The Tourist

True to my plan, I charged the battery of the Olympus Pen F camera overnight and put it into the body, added a card and a lens - the 17mm f:1.8 prime - and resolutely headed out to be a tourist. A dumb tourist. A role for which I have long studied...

You see, I wanted to replicate the experience of the person who buys a camera at the last minute before a trip, does not bother to read the instruction manual on the plane, and debouches onto foreign soil with nary a clue as to how to use it. And then has to justify the expense of buying it by using it.

This is the place we stayed at. It looked nicer in the brochures...

I did not travel in an airplane - I used a Suzuki. My foreign soil was the Rossmoyne foreshore. But I did hop out there with no prep at all.

The camera was on P or Intelligent Auto to start with. And AF. And default factory ISO, which turns out to be 200. And I pointed and shot. There's not a lot of scenic beauty in Rossmoyne, but at least the natives are not stoning you and turning the buses over. And I did get to meet the Minister For Cultural Planning And Awareness who was having a morning swim.

The camera has a number of tempting dials and toggles  - I turned the front one and was rewarded with soft focus. Another position started off the black and white pictures. I twirled a back wheel - the little one - and got a digital red filter somewhere inside the camera - it made Applecross look stormier and more threatening that it is, if that is possible.

I also, rather inadvertently, toggled the special position that gives the equivalent of Agfa CT 18 slides from the 1970's that have been stored in a warm shed. A superfluous setting for me as I have a shed full of the real things and they make me feel very sad.

Well, moving along the fabled Cote d'Rossmoyne, Playground Of Ladies With Dogs And Plastic Bags, I stopped opposite the Mount Henry Bridge - unfortunately a long way across the water. It's fun to watch heavy traffic when you are not in it, and I stayed to see several trains cross. The Olympus Pen F has an internal setting called Digital Telephoto. It really just selects the central part of the sensor and records off that and pretends you've changed lenses. Funny thing to do in a system camera where you really can change lenses - and Olympus makes some cracker optics.

But, if you only have one lens with you, and you can find the thing in the menu, you can make some use of it. Remember that the tourist using this camera probably won't do any cropping when he gets home so anything that works, helps.

Note that any subject in good lighting - like this residence - is rendered well and the autofocus is extremely fast - it puts my regular cameras to shame. On the down side, the Pen F menu and screen presentation is not as easy to understand as my current cameras - but if it were to be the only camera owned one could come to terms with it gradually. The symbols on the screen can be a little small.

Well, you can exhaust the delights of Rossmoyne pretty soon, particularly if you are not stopping at the bottle shop. I bid farewell to the Balham of the Canning River ( Gateway To Leach Highway ) and went in search of some morning tea*.

* " Tea's off, Love..."

The New Olmypus Pen F and 17mm 1.8 lens are available through our website.