Author: Jon Schick

Yesterday afternoon it rained.

Of course it did: it was the day of the British Triathlon elite races n Hyde Park and, well, it always seems to rain for that…. Nevertheless it’s an amazing event to watch and the athletes are astounding – well worth the fee (free, now you come to mention it).  Given the weather was decidedly “iffy” I took the E-1, coupled with a new-to-me 50-200 Olympus zoom (the older version) which had come from a dealer in Germany and looks as if it hasn’t been used.  More fool the original owner…. Stunning lens to complete my weather-resistant trio (11-22, 14-54, 50-200) all of which are available at a comparative song nowadays because the market has moved on to newer things….. I smile to think that I bought all of the above, gear that was good enough for many professionals until only a few years ago, for the price of a half-decent enthusiast camera body only nowadays.

These guys got a rather better view of the start than me – note one of them in the water!

And off they go – start of a thrilling hour

The E-1 is certainly no speed-demon but on continuous AF and shooting it sort of kept up with the action in its own way – reminds me of our decidedly middle-aged dog who isn’t quite as nippy as some of the younger ones on the street.  And I’m mightily impressed by the 50-200 which produces some lovely images.  I’ve some more non-triathlon samples for another time, but it’s a stunner.  Best thing is, because this lot is antiquated and not from one of the two big brands, nobody takes it seriously.  Perhaps they should?

A certain Mr Brownlee in the action here – more of him later…

Amazing to see athletes from all over the world – this is Rostyslav Pevtsov representing Azerbaijan

Now where on earth did I put my bike?

Can I return it please? I think I’d rather run

Run faster….

Alistair Brownlee again, a few yards from the finish line and a comfortable distance from his nearest rivals as he sauntered in.  Sadly his brother Jonathan was out of the reckoning after problems with his bike

The montage below includes some more images – click and it should take you to a slideshow.  All in all, a great afternoon in the barmy London weather!

More on the 50-200 very soon….

Jon

Despite best intentions when I started this blog, it’s not always been so easy to find time for the photography, or the blogging!  Too much domestic stuff getting in the way, even ironing for heaven’s sake….  Still, here are a few recent photographs to prove I’m still out there trying to keep going.  I like the one at the top of this post, taken from the back of a London bus and peering between various people and poles to see this striking woman in her retro hat gazing out the window – she rather matched the modern-retro “Boris Bus” that we were travelling on.  An image that was so much easier to take with live view and an articulated screen.

A few other recent faves, now the weather is getting better:

Taken with the digital dinosaur – not sure what came before dinosaurs, but this did…

Couple of photographs from the beach at Hove

Outside Edgware Road tube station on my way to work

And some spring flower shots – difficult to avoid taking them, even though they’re not exactly breaking new ground!

I have plans for a more exciting post to come over the weekend….

Cheers,

Jon

Just been busy at work and fighting off a nasty dose of man-flu.  Lovely walks to and from a meeting in London today though – ironically I was at an event about pharmacy and medicines management, and dosed up to the hilt with placebo cold remedies.

Not so long ago that the Guy’s Hospital Tower would have been the largest building here

The weather was glorious today so I enjoyed a short wander to and from the event.  I brought the X100 with me – partly because I was wondering whether I could deal with using it as my only camera for some travels in the summer.

A slightly different view of Tower Bridge!

Much as I really enjoyed using it, I think the jury is out so far; not because of its fixed focal length but more because even with the latest firmware I was suffering a few more operational glitches than I really wanted – and missed some photographs as a result.  For example, there were occasions when it simply refused to turn on, or took an age doing so (I mean the best part of half a minute).  And having used my Olympus cameras a lot recently, I’m not sure that I’m enjoying the colours from the Fuji quite as much – I find the way Olympus does skies much more appealing, with the Fuji having a tendency towards a greeny/cyan cast.

Early morning – on the way to the meeting

I’m going to persevere for a while because there is so much to like about the X100 – but it’s also just a bit more of a battle than I think it ought to be.

Ancient and just a bit of modern – part of London’s charm.  Nice golden morning light too

This block in Wapping was a few hundred yards from the Tower above, and close to a new development with apartments ranging from £1.6m to £5.6m!

St Katherine’s Dock – boat probably costs more than the apartments I just mentioned

On the train home back to a part of London where it is possible to buy property for less than a 7 figure sum.  One advantage of the Fuji is that it is quite discrete and people don’t seem to be threatened by it or even notice it most of the time

Nice to have a day when I was able to make the most of the weather for once – but apparently normal service will resume tomorrow.  Oh well, this year’s summer was nice while it lasted 🙂

A lovely bright start to the Bank Holiday Monday meant that my hoped-for plans to travel to Richmond Park were worth doing – and after a speedy drive around the South Circular (if only the traffic was always like this….) I arrived before the park got really busy and wandered off in search of deer.

If I’ve worked it out, you should be able to click on the links above to get at larger versions in a slideshow.

I had a lovely morning (well, at least the bit before stopping off to do the shopping in the supermarket on the way back home) but it wasn’t the best time to go and see the deer.  Compared to the Autumn when the stags are rutting, everything was terribly calm and relaxed today – seeing a stag eating was as close to any kind of action that I saw so I didn’t really get more than “record shots”.

The main issues from a photography point of view turned out to be about how to frame the shots so that the sun was in the right place but you couldn’t see all the luminous lycra-clad cyclists whizzing along the edge of the park in the distance!  Different to the Autumn in that regard too – then, the main issue is about trying to avoid having other photographers in your frame; last time I went, I was quietly watching a deer and taking some photographs when a buffoon with a red jacket and white lens (you know the type….) walked right in front of me and plonked himself down with an enormous tripod and completely blocked my view.  He got so close to the deer that it was spooked and wandered off – he’s lucky that’s all it did.

Still, today I had a nice 90 minutes in the fresh air, half-listened to one of our hapless party leaders being grilled on Radio 4, and learned once again that I can trust the E-3 to get exposure and white balance pretty much spot on a lot of the time.  I did no chimping – and all of the photos above were made with the lowly 18-180 (dreaming about the 50-200….); not bad methinks….

….but not as good as my favourite photograph from the morning, which was taken with the E-1 which came along too.  The 11-22 is currently welded to the front of that camera and it is a glorious combination:

This is a combination I need to use more (the 11-22 is quite a new addition for me) but so far I’ve loved the images that I’ve got from them.  Also hoping the blue skies continue – much easier to persuade myself to cycle to work if I know I won’t be in danger of dissolving before I get there.

Jon

It’s the Bank Holiday weekend so of course the weather is going to be changeable.  I’d trade them for some blue (preferably with a few fluffy clouds), or a stormy sky any day, but sometimes the unrelenting grey does at least help by getting rid of harsh lighting and difficult shadows.  On yesterday’s dog-walk around Dulwich Village (in SE London) I took a Fuji X100 (the original – which can now be picked up for not much money secondhand – not the newer S or T versions) and decided to trust its JPEGs rather than spend an age processing on the computer afterwards. Both of the images above were made around the old college and almshouse buildings which were part of Dulwich College before it moved to its current location in the 1800s.  And keeping the educational theme, the flower shot below (the X100 is quite good at macro even though it has a fixed and relatively wide lens) is in the grounds of the Village Infants School:

I’ve also got the wide and tele convertors for the X100 and am seriously thinking of taking this as my only kit when travelling to some Baltic cities later this year – you have to work a bit harder but it’s so liberating not to be carrying heaps of stuff but still get excellent large sensor image quality.

In the meantime, I’ll be doing the opposite tomorrow.  If the weather forecast is correct, I’ll be getting the skies I asked for at the top of this post and I’m planning to go to Richmond Park first thing in the morning to see if I can find any deer.

Somehow the “Digital Mammal” doesn’t sound as interesting or retro as the “Digital Dinosaur” and perhaps, just a little bit, that pretty much sums up my initial feeling of the Olympus E-3 compared to the E-1.

The E-3 is so much more capable in almost every way and yet loses a  bit of individuality and appeal along the way.  Still, the outlay for a reasonably low mileage example in decent condition, including a grip and couple of original Olympus BLM1s (yay – can use them in the E-1!) was low – the market for Four Thirds dSLRs seems to have pretty much tanked so you can find them at a fraction of their original purchase cost.

Lots of shadow detail was rescued from this one – without a heavy price in noise

I’ve bought it in part because I’m going on a photo-tuition landscape trip to Scotland in November; the tutor would prefer us to have cameras with live view (and let’s face it, even without live view the pathetically small rear LCD of the E-1 is essentially useless for anything other than confirming overall framing) and I wanted a weather-sealed body that could allow me to continue to use my lovely Zuiko lenses (especially the 11-22) and get decent AF speeds.  So the E-3 was the obvious option which gave me everything I was looking for at a sensible price and also threw in benefits like a better viewfinder, image stabilisation and general speediness of operation compared to its antediluvian predecessor.

Nice to use the lowly 18-180 with image stabilisation at last!  This is the view of Dulwich College from Sydenham Hill Woods

The biggest immediate disappointment was the volume of the shutter!  After years of getting used to the E-1 (and Pentax K-5/7 owners will be in a similar position) it was startlingly loud at first – not a stealth-cam then (it doesn’t look like a stealth-cam either).  The control layout will take a bit of learning too – a few things like changing PASM mode and setting a custom white balance are just a bit more complicated than the E-1, but it still feels like a camera where almost no menu-diving will be required once it’s been properly set-up (thanks goodness).

The 18-180 is quite a handy lens for close-ups

All of these first images were made yesterday in Aperture priority mode with the Zuiko 18-180 – I’ve never had an image stabilised body to use it on before so that was quite a treat!  And they’re all JPEGs too – even though I normally only use raw; I’m rather impressed by the JPEGs and wonder whether I could do much better.  I turned the rear LCD in with no chimping allowed (bit like shooting with film or with the E-1 really – in the case of the latter the image on the screen is only an approximation of what you really took!) because I wanted to see what the camera would do and also test myself to see how close I would get to proper exposures without checking the screen.  I dialled in similar levels of exposure compensation to those I would expect with the E-1 and mostly got pretty much what I would have expected – so any problems there are probably going to be user error rather than anything to do with the camera 😦

Stall-holder at our local farmer’s market in Herne Hill (as is the image at the top of this post)

It’s too early to compare image quality with the E-1.  I’m not sure that the E-3 has quite the same distinctive signature but the colours are still great as one would expect from Olympus, and the noise performance is a generation ahead of the earlier camera – so all in all I think there’s going to be plenty to like here.  I need to try a few more portraits – something the E-1 excelled at – but so far I’m a very happy camper.

Decaying stuff = photographer’s paradise!

I slightly shook this one but I think the E-3 looks like it’ll be good for black and white

….and colour

I’m looking forward to using the E-3 more (I need to learn it inside out before I get to Scotland) and I’ll post some more images here I’m sure.  But I think I’ll admire and depend upon it in the way one does a well-made German car – the E-1, on the other hand, gets the heart racing like an Alfa (thank goodness it is less temperamental and better-made though!).

Cheers,

Jon

Sometimes trying out a new toy adds a bit of incentive to go out with the camera, and this weekend was rather exciting in that it marked the arrival of a “new-to-me” Zuiko 11-22 lens in absolutely unmarked mint condition.  After using it for a day I can already see why some people weld it to the front of their E-1s – hardly any distortion for a comparatively wide angle lens (and no software trickery to get that result either), excellent image quality (especially when stopped down a bit, as with most lenses) and lovely colours.  It just feels so nicely-made too.  So far it’s only been on a couple of dog walks so here are a few quick snaps from my local area – Dulwich and Herne Hill in SE London.  I’m looking forward to putting in some work to use it properly soon.

The telephone box above is outside Dulwich Picture Gallery (there is a reason why) and here is the phone inside – not so different from the one we had at home when I grew up in the ’70s (my parents didn’t like the new “trimphones”.

And here is the back of Dulwich Picture Gallery – the oldest public art gallery in the country, with a lovely collection.  The building that is sticking out is a mausoleum that the gallery architect Sir John Soane designed for the original owners of the collection.  Look closely at the roof of the mausoleum, and imagine it without the urns:

In the 1920’s the Royal Fine Art Commission launched a competition to design the British telephone box, and this was won by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, who happened to be Sir John Soane’s nephew, was a trustee of his museum, and was influenced by the roof of the mausoleum at the gallery (also replicated at Sir John Soane’s tomb, which can be visited at St Pancras Church in London) – so next time you see the iconic British telephone box, you know where part of the design originated from.  The museum is opposite the rather grand victorian Dulwich Park – here’s an image from the walk through there; unfortunately the park is full of additional fencing protecting various bits of new turf at the moment – not great with a very wide angle lens!

And a couple more grabbed shots from my walk home – it was such a lovely day yesterday.  If you’re out in the middle of the day in harsh light perhaps sometimes it’s best to try and make the most of the shadows?

The E-1 really does colour:

It’s been years since I used the 18-180 but that one came out to play this weekend too – here’s what we saw in the little park at the bottom of our road – not exactly an obvious lens to use with the non image-stabilised E-1 but not too shabby:

Here’s hoping for some more spring weather – I could get used to this….

Jon