It all came together on Saturday afternoon. Beyond lens lust.

Okay.  So it's a couple of branches.  So what?  Well it's also a wide open shot done with a 60mm Pen (film version) f1.5 lens from the late 1960's.  On a Pen EP2.


Let's get this out of the way up front:  I love the new micro Four Thirds cameras.  I think they are great and for the kind of contemplative photography a lot of people do I think they are better than traditional DSLR cameras.  There.  I said it.  Better.

Here's why:  You get to look through an electronic finder and watch as the exposure, DOF and color are shown to you in a real time preview.  Like what you see?  Go ahead and push the shutter button and you'll most likely get an image that's exactly what you saw.  It's so different than an optical finder that you have to try it out to understand how much different it is in real life.  I can hardly wait until the bigger cameras like the Olympus e30 types (and the Nikons and Canons) lose their mirrors and go all EVF.  And I predict it will happen sooner rather than later.

But there's a second reason I like the little Pens.  I can put just about any lens on them.  But what lenses work best?

Here's the same shot at around f 5.6 and a half.  The background is coming in....

You can't just put any lens on the front of these cameras and be absolutely happy because most older lenses for bigger format weren't really designed to be high enough resolution to put enough detail into the dense and condensed area of pixels wedged into these 12 megapixel 2X crop cameras.   I've tried older Nikon lenses and they work okay but they really didn't do anything that the meager collection of dedicated m4:3rd lenses couldn't do.  I have used the Nikon 50mm 1.1.2 lens but wide open the sharpness suffers.  And the bulk of the lens makes the whole camera package unwieldy.  In fact, using big lenses cancels the whole system out.  If you put a two or three pound lens in front of the tiny camera you might as well just use a big camera to begin with......

The dream for many micro EVIL users is to have a handful of small, super fast primes that were computed for the smaller frame size and can be mounted without issue on the front of a Panny or Pen.

Well, I'm here to tell you that they exist and they are superb.  Something new from Korea?  No.  How about something quite old from Japan.  I'm talking about the jewel-like interchangeable lenses originally made for the Pen F film cameras from the 1960's and the 1970's.  They are out there on the used market and they are gorgeous.  Computed to cover a half frame of film with high contrast and resolution these Olympus optics have been in my equipment drawer since the mid 1980's just waiting for the right opportunity to shine.

A street shot of my friend Emily.  Shot today on Sixth St. in downtown.  f2.8.  No lighting.

The first lens I'm testing is one of my favorites from yesteryear.  The 60mm 1.5 is small, relatively light. The manual-only focus ring is like butter.  You can set infinite intermediate aperture values and watch the exposure subtly change through the finder.  The lens is a bit less contrasty than modern lenses but seems to have greater resolution.  I'd read a technical paper about lens design in the late 1970's which basically said that you can either have very high resolution or you  can have very high contrast or some compromise between the two but not both.  I think, given the high contrast of films back when this lens was designed, coupled with the small frame target that the Olympus engineers gave the nod to resolution.  Happily we live in an age of Photoshop (tm) wherein we can change the mix between the two parameters to meet our own tastes on every shot.  I added about 5% contrast to the image above before converting it to a web sized version.

Here we're at f8 and I'm seeing incredible detail and a tenacious grasp of shadow detail. (Sounding like a wine critic today......)  Look at the detail in his hair and shirt.

Here's the other thing I like about shooting with manual focus primes,  once you focus you can recompose till the cows come home without worrying about "locking" focus.  Small, light, sharp, detailed, lack of flare,  single focal length lenses blow zooms and Rube Goldberg/big fat lenses with adapters clean away.

Do I need a caption for this?  It's the same building I seem to shoot for all my lens tests.  But every lens is different.

I learned an interesting thing about fine focusing today.  I had been setting up the display setting so that when I shot with non-dedicated and purely manual lenses I would get the screen with the green square in the middle of it.  (This is with the EP2).  If I pushed the "OK" button in the middle of the four way controller it would magnify the image up to 10x and allow me to fine focus on small details.  Excellent way to manual focus by the way.  But today I noticed that when I achieved sharp focus (without the magnification) I would see an interference pattern of the details of the image.  It would shimmer in and out as I changed focus.  If I shot on the shimmer everything was incredibly sharp.  It was a cool phenomenon and I tried the high magnification focus to check what I was seeing.  Yep.  It works.  Look for the shimmering interference pattern in the fine details and you are fine focused.

Every lens has it's own look unless it's been homogenized by its maker.  I think the combination of color and contrast from this lens references the popular look of lenses from the 1960's.  It's so "NASA".

In order to make all of this work you'll need to order a Pen F to Pen adapter.  This will fit between the lens and the body and will give you a lens that focuses perfectly, to infinity and beyond.  It will also operate seamlessly in the "A" (aperture) mode.  The only place I've found them is from a supplier on e-bay.  They run around $65.  I think they ship them from China because it takes about ten days to deliver.

Mine is all black and fits perfectly.  Not too snug, not too loose.

One of the coolest things about a lens of this speed and ths focal length is the ability to drop backgrounds out of focus.  This is the 85mm 1.2 of the micro four thirds world.  And, amazingly for a 1960's optic, it seems to be very, very sharp even when shot wide open.  I picked mine up in 1985 for the whopping big sum of $65.  I think they've gone up since then but they are still less than a quarter the price of the Canon 85mm 1.2 and, if you have nimble fingers, I bet it focuses faster too.

Thumb your nose at this new format to your own peril.  I think this is a fun view of the future.  And, in light of the desperately depressing article about the state of the commercial photo industry that ran last week in the NYT, why the heck would you want to spend more for photo equipment anyway.  The consensus is that most things are going to the web.  Do you really thing we'll see the difference there between 24 megapixels and 12 megapixels?  I think we're much more likely to see the difference between about $1200 bucks for the above described rig versus a cool $10,000 for a Canon 1ds3 and the 85mm lens............

The snarky ones out there are always dissing the limited ability m4:3rds users have to limit depth of field.  You wouldn't know it from some of my samples today.  Seems pretty convincing to me.

I whole heartedly endorse the use of the 60mm 1.5 on the EP-2 (and by extension, all the other small crop cameras in the family).  The next lens to go under the microscope will be the 38mm 1.8.  But I may need to talk about inspiration before we get back into the nuts and bolts.  I'm still feeling the reverberations of my trip to the west.

One more thing:  I heard the UPS truck roll up on Fri.  I was hoping it was free camera equipment.... but that never happens....instead it was a box full of my new book on Lighting Equipment.  If I got 12 books I'm sure Amazon will get theirs soon.  It's a pretty darn good book if you want to delve into lighting equipment.  And what red-blooded photographer doesn't?  I put a link below.  Check it out.  If you pre-order it now you won't be disappointed when it sells out and you don't have one.......(smiles...).

Hope you have a great Easter.  Or just a nice Sunday.  All the best, Kirk

My Long, Final Rambling Review of the Olympus EP-2 Camera.

I'll start by saying that I've been seduced by a number of cameras over the last two decades so any reader should take this review for what it most certainly is:  an infatuation with an exotic new stranger.  That can't be helped.  What I'd like to do is talk about the way the camera works, what are the weak points and what are its strengths.  What is it good at and what kinds of things it will let you down on.  Don't bother asking because I'm not going to run out and buy a Panasonic GF-1 and run hours of esoteric tests in order to tell you the differences in the way it focuses with extreme telephotos.  I won't put up charts that prove or disprove the levels of noise in the files.  I will tell you what is annoying as well as the attributes that led me to pull out my wallet in one of the worst years I've suffered thru as a professional photographer and plunk down for a new camera.  So with all that in mind I'm ready to begin.

I've used a bunch of different cameras and different systems over the years and there are a few systems that are very well designed for ultimate user pleasure.  The best I've used are the Leica M series cameras and I used them to shoot for business and pleasure, in conjunction with medium format cameras, for many years.  The immediacy of the finders and the Spartan control interface made shooting very straight forward.  I also loved the Contax ST SLR film camera in conjunction with the 50mm 1.4 lens and the 85mm 1.4 lens.  And in my opinion usability comes before ultimate image quality in the hierarchy of features.  The EP-2 is good here and bad here.  The good:  When the camera is set up the way you want it and all the controls have been customized there are usually only two controls you might need.  One is the +/- exposure compensation and the other is the aperture control.  If you shoot manually you might add a third to the list and that would be shutter speed.  If you can shoot without constantly changing controls, aspect ratios, quality settings, color settings and more then you'll love the camera and you'll be able to use it the same way people use their Leicas.  Look through the finder, let the camera find the focus and then shoot.

If you are obsessed about constantly trying to shift parameters to match small nuances in scenes or you just can't make up your mind you may be doomed to float through the Olympus menu structure for a while till you get the hang of it.  And while Olympus has their own logic and it is learnable it is very different from Nikon's sensible interface and almost as bad as Canon's nearly indecipherable GUI.

I tend to use the camera the same way when I'm shooting for my own enjoyment.  I set the focus for the center sensor, shoot in single shot mode instead of continuous, and I have the camera set for to lock the exposure and focus with a gentle, but not complete push of the shutter button.  I set the noise reduction to off and the noise filter to low.  I generally shoot in aperture preferred mode and usually choose to work one stop down from wide open.  I think the kit lenses and most of the e series lenses that I use with an adapter are sharpest at that setting.  If I'm walking around during the day I'll set the WB at "daylight" and if I'm inside I'll set the WB at "auto".  If I use the camera after dark I'm almost certain to use a custom WB of 2800.  It works well for most interior lights (fewer florescents in Austin and more MR16 and other tungsten track lights).

I love image stabilization and keep the camera set at IS #1 unless I'm using a tripod.  Then I turn off IS altogether because I'm convinced that it degrades the image slightly.  If I'm out in the sunlight I use the custom color setting called "#1 enhance" which seems to try an in-camera HDR kind of thing that brings up the shadows and tramps down a bit on the highlights.  I'll add a little black back into the mix with levels or curves when I process the images.

When I'm shooting out in the streets I generally use the electronic viewfinder all the time.  I think it's the real step forward for all of these cameras.  In this regard I consider myself an early adopter as I have two of the Sony R1 cameras that also came with decent (but light years worse than the EP-2 EVF) electronic viewfinders.  I hardly every use the rear LCD screen unless I'm showing a frame to someone.  Which is rare in itself.

Controversy Alert:  I know this is going to sound scary to all the people who've been doing digital for a long time, but I tend to use the camera almost exclusively in SHQ (super high quality) Jpeg.  Now before you get all lathered up please understand that I'm using the camera to do my own art.  If a corporate client puts money on the table I always fire up the whole RAW workflow deal to make sure I've covered all my bases.  But for the most part it's totally unnecessary.  One of the main reasons I switched systems from Nikon is that I found that Jpegs straight out of the camera were really nice from the Olympus cameras and always a bit problematic with the Nikons.  For my taste the Nikon ones had too dark a midtone curve and too red a skin tone.  Yes, I know I can spend hours in Lightroom making exactly calibrations.  I know I can spend hours creating and uploading custom curves in Nikon Capture and uploading them to the camera but the whole point was that I didn't have to do any of that to get pleasing color and contrast from the Olympus cameras.  And the EP-2 might be the best of the bunch from O just by dint of being the most recent.  Somehow the same people who depend on RAW are the same people who denounce using a meter.  Go figure.  I shoot Jpeg. You can shoot raw.  The Olympus does a big, fat 12 bit raw file.  It's less compressed than raw files from their competitors.  Whether that makes it better I have no clue.  I just know that the EP2 EVF gives great feedback for color and density, letting you get a Jpeg just right in the field and saving you a lot of butt time back home in the Photoshop saddle.

Also, you can denounce me as a heretic if you like but nothing beats the Olympus blue.  You can shift curves and play with hue and saturation with other brand files but every time you change a setting you mess up another part of the curve.  First Controversy Alert Over....

I've now spent over a month shooting daily with the EP-2 and I find the ergonomics of the camera just right for my admittedly small hands.  I buy medium sized gloves.  I wish I had big paws because then I could swim faster.  But I don't and it seems that the EP-2 is aimed at medium and small sized people.  I can imagine it might feel a bit small to all the 6 foot, plus people in the world.  That's what makes camera choice so damn subjective:  everyone is different sized!  The camera is solid but even with the attached kit lens it's still half the weight of a Nikon D300 with a similar lens.  Maybe even lighter than half!  And that means that a tromp around downtown Austin for three or four hours doesn't wear me down or hurt my shoulder.  I wish Olympus would make a micro 4:3rds version of the 25mm 2.8 e series lens.  I like it pretty well and use it frequently on the camera with the MMF-1 adapter but it would be great if it was reduced down in size equal to loosing the adapter.  That way the camera and lens would be about the size of most cheezy point and shoot cameras and would, at that point, become almost invisible to the rank and file subject on the street.  Two of these cameras, a 9-18 and the 14-42 lenses and one longer focal length would be the absolute perfect travel system.  No question.

IS.  Image stabilization.  I use it whenever the camera is in my hands.  When I'm using the kit zoom I can handhold really sharp stuff reliably down to around 1/13th of a second.  If I stopped drinking coffee for a month I bet I could hold that rascal still at 1/4th of a second.  We're down in the zone where the tripod is almost vestigial for this camera.  I keep one in the car but the nice thing about the way I like to shoot is that I can kill two problems with one tripod.  Since I almost always set the aspect ratio on the camera to 6:6 (or square) I use a fluid head on my tripod.  This allows means I'm prepared to go either way: Stills or Video!

So, now that I've brought up the video let's talk about that for a second or two.  Remember when you switched to digital in 2000 or 2001 and a bunch of your friends kept saying that digital wasn't ready for prime time and that film would be around for years and years?  Well, they were largely wrong and no one in the film or photo industry could believe how fast the curve of adaptation changed and accelerated.  It took Kodak completely by surprise and Fuji is still catching up.

Well, that's where we are with video and digital stills today.  Most older (post 35) photographers profess to have little interest in video and instead are waiting for the market to turn around.  Good luck with that. The market has already turned and it's now voraciously devour the advertising market for single image still work.  Those pros who are waiting are going to be waiting a long while for everything to come back to the way it was.  But then maybe time is a big moebius strip and everything will be the same somewhere on the continuum.  I think we're heading down the big slide of video at the water park of imaging and it's pretty hard to put on the brakes when you are going 60 MPH surrounded by torrents of rushing water.  But we could argue this point forever.  I may be totally wrong but I'm so happy that Olympus put just the right kind of video into this camera.

Are there things they missed?  Sure, but they'll add em to the next model.  Here's where I vent:  Those dim product managers at Olympus have a really nice video tool here but I can't really leverage all the power locked up in this tool for want of a $50 plastic adapter that should have been ready to roll at the launch.  It's called an EMA-1 and it fits in the accessory slot in place of the beautiful EVF.  It provides an interface that allows you to plug in just about any kind of microphone you might want to use.  I'd love to plug my friend, Will's Sennheiser shotgun microphone in the plug and get great voice recordings alongside the video footage.  But I can't because these unfortunate dunderheads didn't bother to get all the product synced up.  I hope Charles Garcia or someone else from Olympus reads this and gets on the stick to get me an EMA-1 because I'm stacking up projects that need to have sound and it's so last century to use a separate digital sound recorder and a clapper board to do modern video.  It's just not right.

On to the video.  It works well.  You can set focus, shutter speed and aperture in manual.  With the enormous number of manual focus lenses that can be used with adapters, from the original Olympus Pen's to the AIS Nikkors, there are tons of lenses that you can do follow focus with.  I haven't done big projects with the camera as a video camera yet but I see one big pitfall.  You have to remove the EVF and use the EMA-1 in it's place if you want to have external microphone capability.

I've shot test footage in a number of different lighting situations and, as long as your exposure is on the money, the footage looks great with very little to none of the jello effect that plagues other c-mos type DSLR hybrids.  Everyone else seems to be chasing 1080p resolution but I'm very happy that Olympus chose to go with 720p and here's why.  The vast majority of markets going forward are going to be web based communications and some on site display footage at trade shows and retail stores.  We're not going to broadcast with this stuff just yet.  It may be years until my skills are up to speed as a video producer for the big time.  But in the meanwhile 720 is actually many levels of overkill for the web but much less of a hassle to edit because the files sizes are so much smaller and the non-jpeg compression algorithm is much more efficient.  That means that, compared to say Canon 5Dmk2 HD files the edits will be fast as lightning.  And time is money.

Before I leave the video part of the camera I want to tell you what  a pleasure it is to work with Olympus'  really wonderful 35-100mm f2 zoom lens.  The thing is, this monster is sharp wide open and the out of focus areas have a beautiful, round quality to them.  Stop this lens down to 2.8 (which is where most of its equivalent competitors start) and you've got an optic that is as sharp as the other guy's dedicated macro lenses.  Honest.  While that lens and the EP-2 look like the marriage of a hummingbird and a python you'll undoubtably be using the pair on a rig or a fluid head tripod, using the tripod socket on the lens.  When used in that fashion it's a perfect balance.  But maybe you're not considering the EP-2 for video........

Let's talk DPreivew style performance metrics for a second to keep the IT guys and the pro's happy.  Here's where the Canon people and the Nikon people can crow about the parameter inequality.  The EP-2 has acceptable noise levels at proper exposures, right up to about ISO 800.  Maybe ISO 1000 and then you start to see color splotching.  And noise.  The Olympus people will jump up and start talking about Noise Ninja and Define but let's be frank;  the camera has noise that a D3s and a 1Dmk4 won't see until you hit 12,000 ISO or some other astronomically cool level.  Don't buy this camera if you love doing super high ISO in low light or if you have your heart set on a collection of fast primes (but don't write off the primes too quickly---more on that below).  In good light this camera is a champ.  When the light drops too far down (about where the human eye has trouble focusing a manual camera) the focusing falls apart and the noise comes along for a ride.  This is not the ultimate low light camera by a long shot.

It doesn't do fast, continuous focus either.  If you shoot sports you'll find that using this camera for fast moving stuff is like wearing cowboy boots at a track meet.  OUCH.  Gotta be honest, if I'm headed out to shoot some competitive swimming I'm going to borrow my friend's Nikon D3 or I'm going to try my luck with the Olympus E3 and a fast piece of specialty glass, like the 90-250 f2.8.  Pretty much the equivalent of a 180-500 mm f2.8.  (And yes, they are equivalent when we're talking about exposure!!!--don't even start with me about the 4:3rds lens being two stops less light.  It doesn't make any sense.)

Next on the list of things you might not want this camera for is shooting in the studio with studio flash.  Why?  Because there's no sync socket on the body.  You have to use the hot shoe to trigger flashes; either with an adapter or a radio trigger.  That means you don't get to use the wonderful EVF and if I can't use the EVF I really don't want to use the camera.  Tonight I shot portraits of Ben with the camera but I used florescent devices from Westcott, called TD-5 Spiderlights.  I put them in 30 inch Chimera lanterns for a soft, even glow.  But it made sense since I was trying to shoot wide open at f2 with the Olympus macro lens.

The other thing you don't want to attempt with the camera is shooting any wedding that requires focus in low light or flash.  Again, with the flash in the shoe there's no EVF and I don't like the camera without the EVF.  For all these reasons I would suggest the EP2 as an art camera or a second system but not as a primary camera systems for a busy professional or a photographer who wants to shoot in a wide range of conditions. Oh, and it is not waterproofed or weather proofed so don't sit in the "Splash" section at Seaworld and expect to be using the camera later at the dolphin pool......

With all these faults why do I like the camera at all?  Well, I spent 20 years getting to know big, square, medium format cameras inside and out.  They were slow to operate and required you to work at getting everything just right but they rewarded you with little squares of perfection.  Jewel like photographs that filled every square millimeter of the frame with subject matter and crucial negative space.  I use the EP-2 in just the same fashion.  My favorite way of working is with the 50mm Olympus Macro lens attached and in the manual focus mode.  When you have the camera set up this way, and you've enabled "manual focus assist" in one of the menu menus here's what happens:  1.  You look through the camera and get a general idea of your composition.  2.  You touch the focus ring of the lens and the image jumps up to seven time magnification.  3.  You focus on eyelashes or irises that fill the frame and when you let go of the focus ring the camera image snaps back to normal size. 4.  Shoot the image.

I also love to play around with my favorite old Nikon 50mm 1.1.2 lens on the front of two different adapter rings.  I try to shoot it wide open or at f2 or f2.8.  The whole reason to use that lens is the narrow depth of field.

Which brings me to a very interesting facet of the camera and one that few people will get to experience. You probably know that this camera system was/is based on the old Olympus Pen half frame cameras made from the 1950's until the early 1970's but you probably don't know much about that system if you are relatively new to photography.  Oh hell, even the old timers didn't really pay attention to that system (except for Eugene Smith.....).  But here's the deal:  Olympus made a half frame SLR with a full line of lenses.  They've always been a leading edge optics manufacturer and they had their work cut out for them with the half frame.  The lenses had to be twice as sharp as the lenses designed for 35mm work in order to equal the resolution when photographers enlarged them.  The lenses they made were really, really good.  Breathtakingly good!  You've got to remember that Olympus has always been considered second only to Leica in making world class microscope lenses.  And they brought that expertise with them when they designed the half frame lenses.

Surprise, with the right adapter you can use all of these lenses with the new EP1, EP2 and Panasonic M4:3rds cameras.   So what can you get?  How about a 60mm f1.5?  Maybe you'd rather have a (sharp wide open) 70mm f2.  Or a 25mm f2.8.  Or a 20mm.  How about a 150mm 3.5 that weighs next to nothing.  I've even got a 2X Olympus teleconverter that works with that.  Then there's the 38mm 1.8 and the 42mm 1.4 and even a 50 to 90mm zoom lens.  But the glass everyone wants are the fast lenses.  Because, in this format they'll give Leica and Zeiss a run for their money.  They really are that good.

If you aren't into 50 year old glass you'll be happy to know that you can buy an adapter to use most of the Leica M glass with the camera as well.  I ran into my friend, Paul, the other day and he was hauling around a Panasonic GF1 with a ASPH Summilux 35mm on the front.  Very sexy.  Extremely sharp.  Maybe sharp in a way that only Leica M9 shooters can only rival.

So, by all measures this camera is enigmatic.  Not a top performer.  No usable as a sole business camera. Not a sports machine.  Not a D3s rival by any stretch of the imagination.  So why do so many people love this camera and why are they rushing to use them? At the risk of sounding "new age-y" again I'll say that it's because the camera has some soul to it.  It sits right in your hand.  For me, it's about so many good usability features.  I like the accurate, bright and convenient EVF.  I like the ability to define my own favorite aspect ratio.  I like the quality of the video.  There's no mirror slap and the camera is very stable which makes it a natural for image stabilization-enabled long exposures.

But the bottom line is that it's so fun to use that you find yourself ignoring things that would bug you in other cameras.  Just like a romantic relationship you make excuses for the things you can't change and embrace the things you love.  And really, when you get right down to it so many of the images we love and have loved were made with the simplest equipment, the simple cameras of the day.  In the 1940's the images from Henri Cartier Bresson came from screw mount Leica cameras with separate windows for viewing and focusing, not the big Speed Graphics used by the pro's of that age.  In the 1950's the work of Robert Frank speaks for the decade.  Again, he used a small 35mm rangefinder because the goal was to capture the raw emotion not to map the ultimate potential sharpness of the time.  He used a small camera while the professionals used Rollei's and 4x5's.

If they built a camera that captured emotions and feelings instead of enormous numbers of sharp pixels would you buy one?  If the camera became transparent in your hands would you use one?  If your work calls for seeing things in conservative angles of view (28mm-100mm) and you don't usually print bigger than 11 by 17 do you really need to carry around something the size of a small cat to do your work with?

But again,  I have other cameras.  If I desperately need shallow depth of field I can still shove a 180mm lens on a Rollei medium format camera and show you REALLY shallow depth of field.  But it's sure nice to have something I can carry everywhere and know that, for 90% of what I like to shoot (as opposed to what clients want me to shoot) I can do it with this camera.

Now.  Where the hell is that EMA-1?

We've got a comment section below.  But before you hit it please know that if you tried an EP2 (or a Canon G11, etc.) and you didn't like it that doesn't mean I can't like it.  Also know that neither you nor I can really test lenses at our houses or studios in any meaningful way so it's kind of futile to argue about which brand of lenses "rules".  Your idea of photography may be all about shooting football games and you'll never use a camera like this but that doesn't mean that everyone shoots football games or should be in a state of constant readiness to shoot football games so let's not go into that either.

I like the camera.  The lenses are good. The ability to use everyone else's lenses is even better.  The Panasonic GH1 may  be better but I've never played with one.  Etc.

That sums up my whole thought process about the EP2 to date.  Next time we'll branch out a little bit.

Thanks for reading.

All of the images in this article were done on my EP-2 using an MMF-1 adapter and a 50mm Olympus e series Macro lens.  All of the images are ©2010 Kirk Tuck Photography.  I bought all the gear used in the shooting and production of the article and I don't get money or other consideration from Olympus or any retailer to write these articles.  They are solely my opinions.

If you have a moment, please consider writing a review for any my books you may have read over at Amazon.com.  It costs you nothing and my help me sell a few more books.  Here is the link to my author's page:

http://www.amazon.com/Kirk-Tuck/e/B002ECIS24/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1

Get all three books:  Minimalist Lighting and Commercial Photography

One of my favorite jobs of all time.

I was doing a little pro-bono project last wednesday when the agency doing the design work mentioned a paying job that might entail shooting at a print shop.  We chatted about it and I told them about this job that I did in New York City back in the 1990's.  An agency up there hired me to come up and do my signature available light style to document a specialty printer, step by step.

I kept it as simple as I could.  A Hasselblad and three lenses.  Three or four film backs, all filled with 400 speed Tri-X  (as opposed to the professional 320 variety).  A stout tripod and a light meter.  We might have gotten fancy and used a little pop up reflector from time to time.  The way the job work was that I'd walk around and look for interesting stuff to shoot.  Then I would set up my camera and shoot.

I think the client was nervous when I showed up with only one assistant and no entourage.  In New York in the middle of the 1990's most jobs were filled to the brim with assistants, make-up people, stylists, craft service people and other support crew.  That doesn't even begin to include art directors, account managers, product managers and production managers.  I think that's why the agency hired me and flew me up from Texas.  I had developed somewhat of a reputation for cutting through the silly stuff that had nothing to do with the way I shot and just getting my style of shooting done.

In the end the client really loved the images and used them to do a display for a trade show at the Jacob Javitts Center.  The images were used about ten by ten feet.  I sent a collection of the images to the present day account and they were pretty amazed.  Not that the photos were good or bad but that they looked so different from the homogenous digital images that they see so often on the web and in portfolios.

Having used Photoshop since the early 1990's I know that I might be able to take a digital capture and emulate the effects I got in the prints from the film negatives but there is a difference.  I've come to the conclusion (and so have several of my friends...) that film captures and digital captures are two totally different media.  I love the dimensionality of the prints and I'm not sure I can duplicate that.  And I've already written enough about the loss of potential that instant feedback creates.  So I'll just say that each media has its strengths and weaknesses and these strengths and weaknesses may be very counter intuitive.  I guess the thing I love about film is the same reason why people like to wrap presents:  It's fun to be surprised.

One of the main reasons I like shooting with both the regular 4:3rds cameras and the micro 4:3rds cameras from Olympus is the ability to set the format to a square.  I'll even admit to using a few of the "art filters" like the pinhole filter and the monochrome settings.  But they are all "looks" I could easily get in the darkroom.

Speaking of the darkroom, it's interesting to remember that there were so many steps in film jobs.  First we'd shoot, then there was a certain creative craft to developing film for the right look and the right contrast.  Then we'd try to make contact sheets that were as beautiful as the final prints.  After the client made "favorites" selections we'd make quick, 8x10 "work prints" so I could get client feedback on cropping (where appropriate), burning, dodging, contrast and other considerations.  Finally, for premium projects, I'd spend days in the darkroom, sometimes going thru a full box a paper, just to get exactly the right look and feel in each print.  The back end of the job was a very important part of the art process.   And remember, we'd work hard to get it right in the camera since there was little economic recourse for post process saving.

I love it when work from the distant past magnetically attracts future work.  I probably won't shoot the present day job on film.  The current economy and the level of fear in the advertising community probably mitigates against taking risks.  But we'll soon be back to the a heathly creative environment and hopefully ad people will have the courage to differentiate and create.

It's a new year and I'm throwing out old files and re-dedicating myself to pure photography.  I hope to stay media agnostic but you probably know that I'm fickle and mercurial.  I'm currently working with the Olympus EP2 to do a whole series of black and white portraits that I'm going to share with you in a few weeks.   Stay warm and keep shooting.  The rewards seem to go to the people who work all the time.  Might as well get into the habit.

Quick request:  I know that many of you have purchased one or more of my three books in the last year. If the spirit moves you, it would be wonderful to see a few more reviews of each book over at Amazon.com.  Just suggesting.  Helps my self-esteem.  Makes me write better blogs faster......

Out for a walk with the EP2. Square lovers rejoice.

    A tree along the Austin hike and bike trail.  Just south of downtown.  EP2 with kit lens.

So, I mentioned that I really love the square.  The Olympus EP2 gives me back the square with elegance and ease.  I am satisfied with the camera.  I'll have to leave off my tests with portraits; it seems all the usual suspects actually had other things to do today.  Bereft of human models I took off on a walk around downtown.  I know it won't sound heroic to my friends in the frozen wastelands to the north but it was a chilly 31 degrees (f) when I left my car and started across the pedestrian bridge into downtown.

Here's a link to a small gallery of images from the morning:  morning with my square camera.

I set the new camera to mostly neutral settings.  Large SF Jpeg.  Color natural.  Aspect ratio: 6x6.  Single AF, etc. No more or less sharpening, contrast or saturation than the defaults.  I look through the viewfinder and see an wonderfully framed image with a bit of black on either side.  I can toggle through the "info" button until I get to screen with no numbers, letters or symbols on it and I'm free to compose unencumbered.

The camera is so small and discreet that everyone takes me for a tourist.  At times I feel like a tourist in my own life but I'm sure my mental health professional friends would label that as disassociative and worry.  Instead I'll say that I love cruising around the same downtown I've walked through almost weekly for 32 years.  I love to see what's new and who's hanging out at the coffee shops.  Lately we've seen some upscale stuff on the main drag from the state capital.  A Patagonia shop opened its doors.  There are three new restaurants.  A state office building is being rehabbed for commercial use. Downtown has two more steak houses.

I don't really know what to say about the camera.  I never had a missed focus.  If I needed exposure compensation it was usually on the order of +1/3 stop.  I tried out the ienhance setting in the colors menu and the tree above is from that group of frames.  I find the lens pretty sharp wide open.  The shutter, once locked in, is pretty fast.  In all you'd have to be a bit clumsy to mess up with this camera.

But for me, the ability to compose in the square with such a nice viewfinder is a treat over all else.  More to come after I get the studio thing figured out.  As you probably know, the finder sits in the hot shoe and the hot shoe is the only way to trigger any sort of flash.  Hello tungsten lights and HMI's.  More to report as I live with the camera.  Raw info:  272 shots with one battery, full time  EVF, and 31-38 degrees over the course of three hours.  Kit zoom lens.