Well I promised to post everyday, so here it is... but, due to horrible weather and saturday domesticity contraints, the E-1 has been untroubled... One thing that might be interesting - it would have been for me - is what is actually in the box. Well the Europoean E-1 kit includes: - E-1 body with body cap - 14-54mm lens with lens shade and soft case, front & back caps - Li-ion battery and charger - Getting started manual (full manual is PDF only, on CD-ROM, and can be found also at the E1 website. The quick reference guide can also be found there but strangely is not in the box or on the CD. The manual is some 170 pages long. - Software CD with Olympus Viewer 1.0 and Olympus Studio Trial 1.0. As far as I can tell Viewer is quite adequate if you already have Photoshop. - Firewire, USB and Video cables - body strap with "I'm an expensive OLYMPUS camera, please steal me" written on it. The 50-200mm lens ships with lens shade and a very nice case. The booster/grip does not include the hand strap, which seems a bit cheap... So, all pretty much what one would expect. FIRST GLITCH: I'm using Mac OS X 10.3.2. I installed Olympus Viewer, and immediately applied the patch to version 1.0.1, which seems to be recommended. However, Viewer 1.0.1 crashes on launch, whatever I do. Luckily there's an uninstaller, and it works. Unistalling 1.0.1 and re-installing 1.0 gave me a working program. Of course this may be a local problem.

Well, I'm at home surrounded by boxes. I haven't charged the battery yet, so all I can do is read the manual. But I have had a peek through the viewfinder, and, well, I'm amazed. It just feels right. It doesn't have the tunnel vision feel of the Canon 10D or 300D (note, please, this is not Canon knocking. If I could afford Canon lenses I'd have chosen it, probably). It is almost as good as the Minolta Dynax 5. My idea that I'd be using this 50% of the time, and my film cameras the rest of the time starts to seem archaic. This thing just feels great. Let's hope the image quality is up to the standard of the handling!

Ah, if only people knew the hardships of living the other side of the Alps to everybody else in Switzerland. Everybody else including Olympus Switzerland, for example. Doubtless somewhere near Zurich, over the 3000m high Gotthard Pass. Just think... some poor courier guy has got to struggle through howling winds and biting cold to transfer the boxes that were in stock on Monday in Zurich to our isolated outpost of civilisation. Well it is only 4 days since the order, can't complain. After all, it's not as if we have DHL, a tunnel through the Alps (road and rail), a 7 flights a day air link, is it ? Oh. We do ? Hmm.

At this rate I'm going to have to order something else to keep interested. At least it looks like the weather will be abysmal this weekend.

I wonder if Hannibal operated a parcel post service ?

Not much to say today as (a) I'm still waiting and (b) I've got a lot of work to do. However I did see a new review posted today at dcresource, which seems to be pretty positive.

It certainly looks promising...

Regular visitors to this website (me, that is) will notice a burst of activity recently. I've finally worked out where I was going wrong with blog archives (MovableType is very nice, but before they launch their pro version they should hire a technical writer or two 😊 ). I've also added a second blog dedicated to my soon-to-arrive new toy, the Olympus E-1 digital. I have a feeling that the way I've set both up to use the same templates is not quite the way it should be ... I've re-arranged my photo archive. Following 99.99% of common practice I've renamed "collections" as "galleries", and at the same time I've realised that I need to give people a chance to get a quick overview of what I'd like them to see, so up front will be the new "best of" Portfolio section. This requires (a) some jiggery-pokery with MySQL, (b) me to see if I can somehow use MovableType to power a comments / feedback feature, and (c) the hardest part, making a selection. After that, I hope to start presenting some "exhibits", presentations of organised, thematic work. Am I taking this too seriously ? Time will tell...