Olympus E-P1 top view.

First Impressions

From the moment that I took this camera out of the box, I was impressed. The build quality is fantastic (lots of metal) and the styling is spot on. It’s the small manual digital camera that I have always wanted, and it has a big sensor which is icing on the cake. Like most people, I thought that I was going to miss the viewfinder, and that has not been the case. The LCD is bright, and easy to compose with, and its a breeze to manual focus with as well.

Subsequent to purchasing the E-P1, I found out that the Four-Thirds and the micro Four-Thirds mount used by the PEN are the most adaptable mounts on the market. I have since purchased and been busy playing with my Pentax K-mount to m4/3 mount adaptor, and its a lot of fun.

Usage

The PEN is really easy to use, thanks to the smart button layout, and the dual control wheels for aperture and shutter speed. The menu system is intuitive and easy to use while shooting.

Auto-focus is significantly improved thanks to the latest firmware update, and even before the update, AF was better than most big Internet camera reviewers would lead you to believe.

Olympus E-P1 rear

While the LCD is good, it could be a lot better, but I think Olympus put a lower-resolution LCD in the PEN to help with battery life, and for what I use the PEN for, its fine for my shooting needs.

The nice thing about only having an LCD for composition, is it allows you to use some angles that you wouldn’t otherwise consider using. I can put the PEN right on the ground, compose and shoot without having to lay in the dir to get a shot.

The 14-42 Kit Lens

The kit lens surprised me. It was sharper than I thought it would be, and it has some pretty nice bokeh. Its such a compact lens, its easy to under estimate its abilities.

Dandelion Head, taken with 14-42mm kit lens

I do however feel that Olympus should be selling the E-P1 with a 25mm 1.4 lens, (50mm equiv). I think the PEN would really excel and impress with a nice fast normal prime. Panasonic does make a 20mm 1.7, and Olympus does make a 17mm f2.8 (34mm equiv). I plan to try both at some point (hopefully) and purchase one of them for my daily camera carrying needs.

E-P1 with 14-42 Kit Lens

Image Quality

If you are going to buy a digital camera without an on-board flash, its going to need some decent low-light capabilities, and the PEN does really well for a smaller than APS-C sensor up to ISO 1600. If needed, you can increase the ISO to 3200, and 6400 ISO, the images are noisy, but still usable. The noise in the high ISO images from the PEN is actually quite pleasing, it has an almost film-like quality, which works well when converted to black and white.

Its 12mp I feel is just about perfect, the images are a bit smaller than the .DNG raw files out of my K20D, so its nice to save on some space where I can.

Conclusion

If you are considering a PEN, you won’t be disappointed. I think its a great camera to help a beginner learn composition, as its allows you a bit more freedom to compose. Its also a bit easier to adjust exposure in manual mode, which will take some of the fear away from new manual mode shooters.

After three weeks, I’m very happy with mine. It has made photography fun, and its a great source of inspiration. In the short time that I have had my PEN, I find that I am making better photographs, and trying new angles that I would have never tried before.

Happy shooting.

I don’t use windows, so I will attempt to provide the best instructions that I can for Linux and MAC OSX based systems.

On linux systems, specificly Ubuntu Linux, you can install ImageMagick by issuing the following from the command line:

sudo apt-get install imagemagick

Thats it. Imagemagick is installed. You can skip down to the post-installation steps.

On the Mac, you need to make sure that you have Xcode installed, which will allow your Mac to compile the ImageMagick source code into an executable file that you can call from a script. XCode can be installed from the Leopard or Snow Leopard DVD that came with your Mac.

After XCode has been installed, you will need to download and install “Port“. After Port is successfully installed, you can use it to update ImageMagick:

Update port tree:

sudo port selfupdate

(if you are like me, and you installed MacPorts under 10.5, but didn’t update it when you moved to snow leopard, you can update your installed ports with: sudo port upgrade –force installed ). I had to follow the steps at: http://trac.macports.org/wiki/Migration to get my ports install back on track.

Once you have MacPort sorted out, its time to install ImageMagick:

sudo port install ImageMagick

After ImageMagick is installed, you can use a simple script such as the following to automatically add borders to your images:

put the following text into a text file:

#!/bin/bash

mkdir ./output
for i in $( ls ./*.JPG ); do
convert $i -bordercolor black -border 25×25 output/$i
done

Save the file as addborder.sh and place it in a folder that’s convienient for you. I have a scripts folder under my home, so I can reference the script via: ~/scripts/addborder.sh

In order to run the script, you will need to make it executable, from a terminal issue the following command:

chmod a+x ~/scripts/addborder.sh

The code in the script will create a folder called output where it will put the new files with the boder. The script does not alter the origional files. To use the script, simple open up a terminal window, change to the directory with your images and run:

~/scripts/addborder.sh

Voila, you should now have a folder called output within your image folder containing the modified files.

ImageMagick is a very powerful set of tools for modifying images, and the example above is only scratching the surface. Other uses of ImageMagick could be resizing images for posting to the web, adding  a watermark, or all three combined.

The Cauldron in Coal Harbour

more photos after the break.

Its a shame that such a prominent symbol of the Olympics had to be behind a fence, but I also belive that this is one of the few, if not only times that the Cauldron has been at street level.

I wasn’t able to go into any of the pavilions as the lines were many hours long (I didn’t have enough time to wait). Pictured above is the lineup for the Royal Canadian Mint Pavilion, where you can hold one of the Vancouver 2010 Gold, Silver, and Bronze medals. This particular line was just over a 6 hour wait.

Granville Street was opened exclusivly to foot traffic, and became home to many different public art installations. Pictured above is one of many “trees” with lanterns decorated by children hanging from it.

Another view of the cauldron, which will become a permanent fixture on the Vancouver water front. Thanks to a joint deal between Terasen Gas, and the BC Provincial government, the cauldron will burn on indefinitely after the Paralympics concludes. Hopefully I’ll be able to find a good angle with a long lens to get a shot of the cauldron from the north shore, or even stanley park.

waiting…

The next torch runner waits for the flame to arrive

Here comes the flame.

The torch “kiss”

The opportunity to see the torch along Deer Lake Parkway outside of Burnaby city hall afforded some nice views of the torch relay. Lots of office workers emptied out of their cubicles to wait in the rain for the torch to pass.

The Torch arrives, and is passed to the next torch bearer.

A heavy Police presence to ensure safe passage of the flame.

The Olympic Flame

And its gone.

This is just a few of the vehicles involved in the convoy. The bus carries torch bearers along the route after their run.

Stay tuned for pics from Day 105 (Feb 11th) and my summary post on the torch relay. You can view more pictures from Day 103 in my flickr stream.

Thousands of People flooding Old Yale Road and King George Highway Boulevard

One of the Coca-Cola Buses that make up the torch relay motorcade

The Flame Arrives

As quickly as it came, the flame passes by.

There are many more photos from Day 102 of the torch relay in North Surrey in my flickr stream, and stay tuned for photos from Day 103, 105 and my summary post.

Photo taken almost a year ago today, December 2008 – Toronto. Honest Ed’s is a must see maze of bargains. It was certainly worth the long walk.

Taken at a concert by Central City Jazz in March 2008.

Vancouver After Dark