while the shutter was open.

I probably took over a hundred exposures and from that got maybe 10 or 12 that I thought worked pretty well.  The best results also seemed to come from zooming out to in.

This was a great project for when there just wasn't anything too interesting to shoot.  This is when I would usually grab my macro lens and shoot big pictures of small stuff but a micro four thirds macro doesn't yet exists and I don't own a four thirds one.  But the zoom game was a lot of fun and another way to be creative with the camera.

Enjoy!
Tom Laux
August 28, 2009

Zoom with your Feet

I don't remember when or where I first heard that phrase but it's one of my photography favorites.  For some reason I really enjoy shooting with primes rather than zooms (even though the quality of modern zoom lenses easily rivals that of primes).  Maybe it's because my primes are all faster than their zoom counterparts, which I can't afford at the asme speed.  Maybe it's just because they are simpler and more straightforward.  I don't know.  But when you shoot with a prime "Zoom with your feet" is always an adage to keep in mind.

This morning I had a 16 mile training run to get in on our local rail-to-trails bike path and my wife was doing a 14 mile walk at the same time.  With me running and her walking I obviously end up with a chunk of time waiting while she finishes so I brought my Olympus Pen to do a little shooting while I waited.  I decided this morning to just shoot with the 14mm pancake lens and try to be a little creative with my compositions.  All shots we taken in aperture priority mode with the lens wide open at f2.8, they way I typically like to shoot.  All of these were taken in RAW but then I applied the Olympus Art Filters to a couple of them.

Enjoy!
Tom Laux
August 23, 2009

Using the Pen E-P1: Real World Experience - Part I

I've had my Olympus Digital Pen for about three weeks now and decided to document the experience so far.  I bought this system to compliment, not replace, my Canon 40D DSLR body and lenses and to have a good option for travel when I'd rather go light but still want photographic quality.  I'd been using a Canon G10 for that purpose previously and found it to be a fine camera but Olympus has raised the bar with their new four thirds system with its interchangeable lenses.

Initial impressions of this system are quite good.  The camera feels solid in your hands and has just the right amount of "heft" to it without being too heavy.  The first thing you want to do it put it up to your eye and start shooting but of course there is no viewfinder, just the three inch screen on back.  You've probably read some complaints about the resolution of that screen (it's not quite as crystal clear as the higher res one on my older G10) but I've got no complaints with it.  Indoors and in shade it is very usable.  Bright sunlight does give problems as it washes out pretty well.  You can see good enough to frame your shot but manual focusing is completely out of the question.  But as you can see in the shot above of one of the bridges in downtown Cincinnati taken in full sunlight (using the soft focus art filter), good photography is still plenty easy with this camera.

Coming from a Canon background the menus are different but very easy to pick up and I think quite intuitive. I don't like the small selector wheel used for making choices nearly as much as the ones on any of my Canon gear.  A bit small and not quite as solid feeling, but again very usable (as it the additional jog wheel towards the top used for additional selections).  I don't know if it's just my camera or not but both of my lenses are quite tight going onto and off of the body and occasionally won't seat well enough to make the proper connections even though they appear to be on straight and tight.  The optional viewfinder for the 17mm pancake lens is ok and does let you frame the shot by putting the camera to your eye but it's just a simple piece of glass so all you get is the framing.  You still have to rely on the camera for good auto focus and have already made your shutter speed, aperture and other selections.  I've read some complaints about the option flash gun which is a must as there is no built in flash.  First it is absolutely a beautiful accessory for the camera.  From a design point it's just stunning.  True that it does not tilt or swivel but so far I've only been using it as fill flash and find that it does a terrific job in that category.

To date Olympus has produced two micro four thirds lenses for the Pen, a 17mm pancake prime and a 14-42mm general use zoom.  The pancake lens has quickly become my favorite of the two.  First it's size is such that the entire camera is almost pocketable and like the flash really makes the camera look stunning.  (It's funny, I've never talked about a camera in terms of it's looks or design before but the Pen has changed that.)  This is also an f2.8 lens, a stop faster that the variable aperture zoom making it that much better for low light photography and portraits.

The camera has all the modes an advanced enthusiast or pro would expect, plus a few new ones.  My favorite new feature not found on any of my other cameras are Olympus' unique art filters.  These are basically software manipulations to the image right in camera (and as you're shooting in Live View!) to create different artistic types of creations.  Available are Pop Art (vibrant colors and saturation), Soft Focus, Pale Light and Color, Light Tone, Grainy Film (a black and white high grain mode) and Pin Hole which vignettes the image.  Reading other takes on the camera it seems like Soft Focus and Grainy Film are the favorites.  I would agree.  Olympus was really thinking when they implemented the art filters.  If you are shooting in Jpeg mode then the filter is immediately applied to the capture and is permanent.  (There's also a bit of a delay during writing so don't expect to use these in burst mode.)  But if you are shooting RAW, which is recommended for all the obvious reasons, then the Art Filters can be applied after the fact and will be created as a separate Jpeg of the shot with the original RAW file left untouched.  Plus this way you can try out a number of different filters on the same image to get a variety of looks.

The final thought on this post is the absolute portability of the entire system.  Besides the fact that I have the camera, lenses, etc. all stored in a small PhotoRunner bag, when I went out anywhere that I wanted to take the camera I just grabbed a small North Face waist pack which easily held the camera and both lenses (and on occasion the flash too) with enough room still for a small wallet and cell phone.  We took it sea kayaking one morning and everything fit quite well in a small dry bag.  The camera is small enough that it was no problem taking it in and out of the bag constantly to get shots on the water without worrying about getting the equipment wet.

So one week of vacation with the new camera and there were only a couple of times when I wished I'd had my full Canon outfit.  I would have liked to have my 100mm macro for some flower photography and my 400mm f4.0 prime would have been great for some bird shots, but other than that the tradeoff of traveling with very little gear was a good one.

Enjoy!

Tom Laux

August 22, 2009

Adobe Camera Raw support for Olympus Pen E-P1

Today Adobe posted release candidates for ACR and DNG 5.5 which extend RAW support to the new Olympus E-P1 .OCR raw files.  These are release candidates meaning they have been tested but are not yet in the final release version.  ACR 5.5 is only supported by Photoshop CS4 so photographers like me who primarily use Lightroom (along with CS3) will need to convert their files to DNG (digital negative) format before importing them into Lightroom.  This is an option I'll be testing soon.

The downloads can be found here.

Enjoy!
Tom Laux
August 21, 2009

[Update: installed ACR 5.5 and converted a batch of E-P1 RAW files to DNG format, imported them into Lightroom 2.4 and did some minor editing then exported at Jpegs.  Everything worked well as expected as can seen by the results below.]