A Thanks to Olympus ...even if I am a non profit customer!

I have had the Olympus E450 since late january and am enjoying photography like never before.

Like many I had been a previous SLR owner and Olypmus OM user from the 1980s, moving over to 35mm super zoom ( pentax W90 135) and then a couple of 2 to 5 mpx compacts while other budgets were met long before a 5D EOS or Nikosillycash.

Now I would like to thank Olympus for making a quality, compact sized DSLR within my reach and making photography once again a big hobby of mine.

At the moment the Olympus E450 is a steal from many internet and chain stockests because it is being heavily discounted, often to under 400€ with the kit lens 14-42 f3.5-5.6.

This is rather fortuitous that a whole new group of owners can enjoy some of the plethora of features, which would on a 35mm film SLR make this a top pro model for the late 80s, at a price less than the non-veiw finder PEN cameras from Olympus. Other blogs rate the E450 very highly and some pros are using it even as a back up body, now it is revealed it has the version III image engine also carried in higher models.

In general, given bright conditions the camera takes great, sharp images with a level of control over depth of field which would be a familiarity to someone in 1985 with Ektachrome 64 asa or a 100 asa film ( ISO now). As soon as it get's dull, you need the faster prime lenses and to start pushing the ISO or using a tripod. So you could say the camera is lacking the image stabilisation or high ISO performance without unacceptable noise. However , you could save at least 500€ by knowing what good conditions for great photos are, using a tripod and furthermore, appeciating the limitations of your camera.


All these shots have been taken in the last day, with unexpectedly heavy and lying snow !

One petal left, but no.one has told the flower's that it is winter.....


( not a clear due to the trees, I was waiting for the AIr Ambulance to take off again and run a 10 second exposure on it or get the rotors in motion with a still body; but this is just sharpened 20% and reduced in size, demonstrating the DR of the camera at 25sec f22, and the manual focus using the maginfy in Live View)



Quite good DR on a difficult exposure I should have bracketed: my favourite feature. THis is from RAW ORF file, sharpened. The apparent noise on the petals is acutally the structure of the plant creating a "Pixel" effect, with whiter blocks. Focusing in such soft light was an issue, and this shot really needs a tripof and f11 to get the correct sharpness and DOF.

I see all too many E3 or Nikon 5D shots which are boring, poorly composed and not even in control of an interesting DOF. The aboive shots are a


However this nice pricing and the availability of the three of four entry level lenses is actually not a locking in strategy to capture new users nto the 4-3rds ladder: the ladder is clearly cut off now with just the top "pro" E5 ( a wannabees camera) . A micro four thirds camera which may suit the current 4-3s full sized lenses is a bone Olympus has thrown to the press and users.

To some extent, I don¨'t care! I would invest in a faster prime and maybe one more zoom with some smaller f numbers before I would upgrade the body. I have apparently, a longer product ownership lifetime (personal lifecycle) than most in the gnats-brain-attention span of the generation X's and "i"s have.

Olympus have basically stated that if you want entry level, then put up with no built in VF and slower lenses in both f Stop and AF on the live-veiw only PEN system. Also you will pay for the priveledge fo having something smaller and less SLR user friendly! So I am not worth enough to Olympus now and they are not worth enough to me when I come to upgrade body. Lose Lose it is called in game theory!

I think this is probably throwing in the towel for Olympus to both discount off their entry level, ultra compact DSLR and look for higher margins in the compact "system" or "Hybrid" camera sector.

The E450 on carrots.....night vision

The four thirds system has had some comments for noise and slow ISO: this seems to be being beaten down with the qualities of the E5 and the panasonic range in muFT.

But here are some interesting shots

1) daytime scene from my friends balcony, taken with a hang over. Note the colours, boring photo taken because


2) this was the image as close to as the eye-saw-it, while we were out getting some air and red wine late in the evening the night before. This is nearly the end of dusk on an early October evening some weeks ago.

2"/f5.0/16mm(=32)/ISO100/Natural Colours

3) and here is what the E450 managed on MF and a long shutter speed: unbeleiveable colour and quite low noise: the image is out of focus flatly because neither the AF or the Human Eye Mrk1 had anything to focus on!

4"/f3.7/16mm/ISO400/Natural Colour

NOTE: This seems to be a good setting on the camera for nearly dark, but just enough light for the naked eye to see some detail and maybe some colour.: However it is better to secure more of the scene in focus than the MF will be able to do by setting a very high f stop like 22, and seeing what the camera says in Manual or P modes. The lower f stop may give the same exposure but I would expect the colours to be poorer.

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Here are some more evening shots: ( wood on wood, loft lighting, the tower etc) surprising adjustments to the bracketing, worth setting out with a wide +/1 on Aperture prio' so to estbalish your depth of field and then just let more or less light in on exposure time. P often get's it wrong. I had left Spot AE on by accident.

15sec/f22/ISOauto(400?)

AperturePrio/15/f14/114mm(228)/+0.7/ISO400/Natural colour/WB Auto

100mm(200)/25" f22 Iso 100. From RAW ORF, just some sharpening: very impressive DR, could have been better focused or on a heavier tripod

Meter Experiments with the Olympus E-450

The Olympus E450 continues to suprise me with the qaulity of it's various technical functions and the so called "budget" lens range of which I have three. As mentioned in the last blog I often use bracketed exposures onto a centre weighted auto exposure
In this series of almost identical content, I have only varied the camera's settings to produce very diverse look and feel for the images.

I started out with ordinary focus three points, and centre weighted auto exposure ( AE) I then went to two types of spot AE and down the spot AF to get the leaves in subject really on their own as it tirned out!

In these images the WB was set to auto, but it could have been tried with shadow or sun to experiment:: colours were natural, VIVID could have been too saturated and bright.

6904 ...42mm( =84@35mmFF camera) .80th/f5.6 ISO 400, Exp 0.0

Not a bad shot, nice hightlight on the leaves, a bit heavy contrast, but good depth / figure separation : a bit cluttered with bckgroung and other leaves in the same plane as the lit up one.

Shows why I wanted to experiment further:; this was a little brighter to the naked eye


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6905: 42mm( =84@35mmFF camera) A (ap'priority) 80th/f5.6 -0.7 ISO 200 Spot focus highlight natural colours WB auto'

Just dumping fown one exposure on the camera dn going for highligh, mnakes the leaf instandtly stand out whiel the backgorund is more thrown in focus, darker while still interesting and not now a distraction but a reference for the eye







6906 as per 05 but 60th +0.7 ISO400

This if I remember right, is the closest to the naked eye because the leaf was super illuminated by a shaft of sunlight against the cliff backdrop and other shadows of trees to the left.

The saturation and brightness of the background is differnet from 04, for better or for æsthetically worse






.... .....9707 42mm/800th/f5.6 ISO 100 O.O Spot AE

The scene now takes on a ghostly moonlight apperance, with sharpeness in the detail around the main subjects, and a better attention grab for the three leaf sets.









9708 1250th/ -0.7 Spot Focus and AE

With the stop donw on auto bracket on the spot AE , this shot now is most definetly in the night vision category despite being taken in daylight. INteresting colours.













6909 500th Spot SH and Spot Focus


I will have to read up on Spot SH but in this case it really worked Once again a ghostly moonlight feel , but the best of the three darker.
Spot focus helps the image here too.

Hope i have the ORF file!!!

It all Hinges on the Bracket

There were two key things which were lacking on almost all compact zoom digital cameras: RAW file format and the Bracketed shot <<>> function. Now both are on the Olympus PENs but instead of saving a couple more months, carpe deum on a sub €400 eruo deal on the E450.

Bracketing used to be a manual operation in stepping usually just the aperture up and down one or more f stops around a presumed best fstop. Later it was introduced on 135 format ( 35mm) cameras when they went electronic and motordrive in particular.

Some cameras had a plus/minus exposure button, and this has become very popular on digital SLRs, allowing you to quickly toggle or wheel up-down the exposure one step or in fractions.

Any DSLR worth its' salt will now have a BKT function with atleast three steps ( - /0/ +) at definable increments or fractions of exposure steps. The E-450 fits the bill here

The following little sequence makes me very glad I didn't buy an LCD based experience, but rather a through-the-lens view because they were almost into the sun and it was a very, very bright day with little humidity in the air.



P ...87 94 mm( 188 mm on 135/ FF) 320/f5.6 0.0 / ISO 100/ VIVIV/ Centre Weighted AE

Base shot, first out; maybe a bit over exposed on the highlights, which the 400 series seem to handle quiter poorly : making white blocks with noise often.











P 88 94 mm 400/f6.3 -0.7









The leaves here have a nice saturation, but the shadows become heavy. Also the "corona" highlight on the leaf-edges is not noticeable.










P ...89 +0.7 250 / f5

Still a nice shot, the shadows now have full colour, while this fights with the vein detail in the leaves. THe leaves are a little washed out

This was infact, perhaps the nearest visual perception of the very brigh light, while the eye still sees colour in the shadows.













90 P ....90 zerio compensation 250 f 5.6



A little flat, in between saturated and not.





















P ...91 320 f.6.3 -0.7 WINNER IS.....



The shadows are a little heavy, but a good balance between saturation and detail in the leaves: also, when cropped as in the top of the blog, the corona on the leaves is very evident and ...competition winning.


























P....92 200 f 5 iso 100 vivid 86 mm ( 40-150) +0.7 Exp Comp / Centre weighted metering

Small Tips on Using the Olympus E450 DSLR

Now the E450 is seen as an entry level camera, but if you are like me a previous 1980s OM and manual camera user, then its' features are from outerspace:

So there are probably many, many useful or just mildly interesting functions which never get used by today's buyers of such a so called entry level little gem!

However, some default settings are really not ideal. Furthermore some settings are highly desirable when you get "that" shot situation you want to get right.


I've had the camera 8 months now: here are some tips / observations:

There are some odd defaults: vivid colour is just too much for me, natural is really true with muted being a little "ektachrome" in feel. Portrait colour seems a bit strange, but I have actually just discovered monotone on bracketed shots gives very good results Prog/ AUTO selects a slower shutter speed than I like to use, often under 250 and f8.
I set colour over to natural, centre weighted AE, and AF with three points, set fill flash on but deactivate auto pop up and am careful to check Prog is fast enough. Then the flash is always ready to fire just by hitting the hard button on the top.

Also I leave the braket function on, "toggeling" it's use with the frame shooting button and the exposure adjust in front of the shutter release. In other words on single shot you just quickly adjust to zero on the little front button, while as soon as you want brakceted shots , just switch the frames button on the top.

Sports mode is okay to secure the fastest available exp' for the light, but does not function with bracket and the continuous auto focus on live view is not fast neough for sports!



Fireworks effects does a damn good job, better than I could achieve, as does candle, night portrait and to some extent the virtual macro functions.

Night shots on a tripod : MF all the time, f8 and 15 seconds for say 20% of the scene having street/house lights or 22 for less light/ softer light; use the mirror delay function for this too.

Before you shut down! Another little tip is that the camera seems to use less power if you leave it on during a 2 to three hour period of sporadic shooting: ie boot up takes battery power. NB! Switch off live view and check it is been accidentally put on. It uses more power even with the lens cap on!

Back to Basics :: What Makes Good Photos : The Olypmus E450 included!

Here is the list of what I think actually makes for good photography and therefore good shots in descending order of importance

1) Shutter Speed
2) Focus (on the subject)
3) After cutting / "light"room effects
4) Aperture & Depth of Field Effect
6) Composition
7) White Balance/ colour setting/ ISO: fiddely wee things of dSLRs/ mFT cameras

Suprised by the order?

The key thing I think that makes the difference between a mediocre amateur shot and a pro shot is not actually composition; it is sharpeness and vividness of colours, or contrast in montone.

Composition through the lens is not always king and I am a devotee of the "light room" cropping blade. As long as a shot has some subject of interest which is sharp ( or not if that is a really unique good blur) then you can crop, monotonise, saturate, sharpen, selectively blur and even photomontage your image, to either rescue a poor composition or find something really eye catching.

My other hobby is sailing and in that sport their is an adage that them whom maketh two mistakes will deserve only second place in a race, while them whom doth have only one wee tiny error will come correspondingly first. In photography if you start to eliminate your mistakes, then you will quickly be able to focus on ( pun there ok!) better composition: ie more interesting shots.

Shutter is King

At 1/250th of a second you are not free of camera shake from hand held shots or even with a rather hefty little mirror on a DSLR like mine, the shock of the mirror mechanism can cause a tiny amount of shake. Also noticeable at say 1/25th on a tripod.

EDIT: Luckily there is a "lock up" anti-shock mirror pre-lift delay to shutter which helps and the higher series E520 and above have image stabilisation (IS) which works well enough to take two shutter speeds down according to users.

On the E450, I find the P (programme) and related Auto (programme with flash), choose too slow a shutter speed : often 200th of a second while being way up at f8: my slowest lenses are zooms which are 5.6, so this is annoying that it stops up and slows the shutter. I notice immediately when the light is down, or at the longer focal legnths, my image sharpness drops.

Try Shutter then you fool Freddie! The problem is that in Shutter Priority you can be out of sensible exposure with a blinking f number as soon as the light changes or you want to go even faster up the shutter dial.

Help is at hand: Sports mode, but this engages the rather poor continuous image sensor focus when using Live View, and does not allow for bracketing: It will at least though, secure you the fastest available shutter speed for a "correct" exposure.

Sharper Budgets

Pro's use faster lenses ( sub f3 in FT or sub f2 where possible) : They choose primes at super wide 20 or 24, then 28, sometimes 35, 49-52 and then 90 - 120 and finally a 200 before you then get into sports and twitcher types of big whites at sub f5.

In the days of film, pro's took far more images than amateurs, thus allowing for some blurred "frames" or imperfections, while often allowing them to get the shot for that series or pose. Now I notice that pro's spend a little more time in set up and checking the camera settings between frames, or series of frames, and I dare say if you canvassed them, you may find they actually take less frames than enthusiasts with dSLRs.

Expensive lenses and top end FF, wider or APS-C type cameras and the Olympus E5( onto ZD Pro lenses) also focus better and faster, and have the best quality lens elements to make the sharpest image plane.

So the kit helps pro's make fewer mistakes.

Focus on Focusing

The higher end systems all offer faster, more accurate focusing too.

I really must say that I miss the old split prism manual focus and find that even some expensive cameras I have tried are not really all that much faster. It is just we are lazy and in the digital world, okay, we want to take masses and masses more frames than before, so twisting the left hand is very passe?

My only advice on focusing is to get used to the cameras focusing choices and settings and find what works on your camera for your style of images and in different situations:

: on the E-450, select spot AF and put it on the centre dot of the three as default, such that you get into the habit of focus-reslect frame. The more complex functions, like hybrid AF and using the AE/AF lock with different settings are also worth learning as I am now: the continuous autofocus does not seem very good to me so far. Face detect is way quicker on the current compact camera ranges from all and sundry than on the E450, but it can be useful. If you have a GH1 or G10 from panasonic, now you can touch screen select what you want to focus on.

Another useful function is M-AF-S which is a combination of an AF followed by a fine manual adjust: in practice it needs to be done on a tripod with 7x or 10x live view magnification: I use it mostly on "macro" close up attempts but also it is of use when you have a disappearing edge:like a door frame, where you want to keep the centre of it in focus so that on say f5.6, the whole frame is in focus with the background blurring out.

MF also has it's place , in close ups, indoor shots in low light and night images, when the "night scene" pre-programme doesn't find anything to focus on.

Bracketing Exposures

Bracketing is my favourite means of improving photos and I guess the technique came from pros: certainlky it relates to the experience of running the test strips in the dark room when exposing paper. Pros were and probably still are, more likely to use an external meter to get the correct exposure and then push the emulsion or print, the ISO or the curves now, to get the best from the frames which were taken at the "correct" exposure.



BKT allows you to look at is which exposure is most pleasing for the subject : but further more, you can get around many faults coming from over or under exposure and resulting at sensor - processor level noise.

You can see that you gain or lose in detail, contrast, sharpness-DoF, and over all feel of the image: you can also see which exposure makes unacceptable white-out highlights, noisy-hard black shadows or unwanted noise flecks and pixelation effects in quarter tones.

In other words, you may be able to eliminate noise ( abberrant, coloured pixels) by selecting the shot which is slightly underexposed and "lifting" all the graph to brighten and reveal detail in the three-quarter tones and shadows. Or the converse, an over exposed shot may have a grey feel to it, but capture detail in the subject area the "correct" exposure does not.

BKT is worth starting experimenting on in Programme with ISO AUTO, and the exposure compensation being +/- 1.0 : a whole exposure step, so you can learn what type of shot requires which side of the line ( the camera does vary the ISO in order to bracket down one f stop beyond a certain dark exposure limit) . This was easy on the old needle days: you underexposed for highlights and if you were on transparency films and you could rely on the lab to either get lucky on their test strip or totally mess up a whole roll of Ektakrome for you!

On a tripod with a static scene you can also then work up layers from your bracket in your image software, which add both contrast and detail to the subject.

BKT is the main function I wanted which was not available on a compact camera with RAW file format for under €500. Hence I bought an E450 with a kit 14-42 and the 25mm f2.8 prime ( =50mm in old money 135), which renders the system smaller than the Fuji FinePix /oly 6000s with the biggest zooms.

The noise issues with the FT 10mpx chip can be worked around by bracketing: noise comes in at either end of the scale for any camera- abberant red flecks in both shadows and highlights. Also it comes to happen on some grey tone or quarter tone ( brigth areas which are less light than highlights) that there it is again: noise.

Some of this is associated to JPEG compression- set the camera to take RAW + a jpeg of your preference; if the CF and XD are getting filled, then pump down the JPEG to small-medium-compress for internet use. Finally to get an umissable frame, switch off RAW and go back to Large Fine Jpeg and select ISO100.


DoF notes:

If you get the shutter speed right and look at eliminating noise and getting a choice of best exposure, then the next thing to look at is controlling and utilisation of Depth of Field.

This is influenced by the aperture of course, the focal legnth of the lens but also the nature of that particular lens: the 40-150 even at f5.6 gives a very short depth of field, so much so you have to stop it down to deepen it! Where as for comparison, the 14-42 at max mm (=84m), gives a deeper depth of field than the 40 at the same.

Short and super wide angled too vary. But one area which also varies is the sharpness of the actual supposed focal plane at high f stops: this can be so soft as to render them not worth having the f2.8 or 1.4 setting! This affects several FT lenses I will not slander further, and the faster Zuiko OM primes when used on FT cameras ( presumably also a little soft on film!)


BKT is also very useful in DoF experiments, where you want to select a most pleasing fade in and out or when you want to look at light in addition to blur to bring out the best in the subject-background relationship.

Composition

Finally here I get onto what you frame with your fancy bit of "enthusiast, pro level" kit!

The only thing I will say tonight, is you have to decide what the photo is going to be OF. What is the subject and how will it differentiate itself, stand out, from the background?

If of course, you are shooting a pattern, or texture, it is kind of the opposite; how to make the whole frame the subject!

The final note on this is that you want to look for the golden zone and any triangle. -shapes or leading S-shapes in the image : I kind of do this naturally but miss out on some which i Kick myself for in the light-room. A tree is not pefectly on the S, or whatever!

The simple things still mess me up in composition: level horizon! But most of my potentially good shots gone wrong are messed up by shutter speed and I know this is the case for many, many photographers!

Practice : Chop Water, Fetch Wood

I would say go out and get the above list in that order or priorities, sorted so that you know when you do go on a shoot or when something is happening and you have a camera on you, that you can very quickly set the camera up and be confident you will overcome user-error, while adapting to the restraints and opportunities of the situation and lighting.

Put the camera on a small tripod and set it to P on ISO400: So take some frames of your table, take some of the objects on the table (without flash!) Set the camera on Shutter, 500 or more with AUTO ISO: Take photos of your house, your car, your spouse, your kids and your dog. Take photos of the view from your window and up and down the street. Focus on each lamp post in turn! Use BKT, go through the settings without too many combinations.

Then move onto BKT shots: start +1/-1 and then move down to -0.3/+0.3.

After some time you may find that you will be clicking not at the BKT function but at the little expo comp button and moving it for your expectations of the condiitions, taking time to alter the frame or more rough exposure settings with far higher aperture settings or faster shutter speeds on "correct" exposure to begin with.

Through the Eye of the Beholder

A single eye sees 120-140' with biscopic vision being able to sense movement maybe as far out as 220'.

However what we recognise as out usual gaze, or our field of active view, is actually less than 90'. Within this we both collect, process and percieve the most information.

The relative magnification which we percieve as normal and the brain calculates our spatial awareness on, is actually equivalent to a 90mm lens on an FF / 35mm( 135) camera. However a 90mm lens will give a "crop" or field of view to a mere 24'.

Why is this? Well I don't really know the answer but at a guess I would say the eye has both a relatively convex first lens - the cornea, and a powerful, malleable second lens coupled to a very concave focusing surface which greatly increases the surface area for image-capture: more megapixels if you like, and in addition a super sensitve sweet spot, the Fovea Centralis where even more sensor elements are concentrated.

In this way the circular focal plane created by the lens in the eye is better exploited by falling onto a curved, 3D plane rather than a cropped plane like a CMOS/CCD or layer of film.

On a four thirds frame, the reverse is true: the focal circle is somewhat under exploited from the quality lenses. see below for more discussion on this.



Kit and Budget Lenses from Olympus and their Relativity to Eyesight

14-42mm f3.5 Kit lens: (28-84 in FF/ 35mm) eq14mm: 70' and 1/3rd approximate eye magnification
eq84mm: 30' and 1/1.1 app "" "" ""


25mm pancake f2.8 "prime" eq 50mm 46' and 1/1.75 app

40-150mm kit lens f4.0 80 as above

eq 200 12' amd 2.2
eq 300 8' and 3.4 magnification.


Relative Field of View and Magnification

As a rule of thumb you could say that 100mm represents about 1.1 eye magnification, or as mentioned, 90mm is equivalent.

To capture near to all that the eye sees in field of view you would need to be using a 20 or 24mm (ff/135) but of course this both shrinks distance objects and distorts straight lines.

I very much like using 90-120mm because for either portraits or actually some landscape details, architecture and near-macro, the crop produced is what the eye and brain would have most perception of: the Foveal Crop you could say. Despite these lenses being either slower (f4 for example in a 40-150 zoom) or expensive ( f 2.0 or even 2.8 fixed focal macro/portrait primes) than say a 25mm prime or the 14-42mm kit lens, I prefer to use them because you can work at a little more distance from people. This gives you the chance to get the shot just before they are really aware that a photo is being taken.


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Personal View on Four Thirds Economics and Technology



On a four thirds frame, the reverse is true from the extensive utilisation of the focal circle onto the retina in our eyes: the focal circle in this type of camera is somewhat under exploited with respect to these high quality lenses.

The latest mFT release from Panasonic, an 18 effective 16 CMOS with a panorame function which is broader than 4-3 demonstrates this to be the case. Some would say that a sensor bit-element dispersal of 4 to 5 microns, the sensors are too small and packed to offer equal quality to APS-C and FF sensors.

However, Olympus has pioneered compact-sized, near perfect telecentric lenses: this means that light is focused and travels almost paralell throught the later lens and aperture elements to an give an accurate re-dispersal to the focal surface, the resulting quality in image and reduction in scattered light and unwanted colour spectral effects means that the smaller sensor can acheive excellent results comparable say 10 mpx to 10mpx APS-C or even full frame cameras.

The quality of images producable even on the "cheap kit" lenses, is really superb and you have to spend a lot of money in getting two f-stops faster from the range of FT lenses out there.

Of course Canon and Nikon divotees will point to the previous noise in the FT sensors, now obvercome to give perhaps better results for Olympus and Panasonic operating at ISO 6400. Also these manufacturers have very good lenses which achieve a high degree of telecentricity.

However Olympus and the others in the FT /muFT group decided that less-must-be-more. By reducing materials they could reduce costs and pass that on to the hobby market they are aiming at. Also of course, the cameras are far smaller than most of the APS-C and all the FF ones on the market. mFT cameras are sold at a relative premium price, in line with the second tier of hobby dSLRs from the main competitors, but standing as mirrorless, half way compact-dSLR cameras.

What Olympus and Panasonic, Leica too, enjoy in better margins from this less-is-more, they can use to consolidate their leading positions in this market niche, or you may argue actually that is is a small sector, definded as: advanced compact digital cameras of superior qaulity lenses (interchangeable for all at the momeent) which even pros use. This means the producers can use their margin to continually innovate and offer ranges of cameras to suit consumer desires and pockets.