We Shoot Tulips With Olympus Don't We?

It is that time of the year again, spring is in the air; again, tulips are in full bloom at our Wellington Botanical Garden again ;)

Turn out to be a dry and mild sunny day, after lunch we head for the garden; to admire the short lived, glorious flowers. I expect all the blooms will be gone early next week.

I took TWO Olympus with me, the 3 year old E-P2 and the 8 months old OM-D E-M5. To calm my aching knee I only have TWO Panasonic lenses, my favorite super wide zoom; the Panasonic LUMIX G VARIO 7-14 mm F4.0 ASPH and the very compact Panasonic Lumix G X Vario PZ 45-175mm f/4-5.6 zoom.

Out of the blue, Le General insisted that she wanted to shoot her own pictures!  I have to give her the E-P2 with the 7-14 lens which she hogged the whole afternoon ;)

A 45mm view of the garden taken by LB before she took over the ultra wide.

They Doctored News Pictures In Malaysia Don't They?

Do they or they do not?

Of course they do, not forgetting photographers have been manipulating pictures since the medium was invented!

Fast rewind to September 9, I read with interest an news item in the Malaysia paper; The New Straits Times which was posted in Face Book...
 

WORK ETHIC: Bernama man denies senator's claim he had doctored photo of PM's Hari Raya open house

PUTRAJAYA: THE photographer who covered the Hari Raya Aidilfitri open house of Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak and ministers on Aug 19 regrets that his picture has become a subject of dispute by an opposition party senator who alleged it had been doctored.

"Doctoring pictures is not part of my work ethic. In fact, it is not the work ethic of any Bernama staff. The allegation is an insult," said Harry Salzman Abu Bakar, a Bernama photograher.

Has Hasselblad and Leica Gone Loony?

I always think highly of Hasselblad, for a long long time I think they make some of the best medium format cameras around!

Their 500C was a classics! It even went to the moon, the first man on the moon was shot with a Hasselblad!

I had great admiration for Hasselblad, until two days ago...

Hasselblad proudly launched their new LUNAR at Photokina two days ago, they called the monstrosity "Italian-designed ‘ultimate luxury’ mirrorless, interchangeable lens camera"!

I hasn't stop laughing :)  Ha ha ha ha...

Wait... the best is yet to come...

Konnichiwa こんにちは Canon G15

Say sayonara to my G12 and konnichiwa to the new G15 :)

Blurity Deblurs Shaky Photos!

One year ago I read with interest Adobe was showing off an advanced Image De-blurring feature that may appear in an upcoming CS6.0 of Photoshop. The demonstration got everybody work up but alas this magical feature did not appear in the latest version of Photoshop.

What I didn't know Blurity was on the same track promoting a stand alone app that do the same magic of making blurry photos sharp!

Nikon D600 The Disruptive Full-Frame DSLR?

By now the whole world know Nikon has launch their "affordable" D600 FULL-FRAME DSLR!  Priced at US$ 2,099 (body) it is a thousand bucks cheaper than big brother the D800.

So what it is 12 MP LESS than the 36 MP big brother, who or how often do you need all those extra pixels anyway?

Every photographer worth his/her pixels knew the full-frame DSLR is the ultimate upgrade, trouble is a decade ago; you will have to take out a second mortgage just to upgrade to a full-frame system!  It was that expensive ;)

Prima Facie - Nikon D800 DSLR

After talking and anticipating about it for a week, last Tuesday thanks to Ben of Photo Warehouse, we were given a chance to try out the 36.3MP Nikon D800 DSLR!

Our manager Simon told us we have just three days to play with this "King of Mega Pixels" and he is interested to know how this full-frame DSLR compare to the Mamiya 645DF he bought for the office 3 weeks ago.

Simon's intention is to find out if the D800 can deliver the kind of sharpness and dynamic range like a medium format digital back is able to.

Prima Facie - Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8 L IS II

Three days ago, my colleague Martyn received his spanking new Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8 L IS II lens! I was the first person he show the 1.6 KG, NZ$ 4,000.00 chunk of glass to ;)

Alright Martyn, I don't have one :)  The fact is, I can't afford one!

Fondling this cold metallic wonder optics bring back memories of those great time I was with the papers, most of my news pictures were shot with a similar lens but WITHOUT the luxury of IS (Image Stabilizer).

Canon launch their first generation EF 70-200 f/2.8 L in March 1995, rapidly the versatile zoom became the "must have" of all EOS totting pros.

In September 2001 Canon delivered the same lens with an advance image stabilizer and priced it 3 times more than the non IS version.

Canon claimed their version two IS zoom have a three stops advantage over the non IS, what they meant was if you are able to shoot a shake free shot with your non IS at 1/125 (@ 200mm), you will be able to do the same at 1/15 with the IS lens!  A bit of exaggeration, but possible ;)