For most of the past four weeks I have been travelling around Iceland with my Olympus E-1 (and Hasselblad Xpan). I shot 2700 frames, about 26Gb of Raw files, and used all 3 E-System zoom lenses. The camera behaved perfectly all the time, and stood up to rough handling and repeated soaking without a whimper. Using the battery grip, I found that one charge was good for up to 700 frames, which is quite exceptional. One peculiarity I found was that when the low battery warning appeared, turning the camera off, leaving it a few minutes, and turning it on again appeared to give the battery a very significant new lease of life. I changed lenses often, in a sometimes very dusty environment, and the sensor cleaner worked perfectly. I have not found any evidence of dust on any of those 2700 frames, which I think is more than can be said for the people I spent some time with, who were all using Canon or Nikon systems. The E-1 looks a bit lonely amongst all these big D1s etc. But when you point out that the 50-200, coupled to the 1.4 converter, gives a 35mm equivalent 560mm lens, they look very thoughtfully at their huge 70-200 IS lenses!


Early morning light over Kjalfell, Iceland, July 2004.

Whilst I got some good photographs, on the whole I was a bit disappointed with the results. Partly due to technique, partly due to tripod problems I suspect, I ended up with an embarassing number of out of focus shots. I also had problems with the eyecup falling off, and the diopter moving. But in general the camera behaved very well - it was just the photographer at fault. What is interesting is that I have just had a first look at the 12 rolls of slide film I shot with the Xpan. It is indisputable that my success rate here is much higher. This may be because I'm much more familiar with the Xpan. It may also be because I'm a more naturally "panoramic" photographer (I suspect this may have something to do with it). But I won't give up with the E-1. It is a wonderful camera to use, and when I get things right, it delivers. I suspect a little more practice on auto focus, and learning to use AF lock might help a bit. We shall see...

I usually let a lot of what passes for "fact" but is in fact ill-informed opinion on the web to wash over me. But recently a debate has been sparked over an article on a site I link to, maintained by Ken Rockwell. I say on my photo links page that Ken's site has a healthy mixture of satire and sarcasm. But this was two years ago. He seems to have got a bigger head along with the huge lens (what a big one) he struggles to hand hold (!) on his index page (actually in many cases I'd assume that THAT was satire, now, well, probably not). The article that has got many people a bit upset here is this: Ken's learned essay on the futility of RAW. Now, Ken is entitled to his opinions, and even to hold the strange view that not exploiting the full potential of your DSLR is a good thing. But it seems he really does not understand that what he is passing himself off as an authority on. One big problem is his hang-up on "getting it right in the camera". I wonder what he means by this... he seems to think it is only an issue with digital, but, surely, when somebody like Ansell Adams exposed his black & white film to capture shadow, and balanced the overall exposure with complex, time consuming masking in the darkroom - was this because he got it wrong in the first place ? The camera is only part of the picture making process. A well informed DSLR user will deliberately over expose (within clipping limits) in order to get as much detail as possible in shadows. An in-camera JPG of such a capture will indeed look wrong. But in many cases a post processed version, adjust for exposure, will have the same balance as a "nominally" exposed in-camera JPG, but with extended shadow detail. Why does Ken have a problem with this ? I could go on, but finally, since Ken is happy to spray insults at random (e.g landscape photographers using DSLRs are amateurs), I don't feel too bad in saying that Ken's basic problems are down to laziness. Too lazy to understand digital, and too lazy to work on his photography (which, based on some of his hideously garish shots on his website is sorely needed). Why write this ? Not because I have anything particularly against Ken, I'm sure he's a nice guy, but the more people who counter his (in this case) seriously misinformed and biased views, the better. A lot of people are confused about RAW, and are seeking help from experts. They don't deserve this sort of rubbish masquerafing as wisdom. What they DO need is a balanced view with carefully checked facts explained to them, for them to base their own decision on. Such as here, or indeed here.

Since Noise Ninja 2.0 has been released as a public Beta for Mac OS X, I've been trying it out on some ISO 3200 photos, and comparing with the Olympus post-processing tools (not in-camera noise reduction). The following sequence of 100% screenshots shows various combinations: This is the raw image, no noise reduction of any type This has Olympus Studio RAW Noise Filter turned on. This has both Olympus Studio RAW Noise Filter turned on and Olympus Studio Image Editor Raw Noise Reduction on, set to auto. Note things are getting a bit plasticky This has Noise Ninja's supplied ISO 3200 profile applied to an otherwise untreated image. This has Noise Ninja's supplied ISO 3200 profile applied to an image with Noise Filter turned on. This has got everything on - Noise Ninja's supplied ISO 3200 profile applied to an image with Noise Filter on and Noise Reduction set to auto. To my eyes, the best result is to go direct from the raw image to Noise Ninja, without applying any Olympus tools. This may be because the Noise Ninja default profiles are built with this in mind. Note, they're also intended for "average" JPG images, whereas I'm creating 16 bit TIFF from RAW. There is probably quite a lot of scope for improving things by creating profiles for this scenario. It seems to be a fairly straightforward process. It may also be because Noise Ninja produces a more "photographic" rendering, which is more pleasing to the eye. Either way, Noise Ninja is impressive, and makes E-1 ISO 3200 genuinely usable.

Following a current thread on DPReview, and based on some recent observations, I've revisited the "Olympus Studio" vs "Photoshop Camera Raw" question, with some alarming results. I've been using Camera Raw routinely for some months. It is fast and intuitive, and apart from high ISO images, seems to be close enough in quality to Olympus Studio to make little practical difference. However, when processing a photo recently taken in Italy, in Camera Raw, I was disappointed to find that I had apparently blown out the red channel. No amount of tweaking curves seemed to be able to save it. Later, when reviewing the shoot in Olympus Studio's slide viewer, it slowly dawned on me that here I was not seeing any such problem. So I reprocessed in in Studio's Image Editor, and hey presto - well exposed image. It is difficult to work out what is going wrong in Camera Raw; I'm starting off with the default settings, which should, I presume, give me something close to Studio's default settings. But it doesn't. This might be an extreme case, or perhaps Camera Raw doesn't like saturated reds, but for now, despite the usability issues and the bugs (see below), I'm going back to Olympus Studio for RAW developing.

Adobe Camera Raw version

Olympus Studio version

Bugs

• 16 Bit TIFF files do not have EXIF data written to them
• In Color Management preferences, "Embed Color Profile" will always embed sRGB profile if selected. If deselected, the in-camera profile is retained.
• If Studio crashes, the OlyCheckMarkInfo file is lost. It seems it is only closed / save on Quit. There is no way to save it otherwise. This means that if Studio crashes, which happens sometimes, all work on sorting images is lost

Annoyances

• No easy way of selecting images to open in Image Editor - you have to close it to get back to the slide modes, and the file browser cannot show previews of ORF files
• Using RAW Developer from the slide modes doesn't allow you to see the histogram. So Image Edit mode is more or less obligatory
• RAW Developer is very, very slow and clumsy. Even deselecting or selecting a checkbox, which has no effect on the result, forces a reprocess / redraw.
• RAW Developer is very poorly documented

Whoops. I seem to have forgotten to post here 😊 Well it has been a long road, paved with good intentions. My E-1 has clocked up thousands of shutter cycles, and produced about a Gbyte of photos, of which at least 2 are sort of ok. In the meantime I have fitfully tried to use other cameras - the XPan has had two films through it in 5 months (38 frames!) and the Fuji 670 less than 1 film. This is not because "digital is better than film" - really this has nothing to do with it - it is because the E-1 is just a fantastic camera, incredibly user-friendly, encouraging, and impossible to put down. The fact that it is digital is just a side issue. So what are the key points I've learned ? Well, first, inevitably, the E-1 is not 100% dust proof. The sensor can get dust on it, but so far a simple restart sorts it out. It just seems that the ultrasonic shaker needs a few attempts in some cases. But I've been changing lenses whenever I feel like it, which is often. Another point is battery life....well so far I've failed to run down a battery. This thing is incredible. The record so far is: 1Gb CF full, 2Gb Microdrive full, extensive reviewing, and 2Gb MD downloaded from camera on battery power, and still no indication that the battery is even thinking of packing up. And this is using the internal battery, not the grip. I really haven't got any negative points to report on. Ok, the 50-200 is a bit heavy for hand holding (I had to try hard to find something!). Oh, and the stop down button is a bit fiddly, but no more than on my Canon T90 ... less, really.