What this means, is that you can include the following in your navigation menus:

• External Links
• Hide pages
• Categories
• Regular pages

Also, never has organizing your pages been easier! Just drag and drop these pages to wherever you want them to appear in your navigation menu! Not only this, but you can easily add pages, external links and categories to your footer area of your site – all using our Supertheme.

These menu’s are easy to create, easy to manage and they look great!

If you’re not using Supertheme for your Photography Wordpress Theme, go get it today!

We’d like to extend a very special thanks to our three judges who are all committed to giving back to the photography community – Steve McCurry, Michael “Nick” Nichols and Art Wolfe.

We’d also like to thank the organizers and sponsors of the LookBetween Festival: Michael “Nick” Nichols, the LookBetween Board and staff, Jessica Nagel (host at Deep Rock Farm), National Geographic and BD, for including us in this year’s event. It really was an honor.

And now, the Photocrati Fund Board and staff are pleased to announce the results of the first-ever Photocrati Fund competition.

The 2010 Photocrati Fund Fellow: Mark J. Davis

Project Title: Fishing For Leftovers

Mark will receive a $5,000 grant to pursue his on-going, environmentally-focused project Fishing For Leftovers, which highlights the impact of commercial over-fishing on small-scale subsistence fishermen in Southern Chile.

About Mark’s project:

A 2006 study by an international group of ecologists and economists projected the collapse of the world’s fishing stocks by the year 2048—due mainly to overfishing. While consumers will be the last to feel the effects –there are tens of millions of people worldwide who live in small fishing communities that depend on the sea for subsistence who are already reaping the consequences.

This project documents life in one such community in Southern Chile where due to a lack of other opportunities, small-scale fishing operations are the main source of income. Recent increases in large-scale commercial fishing enterprises that use controversial fishing practices have led to both the depletion of the fishing stock and the destruction of much marine habitat. Mark hopes that this project highlights the disparity between the lives of the subsistence fishermen and those who operate large-scale fishing operations.

© Mark J. Davis

© Mark J. Davis

© Mark J. Davis

“I am honored and am extremely grateful that through this grant I will be able to continue to tell this important story,” Mark says.

Mark’s project was selected from a competitive pool of more than 400 applicants by our prestigious panel that included some of the world’s best-known environmental and cultural photographers. The judges had a very difficult task—we (happily) received a large number of outstanding and meaningful project proposals by some very talented emerging photographers.

To that end, we would like to recognize the top finalists.

Second Place: Bharat Choudhary

Title: IS THIS HOME?

Location: Mizoram, India

This project seeks to document the humanitarian concerns of Burmese Chin refugees and asylum seekers in India. Around 85,000 Burmese Chin refugees live in India, mainly in India’s northeastern state of Mizoram – at the India-Burma border. They live in cramped, unhygienic, unsafe neighborhoods, and earn as little as $35 (US) a month. They are reduced to scouring the garbage left at the night market for food. This project aims to strengthen the existing advocacy efforts for human rights of the Burmese Chin refugees.

Third Place: Anna Beeke

Title: UNTANGLING THREADS

Location: Morocco

The photojournalism project, Untangling Threads: Female Artisans in Morocco’s Rug Weaving Industry, seeks to document the environment and culture of female weavers who have recently begun to participate in local and global markets. The project also plans to track the rural-to-urban journey of the carpets that are produced. While the carpets are generally sold for high-dollar amounts, the female artisans receive a very small percentage of the profits – which perpetuates the cycle of poverty and child labor in rural Morocco. This project aims to highlight the faces behind the production and the market forces that bring these products to the world.

Fourth Place: Malin Fezehai

Title: VANISHING NATION

Location: Kiribati

Due to global climate change, the small, but highly-populated island – home to roughly 100,000 people – is in danger of disappearing beneath the rising waves of the sea levels. Mass evacuation is now in the initial stages. Malin’s project seeks to document how the rising sea levels are affecting daily life of these “climate refugees” – an entire nation forced to migrate.

Fifth Place: Anna Maria Barry-Jester

Title: BORN INTO A SAFE PLACE

Location: India

India has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world, just behind war torn African countries like the Sudan. Two thirds of women do not give birth at a health facility; aside from the danger to the mother, there is a greatly increased risk of complications and mortality for the infant. Most home births are overseen by untrained birth attendants, with limited ability to recognize problems early enough to seek proper treatment or to get to a facility in time. This project seeks to raise awareness about the complications and dangers related to giving birth in unsanitary conditions and to improve access to services and outreach offered by the Indian government. Trained in both photography and Public Health, Anna Maria Barry-Jester uses her lens to help develop important health outreach and education campaigns.

Other top finishers:

Oliver Michael Edwards (sensory impairment), Laura El-Tantawy (suicide among male Indian farmers), Andrew Cullen (winter disaster in Mongolia), David Belluz (self immolation in Afghanistan), and Ryan Gauvin (depleted uranium/Balkan states).

Congratulations!

Congratulations to Mark J. Davis and to all of our finalists. We’re looking forward to following your work and we can’t wait to feature a photo essay from Mark’s project next summer.

It’s been a little quiet on the blog front lately and we just wanted to let everyone know that we’re in the middle of some major re-organization. We’re looking forward to re-launching a more streamlined and focused Photocrati Blog soon. Stay tuned for details!

We’ll be taking the occasion to announce the winner of the 2010 Photocrati Fund competition! We had over 400 applications for this year’s competition, the first ever. There were a lot of great photographers, amazing images, and innovative projects. We want to thank Steve McCurry, Nick Nichols, and Art Wolfe for their time reviewing and voting over the last two months. We’ll be announcing the winner on Saturday night at LookBetween, and we’ll post an announcement here early next week!

For those who have not heard of it, LookBetween promises to be an amazing event. It’s a spin-off of LOOK3: Festival of the Photograph. LOOK3 is hosting an experimental two night event to present the work of 90 innovative photographers on a farm 30 minutes west of Charlottesville. The 90 artists showing work were asked to participate by experts in this field such as PDN, Burn Magazine, Humble Arts, Getty Images, VII, and others. This initiative is designed to showcase early-career talent and engage the presenting artists with media professionals on practices and trends influencing the direction of photography today.

Each night will feature outdoor projections of work by the invited emerging photographers in attendance. Showcasing the work of these talented photographers is a main focus of the weekend. However, LOOKbetween is also designed to create networking opportunities and be a forum for the exchange of ideas between professionals and those early in their career. Saturday daytime will be devoted to discussion about important issues in photography. Thank you to BD and National Geographic for supporting LOOKbetween.

NAS stands for network-attached storage. It essentially describes network storage options for the home and office. There’s a lot of technical gobbledygook attached to this storage option, but suffice to say that you can use it to share data among computers, use the network drive as a media hub to stream movies and tunes, share printers (via onboard USB ports), and possibly use these drives for data backups as well. Those USB ports can also be used to attach other compatible devices, such as flash drives and even hard drives (for data transfer or backup to the attached hard drive, as applicable). However, be aware that the connected drive may need to be reformatted for this purpose, which means all data will be wiped out.

Network drives look more or less like typical external hard drives, with one exception: They do not connect to your host computer but instead, via Ethernet cable, connect to your wireless network. Any computer on your network can read from and write to these drives once you’ve logged on from that computer. The drive comes pre-configured with specific “shares”—one of which is your “private” or “admin” share.

A share is a shared folder, but that doesn’t mean everyone gets to share it. It could just be shared among computers in your local area network (LAN), specifically your home network. You can password-protect shares and grant limited access, all by setting up user accounts and groups. And you can add to these at any time and adjust other settings using a Web-based administration tool. When you turn the drive on, it may take a few minutes for all the protocols to fall into place. Much of it runs on autopilot. Initially you’ll need to set up a user name and password for login (don’t lose these, or you may have to reset the entire system, which may also erase all data). That’s it in a nutshell.

Network vs. Typical External Hard Drive

One of the advantages of a network drive is that it disregards your operating system. I can read from and write to my NAS drive from Windows or Mac, or the Great Cosmic Computer on Planet 9 (if it speaks the same computer language). With my earth-bound everyday drives, I can only exchange information effectively if that drive was formatted for the computer’s operating system (OS). I might be able to read from the drive, such as copy files, but not write to that drive if it has been formatted for another OS. For cross-compatibility I would need a drive formatted for DOS, which has some inherent limitations. However, sharing data with a network drive is nowhere as fast as with a conventional drive.

Unlike the typical hard drive, which is only accessible from the connected computer, a network drive is accessible from anywhere on the planet via the Internet. It may require setting up a special remote access account initially through the browser login site.

I’ve recently come across several options for creating a home network. These include the Western Digital My Book World Edition (at Amazon: WD My Book World Edition) and Seagate BlackArmor NAS 220 (at Amazon: Seagate BlackArmor NAS 220) for increasingly more demanding work environments, and on a smaller scale, Verbatim’s 1 TB Network Storage Drive (at Amazon: Verbatim 1 TB Network Storage Drive), and SimpleTech’s SimpleNET NAS Head USB 2.0 Portable Dongle (At Amazon: SimpleNET NAS Head USB 2.0 Portable Dongle). That last one is a mouthful and an odd creature, to boot.

RAID Defined

Before we go any further, we need to define a basic term involved in computer storage: RAID. RAID stands for Random Array of Independent (or Inexpensive) Disks. A RAID drive is comprised of two or more disks configured to operate in tandem, within a housing with a central controller. You may be able to hot-swap disks in select RAID drives, but many require that the drives be replaced by an authorized service center, or at the very least, require complete shutdown before swapping out any drive. Normally, the drives in a RAID system must be matched by brand, model, and capacity. Of course, you can’t mix and match IDE with SATA drives, which use different controllers and pin configurations.

The basic two-drive RAID configuration can be set up so that one disk mimics the other, serving as a constant backup in case of failure. This is the “mirrored” drive, or RAID 1. RAID 0 has both drives operating together, but instead of backing each other up, they each hold pieces of information to provide faster throughput, forming a meandering stream of data. The problem is that if one of these “striped” drives goes down, the data may be totally corrupted and irretrievable. The down side to the mirrored drive is slower operation and half the storage capacity. In other words, if you buy a 2 TB RAID 1 drive you’re effectively only getting 1 TB of storage; with a 2 TB RAID 0 drive, you get 2 TB (minus what the system requires in each case).

RAID drives are usually configured one way or the other out of the box. The best way to reconfigure the drive is via a hardware switch. Using software to change the RAID configuration may slow the drive down.

Our Options

Western Digital (WD) has several NAS systems, beginning with this 2 TB RAID edition. It is Mac Time Machine-compatible, but may require that the drive’s firmware be updated (log in via your browser – on Mac, enter via Bonjour – and select the Advanced Mode, then System tab and Update). At least that’s in theory. I couldn’t get Time Machine to use the WD My Book World drive for backups for some inexplicable reason. So I’ll just continue to use it as a shared drive, without backups. After all, the drive is stylish and runs extremely quiet—and otherwise operates quite effortlessly, being readily accessible from any computer I own—PC, Intel Mac, and pre-Intel Mac. It’s also from the generation of WD green drives, so it’s more energy-efficient. This drive was configured out of the box and remains a RAID 1 drive.

Also a RAID 1 drive out of the box, the Seagate BlackArmor NAS 220 is metal and built like the proverbial tank. It consequently has less of an aesthetic than the WD drive, which is all white with rounded corners. The one thing this drive was not configured to do was work with Apple’s Time Machine. But since it is firmware-updatable, that may change in the future.

Both the WD and Seagate network drives are designed to remain on 24/7. That doesn’t necessarily apply to Verbatim’s Network Storage Drive, which is a compact 1 TB solution. This is a single disk drive, so there’s no option for any RAID configuration. This Verbatim drive is a very uncomplicated network solution that you may want to avail yourself of for a home network.

SimpleTech’s SimpleNET NAS Head USB 2.0 Portable Dongle essentially lets you turn any USB hard drive into a network drive. It features FAT32, NTFS, HFS+, and EXT3 (network sharing) file system support. With its two USB 2 ports, it can be used like other network devices, for any number of file-sharing purposes, and is compatible with all current operating systems.

Congratulations to all those photographers who were invited on after a rigorous review process during the first and second-ever rounds of invitations!

Samsung NX10 vs Olympus E-PL1 (excuse the crappy BlackBerry photo).

Look who just arrived at EtL HQ! I believe I’m one of the first people in the US to receive a final production model of the Samsung NX10 (courtesy of the good folk at B&H), and despite the bad weather forecast for my area this weekend, I’m going to do my best to get out there and give this guy a good initial test run. Expect my initial impressions soon.

In the photo the NX10 sits next to the Olympus E-PL1 (see review here), who should be shipping home very soon. I’m glad I was able to get them together to compare sizes side by side. The NX10 is not that much bigger, despite the larger LCD and fixed EVF, and feels about the same weight. I can tell you right away the NX10 is comfortable to hold. Because of my point of view and wideangle lens on the BlackBerry Storm the NX10 appears much larger in the above photo. I’ll take better ones this evening.

Sadly, I haven’t received the Samsung 30mm f/2 pancake lens, which I really want to try out. It isn’t even listed on the B&H website, so they may not get it in stock before my review is done. That would be a shame!

Stay tuned for more over the weekend or early next week.

Note: Links in this article might be to one of our affiliate stores. Purchases made from our affiliates through these links will benefit Enticing the Light at no extra cost to you.

Related posts:

1. Review – Samsung NX10, Part 1: First Impressions
2. New Samsung M8910 Pixon12 Cameraphone Is Better than Canon 350D (Digital Rebel XT)
3. Review – Olympus Pen E-PL1, Part 1: First Impressions

Olympus Pen E-PL1 with Novoflex and Pentax 31mm Ltd.

by Miserere

⇐ Part 1: First Impressions

Note: The camera and accessories tested in this review were loaned to EtL by B&H Photo & Video store. To thank them for their generosity and allow us to receive more products for review, please consider purchasing your camera equipment through our affiliate B&H link (also found on the right sidebar). Thanks!

Menus

My first test with a new digital camera is to see if I can set it up without reading the manual. If I can’t do that, it means the engineers have failed. I’m happy to report Olympus employs some good engineers for their menu system, as I was able to navigate and menu dive, exploring all the settings and adjusting parameters to my needs. Shallow diving, I should say; while all settings seem to be there, I get the feeling everything is very close in button presses, with no endless menus that you keep scrolling down through. I liked the menu system and found it very neat and tidy.

While shooting, just about every immediate parameter is available for change by pressing the START/OK button at the center of the 4-way control dial, much in the same way as you find in a P&S. Don’t put it down because of this—it’s a good thing. Being able to quickly access AF mode, WB, metering mode, or even flash EV comp is valuable in my book. I hope more camera brands start doing this. The parameters appear vertically on the right side of the screen, while the values available for the selected parameter are spread horizontally at the bottom; both have semi-transparent backgrounds. Once you’ve made the adjustment, tap the START/OK button and you’re ready to shoot.

Buttons, Oh Magic Buttons

Backside of the Olympus Pen E-PL1.
(Photo courtesy of Olympus.)

Photographers love buttons and knobs; the problem is we can’t agree on what functions those buttons and knobs should perform, or where they should be. With that in mind, these are my opinions on the buttons that grace the E-PL1. Let’s start with the first button you’ll press: ON/OFF. It is recessed, which will help from accidentally turning the camera off while you’re shooting, or on while it’s in a bag. I would have preferred a switch, but at least they thought about how to make a good ON/OFF button. The second most important button is the shutter release, which is adequately dampened and located in a comfortable position, close (but not too close) to the ON/OFF. The third item located on top of the camera is the mode dial, which is one tough cookie to turn; on the up side you’re unlikely to find the camera on a different mode when you pull it out of the bag.

On the back we have a typical 4-way + center collection of 5 buttons. While shooting UP accesses EV comp, DOWN drive mode and timer, RIGHT the flash settings and LEFT the AF point choice. Like I mentioned in the previous section, the center START/OK button accesses shoot settings.

To the left and up of these buttons are 3 vertically aligned buttons that, from top to bottom, are PLAY, MENU and INFO. The first two should be obvious; the INFO button cycles through different display looks for the LCD: no info (just battery life shows up for a few seconds when you turn the camera on); a lot of info (shutter speed, aperture, EV comp, ISO, focus/exposure/file/etc/etc mode…); less info and a live histogram. I prefer this third option. In all but the no info the chosen AF point (or rather, square) is overlaid as a thin, grey square, which can be difficult to see in bright light. If using spot metering, the actual area used by the spot meter is demarcated by a circle—very nice.

To the left and down of the 4-way control is the RUBBISH button. Or TRASH, if you’re from the left side of the Atlantic.

At the top of the rear side of the E-PL1 are 3 buttons that held a lot of promise, but ended up letting me down. But first let’s focus on the good things: There is a direct video record button which new parents will probably love. As a stills photographer, I hated it because it’s in a perfect position to just press it, for the hell of it. It’s also squishy and feels completely different to the rest. Such a fun button to press…so many inadvertent videos shot… So what’s the plus side, you ask? The good people at Olympus let you customise it and assign it to another function…within limits (see table below). The other two buttons are ubiquitous on P&Ss and function in a similar function here when in playback mode; in shooting mode the one with the little magnifying glass magnifies a section (any section) of the scene 7x, 10x or 14x. This is very useful for manual focusing. The one that interests me most is the Fn button, which can also be customised…but again, only to a point. See the table below for the options available to these buttons.

Do you see anything missing? How about ISO, or AF? Boo, Olympus, boooo, boo. I hope they add these options with a firmware update. As it is I currently have the Fn button to ‘LCD OFF’ and the Rec button to ‘Manual focus’. Switching to manual focus via the Rec button is my workaround to decouple AF from the shutter release button when needed.

UPDATE: Thanks to a comment by Omgreo, we now have a way to properly decouple AF from the shutter release button: You first have to go into the advanced (two gears) menu and in the Button tab, go into the AEL/AFL option. For S-AF set it to Mode 3. Then assign AEL/AFL to either Fn or Rec. This would work best for me, as on my DSLR I have AF assigned to a button on the rear of the camera and find this works well for my needs. It’s good to have well-informed readers on our site.

Shooting Speed

Not much to say here, just some numbers for you to look at. I’ll point out, in case you’re a bit sleepy, that FPS is influenced by the ISO in use, showing that some noise reduction is going on at ISOs somewhere above 800 that’s taking up time. Note also how this process gets more intensive the higher the ISO. Following is a table summarising my measurements, obtained by recording the camera firing in continuous mode through software that shows the waveform, allowing precise time measurements to be made. Battery was fully charged.

Shooting Modes

It’s a busy mode dial, with the typical PASM + Scene modes, Art filters, video and special to Olympus, the iAUTO. All modes work as you would expect, with M being nice in that Olympus allows for auto ISO (once you allow it in one of the menus); sadly, once ISO reaches 100, if the scene is too bright for the aperture and shutter speed you’ve selected, you’re screwed and your picture will be overexposed. This is such a simple problem to fix with a few lines of code, that it really annoys me when I encounter it on a camera (it’s not just Olympus who’s at fault). This is one of those red flags that tells you in no unclear terms that no photographers were involved in the designing of this camera; not in any serious way. Sigh…

But let’s move on… Shooting in any mode is straight forward, with easy intuitive ways to change shooting parameters. Note that I didn’t say “fast”; you have to use the 4-way controller for aperture, shutter and EV comp., which is not as fast as with the dedicated controllers on the E-P1 and E-P2. That said, most of the time I didn’t miss this immediacy, and in some ways I benefited from it by thinking and being prepared ahead of time. For example, if I turned into a street that was in the shade I would open up the aperture and maybe up the ISO a stop; I’d do the opposite when walking out into bright sun. In a strange way, this little camera has made me question how I shoot—a very unexpected result of this review.

Art Filters

Don’t knock ‘em till you’ve tried ‘em. There 6 available are summarised in the table below. They are applied in real time to the LCD so you can see a preview of what the image will look like. But then for some reason the camera processes the image for a few seconds after you take the picture, so the preview must only be performed on the 231k binned version, which explains why it takes longer to do the same for the full 12MP image.

Olympus E-PL1 sample using the diorama Art Filter.

iAUTO

iAUTO is Olympus’s attempt at making photography technique simple for the masses (where the “i” in iAUTO stands for “idiot”, apparently). I use the word “attempt” because, well, they didn’t quite get there, bless their little hearts. Let me explain what I’m talking about. When you set the camera to iAUTO you lose access to many of your standard settings like aperture, shutter speed, etc. You can change the drive mode, select focus points, and switch between auto flash or flash off, but that’s it. When you press START/OK you are now shown a range of options for your photo that use “plain English” instead of that undecipherable photographic lingo. Here’s a list of what you can do:

I loved reading the shooting tips, where Olympus regales us with poetry such as this:

Shade of cloud or parasol
makes shadow of
flowers softer.

All joking aside, I do think the novice who cares about improving their photography can learn something from these haiku-sized nuggets of wisdom, but a good introductory book would go a lot further.

But the reason I complained at the beginning of this section about Olympus not quite succeeding with their iAUTO mode is because all the changes I listed in the table above are mutually exclusive, meaning: You can pick only one. What happens if you want to make your image brighter and increase your DoF and make it warmer? Then you’ll need to go beyond iAUTO. Maybe this is Olympus’s way of nudging you off the branch so you can learn to fly on your own.

That LCD

The LCD on the Digital Pen family has received the brunt of criticisms levied against the trio of cameras. While the E-P1 and E-P2 have 3″ LCDs, the E-PL1’s screen is slightly smaller at 2.7″; either way they all sport 231k resolution, which is low by today’s standards. After almost 3 weeks and several GB of shooting, I no longer notice the LCD and can look right through it, so to speak. But I do admit that the first impression was not good and I can imagine people not buying the camera because of it. To those people I say: Give it a chance.

Despite the lowish resolution, I still found it easy to focus manually, which is great for macro work where one tends to set the lens to closest focus distance and then move the camera back and forth to focus. In this fashion I obtained more keepers than I do with my DSLR and optical viewfinder, which has convinced me that the next DSLR I purchase must have live view. Shooting with my arm extended above my head was also easier, despite the LCD not being articulated due to the screen’s large viewing angle, which gave me enough detail to make out my composition and where my focus square was located. Which brings us to our next section.

Power Consumption

I never depleted the battery in one day to figure out if it lasts as long as the specs say, so I can’t comment. One thing I did to save battery is make one of the custom buttons an LCD OFF/ON switch, so while I was walking with the camera the LCD would be off and I’d turn it on when I saw a photographic opportunity. LCDs are battery hogs, so I’m sure this practice prolongs battery life. I would like to have seen an option to set an auto LCD off time; I would choose maybe 10s. The only option I found was to choose sleep time from 1, 3, 5, 10 minutes, or never. There is also an option to dim the LCD backlight after 8s, 30s, 1 minute, or never; this should be a “turn off” option, not “dim”. In the camera’s vein of never-ending customisation, you can choose how early or late it will warn you of low battery.

Flash

Some people seem to have an aversion to flashes on small cameras, but I think they’re a good investment in space. The E-PL1’s flash in particular is very nice; it pops up quite high, you have to release it manually (I hate flashes that pop up on their own), it’s off to one side (the further away to the side of the lens a flash is, the less red-eye syndrome you’ll encounter) and is reasonably powerful. Best of all, it’s highly customisable (as you might have expected). These are the modes available: Auto, Redeye, Fill In, Flash Off, Red-Eye Slow, Slow, Slow2 (2^nd curtain), Full, 1/4, 1/16, 1/64. How’s that for choice? You can even choose from two different spellings of red eye. But that’s not all; these are the flash modes, accessed quickly by hitting the right arrow button I should add, but then you also have the flash EV comp, which is one of the options accessed through START/OK. Here you are able to fine tune the flash power in 1/3 stops (or 1/2 or 1/1 stops if that’s how you set the camera up) from -3 stops to +3; that’s more than my DSLR allows! I know it’s only a guide number of 7m at ISO 100 (apparently 10m at ISO 200), but you can always mount a bigger flash on the hotshoe if you really need it, and unlike the S90, you can use the onboard flash to wirelessly control up to 3 sets of Olympus’s flashes.

One final thing I like about the flash is that due to its design you can use your left forefinger to easily point it upwards, providing instant bounce flash. It would be great if some smart engineer at Olympus found a way to make it stay pointing up. True, this isn’t the most powerful flash, but with the appropriate ISO you can bounce it and make it effective. In fact, stay tuned, this evening I’ll take some pics of my darkened living room so you can see what I’m talking about.

Focusing

In tight competition with the LCD for “most hated feature” on the E-P1 and E-P2 was the AF, which has been called glacial, sluggish and unusable; many early buyers returned their cameras because of it. Are my standards so, so low? I didn’t find the AF unusable with either of the two lenses I tired (the kit 14-45mm f/3.5-5.6 and the pancake 17mm f/2.8) . No, it’s not lightning fast (it’s not a Canon 1D mk IV with 24-70mm f/2.8L), but it’s entirely usable and I have many photos attesting to it. Having said that, I can imagine a few cases where it’s not ideal: Sports, kids, F1 racing… But then many DSLRs struggle with these focusing situations too. At the end of the day this is a contrast detect AF system that is still not at the level of the phase detect systems used in DSLRs; but it’s not glacial either.

Where the AF does suck is in continuous mode. There is no smart algorithm here figuring out how your subject is moving (away from or towards us), instead the lens focuses in-and-out in rapid succession, continuously, in order to capture the subject in focus at some point during its (the lens’s) little in-and-out trips. This system is both rudimentary and inefficient, and I hope there are some engineers at Olympus working overtime to provide an upgrade via firmware soon.

The other good idea turned bad is AF tracking. The idea is as follows: You select a region on the LCD where your subject is, then you half-press the shutter release and the camera autofocuses on the subject; when the subject moves, the AF square region follows it across the LCD, or keeps track of it if you move your camera with the subject. It’s also useful for when your subject is motionless but you want to reframe the shot yet still keep the subject in focus (macros, portraits…). It works best with objects that don’t move too fast; it seemed to track cyclists fine, but struggled with cars unless they were sufficiently far away that they filled the AF square region. Sadly, and here comes the bad part, it is unusable on most moving subjects because it suffers from severe shutter lag; I didn’t measure it, but at least 0.5s, making it almost useless. As a reframe while keeping your imobile subject in focus tool, it’s great, and a very useful tool at that, but it’s a shame it can’t be used with birds in flight, moving athletes, cars, etc.

One “trick” mode that does come in handy is face detection. Instead of selecting a focus point, you let the camera search for a face amongst all of them, and in bright light it’s successful most of the time. In low light, not so much. Still, a very useful feature for us people shooters, especially if you’re shooting from the hip or pretending to look the other way. Verdict: Face detection is not a gimmick!

Finally, I’ll talk about the focus points. They are 11 squares arranged in 3 adjacent rows, with the middle row having 5 and the top and bottom having 3. You can choose a single square, or all of them. It would have been useful if you could select a whole row or column; I wonder why they didn’t think about this. It would also be useful if you could define the size of the square, because as they are now they are quite large and make it impossible to focus securely on the eye of your subject if taking a full head shot.

Real World Shooting™

Olympus E-PL1 with 17mm f/2.8 pancake lens. This gentleman never noticed me taking this photo despite how close I was. Olympus E-PL1 with 17mm f/2.8 pancake lens. A quick shot in a rare traffic gap. Click for bigger-than-usual version. Olympus E-PL1 + kit lens + lost hub cap = cool photo opportunity.

Given all the criticisms levied against this poor camera across the internets you’d think it’s impossible to take a photo with it. In fact, the opposite is true, and I have some very nice images to boot. After a little over 3 weeks of using it almost daily I’m beginning to get the hang of it, which is sad because I have to return it shortly. Now don’t think there is a steep learning curve to using the camera, because I found it very intuitive and easy to shoot with. However, for some of my work shooting street scenes I need very quick reflexes to set the camera and shoot without thinking about it. This takes training, and having been shooting with a DSLR for almost 3 years I have certain habits engrained, which makes shooting an LCD camera more work to adjust to.

My slowness to learn new tricks notwithstanding, I had no issues when photographing anything calm, and while my reflexes were lacking for some of my street photography, the camera did provide me with new ways of shooting. One of the problems candid street photographers have is being noticed, and nothing screams PHOTOGRAPHER like a big DSLR being lifted to your face. With the E-PL1 in my hand, however, nobody paid attention to me; I was just another tourist. With live view and a wide angle I was able to take photos without people noticing, even when I was less than a meter away. And the shutter, while louder than I expected, is quieter than the shutter plus mirror slap in my DSLR and is easily drowned by ambient noise in most crowds and streets. And when people did notice me pointing the camera in their general direction, they reacted differently than when the same happens when I have a DSLR in my hands. Most of the time they would apologise for getting in the way of my shot and move on—with my DSLR I often get suspicious looks and “are you a professional photographer?” questions.

The responsiveness of the camera is at DSLR levels (apart from the aforementioned continuous AF and tracking issues). I have it set to take the photo no matter what, and every time I pressed the shutter button it instantly took the photo. I didn’t find myself missing many more shots than I do with my DSLR, and when I did, it more due to my unfamiliarity with the camera than anything else. Live view has opened up a wealth of oportunities for taking photos I wouldn’t think of with my DSLR; case in point is the photo to the right, so easy to compose and take with the E-PL1.

Using Non-μ4/3 Lenses

One of the reasons the micro 4/3 cameras have been so successful is because of all the lenses from other brands that you can attach to them via an adapter. This opens up the potential market for these cameras to shooters from any brand. But not all lenses were made equal, and it’s rangefinder lenses in the Leica M mount that best fit on these bodies due to their small size and short registration distance. Nevertheless, I went ahead and used some of my Pentax K mount lenses with a Novoflex adapter when I wanted more reach and/or a larger aperture (see photo at top of article). I found some interesting things: Good lenses, like those from the Pentax Limited line, performed well, but some other lenses that work well on my 10.4MP APS-C DSLR performed poorly on the E-PL1. I suspect the sensor may be packing its pixels too tightly and taxing those particular lenses. This raises the question of whether or not I’ll be able to use these lenses on a higher pixel count DSLR if I ever upgrade.

Bob, a staple of Bromfield Camera in Boston. Taken with the Olympus E-PL1 and Pentax 77mm f/1.8 Ltd.
Converted to B&W in Photoshop.

Bear in mind that mounting any non-4/3 lens on a micro 4/3 camera means you lose all automation, so you have to perform both focusing and diaphragm close down. Or you can be like me and just shoot wide open all the time, this way you just have to concentrate on focusing. Which, to my suprise and happiness, was extremely easy on the big LCD screen, and could be made even easier (or at least precise) by pressing the magnification button, which magnifies a user-defined section of the LCD 7x, 10x or 14x. I wish there were an option for 4x, as more often than not 7x was too much for hand-holding with lenses longer than 50mm or so (but great for macro on a tripod). On the other hand, 7x or 10x magnification is very useful when manually focusing wideangles. Most of the time I just used the LCD without any magnification and my success rate was much higher than with my DSLR and viewfinder focusing (with the same lenses). In low light, the LCD will brighten up allowing for even easier focusing.

Exposure

I’ll keep it short: Exposures are perfect. I use mostly center-weighted, but matrix metering worked well too. I was very impressed with the metering in just about every situation I encountered. If I ever used EV comp it was for artistic purposes.

Exposure often gives DSLR users headaches when they MacGyver a foreign lens onto their camera. No issues to report with the E-PL1. Yep, that’s it: Exposure was consistent with all third party lenses I tried, at any aperture. The joys of on-the-sensor metering, I suppose.

Here’s a tip of the hat to Olympus: If you’re not happy with the exposure, you can set a general exposure shift of up to ±1 EV (in 1/6 EV steps) for each of the main metering methods (matrix, center-weighted and spot) independently.

Conclusion

The Olympus E-PL1 is an easy to use camera that can work equally well in the hands of an inexperienced novice, as in those of a seasoned shooter. If you leave it alone, use the camera defaults and shoot in Program mode, you’ll get great pictures. If you want to customise the hell out of it to set everything to your liking, you can do that too, and you’ll get even greater pictures…or maybe not, but at least you’ll have fun customising the many option Olympus gives you.

Stay tuned for the Part 3, where I’ll be looking at the camera’s IQ, because you wouldn’t buy a camera that took bad pictures, would you?

Please consider purchasing the Olympus Pen E-PL1 from B&H. We’ll get a small commission and you’ll get our eternal gratitude

Note: Links in this article might be to one of our affiliate stores. Purchases made from our affiliates through these links will benefit Enticing the Light at no extra cost to you.

Related posts:

1. Review – Olympus Pen E-PL1, Part 1: First Impressions
2. Review – Canon S90, Part 2: Using the Camera
3. Shooting a Commercial? Use an Olympus E-PL1!

I have a Canadian friend who works in the Photography equipment business; he’s married to a good friend of mine from college, and while we’ve only met twice in person, we speak on the phone every now and again and exchange e-mails regularly. He frequently e-mails me news about upcoming products, but because he deals mostly with medium and large format photography, I don’t make use of this information because we’re not really concerned with that market on EtL. In any case, he’s generally been right about any predictions he’s made, which is why I did a double take when he sent me these photographs on yesterday.

About a week earlier he told me he’d heard comments through a German colleague that Leica were planning on releasing a new camera sometime in April. We both chuckled at the idea, but wondered if the R10 (the fabled Leica DSLR that never came) had finally been developed and was ready to launch. That’s not what these photos show, and not what my friend told me he’d found out through underground radio.

It seems Leica have struck a deal with a Japanese manufacturing company (Cosina came to my mind immediately) to have a line of cameras factory built, unlike current Leicas which are assembled by hand at one of their 3 facilities (in Canada, Portugal and Germany). He knows nothing about the specs for this new camera, but the fact that its called A9 would seem to link it to the M9, and externally they seem alike. What he does know is that Leica Canada has created a new product number and priced it at $3,000; this he heard from a Leica Canada contact of his who would reveal nothing else.

So that’s all we have to go on right now. My theory (and this is all pure speculation until we see an official announcement from Leica) is that Leica has come to the realisation that its current market model of high-priced cameras selling in small quantities is not going to get them through the global recession. Manufacturing cameras in series at Asian factories could lower production costs significantly, while keeping per-unit sales profit roughly the same; because the number of units sold would likely skyrocket, Leica’s total profit would be very generous. If the A9 really is just an M9 “made in Vietnam”, and they sell them for $3,000, even the best factory in the World won’t be able to build them fast enough. Even if the A9 is an APS-C version of the M9, it’s still a great price for a digital rangefinder and bound to be popular.

At some point this month we hope to find out the truth. For now, here are the two photos he sent me yesterday.

Related posts:

1. More Small Cameras: Leica X1 Field Report at Luminous Landscape
2. Leica to Branch Out into New Digital Venture
3. Nokia Releases Their First Camera…with a Phone Attached: The N86

The boys at DP Review were no less effusive: ‘Pentax has managed to squeeze what is … an impressive feature set into the camera’s minuscule, rather inconspicuous, body and the image quality, especially in low light, is the best we have seen so far in the entry-level bracket of the DSLR market. To put some icing on the cake, all of this comes at a currently, compared to the closest rivals, very attractive price point.’

The camera also made Editor’s Choice at my favourite photo magazine. And I’d seen the sensor tested at DxO labs a week or two ago and that really made me curious.

A word on my methodology

I should make clear that I don’t test or review cameras the way DP Review or Steve’s Digicams do. I test cameras as a user, just as I’ve tested PC programs and operating systems for years. Good design is about a great user experience, something very few companies are good at Technoledge. So I don’t read the manual at first because I want to know how easy the product is to use, and how intuitive the controls and navigation are. Would anyone actually read the 300 page manual? Not unless she’s stuck on a dessert island with nothing else to do.

First Impressions

The test camera wasn’t a nice red one as I’d imagined (yes, it comes in white and navy blue as well), but a dull black unit. The K-x is a fraction bigger than my old Nikon D40, which I’ll use as a benchmark since it was entry-level DSLR champ 3 years ago. The Pentax is a bit heavier with 4 standard NMH rechargeable batteries in its handgrip. The second dull note comes from the ordinary viewfinder and the vital shooting data on the bottom row, which is hard to read in bright light. By contrast, the screen on the back is bright and the info pretty clear. The autofocus is snappy if noisy, and response to the trigger is immediate. No complaints about the handling.

Take some test shots in the evening light, I struck another dull note as Aperture Priority mode seemed to worked to a dark priority of its own. Switching to manual turned off auto ISO, which I didn’t realise at the time, so I still wasn’t hearing music. I couldn’t read the tiny exposure number in the viewfinder either and ended up using the shoot-and-check-the-screen method.

At home in front of my PC, I discovered that the standard USB cable I use for my Nikon and Canon cameras didn’t fit the Pentax – a real discord as I’d lent my SD-to USB-gizmo to a friend and had no way to pull any photos out of this camera.

A mixed bag of results

More frustrations, after looking at the files coming off the Pentax’s SD card. Shots from Cremorne Point across the harbour lacked detail long before the light faded. None of the long shots I took that afternoon was any sharper, and the light and shade contrast seems exaggerated. It was a golden afternoon, not bell clear but not hazy either.

Later shots to Circular Quay across the harbour lacked detail as well, even though the sun was still above the horizon. As it got darker, I took some shots at ISO 1600 to test the sensor’s reportedly good high ISO capability but struck another sour note.

In the end, I decided to set up a comparison with the Nikon D40 on a tripod. The D40 is not a high ISO champ in anyone’s book but the results shot at ISO 3200 were a surprise. These are 100% crops, reduced a little to fit here.

To make them the same size, I reduced the K-x shot by 50% (12mp vs 6 mp) which actually makes it look better. I have no idea how this can be, but I can only tell it as it is.

In normal light, the K-x produces images with good colour depth and dynamic range, but so does the old D40 (left, different day, different hibiscus).

Looking for answers

I have a hunch that the 18-55 kit lens on the K-x isn’t much chop. The distortion at the wide end is mind-bending, which is a hint. It would explain the lack of detail in landscape shots, if not the high ISO performance. I have no other Pentax lenses, so I can check reviews online. DP Review says ‘corners have had to be cut to keep cost down.’ An article at Photo.net is more blunt: potentially adequate for outdoor photography on sunny high-contrast days.’

The review at Photoreview says: ‘… resolution only met expectations with raw files.’ In plain language: JPEGs weren’t sharp enough. The RAW photos I’ve taken with the K-x are no better but RAW gives you more room for enhancement. RAW files also take more room, period, ending up somewhere between 10 and 15mb and slowing my PC’s editing speed to a crawl. With the kit lens, all I say is that K-x takes great photos in good light – like the one below.

With some distance between the camera and the subject, things get fuzzy. Here’s an example shot in bright daylight from about 30m distance at ISO 400, 1/250, so camera shake isn’t an issue:

It’s time to try some other things and that means opening the manual, which is one of best I’ve come across. Live View works well enough. It’s not a feature I plan to use since I’m more comfortable using a viewfinder. I try video, and it’s just as easy: choose your preferred settings for quality, sound, aperture control, focus and shake reduction from the menu, switch the top dial to movie and off you go.

Video quality is similar to the Nikon D90, and audio is fair. HDR is just as easy – select it from the menu and keep your finger on the trigger. The most astonishing feature of the K-x by far is its burst-mode: Almost 5 frames/sec is a speed more commonly found in prosumer or pro cameras. The K-x should be great for action and sports.

Marketing

‘BREAK ALL THE RULES – Choose a camera that redefines the entry-level digital SLR category.’ So the Pentax website claims. ‘The PENTAX K-x offers high-end features including Live View, HD video and photographic performance that challenges higher class models.’ 

The K-x is a well-built, well-thought out DSLR. It sells at a Nikon D3000 price but offers D5000 performance, at least on paper, and I suspect the battles in the entry-level DSLR market are largely won and lost on paper since most of the buyers are upgrading from digicams with lots of smart features. Pentax has done its homework here with a winner on paper.

Most buyers at this end of the market choose cameras for their features but never use most of them, so Pentax has given them a feature-packed camera that can point and shoot with the best of them. The choice of bright body colours will also appeal to first time DSLR buyers looking for a bit of chic.

K-x is right on target

People buying their first DSLR have few reference points in the new territory but expect common digicam features like live view, video, anti-shake, lots of scene functions, digital filters and in-camera processing (which here includes correction for lens distortion and compensation for blown highlights and dark shadows).

Pentax delivers plenty, including video recording at 1280 x 720 at 24 frames a second with mono sound, for up to 11 minutes at the HQ setting. For still photography, a new cross processing mode randomly shifts photographic parameters for each exposure to create eye-catching images with unique colours. Other big features include:

• High-precision 11-point AF sensor
• In-body image stabilisation
• 4.7 frames/ second burst mode
• Dust Removal for image sensor
• High dynamic range function for creating composite images
• White balance control with new CTE mode for sunset scenes
• Automatic compensation of distortion and lateral chromatic aberration
• K-mount takes all recent Pentax lenses.

Ease of Use

Despite the feature load, the K-x is as simple to use as you want. Buttons are few, navigation is logical and menu screens are easy to read. The more detailed menu screens for finer settings are easy to get to as well.

Liveview will please those who’re used to digicams but has the usual issues common to DSLR implementation: slow contrast detect autofocus, trouble focusing in low light, and so on.

The early problems I had with the were a combination of being unfamiliar with the K-x’s workings and the Manual and AP shooting modes. I had no idea that auto ISO doesn’t work in Manual, but I can see the logic at a stretch. In the end I used scene mode settings which gave the most consistent results, and that’s probably how most users will operate this camera.

Performance

The shortcuts Pentax has made to the K-x to meet the price point won’t be obvious to buyers coming from digicams: the ordinary viewfinder and the lack of AF point illumination in it, for example, and a pretty basic LCD by DSLR standards.

It was the ‘photographic performance that challenges higher class models’ that interested me the most, and this was a claim echoed in many reviews. The camera produces photos with faithful colours and good dynamic range, but the high ISO performance was disappointing. So was sharpness, for which I blame the lens.

I got used to not seeing AF markings in the VF but metering was suspect at times, making images too dark. In Manual mode, the small exposure correction number in the bottom right of the screen was hard to read. In bright light, even the big numbers down there are hard to read.

Conclusions & Recommendations

I have no doubt that the K-x is a real hit for Pentax. It offers a long list of serious features for the money, and most of the buyers won’t be disappointed. However, I was surprised that a camera with an advanced 12mp sensor couldn’t produce pictures as sharp as the old 6mp Nikon D40, which was released late in 2006.

Nor did the on-paper dynamic range of the K-x translate to real-life images. Often, the highlights and shades in bright sunlight were too harsh without compensation on (something I’d prefer not to do as a rule).

The K-x may have a lot to offer first time DSLR buyers, but for this user its offered a strange mix of features and omissions, and there was nothing about it that really grabbed me. Lucky for Pentax, I’m not the market for the camera.

If you’re thinking of buying one, think about opting for a different lens. Pentax makes a higher quality 18-55 and a dearer 17 – 70mm, and Sigma makes a bargain 17 – 70mm f/2.8-4.5 DC Macro lens which is offered in a K-x kit, at least in Oz, for some $200 more. Adorama lists the lens for less than $400 on its own. See the links below for more lens options and details. I suspect a decent lens may well give the K-x a fair chance to show what it can do.

Pentax K-x Buying Options at Amazon

• Pentax K-x – Digital camera – body only
• Pentax K-x with 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 AL Lens
• Pentax K-x with 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 AL and 55-300mm f/4-5.8 ED Lenses
• Pentax K-x with 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 AL and 50-200mm f/4-5.6 ED Lenses

Resources

• Very comprehensive review of all types of Pentax lenses
• List of Pentax lenses on the company’s website

Post from: Digital Photography School - Photography Tips.

Pentax K-x Review [Muscling in on Nikon and Canon]