This is time of year where the days draw shorter, where weekends get taken up with life’s trivia, and going out to take photographs just doesn’t happen.  And in fact I’m getting a but tired with all the trappings of photography, and can’t help but wonder what it’s all for.

So it’s a good time to re-discover the Ricoh GR Digital slipped into my jacket pocket.  This wonderful little cult camera is such a pleasure to use that it demands that photo opportunities be found.  Even after a hard saturday afternoon’s shopping.

Caffeinated. Ricoh GR Digital in B&W mode, Ilford FP5+ simulation in Nik Silver Efx Pro.

I know of a least two great photographers working daily with this camera (and similar models), Mitch Alland, who’s street photography from Bangkok is endlessly fascinating, and Wouter Brandsma, who’s transformation of everyday trivia into photographic art is an inspiration.  Not really what I do, but that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate it.

The Aeolian Islands form an archipelago of seven volcanic peaks poking above the sea to the north of Sicily and the  Messina Straits. Of those seven, one, Stromboli, is active, and has been in constant (“strombolic”) eruption for  at least 2000 years. Another, Vulcano (the name is a bit of a giveaway), is a smouldering stratovolcano which last blew its top about 100 years ago, and must be thinking about a repeat act in the not too distant future, based on its past record.  Lipari, the largest island, is classified as active by geologists, and has some low key fumarole activity scattered around. The rest are dormant or extinct. Salina, with it’s distinctive twin peaks, is the second largest, and fairly busy by Eolian standards (i.e sleepy). Panarea is a small, discrete high end tourist resort, with the relicts of a massive explosion, Basiluzzo, featuring active undersea vents, a kilometer or so offshore. Filicudi and Aliculdi are car-free, timeless, sleepy dreamlands which you’d love or loathe. All seven are linked by a web of hydrofoils and ferries. If you ever happen to have read Christopher Priest’s novel “The Affirmation”, or his “Dream Archipelago” short stories, this could well be the setting for them.

Lipari, and Salina’s twin peaks, from the rim of Vulcano’s crater.

The Dream Archipelago

I have always been vaguely aware of the Aeolian Islands. They seemed to be a distant, mythical, far off place which was hard to get to, and about which little was said. I just knew I wanted to go, and finally at the tail end of a two week  vacation in eastern Sicily (also highly recommended, especially Etna), I had my first opportunity. Three days in Lipari, a quick glimpse of Stromboli, an afternoon on Salina and a hint of Vulcano and I was hooked. The next trip  was exclusively to the islands, included cameras, and a first ascent of Stromboli.  The second, earlier this year,  was exclusively photographic, out of season, and featured Vulcano and Stromboli, and some serious near-vertical trekking.

Alicudi and Filicudi, spied from Lipari.

Vulcano and Stromboli are the obvious attention grabbers, especially Stromboli, so for now I’ll concentrate on these. I’m really at a loss to say which fascinates me the most. Stromboli is more spectacular, more isolated,  more wild and, I guess, more romantic. Ingrid Bergman certainly thought so. Vulcano is more accessible, has fewer  restrictions, is pretty spectacular itself, although you need to seek it out a bit more, and from a photographic  perspective arguably has more potential. I’d hate to have to choose between them.

The volcano looms over the church of San Vincenzo on Stromboli.

Vulcano

Vulcano’s main feature is the Grand Crater. It is truly impressive, about a km in diameter, with the rim between 400 and 600m above sea level. The north west side is riddled with fumaroles, of varying activity, and wide  deposits of sulfur and other minerals. The crater itself is sprinkled with large lumps of obsidian, which you  really would not want falling on your head.

Sunrise through sulphuric fumes, Vulcano.

The contrast between the bright yellow sulfur, the deep blue  Mediterranean sea, and the equally blue sky, is full of potential but not so easy to exploit well. Especially when  the pretty yellow patches are associated with enthusiastically poisonous fumes emanating from the fumaroles and  tending to creep up behind you when you least expect them. Please note: if you do visit Vulcano, don’t let the relaxed attitude to public safety put you off. In a nanny state like the UK these would be seriously fenced off. They can be lethal, and stumbling around a steep rocky smoke breathing toxic fumes is not a fun way to spend your time. But then again, with care and attention to your getaway route, you can get extremely close. Of course, then  you’ve got to watch out for boiling water and scalding steam. Hey, it’s a volcano!

Obsidian and sulphur, Vulcano.

The climb up to the crater is quite straightforward, but don’t carry too much gear, and do carry as much water as  you can carry, and a snack. There’s no bar or gift shop up there!  If you’re taking photographs, honestly you want  to go for the sunrise or sunset slot. Sunrise is better (clearer air) but sunset can be spectacular.  To get to  the path, just follow the road south out of the port, skirting the crater. About 2km from the dock you will see a  path to your left.  Don’t even think about shortcuts, the path is the only safe way, and any shortcut is going to  be much harder.  The path zigzags up the side of the crater. At the first hairpin, a recently installed feature is  a kiosk where you might be asked to pay 2€ for entrance. This is not a con, but an official move to raise funds to  protect the area and improve access. The results can already be seen in a much improved upper section of the  path, which previously could be quite tricky.  However, the kiosk tends not to be manned at 5am ...  Initially the  path is pretty steep. Take your time, plod along. It’s not as bad as it seems and all will be forgiven when you  get your first glimpse of the crater.

The Grand Crater, Vulcano.

And it will get you prepared for Stromboli! Stromboli is a different kettle of fish. The crater zone is  approximately 1000m above sea level, which is where you’ll be starting from (sea level, give or take 50m).

No pain, no gain

The  climb is steep, unrelenting, frequently exposed to the Mediterranean sun, and as you get higher you’ll be walking  on volcanic sand and ash. It takes between 2.5 to 3.5 hours, depending on the conditions and the group. Because  you’ll have to go in a group. Health & safety regulations introduced some years back in reaction to several  accidents as well as increasing volcanic activity now dictate that you must go with a recognised and licensed  mountain guide, who will always have at least one assistant, and stays in constant communication with the emergency services. Most guides are local, multilingual (at least to some extent), and have extensive knowledge of aspect or the other of the island and volcano, be it geology, vulcanology or botany. Several are qualified scientists. So there is no rip-off here, the guides are well organised and responsible, and the charges are quite  reasonable (around €20). But there is a supply and demand problem. In-season (basically Easter to August), demand  is very high, and groups are large and constrained. In theory each group should spend no more than 30 minutes on  the summit ridge (not including a rest at the lower platform, at about 850m).  This is in part a restriction for  safety reasons, to minimise exposure to toxic gasses (including carbon monoxide), and in part a limitation to  allow the maximum number of visitors per day (and all groups aim to be there or thereabouts at sunset). After  such a climb, it can feel pretty disappointing to have so little time at the summit, so try to go out of season.  Rules are more easily bent, the atmosphere is more relaxed, and 90 minutes on the ridge is not unheard of - by  which time it’s dark anyway.

Smoking vents, seen from the lower platform, Stromboli

Shooting a volcano

So, photography. Well, really, don’t take too much gear. Really, if you’re exhausted when you reach the top,  you’ll be in no shape to take good photos, especially as you’re going to have to act and react quickly.  First of  all, if you’re in a large group, try to be at the front for the final stretch. You’re going to want a front row  view. Second, or actually no, first of all: safety first. This is a dangerous place. One slip, and you’re quite  literally toast. Nobody is going to go down into to the rift to rescue you. No photo is worth that. Do take a  tripod. Forget filters, you don’t need them, and you’ve got no time to fiddle with them, with the exception of a  UV / Skylight to protect the lens from ash and dust ... which quite possibly will be raining down on you. That’s  why the guide gave you a helmet. Put it on. I would recommend a mid-range zoom lens, with a 35mm equivalent of  around 70-200mm. Take a wider angle if you feel you can take the weight (but honestly, there are few worst places  to change a lens), but you probably won’t use it. I’ve taken an XPan up twice and got almost nothing worthwhile. A  remote cable release is good to have as well.  Observe first: try to avoid seeing the world through your  viewfinder. The experience of being 500m away from an erupting volcano is literally awesome, and pretty much unique at least in Europe.  Identify a good candidate for photos, usually a crater which is producing eruptions  every few minutes or so, frame your shot, set up your exposure, check your histogram, and focus manually. Set up  your motor drive (actually, set up as much as you can before the climb). Then hold your cable release, enjoy the vista, and wait for the opportunity. If you hold your nerve, you’re in with a good chance to get a great shot. If you just flap around reacting to the volcano rather than observing and waiting, you’ll end up with a lot of  blurred shots with something that might be lava in the corner. It’s really not dissimilar to shooting fireworks.  Planning and anticipation are key.

Third time lucky ? It took 3 visits to Stromboli before I caught this!

The show just keeps going on.

Then sooner than you want it’s time to go down, but actually this is almost as much fun. You won’t go down by the steep path you came up on, but rather by a wild, head-torch illuminated semi-controlled slide down and across the relict ash slope on the south side of the volcano. You’ll take about 45 minutes to reach the village. And you’ll want several beers to go with that well-earned pizza.

And now ... the easy way up

If you feel like a (relatively) more relaxed and less constrained experience, alternatively you can walk  out towards to east of the island, past Piscinas, past the Punto Labronzo lighthouse, and follow the old path up the ridge overlooking the “Sciara del Fuoco”. You are allowed to climb up to 450m without a guide, and you can get as far up as a  platform which povides great views of eruption craters along the top of the ridge, as well as (if you’re lucky) lava flowing down the slope, and ejecta crashing into the sea below. It’s a different experience, but equally rewarding.

Overlooking the Sciara del Fuoco, Stromboli.

And there’s a lot more to the Eolian Islands than Volcanos. The best time to visit, in my experience, is late  March, but it varies a bit year to year. At that time things are pretty quiet, the tourist infrastructure hasn’t really got going, and finding a guide is not 100% guaranteed ... but just relax. It’s all part of the experience.

Not just volcanoes. A natural arch on Lipari’s west coast.

Getting there

The most reliable, year-round link is by hydrofoil from Milazzo. Both Ustica Lines and Siremar operate regular  services. Departures to the outer islands, including Stromboli, are much less frequent out of season. Milazzo is reachable from Catania airport, by a combination of public transport (entertaining but slow), or by taxi service  (fast but more expensive). In-season some bus services link both Catania and Palermo airports with Milazzo.

Stromboli Guides

Both Magmatrek and Antonio Famularo are highly recommended and very professional. Out of season they provide a joint service.

It’s not all hard work…

 

 

And some more Lavertezzo.  XPan this time, (very) early one day in August.  It isn’t an obvious location for the panoramic format, in fact this session is the first that I’ve managed to get some halfway satisfying shots from. Usually, outside of winter it is more or less impossible due to the amount of people swarming around.  In fact, in this case, a couple had actually camped out on the rocks. Fortunately they were still asleep. Or at least lying down.

Anyway, I’ll just let the pictures do the talking…

I’m on vacation in Sicily. It’s absolutely not a photo trip, but Sicily can be painfully photogenic at all sorts of level, so good casual opportunities do come up.

WARNING: high levels of sarcasm ahead, may offend.

It started with a week on the island of Favignana, which was good enough for the likes of Selgado, Burri, and a gaggle of other Magnum photographers, so it should be good enough for me. But ... they, very luckily for them, did not have an Olympus Pen-since-1959 EP bloody 2 “camera” with them. I am coming to loathe this all style and no content device. It is by far the worst camera I have ever used. Considered as a device to prevent photography it would rank pretty highly. But that wasn’t what it was intended to be, alledgedly.

It’s difficult to know where to start, but perhaps I’ll be slightly unfair and start with the add-on electronic viewfinder. Now, this camera is unusable without the EVF. In fact it should be returned as unfit for purpose without it, because the screen is abysmal. I loathe using a back screen as a framing tool, but on my Ricoh GRD at least it can be done, quite effectively even. On the EP2, forget about it: the screen is dim and coarse. So, EVF it is. And this EVF is rated as one of the best in the business. But guess what, it still sucks. It doesn’t pixelise, it has very low delay, it even has pretty good dynamic range. But it doesn’t have enough. Under harsh contrast there is just no way I can get a fix on the highlights and shadows. It burns or blacks out stuff which my eyes do not, making it impossible for my brain to instinctively make exposure decisions. It just gets it the way. And of course, when I apply exposure compensation, it reacts. No! Don’t do that! I know you can, but if I’m sussed enough to understand what exposure compensation means, then it really is not going to help me if you keep moving the electronic goalposts around. And that’s just for starters. I could go on for a lot of paragraphs about how an EVF screws up DoF preview as well. And then of course there’s the idiot fact that the camera has to be turned on to look through the viewfinder (this is “progress”, I believe), which is unfortunate given the gusto at which the EP2 drains its battery (very easily twice as fast as the E400 with the same battery). Of course, all this applies to any EVF camera, not just the EP2, but the scary thing is that this EVF really is - relatively - very, very good. But it ruins photography as an enjoyable experience, and that’s scary.

So, what about some specifics? Let’s start with “manual focus assist”. This zooms the center of the VF area so you can focus more easily. Well fine, provided (a) the object you want to focus on is in the middle, which if you’re slightly beyound idiot level it quite probably isn’t, and (b) you’re not interest in the object’s context. Ok, so you can turn it off, provided you can remember where the option is in the labyrinthine menu system - I’d happily swap it for the “art filter” position on the mode dial - and it is genuinely useful in Live View mode, on a tripod, when you’re moving the focus point around. It is absolutely a pain when it engages when you as little as think about glancing at the focus ring, ruining another shot. And yes you can turn it off. If you remembered to, and if you’ve got several minutes to waste in the menu system.

Ah yes, the menu system: ever since the E400, Olympus cameras have had the “super control panel” screen for direct access to shooting parameters. It’s actually pretty useful and has been widely copied, like a lot of good innovations from Olympus. I’m fairly sure the EP2 has it to, but I cannot for the life of me work out how to get at it. If it is there, and not just a figment if my immagination, it is anyway but 1 of 3 completely seperate systems for configuring the camera. One well designed one would suffice.

(ok, finally I worked it out. Press “OK” several times to cycle through the modes.)

The electronic level is very nice. It would be even nicer if it could be combined with the display of basic shooting info, like Aperture, Exposure, that sort of thing.

Then there’s more general stuff about the ergonomics and user interface. In A-mode, which is pretty much all I use, if you press the exposure compensation button, the value highlights in the display and you can change it with either the thumbwheel or the control dial. I try to avoid the control dial. If you click the button a second time, both the aperture and compensation values highlight, and now you can change the aperture with the thumbwheel and compensation with the dial. Or is it the other way around? And why, anyway? The opportunity for error is endless, especially if you have to use the control dial.
The control dial is a truly stunningly bad example of industrial design. Like many similar devices, it also functions as a 4 way pad, with the 4 buttons providing a quick entry point to things like ISO and White Balance. Useful, but not when the thing is so fiddly and sensitive that when you just had that shot lined up of Elvis climbing out of his flying saucer, you discover that you’re in 12 second self timer mode. Or something even more obscure. Even when you’re intentionally using the dial, the slightest misapplication of pressure can have you at ISO 3200 in a microsecond. Reversing out, however, would take a while longer.

Finally, because otherwise this could go on for ever, a word about the standard 14-42 lens. In order to pretend that it is small, Olympus made it collapsible. This provides yet another potential roadblock in getting the shot. And attaching a filter to it, especially a polariser, is an exercise in frustration. Turning the polariser almost always throws the focus completely off, and triggers an error message. And when you remove the filter it feels like you’re in serious danger of dismantling the lens inner barrel. Yet another ghastly Pen experience.

Kodak Films? Unfortunately, no ho bisogno, grazie

Ok, you can get good results out of the EP2, all being well, but for me at least it provides little enjoyment and kills spontaneity. So much that the whole point of the thing seems weak.

On a general note, in 2 weeks, some spent in very photogenic tourist spots, where everybody has a camera, I have not seen one “compact system camera”. No micro four thirds, no Sony NEX, no Samsung. Plently of Lumix and Fuji bridges, plenty of Canikon DSLRs, even a sprinkling of Olympus DSLRs, some high end compacts and of course hordes of digicams. But the world takeover by compact system cameras? I see no evidence of that on the streets.

So, what ‘s the alternative? I don’t always feel like carrying a DSLR around, even a small one, and compacts have their own compromises and lack creative control. Film seems tempting. A small SLR, maybe, but even an Olympus OM isn’t all that light. Or maybe a Voigtlander or Zeiss Ikon rangefinder ... but again, these involve compromises. Maybe somebody will make a CSC actually designed to encourage photography, but I’m not holding my breath.

But as far as the Olympus EP2 is concerned, I think I’ve had my fill. The worst, and possibly the prettiest, camera I have ever owned. And it seems I’m stuck with it.

On Saturday morning I’m off for two weeks to Sicily, starting with the Aegadian Islands.  Not exactly a polar destination, but life is full of compromises.  Several years ago, when I first went to Sicily, I ended up visiting the Aeolian Islands for the first time, and that kicked off a new geographic obsession for me.

I’ve just published my first gallery of photos from the Aeolian islands. I’m sure there’ll be more to come.