It's been a tough year for most of my friends and long distance acquaintances. Some times a walk through the park is a good prescription for our mental health. Hope the holidays are stress free and happy for everyone.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
A silly holiday image.
It's been a tough year for most of my friends and long distance acquaintances. Some times a walk through the park is a good prescription for our mental health. Hope the holidays are stress free and happy for everyone.
Monday, December 14, 2009
A rant about an editorial in the NYT by Thomas Friedman.
The following is from Thomas Friedman's Editorial in the New York Times from Sunday, December 13, 2009. I am excerpting it according to the fair use provision of the U.S. Copyright Law to discuss it's interpretations about the new economy......
In this article Friedman is discussing his friend's re-working of an advertising agency to deal with the "realities" of the new economy...........My note are in red....
"He illustrated this by telling me about a film he recently made for a nonprofit.
“The budget was about 20 percent of what we normally would charge,” said Greer. “After one meeting with the client, almost all our communication was by e-mail. The script was developed and approved using a collaborative tool provided by www.box.net. Internally, we all could look at the script no matter where we were, make suggestions and get to a final draft with complete transparency — easy, convenient and free. We did not have a budget to shoot new footage, yet we had no budget either for stock photography the old way — paying royalties of $100 to $2,000 per image. We found a source, istockphoto.com, which offered great photos for as little as a few dollars.
If there was no money in the budget for any production was there money in the budget to pay Greer's fees? If so, how did the money get there? Was it part of a negotiation? If so, why wasn't appropriate money negotiated for all the other creative resources normally necessary? In other words, how did everyone else's budget disappear while the budget for Greer remained?
“We could easily preview all the images, place them in our program to make sure they worked, purchase them online and download the high-resolution versions — all in seconds,” Greer added. “We had a script that called for 4 to 5 voices. Rather than hiring local voice talent — for $250 to $500 per hour — we searched the Internet for high-quality voices that we could afford. We found several sites offering various forms of narration or voice-overs. We selected www.voices.com. In less than one minute, we created an account, posted our requirements and solicited bids. Within five minutes, we had 10 to 15 ‘applicants’ ” — charging 10 percent of what Greer would have paid live talent.
(And, of course, when they've succeeded in eliminating all of the "live talent" in the market what will they do when the market recovers and clients demand original, creative and complex voice over solutions? Will they wring their hands and plead ignorance? Doesn't the work itself have an intrinsic value? Are all skills merely commodities?)
“Best part,” he said, “within minutes we had sample reads, which could be placed into our film to see if the voices fit. We selected our finalists, wrote them with more specific instructions and within hours had the final read delivered to us via MP3 files over the Web. We could get any accent or ethnicity we wanted. For music, we used a site calledwww.audiojungle.net,” where he could sample thousands of cuts of music and sound effects with the click of a mouse, and then buy them for pennies.
(How can Friedman, or for that matter, his friend Greer, not understand that by decimating each layer of creative businesses by not having the balls to charge liveable and sustainable production budgets they will create a business model that will quickly go up the food chain. Pretty soon, if there is no solidarity among creative professionals the next step is to automate advertising and marketing or offshore it to third world countries. People might say that this is a new "paradigm" driven by the web but what is really happening is that the massive destruction of creative markets, and other similar skilled markets, is leading to people making non sustainable choices in order to survive for the moment. As usual, only the consolidators are making any profit. Eventually these vulture-like pricing strategies will push most of the creative class into poverty.)
By being able to access all these cheap tools, Greer got to focus on his value-add: imagination. The customer got a better product for less money. But he didn’t create many new jobs. For that, he needs the economy to pick up. “If we could only borrow a buck and invest,” said Greer, “we’d all be rolling again.”
(There is no proof that the client got a better product. There is no proof the client got a good product. Only a groundless justification for cutting the profit out of three different areas of creative endeavor. "Save yourself and forget the rest of the passengers!" "Take him, not me!" Finally, what does Greer need any additional capital for? His supplier costs have dropped by a factor of ten. He's doing his jobs for 20% of what he used to charge. If his sole value add is imagination wouldn't he be better off eliminating all of his staff and just sit around being imaginative? ........Imagination is the most readily available resource in all of the advertising world. Hell, you can get better imagination from just about any six year old than you can from the typical ad man. The real shortage is of skilled practitioners, and companies like Greer's are picking them off one at a time under the guise of "efficiency". That Friedman applauds this makes me nauseous. When the NYT downsizes him out of a job, replaced by random column generators, or "crowd-sourcing" I hope he'll understand what he helped to destroy. Makes me want to re-read the Lorax by Dr. Suess.)
What does this have to do with a column about photography? Plenty. In nearly every avenue of our lives big business is trying to figure out how to squeeze more and more cost out in order to return huge profits to a smaller and smaller group of people (not necessarily the stockholders). By denying quality suppliers a sustainable profit they drive the suppliers out of business or off shore. By doing so they decimate support for local communities. Photographers have been especially hard hit in the last few years by stock photography marketeers that market to the dreams of a vast army of amateurs, convincing them to work below their own costs (the very thing our government routinely accuses China of doing....it's called "dumping" when countries do it). In this way legions of people, hungry for some sort of misplaced artistic recognition, subsidize companies owned by powerful corporations. In a way it's similar to the way that state lotteries prey on the ignorance of the poorest segments of society. They show off the "big winner" to a demographic segment that doesn't understand the statistical relevance of "one in ten million..."
In the same way the legions of microstock photographers don't understand that they are part of a system that drives the cost of "marketing intellectual property" to zero for companies so they can more efficiently take even more money out of the pockets of the very people who subsidize them. Corbis=Microsoft.
When mega corporations have succeeded in driving off the musicians and artists and filmmakers and all the other people who bring beauty and relevance to our lives what exactly will be left? Canned music over fries at McDonald's? Endless animated movies? Billions of nearly identical photographs? A broke middle class? A poverty stricken class of skilled workers? And when Google finally figures out which legislators have to be paid to make all books available free who will ever want to write a book again? Then what will you read?
Finally analogy: If you take a great bottle of red wine and dilute it with several gallons of water is it still a great bottle of wine? And if you train a new generation of people to drink the diluted wine will they have actually experienced good wine?
If we as a culture are willing to settle for less and less, where will it all end? What will we have done to ourselves.....?
In this article Friedman is discussing his friend's re-working of an advertising agency to deal with the "realities" of the new economy...........My note are in red....
"He illustrated this by telling me about a film he recently made for a nonprofit.
“The budget was about 20 percent of what we normally would charge,” said Greer. “After one meeting with the client, almost all our communication was by e-mail. The script was developed and approved using a collaborative tool provided by www.box.net. Internally, we all could look at the script no matter where we were, make suggestions and get to a final draft with complete transparency — easy, convenient and free. We did not have a budget to shoot new footage, yet we had no budget either for stock photography the old way — paying royalties of $100 to $2,000 per image. We found a source, istockphoto.com, which offered great photos for as little as a few dollars.
If there was no money in the budget for any production was there money in the budget to pay Greer's fees? If so, how did the money get there? Was it part of a negotiation? If so, why wasn't appropriate money negotiated for all the other creative resources normally necessary? In other words, how did everyone else's budget disappear while the budget for Greer remained?
“We could easily preview all the images, place them in our program to make sure they worked, purchase them online and download the high-resolution versions — all in seconds,” Greer added. “We had a script that called for 4 to 5 voices. Rather than hiring local voice talent — for $250 to $500 per hour — we searched the Internet for high-quality voices that we could afford. We found several sites offering various forms of narration or voice-overs. We selected www.voices.com. In less than one minute, we created an account, posted our requirements and solicited bids. Within five minutes, we had 10 to 15 ‘applicants’ ” — charging 10 percent of what Greer would have paid live talent.
(And, of course, when they've succeeded in eliminating all of the "live talent" in the market what will they do when the market recovers and clients demand original, creative and complex voice over solutions? Will they wring their hands and plead ignorance? Doesn't the work itself have an intrinsic value? Are all skills merely commodities?)
“Best part,” he said, “within minutes we had sample reads, which could be placed into our film to see if the voices fit. We selected our finalists, wrote them with more specific instructions and within hours had the final read delivered to us via MP3 files over the Web. We could get any accent or ethnicity we wanted. For music, we used a site calledwww.audiojungle.net,” where he could sample thousands of cuts of music and sound effects with the click of a mouse, and then buy them for pennies.
(How can Friedman, or for that matter, his friend Greer, not understand that by decimating each layer of creative businesses by not having the balls to charge liveable and sustainable production budgets they will create a business model that will quickly go up the food chain. Pretty soon, if there is no solidarity among creative professionals the next step is to automate advertising and marketing or offshore it to third world countries. People might say that this is a new "paradigm" driven by the web but what is really happening is that the massive destruction of creative markets, and other similar skilled markets, is leading to people making non sustainable choices in order to survive for the moment. As usual, only the consolidators are making any profit. Eventually these vulture-like pricing strategies will push most of the creative class into poverty.)
By being able to access all these cheap tools, Greer got to focus on his value-add: imagination. The customer got a better product for less money. But he didn’t create many new jobs. For that, he needs the economy to pick up. “If we could only borrow a buck and invest,” said Greer, “we’d all be rolling again.”
(There is no proof that the client got a better product. There is no proof the client got a good product. Only a groundless justification for cutting the profit out of three different areas of creative endeavor. "Save yourself and forget the rest of the passengers!" "Take him, not me!" Finally, what does Greer need any additional capital for? His supplier costs have dropped by a factor of ten. He's doing his jobs for 20% of what he used to charge. If his sole value add is imagination wouldn't he be better off eliminating all of his staff and just sit around being imaginative? ........Imagination is the most readily available resource in all of the advertising world. Hell, you can get better imagination from just about any six year old than you can from the typical ad man. The real shortage is of skilled practitioners, and companies like Greer's are picking them off one at a time under the guise of "efficiency". That Friedman applauds this makes me nauseous. When the NYT downsizes him out of a job, replaced by random column generators, or "crowd-sourcing" I hope he'll understand what he helped to destroy. Makes me want to re-read the Lorax by Dr. Suess.)
What does this have to do with a column about photography? Plenty. In nearly every avenue of our lives big business is trying to figure out how to squeeze more and more cost out in order to return huge profits to a smaller and smaller group of people (not necessarily the stockholders). By denying quality suppliers a sustainable profit they drive the suppliers out of business or off shore. By doing so they decimate support for local communities. Photographers have been especially hard hit in the last few years by stock photography marketeers that market to the dreams of a vast army of amateurs, convincing them to work below their own costs (the very thing our government routinely accuses China of doing....it's called "dumping" when countries do it). In this way legions of people, hungry for some sort of misplaced artistic recognition, subsidize companies owned by powerful corporations. In a way it's similar to the way that state lotteries prey on the ignorance of the poorest segments of society. They show off the "big winner" to a demographic segment that doesn't understand the statistical relevance of "one in ten million..."
In the same way the legions of microstock photographers don't understand that they are part of a system that drives the cost of "marketing intellectual property" to zero for companies so they can more efficiently take even more money out of the pockets of the very people who subsidize them. Corbis=Microsoft.
When mega corporations have succeeded in driving off the musicians and artists and filmmakers and all the other people who bring beauty and relevance to our lives what exactly will be left? Canned music over fries at McDonald's? Endless animated movies? Billions of nearly identical photographs? A broke middle class? A poverty stricken class of skilled workers? And when Google finally figures out which legislators have to be paid to make all books available free who will ever want to write a book again? Then what will you read?
Finally analogy: If you take a great bottle of red wine and dilute it with several gallons of water is it still a great bottle of wine? And if you train a new generation of people to drink the diluted wine will they have actually experienced good wine?
If we as a culture are willing to settle for less and less, where will it all end? What will we have done to ourselves.....?
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Wacky times with lens adapters.
Just above: A shot of the front of the Canon G11 made with the Frankenstein set up in the top two images.
But Why?
Well. I think it's because I really like shooting square with this little camera and I like the way the finder looks. But, when I use the kit zoom lens I can't really make the DOF dramatically shallow. And, with the exception of the 50mm Macro, Olympus e series lens, there are really no fast lenses for the system. I bought the Nikon adapter to use the 50 1.2 on the e series cameras. I like the effect on the e30 and the e3. But when I bought the adapter to use e lenses on the EP2 this seemed like a fun experiment.
I haven't had time to shoot any portraits with the set up because of the holiday crush but that's next.
Here's what I like about the combo:
1. The shallow depth of field!
2. The amazing center sharpness of this older lens.
3. The wonderful out of focus feel.
What I've come to dislike about the combo:
1. I can't really focus it accurately unless I used the quick magnification in the finder. That gives me an image that is 10x to focus with but it really slows down the process. Take this caveat with a grain of salt. I don't have perfect vision and I usually wear glasses for close focusing.
2. The lens has some nasty green fringing wide open that show in the high contrast intersections.
3. I lose autofocus. Obviously. The lens never had it to begin with.
4. If I stop down I am looking at more and more gain artifacts in the finder.
5. If I stop down I lose the visual effect I'm trying to get with this lens in the first place.
What I hope to end up with is a camera/lens combination that gives me back the tight crops and the shallow depth of field I like while being more convenient than other set ups I've tried since the film days. In truth I'll probably give it a valiant effort and then start using the 50 Macro Olympus lens. It's almost as fast at f2 and, if I compare them side by side, at f2, the Olympus is a bit sharper and much better corrected for chromatic aberrations. It will also allow me to set all apertures while focusing and metering at the wide open value.
I'm on week two with the EP2. Here are my thoughts. I like it very much. It requires a bit more control freak intervention on the +/- controls to keep the exposure in the sweet zone. No problem there. The IS is astoundingly good with the little kit zoom. That lens is sharp in the center zone at nearly every aperture I want to use.
Should you rush out and buy one if you already have a G11? Good question. I used the G11 to take the photos of the EP2 above and I was impressed once again at what a good job Canon did on that camera. Unless you have Euros or dollars cascading from your stuffed pockets I would wait a while and push the G11 to its limits.
In fact, I just saw a 16x20 black and white print in my friend's office, made on a G10 and printed with an Epson 3880 this week. It was absolutely perfect.
If you did pixel peeking you might be able to find a fault but at the normal (and even at the "I'm an opinionated photoshop expert smart-ass" level) it was damn good. I mean good enough to compete with similar images from the latest DSLR's. But, this guy has his chops down and the image was well seen.
What to make of all this? Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. And sometimes we buy cameras because we just like buying the cameras. And there it is.
Wednesday, December 09, 2009
Out for a walk with the EP2. Square lovers rejoice.
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.
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.
Monday, December 07, 2009
A short blog about why I think the Olympus EP2 is great.
This image was shot with a Hasselblad Camera and a 150mm Lens. I like it because it is square, black and white and the lighting is fun. What's this got to do with the tiny Olympus EP2? Read on.
When I bought the e30 SLR camera I was excited about being able to choose a different aspect ratio. The ratio I shot with for twenty odd years was that of the medium format square. Called 6x6. I love composing portraits in the square and one of the things I never liked about the transition to digital many years ago was the cold hard abandonment of divergent aspect ratios. With 3:2 based systems everything became the 35mm look that I had consciously moved away from decades ago.
But the way the aspect ratio option was done in the e30 only really worked if you were shooting in the live view mode. The time delay using live mode in an slr with a mirror was just too long. Not being able to compose at eye level was just too different. I could live with it when doing still life and landscape but....I don't do still life and landscape very often. And when I do it's for money not for joy. The joy comes from shooting portraits.
So, along comes the little black EP2 and it offers an electronic viewfinder. That's its one major improvement over the earlier EP1. But along with the EVF I get actual square aspect ratio in an eye level finder! The joy! And it works well. The square factors out to about a 9 megapixel camera which is more than enough for me.
Once I set the camera into the monochrome mode and enabled the green "filter" I was in heaven. I'm still in heaven. Now I have the digital camera I always wanted at a very reasonable $1100. This is my portrait, street, event, anything that doesn't require flash camera. So far the files are looking good. When I something half as good as the Hasselblad shot I posted above I'll do a more in-depth review and post it here. I'm in the "breaking in" process right now. Stay tuned.
Tomorrow I get the MMF-1 and we go to town shooting some video with the 35-100mm f2 lens. Creamy out of focus and lots of juicy sharpness in the same frame. New chapter of the digital revolution here we come!
Have fun shooting.
Thursday, December 03, 2009
Breaking the self fulfilling prophecy of a "bad year"
For Zachary Scott Theater.
Each of us looks at our daily life through the layers of our past and the constant static of random and chaotic information from outside our rational process. Our memory of past occurrences obscures the real pattern of the present. How many times this year have I heard photographers say, "The whole industry is devastated and it's never coming back!"? But aren't new photographs being made every day? Negativity and news reports lead one to believe that everyone is unemployed, losing their jobs, their life's savings and their homes. Economist tell us that we'll never regain the spending power we had in the 1980's and 1990's.
But what is true? How much of this is random, unrelated static? How fearful should we be? Well, all economics, like all real estate, is local. In Austin, Texas the unemployment rate is around 7% but the unemployment rate at the height of the boom years hovered around 4%. So 3% is the number directly affected by this downturn in my metro area. The other 93% of people still have their jobs. Still get a pay check, still buy groceries and pay rent or mortgages. I know the numbers are different in other parts of the country but in many places similar statistics prevail.
When I read the paper or watch the news things seem horrible. Random killings, earthquakes, storms, wars. But locally? Nothing. Ribbon cuttings, petty embezzlements, Christmas tree lightings, appeals for charities.
How does this all relate to the business of being a photographer? Surely I'm not telling you anything new about the nature of anxiety and the news.
Okay. Here's what I've been thinking about lately. It's been a tough year. The "low hanging fruit" disappeared from the trees. Belts have been tightened, even if only in anticipation of a whole scale collapse that will probably never come. Budgets have been slashed. All the cliches.
So, every photographer (every business) has a choice of how to approach the change in market dynamics. Some will theorize that this is a year in which nothing will happen. These photographers choose to sandbag the windows and retreat into their bunkers, intent on husbanding their resources, for the time in the future in which they anticipate that the clouds will part and the economic engine will re-fire and they'll stand ready to reap the rewards. They're keeping their powder dry. And while they're keeping their powder dry life goes on without them.
The opposite choice is to go out and make the connections and work with what's being presented by your universe. Accept less glamorous jobs. Make new friends. Show new work. You only get one life and if you hide away in your bunker you're just wasting your time.
The solution to the retreat of low hanging fruit is to get a taller ladder. Throw a wider net. Stay connected. When it all works out you don't have to worry about timing the market. You'll already be enmeshed in the middle of it.
I've spent the year trying to stay in touch. Working on my own fun projects. Spending money on cool stuff when opportunity knocked. Writing blogs. Reaching out. Teaching. Writing books. Shooting smaller projects. Planning for bigger projects. Having more lunches with friends. Getting the important stuff right.
When the market comes back I hope I barely notice because I'll be submerged in the process.
Case in point: I have some friends who have seen a few(financially) rough years. One of them had the opportunity to travel in Europe as part of a speaking tour. While it didn't make economic sense for them at the moment they pulled their kids out of school, took some vacation time, spent the money and took a fabulous trip for two weeks. Why? It made emotional sense. Kids grow up. Time won't stand still. The money is less important than the shared experience. Did they have some fear about taking the risk? Yes. Was it worth it? You'd have to ask them but from the smiles on their faces I would say......without a doubt. They acted. They resisted paralysis. They risked. They won.
I look back at this bad year. What do I see? Devastation and ruin? No. We made it through. We're still paying our bills. Clients still call on the phone (but mostly they e-mail). I've written another book. I've shot some fun images. I spent the year having fun with my family. We learned to enjoy new stuff. It's all a wild adventure. I feel like we won too.
Was it a bad year or did we just make less money? Can we separate the nonsense that the photo industry is falling apart from the temporary shortfall in the economy? If we can then we all win.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
At the Theater with a camera and a big lens.
One of my favorite clients is Zachary Scott Theater. Their marketing director uses photography well and they appreciate my style. I do a lot of straightforward, set-up images throughout the year for their website and print collateral. But one of the things I've been doing for them for over sixteen years now is "running shoots". These are documentary shoots of the dress rehearsals. We usually do them the night before each show opens. We do them straight through. No stopping and starting. I have access to every part of the stage but there are no "do overs". These are the photos that the theater sends to the lifestyle publications and the local newspaper to run with reviews and announcements.
What we're trying to do is give a potential audience the feeling of what it's like to be there. To be in the audience.
When I first started doing this the publications wanted black and white prints. We shot black and white Tri-X in Leica M series rangefinder cameras. This took a lot of concentration on the changing stage lights. Since the cameras were unmetered I was constantly checking things with a spot meter. It was quite an undertaking. Our hit ratio for well focused and well timed images was much higher than our ratio for proper exposure.
At the end of the show I'd head to my darkroom to develop film that evening. The next morning I'd make contact sheets and try to meet with the marketing team around 11 am to get their input for needed prints. By mid afternoon I'd have ten or fifteen 8x10 inch black and white prints ready to be picked up and sent around.
Over the years the cameras changed but the deadlines never did. Last year I was shooting the shows with a Nikon D700 and assorted lenses. As you may know I changed systems and now I shoot with the Olympus e series SLR cameras. I really like them but they don't handle high ISO noise as well as the Nikon stuff. I was nervous about using them on a show like the one I've included images of. The stage light isn't bright and everything is knocked down a bit by colored filter gels. I have trepidation in shooting anything over ISO 1600 with the e3 or the e30 so I didn't go there. But while I was getting ready for the shoot I remembered shooting at ISO 400 with a manual focus Leica. Things have gotten better.
The standard lens I used for 80% of my stage shots last year was the Nikon 70-200 f2.8. The Olympus equivalent is the 35-100mm f2.0. The Olympus is a full stop faster and at least two stops sharper. By that I mean that the images I get at f 2.0 seem on par, in terms of sharpness, with the images I used to get from the Nikon at f4. I packed an e3 and an e30 and just two lenses, the 35/100 and the 14/54mm.
I shoot a lot during rehearsals so I tend to shoot large/fine/jpegs. I set both cameras to ISO 1600 and I set the color settings to "natural" with a minus one click on contrast. I use the spot meter in both cameras. One 4 gb card for each. (I've settled in at 4 gb because they fit nicely on one DVD.....).
Since both cameras have great IS (image stabilization) I forgo the tripods and monopods. This year my 14 year old son, Ben, joined me with his Pentax istD camera and short zoom lens. 14 year old non coffee drinkers seem to be better at holding a camera still than some adults....
While I missed focus more often than I would have liked I found that the lens performed very well at f2, f2.2, f2.5 and f2.8. I rarely had to go below 1/160th of a second and found that most of the time I was working around 1/250th of a second. Not a very perilous range for handholding. Most of the actors were African American and nearly every background was dark and continuous. A ready made torture test for noise in the shadow areas.
Non of the examples above have had post production noise reduction applied. The noise reduction in camera is "standard". Please take a moment to blow a few of them up on your screen and evaluate the noise. While I'm the first to admit that the Nikon's are less noisy I don't think the noise in these files is at all objectionable. I took the time to print a few and found them to be just right.
When I pick up the 14-35mm f2 SWD I'll stop worrying about noise altogether.
The magic thing seems to be that the lenses have enough depth of field to cover what I need at nearly wide open. Not the case with full frame which requires me to work around f4 for satisfactory sharpness and focus depth. Amazing how you can never compare apples to apples in this craft. If Olympus made a few f1.4 or f1.2 lenses for this format I'd sure give the whole thing a try with the older e1's and e300's. If I could use them at ISO 400 it would be fun.
So, sheer square inches is a nice thing to have when you need to shoot under low light but.....it's just one shifting side of a changing paradigm. Olympus figured that out when they started designing lenses for their small sensor system. I can hardly wait to try my hand at some architecture with these little cameras. The 7-14 and the 9-18mm lenses have reputations for being some of the sharpest and best corrected wide zooms around. Couple the lens performance with really wide DOF at f5.6 and f8.0 and you really have a totally different way of looking at that field. Should be fun.
I suggest you head out and support your local theaters during the holidays. Live theater is something special. And while not as polished as a movie or a television show there is a tremendous value in the unexpected and the energy of live performances. Many theaters depend on the holiday cash flow to help subsidize chancier work during the rest of the year. And if we let theaters die off all we'll be left with is television and YouTube. Don't you want a nice excuse to get out of the house?
Final Note/Request: If you are looking for the perfect gift for someone who is really hard to shop for, like a really hot girlfriend/boyfriend, a generous aunt, a demanding boss, your sainted mother, etc. you might want to consider a really original gift. My third book, Commercial Photography Handbook, comes to mind. Beautifully illustrated and full of good, solid business info. You never know when your great grandmother will give up knitting and pick up a Leica S2, ready for business. You'll be happy you got her the book when she starts turning a major profit. Heck, she may even share tips with you. Thanks, Kirk
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