FUJIFILM X-T1 Gunning for OM-Ds?

2014 is gonna be a very interesting year in new digital cameras launch!

As Olympus OM-D fan boys are rubbing their hands in glee, waiting for the new OM-D E-M10 to launch on January 29 at 6am London time...

 FUJIFILM dropped a bomb shell...

Lumix G Vario 12-32mm On OM-D E-M5

By now some of you might realised that I am mighty impressed with this little "kit lens" that came with my GM1, why... I even compared it's performance with a much "larger" Olympus kit and it won!  I even "jump to my conclusion" that the tiny 24-64mm (equivalent) zoom might make a perfect traveling lens on my Olympus OM-D E-M5!

The ultra compact Lumix G Vario 12-32 f3.5/5.6 zoom look really cool on my Olympus OM-D E-M5 body!

Back at work today, my colleague; Nigel does not exactly soak in my excitement on this little jewel... he even STRENGTHEN my untold doubt that the Lumix 12-32 performed better because it was on a Panasonic Lumix camera!

Battle Between Two Kit Lens

A kit lens is a "starter" lens which can be sold with an interchangeable-lens camera such as a single-lens reflex camera. It is generally an inexpensive lens priced at the lowest end of the manufacturer's range so as to not add much to a camera kit's price.

Originally kit lenses were of normal focal length; more recently kit lenses tend to be inexpensive zoom lenses that range from medium wide angle to mid telephoto for added versatility. - Wikipedia

The two kit lens I am comparing here are:

The Olympus Digital M.Zuiko 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 ED came with my Olympus E-P2, three years ago. The focal length range is equivalent to 28-84mm in full (35mm) terms.

The new LUMIX G VARIO 12-32mm / F3.5-5.6 ASPH / MEGA O.I.S. that come as a kit lens with my ultra-compact Lumix GM1. The focal length range is equivalent to 24-64mm in full (35mm) terms.

The two kits, Panasonic; left and Olympus, right. Both lens are in their "retracted" positions.  The new Pani for the GM1 is a lot smaller than the 3 year old M.Zuiko.

Olympus Stylus 1 - E-M5 Wannabe

 Olympus dive into the super zoom arena with the Stylus 1, officially announced today. The OM-D E-M5 wannabe features a larger-than-average 1/1.7" BSI-CMOS sensor.

The new 28-300mm equivalent, constant aperture F2.8 zoom lens, high resolution EVF,'hybrid' control ring, and Wi-Fi lead the attractive features.Olympus also includes built-in ND filter, tilting touchscreen, in-camera Raw processing, and 1080p movie recording!!

You can even get a 1.7x teleconverter for this mini E-M5 look alike, which increases the telephoto end of the lens to 510 mm!

I was told the Stylus 1 will be available in December for a list price of NZD 850.00.

Olympus OM-D E-M1 WTF?

WTF - What The Fuss?  Did you think I mean something else? DUH!

So finally Olympus announced their most talk about, argued about; leaked before launch MFT camera, the OM-D E-M1.

Google "Olympus OM-D E-M1 and you get...

About 6,740,000 results (0.27 seconds) !!

But what was all the fuss? 

Is the EM-1 a revolutionary NEW camera?

NO!

Olympus OM-D E-M1 LEAKED!!!

The most talk about and highly expected NEW Olympus OM-D E-M5 replacement, the OM-D E-M1 photos AND video was leaked all over the internet!!

This is a screen grab from a video in ENGADGET!  Go watch it now, they MIGHT take it down ;)  After all, this beauty is not supposed to be launch till next month! (As expected the video was taken down, but you still can watch it HERE.. for how long? Anybody's guess ;)

OM-D @ ISO 20,000 in Real World!

I have been using my Olympus OM-D for nearly a year, and I have shot thousands of pictures with it, but how many time did I actually made use of the ISO 20,000 setting for really low light capture?  ONCE!!

This still life test shot was taken in early May last year, while I was testing my newly acquired dream camera. It was shot at ISO 25,600!

Even at that never heard of (a couple of years ago), ultra high ISO for a HALF FRAME sensor, the result was ACCEPTABLE!

New Olympus PEN E-P5 z z z z !

One week ago Olympus launched their new PEN E-P5, superceding their two year old E-P3.

Because the number four and any of its multiples are considered a BAD OMEN in Japan ( even knifes, forks and bowls are never ever sold in packages of four). there are no E-P4.

This is the "new" E-P5, you can have it in black, silver or white. This is the white version.

Stealthy OM-D For Street Photography

During our recent visits of Sydney and Brisbane, my friend was wondering how I kill time when Le General was busy shopping! Would you believe I decided to try out my Olympus OM-D EM-5 as a stealthy street photography camera?

I did! But was the camera small enough to avoid suspicion? Was it fast enough to auto focus?  Take a look at the pictures below and decide yourself ;)

Most of the shots you see below was shot WITHOUT raising the OM-D to my eye, I depend on the raised rear LCD  screen for aiming and I shoot "continuous-low" at 3 frames per second.

The OM-D with the raised rear LCD was usually hung from my neck or sitting on my lap, there was time it is just sitting on a table for all the candid shots.

Olympus OM-D E-M5 Best Camera of 2012!

According to the extremely popular Digital Photography Review, Olympus OM-D E-M5 has been voted as Best Camera of 2012 by reader's poll!

The second and third place went to the Nikon D800 and Canon 5D-Mk 3.

How did the "half frame" mirrorless wonder beat the other two FULL FRAME heavy weight DSLR?

FOCUS PEAKING feature HIDDEN in OM-D EM-5!

Before we even start on the subject of FOCUS PEAKING and not wanting to repeat what hundreds of write up on this very useful feature, please go and check this page out and watch the video below!



DONE?  By now you should know exactly what Focus Peaking is all about ;)

In short, Focus Peaking is a fast and accurate way to focus a manual lens on a mirrorless camera!

If Focus Peaking is so effective, WHY-WHY-WHY, that the most popular M4/3 Olympus OM-D E-M5 DO NOT HAVE IT??

After all, Sony; Pentax, Panasonic etc have this feature built in!

All this while, OM-D user like me suffered in silence; avoiding using our manual focus lenses because you really have to strain your eye to get an accurate focus!

Yes, yes; yes, I know there is the magnified  manual focus aid you can activate, have you try it out?  The blow-up image shake like hell and after a while you gave up ;)

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.

It's a Bitch Focusing Manual Tele Lens On OM-D!

Saturday... after days of doom and groom of wet and cold days, mother nature decided to show a little mercy to Wellingtonian by dishing out a dry, mild day!

As usual, I have a couple of hours to kill after dropping Le General for her line dancing at Newtown.

I had with me the OM-D E-M5 (with grip) and my old Nikon 300/4.5 IF-ED manual lens plus a Nikon TC-14 tele converter.

My Manfrotto carbon monopod came with me too.

 I head for my favorite "lens test area"; the Oriental Parade where I knew, on a nice day like this, people come out for exercise and play :)

The 15 year old Nikon lens with the 1.4X converter took on a field of view of a 420mm lens. When this combo is attached to the M4/3 OM-D it "became" a whopping lens with a FOV of 840mm!

Another Banding Problem Of OM-D E-M5!

Olympus has acknowledged the banding that can appear in high ISO OM-D E-M5 images shot with the Panasonic 20mm F1.7 lens and says it is working on a fix.

Statement from Olympus:

"After checking every possible combination of a body and a lens, we found the phenomena only with this combination (OM-D, E-M5 coupled with the Panasonic 20mm pancake lens). We are continuing to study how we can eliminate this and we recommend for our customers using E-M5 with Panasonic 20mm pancake lens to keep a low ISO to avoid this problem for the time being."

Mind you, with all that camera sold and being the hottest selling M4/3; there are not many complain, don't believe me?  Just go and Google "OM-D E-M5 may show banding" and you get ONLY 12,000 results, wheres "Canon 5D-III light leak" return 314,000  ;)

So imagine my surprise when my friend Chris Bing show me his E-M5 is having banding problem of a different kind!

Do In Camera Stabilization Work For Long Primes?

Image stabilization (IS) is a family of techniques used to reduce blurring associated with the motion of a camera during exposure.

Specifically, it compensates for pan and tilt (angular movement, equivalent to yaw and pitch) of a camera or other imaging device. It is used in image-stabilized binoculars, still and video cameras, and astronomical telescopes.

With still cameras, camera shake is particularly problematic at slow shutter speeds or with long focal length (telephoto) lenses.

With video cameras, camera shake causes visible frame-to-frame jitter in the recorded video. In astronomy, the problem of lens-shake is added to by variations in the atmosphere over time, which cause the apparent positions of objects to change.    - Wikipedia

Get A Grip & TRANSFORM OM-D E-M5!

Get A Grip means "it seems like you've lost it, so go get it!!"

Before I start my rant I wanted to say "GET A GRIP Olympus Australia!!!"

Why?

In New Zealand, you have to go through Olympus Australia to order anything Olympus!  And it take A LONG TIME!

My HLD-6 grip for the OM-D E-M5 took FIVE WEEKS to arrive! It is as bad, if not worst than getting my passport renewed at the Malaysian Embassy here!  ;)

Why do I need extra grip and support for a most reviewed compact camera?  Because this retro-centric super compact is just TOO BLEEDING SMALL for my huge palms!

Video With OM-D E-M5

I have not touch my video cameras for years! They just sat there, somewhere in the closet quietly and slowly died! I saw it coming when they incorporate video capability in digital still cameras years ago. Another example of disruptive innovation, my young PhD friend Christian Sandström will tell me ;)

 Not that I shoot a lot of video, for the last couple of years; most of the clips were of Le General's line dancing and my camera of choice was the Canon G12.

Why my G12? It is easy breezy, the G12 auto white balance is accurate and the HD quality is more than good enough for Youtube upload!

What about the OM-D E-M5?

Old Nikkor 35/1.4 on OM-D E-M5

When I joint the newspaper in 1974 as photojournalist, there was one lens that was found in every photojournalist's bag throughout the 70s and 80s; that "standard lens" was the Nikkor 35mm f/1.4 wide angle lens.

The Nikkor 35mm f/1.4 was introduced, in 1969.  It was Nikon's first multicoated lens and it has been used by NASA in space!

Olympus ED 75mm F1.8 V Leica 90mm F2 Summicron

I lied ;)  It is not actually a real "V" confrontation because the NEW Olympus M.ZUIKO DIGITAL ED 75mm F1.8 lens is not even in the shops yet!  But what I have are high resolution samples taken by this big deal telephoto lens from Olympus themselves, that to me are good indication of it's quality!

What I do have is Olympus's competitor, my LEICA SUMMICRON-M 90mm f2 short telephoto.

From 1980, for 18 years; this chunky, weighty glass was Leica's most expensive 90mm lens! In 1998 Leica replaced it with the even more expensive but even more spectacular LEICA APO-SUMMICRON-M 90mm f/2 ASPH !!

Lumix 45-175mm f/4-5.6 ASPH X Lens on OM-D

The lens we are trying out is known as...

Panasonic Lumix G X Vario PZ 45-175mm f/4-5.6 ASPH/POWER O.I.S. Lens

What a mouth full!

August 2011, Panasonic launched two new powered zoom lenses for its Lumix G Micro Four Thirds cameras.

Of the two, the Lumix G X Vario PZ 45-175mm f/4-5.6 ASPH/POWER O.I.S. lens provides the longer 3.9x zoom magnification and covers a focal length range equivalent to 90-350mm (in 35mm term).

According to Panasonic...

"This is the world's First Digital Interchangeable Power Zoom Lens."

"Panasonic introducing a new cutting-edge interchangeable lens LUMIX G X VARIO PZ 45-175mm / F4.0-5.6 ASPH / POWER O.I.S. with electric-powered zoom operation from the new premium lens brand “X”.

Crystallizing Panasonic's optical technologies, the “X” lens features a unique Nano Surface Coating for minimal ghosts and flaring and natural atmospheres with remarkable transparency."