Olympus PEN E-PL8...Part One

If you touch me there again, I shall screen...

And while you struggle with that, I hasten to add that I am talking about the new Olympus Pen E-PL8 camera. It is the first of the Photokina 2016 items that has come to the Little Studio for review - and it is a delight.

The announcement at Köln this year has already been seen on some YouTube clips and Facebook pages, but it makes a considerable difference to what you feel when you hold the camera in hand. It is very solidly built for a mirror-less camera and gives an immediate impression of quality. The kit you are seeing is supplied with the 14-42mm f:3.5-5.6 EZ zoom lens and is targeted at general users and travellers. And flower shooters. And jeweller shooters...

Aww, let's face it - it's targeted at you.

The tech sheet is impressive; 3.0" LCD, 16 MPxl, 3-axis image stabilisation, 81-point AF, 100/25600 ISO, full HD video, etc. Those of us with a bent for figures will be well served by the official Olympus Australia web page for this camera - it has a full list of the specs. Those of us with a bent forefinger that is itching to try the camera out will just charge up a battery and charge out of the house...

But pause...you have to get into it first. Olympus have always been keen packers - they employ origamatic skills to find how to ship delicate devices in cardboard boxes with a minimum of plastic foam. I think it is a case of self-discipline for them, or a contest in the factory. Of late, they are making it easier for the customers to actually get into the darn box, and we are grateful.

The target audience may not read the instruction booklet that comes with the camera. With that in mind, the makers have preset the thing to an intelligent setting and put as much basic automation as they have to work. The tourist can clap the lens on, the battery and card in, and head out of the motel door within the first hour...and bring back excellent results. The more sophisticated photography readers can wander for days in the art, special effects, and manual settings and get results that are nearly as good.

Note the march of progress as evinced by the LCD screen design - it is the main view-finding and aiming mechanism for this camera and has been taken to a sophisticated level to do so. It swings up, out, back, and down under the body and makes the lens' view available at the front of the camera. This is to enable the photographer who is taking a selfie to see what they are doing.

Better yet - as the camera has haptic control - ie, a touch screen - and you can see that selfie image from the front as you grip and grin, you get precise narcissism. The addition of pathos, bathos, art, or angst is entirely up to you - the E-PL8 will capture it faithfully. It will also deliver it to your smart device - phone or tablet - through Wifi if you want to bedevil your friends with the images.

Should you wish to be an eye-level shooter, you can also purchase an Olympus electronic viewfinder that slots into the hot shoe and gives you what the lens sees...indeed, as it is a mirror-less micro 4/3 camera it gives you what the sensor sees.

But how does what some people might think as an entry-level* camera perform out in the field? Read our next weblog column.

* Entry level? Entry into a world of sophisticated design...

See the Olympus PEN E-PL8 with 14-42mm lens on the Camera Electronic website
230 Stirling St, Perth
2/324 Murray St, Perth

The Decline Of The Self Portrait Number Two

Remember the problem of the selfie shooter we mentioned in a previous post? The ten seconds to eternity that the self-timing circuit takes before it fires the camera - when you try to look like Roger Moore when he was 007 and end up looking like Roger Moore now...*

Well the problem compounds when you consider the support you need for a good self portrait - and we don't just mean the family not laughing at you - we mean the mechanical support for the camera.

The artist who painted themselves saw themselves in a mirror, and either had to make the difficult mental switch from left to right that a mirror image depiction involves - or arrange two mirrors to bounce the image back and then run with that. The camera shooter might also pose themselves in front of a mirror but unless they capture the image by shooting in that mirror, they get to see the real them when the file is displayed on a screen. If that sounds confusing go into the bathroom and try it yourself.

The artist set up a mirror that reflected themselves in whatever light they chose and then had to set their canvas in a light that would reflect wherever they chose to show on it. Not as simple a deal as you might think. But they had the advantage that we mentioned before of being able to edit the backdrop as they painted. The average selfie shooter who shoots a mirror shot in the toilets at a nightclub gets what they deserve. A more careful worker might take a bigger file into a computer and then Photoshop the backdrop, but that is a complex task.

Back to the support - most selfies are taken from unflattering angles - or at least angles that are bound to distort the faces and bodies they depict. Up looking down and down looking up with wide-angle lenses plays hell with verticals and makes pinheads or monsters of the subject. If the poser would consider themselves in the light of an architectural shot and attend to the verticals they would be so much happier. This doesn't mean a bellows camera or a tilt/shift lens...though Camera Electronic would be delighted to sell these items to everyone - but it does mean some form of tripod.

Doesn't have to be a big tripod, and for a lot of cameras it does not even have to be a sturdy tripod, but it does have to get the center of the lens looking at the center of the main subject with the camera back vertical. You can do it with a Gitzo 6" naval gun mounting, or Manfrotto 190, or little Cullmann 622 - or even with a Cullmann Copter tabletop tripod if you have a handy tabletop.

Do that, get your mouth and eyebrows under control, stand fairly upright and try not to show the wrinkles at the knees of your trousers ( or the wrinkles at the knees of your legs...) and do it all in ten seconds and you too can be an artist. Or at least an objet d'art...

* Don't google it. It'll just ruin your memories...

The Decline Of The Self Portrait Number One

The self portrait has been a staple of the artistic world ever since men started painting and sculpting. The latter art was difficult as it involved a degree of skill but the former was easy - you just dipped your hand in sloppy clay and slopped it on a rock. You might not have portrayed a lot of you but at least people could count your fingers.

Brush and canvas jobs seem to have been done by every famous and/or obscure artist who ever got up in the morning. Some were brilliant evocations of the times and accurate depictions of the face and figure of the painter. Some were daubs. And some were art that might be described as campaign promises...

The self portrait in early photographic terms was just a mechanical addition to this genre. Photographers with no customers sat down in front of their folding and box cameras and waited out the exposure. When things advanced and sped up, lenses could be put in shutters with mechanical self timers and everyone who could balance a camera on a pile of books could rush around in ten seconds to be captured in front of the machine.

Note the ten seconds - it is the thing that separated the picture from the portrait. In the case of the painted canvas the artist had days, weeks, or months to arrange lighting, sketch in a cartoon, readjust the outlines, and then paint in whatever looked good. If the backdrop in a dingy studio looked bad, a different scene could be limned in. To their credit, most western painters never mounted themselves on horses with cuirassier breastplates and upraised sabres in their self-portraits, though they were generally available to do that for the paying client - town burgomeister or otherwise.

The extended period of time gave the artist looking in the mirror time to arrange their mouths and eyebrows to best advantage. Whether they could capture that on the canvas is another thing, but at least they had time to scrape off the pigment and try again. The selfie-shooter is in a worse position - they have ten seconds to look like Clint Eastwood...and run the risk of looking like Nana Mouskouri eating a bad oyster. Oh, sure, you can press the reset button and try again, but if you are in a group they grow restive and critical after the 15th repeat.

The only hope for it is the camera that swivels the LCD screen up and over itself or around to the side so that it presents the posing party out the front with a view of what the lens sees. You still have only 10 seconds to look handsome and intelligent and some of us would need a lot longer to even spit, but at least you are on the right track.

More on this subject in a further post. Note that Camera Electronic sells cameras  from a number of makers  that do the flipping screen thing to perfection. No need to be shy - we know what you are buying it for so just ask us to show you the one out of the plain.sealed wrapper...

The Difference Between A Self Portrait And A Selfie

The difference between a self-portrait and a selfie can be far more than the equipment that is used for the image - and far more than the location or occasion. It can be the difference between a portrayal and a betrayal.

We are beset or blessed by social media - Facebook, Twitter, Flicker, Blatt, Squeal, Overshare, and Timewastr. We all need photos of ourselves to put on the top or the bottom of the page - or, in the case of one of my FB friends...everywhere including the water tank at the top of the hill. We take selfies for this purpose. The traditional selfie for Japanese tourists is in front of a western monument smiling and making "V" signs with their fingers. The traditional selfie for belly dancers is making duck faces in front of the bathroom mirror. These are accepted as fun things.

The selfies with dead animals are not accepted. Hunt and shoot if you will, and frame your portrait with the dead whatever for your den wall, but be careful that you do not advertise it further. The contumely can be never ending.

The self-portrait is altogether a more serious thing. The photographer has the task of representing themselves to people who will really look at the thing - actual contemplation rather than a quick flick through the FB news feed. The self-photographer would do well to imagine their image printed to a large size and set for viewing in a public gallery - and then to provide an image that rewards that scrutiny. They may chose to reveal or conceal, but they must do it well.

Well - the man in the image seen at the top of this blog post did just that - he thought about himself; his interests, his personality, his external appearance. He considered which colours would look well on him, and would look well framing him. He considered the lighting. As he had the equipment to light a portrait, he used it correctly - he analysed the best angle for main face lighting and put in enough ancillary illumination to support this.

The result is...he looks good. Damned good. He can send this as a small image or frame it as a large one and know that it is a good ambassador for him. He can make a business card for himself with this self-porttrait and people will look at that card more than once. A successful self-porttrait.

PS: I pinched this Gold winner from last night's Mandurah Camera Club competition as well - I thought it a delightful image.

Uncle Dick

The Hanging Judge

Did goe to the Mandurah Camera Club laste night and was greatley entertained.

Any club that meets in a bistro with a bar and snacks is doing it right. This was the Mandurah Bowling club - new premises - and it has the advantage of being easy to find, easy to park, and serviced by a freeway.

Photographers are a funny lot. Sometimes funny haha and sometime funny hmmm. The Mandurah CC are funny fun - their photos were good and their welcome was warm. And there was a large roll-up...this is a club that is expanding. There were visitors other than myself last night and they were as warmly welcomed as I was.

Judging at club contests can be funny as well - some places I have felt that there are severe intra-club rivalries and I try to steer clear of favouring one person or one camp over another. Or at least keep an eye out for when the mood of the competition night turns and the first folding chair is thrown through the darkness and the scuffle begins. Then I run for the door.

Mandurah was not like that. They were out for a good time, had a good time, and showed me a good time. Everyone played nice. They even lined up for a group photo.

The set subject for the night was a self portrait taken by the contestant. They had rules that the person had to be operating the camera themselves - fortunately most of the modern cameras have ether some port for remote control ( And we sell remote controls. See, Saul, I'm selling...) or a self timer that will allow for 10 seconds of frantic posing.

There were a number of good images - one of which is actually a very good commercial proposition if someone cared to pursue it. One of the others - a Gold winner - has been shamelessly pinched by me for the heading image on this blog. I am a bad person for doing this, but the image was so delightful that I could not resist. It has colour, humour, and charm...and as it is a self portrait we can cheerfully say the same about the photographer.