Well, here is my first post on this blog for about 6 months. Having resurrected the site, I had to spend some time reversing out of some changes I'd made which in particular affected this blog. As I wrote elsewhere, I've decided to drop the major makeover and just make detail improvements when time allows. I'm not terribly happy with the site, especially with the design of the photo galleries, which is really getting creaky, but for now it will have to do. In the interim I haven't had a lot of time for photography, but I did end up buying an Olympus E-400. You can see some photos from it here (and many more, for now, on my Flickr pages). I was quite smitten by the E-400 the first time I picked it up. Reverting back to a "classic" shape has allowed Olympus to create a DSLR much smaller than most others, but without sacrificing handling, at least for me. It has more or less replaced the E-1, as really there is little if anything that the E-1 does significantly better. It is a little more fiddly than the E-1 in manual mode, due to the lack of a second dial, and things like DOF preview are awkward. But the image quality more than makes up for it, and when paired with the 14-45mm lens, it really is a quite practical "take it anywhere" DSLR. It doesn't _quite_ fit in a pocket, but it isn't far off. The screen menu easily makes up for the lack of a settings panel. The fast access to parameters, and the clever way in which you can go deeper into options settings if you need to, but have the basics right up front, is really excellent. Ok, dedicated buttons for things like ISO, AF mode, drive mode, etc, are certainly very nice to have, but you can't have such a compact body as well as all the E-1 buttons and controls, and the compromises that are made are made very well. To be honest, it doesn't quite have the "wow" factor that the E-1's ergonomics and handling gives me and many others, but for every day use, it is really a very fine camera, and one which, unlike say the Nikon D40, caters for beginners, without in any way ruling out advanced users. I'll post more on the E-400 in weeks to come.

Since my only spare time at the moment co-incides with darkness, for practical purposes if nothing else, I've decided to experiment a bit with nightime long exposures. This being totally experimental, I'm also combining it with another experiment, which is to use Flickr alongside my galleries here, to try to engage a bit more with the community at large.

Why, exactly, I'm not sure, since I'm just as antisocial online as I am offline... But anyway. Here goes. The first batch has been uploaded. They were all taken with the Zuiko 11-22mm lens, and an exposure time of 60 secs (plus 60 secs dark frame subtraction, or "noise reduction" as Olympus calls it).

"Oh Lord, those blues are gonna rub me raw" - Warren Zevon RIP Here follows a veritable orgy of pixel peeping. I was playing around with Aperture 1.5 earlier today, since Apple has finally decided to let people try it out for free. I might write further about Aperture later, but I got distracted by what I discovered when I tried comparing detail in Aperture output compared with my current favourite, Iridient RAW Developer.

The photo I was playing with. The green box is the area which the 100% crops are taken from

I processed a recent photo in Aperture, with default settings, and sharpening disabled. I then opened it up in Photoshop, and compared it with the same image processed with RAW Developer. At first glance, whilst it was clear that the colour balances were quite different, it also seemed that if anything, Aperture was extracting more slightly more detail than RAW Developer, especially in the highlights (you're going to have to take my word on this, but in any case, this is hardly a scientific study). At second glance, however, I was distracted by something I hadn't notice before - a rainbow pattern in a ripple in the water, which certainly shouldn't be there. Actually, I'd noticed some strange colour artefacts in water droplets in another photo from this shoot in Aperture, and was ready to denounce Apple's RAW conversion - except that I found this "rainbow" in the RAW Developer version. It's in the Aperture version as well. So, what have we here then ? The mythical E-1 moiré ?

Oil slick or moiré ? As revealed in Iridient Raw Developer

Aperture 1.5's version of events

So I decided to give Adobe Photoshop™ Lightroom™ (ahem) Beta 4 a go. And lo and behold, (almost) no rainbow.

Lightroom Beta 4 shows what it can do

So, who cares ? Can't see it in the print, right ? Well, no. You can. And once I found one example, I found lots more in rippling water in similar shots. So, shock, horror, in this particular case it seems that Lightroom, and its flavour of ACR, are in fact pretty good at handling edge-case E-1 ORFs. Since Lightroom is improving it leaps and bounds, it is beginning to look interesting. And yes, I did check in Olympus Studio, and even in CaptureOne. Neither could do better. But actually, I was following up another bit of pixel-peeping there: whilst comparing Aperture's output to Raw Developer's I noticed in looked rather cool. So I checked the white balance data, which in both cases was set to "auto", or "as captured". Aperture reported a colour temperature of 5039K, tint -7, whereas Raw Developer claimed 5495K and -5. A bit more digging revealed the following:

Software	Col. Temp	Tint
Lightroom B4	5200K	+14
Olympus Studio 1.5	5300K	0
Iridient Raw Developer 1.5.4	5495K	-5
Aperture 1.5	5034K	-7
CaptureOne 4.7.3	5700K	+3

Now, I realise that different programs have different ways of handling white balance data, but surely they read the same camera data ? Otherwise, what was the big fuss about Nikon encrypting white balance all about, if it all comes down to guesswork anyway ? I know that CaptureOne seems to actually report a colour temperature some 300K than it is actually applying, and I know that there are various different interpretations of tint, but still... Do we just take this as black magic, and consider it part of the "character" of each RAW engine ? I don't know, but manually adjusting the colour temperature in Aperture to the same value as in RAW Developer pretty much gives the same result. So who is right ? Normally, one would assume Olympus has the best crack at it, but given the general competence of Studio, one has to be sceptical. What this really underlines is the importance, if you really want to capture "true colour" (whatever that is) of using a reference like the Whibal. Otherwise just feel free to wiggle around sliders until you get something you like the look of. That's what I do. So, after all these detours, what about Aperture ? Well, it seems competent. Very different to Lightroom, to be honest. Very focused on DAM, and with much better Photoshop integration, ironically. I'm not so impressed with Apple's reinvention of various wheels in the image adjustments settings, although the results are fine, but in terms of digital photo management, it potentially blows iView MediaPro out of the water. Potentially only, however, because unless you're shooting RAW only, and a RAW that Aperture knows about (it won't touch Lumix LX1 files, even converted to DNG), then forget it. It will handle scans, but grudgingly. The Lightbox, and the Stacks, are great, good ideas with inspired implementation. The Loupe is indeed a gimmick, but an entertaining one. And despite the scare stories, it seems to run just fine on my MacBook, and feels less cramped than Raw Developer. But I've got too much legacy both in film scans, and processed RAW files, to adopt it. Maybe one day. If Microsoft screws up MediaPro, I'll be tempted. As far as RAW Converters are concerned, to be honest, they're all pretty much on a par. My advice is find one you like the feel of, where you understand the controls, and how to get the best out of it, and stick with it. But bear in mind that Lightroom and Aperture, for better or for worse, bring quite a lot of baggage along with them that you might one day regret getting locked into. And as far as E-1 moiré is concerned, well, bug*er me sideways - looks like Phil Askey was right 😊

I just received the latest Olympus E-Spam, er sorry, E-News, and apart from the fact that after over 2 years, they have finally relented and sent to me in English rather than German, it also contains a link to the 4/3rds consolidated lens catalogue. And the interesting thing there is that the lenses are branded as Olympus, Sigma, and ... Panasonic. The front of the glossy catalogue carries the brands Olympus, Sigma, and Panasonic. Not a Leica logo in sight (nor indeed Lumix). The 25mm f1.4 is described as the "Panasonic Leica D Summilux", and as "bearing the renowned Leica Summilux name". In other words, Panasonic have bought the rights to use the name. End of story. Strange marketing indeed.

The last year has seen some considerable changes in the evolution of the 4/3rds world. We have a number of new cameras, nominally from 3 manufacturers, although 1.5 would be more truthful, and lenses from 3 companies as well. Up until now, I haven't found anything of much interest beyond the E-1 and the mid-range lenses. The E-300 didn't interest me, nor the E-500, and I have no use for the E-330. The Lumix/Leica L1, as far as I can see, is an expensive doorstop. I really fail to see why anybody interested in photography would buy one. The Leica (let's be generous with naming) 14-50mm lens seems expensive and clumsy, and whilst the image stabilisation is interesting, the optical performance seems at very best just below the Olympus 14-54 - and since the next generation Olympus cameras will probably have in-body stabilisation, one could wonder what the point of the 14-50 Leica actually is. However, the Leica 25mm f1.4 lens is definitely interesting. Some of the Sigma lenses could be interesting as well, in particular the 50-500mm, which is approachable in terms of cost. However, it is quite slow, and a slow 500mm coupled with the E-1's sensor and autofocus is not necessarily going to be a happy marriage. But what has got me excited is the Olympus E-400. A camera about the size of an OM-1, with an OM-style body design, and a weight to match, two matched lenses AND a 10Mpix sensor - this sounds like an ideal travel / trekking camera. Ok, so it isn't splashproof, but there have to be tradeoffs, especially at the price. It is telling that the forum world hasn't got excited about the E-400: this is a camera aimed at photographers, not geeks. A preview of a pre-production sample in Réponses Photo adds to the anticipation. They really like it (apart from the autofocus, but it seems that we're stuck with that 3 point system) and in particular they found that the viewfinder was surprisingly good, bright and not too small - better in fact that the Pentax K10D in the reviewer's opinion. I'm sorely tempted. The E-1 gets to be a heavy camera when you're climbing 2000 meters. Obviously I would miss the 100% viewfinder, and probably the E-400 is not as nice to handle as the E-1. But it is the first 4/3rds camera I've considered buying since the E-1.