Hello ? Anybody here ?

in Olympus E-System , Thursday, February 05, 2004

I've been a bit quieter than planned this week. Unfortunately the aftermath of a mega-party last weekend (not that I'm complaining) and a workload from hell this week (yes, here I am complaining) has kept the E-1 very unused.

However, one small development: I ordered the Studio software (I can't wait for Photoshop CS to maybe support the E-1 forever) and the EP-2 Eye Cup. The EP-2 is really worth it. It helps cut out external distractions when looking through the viewfinder and really rounds off the handling. I paid about 30 CHF for it (20 Euros, so $20 give or take).

Oh, and the software and EP-2 took under 2 days to arrive at my dealer after I placed the order, so here in Switzerland anyway there doesn't seem to be any problem getting Studio.

We shouldn't have to pay for it though...

Photos soon - PROMISE!

Changing the focusing screen

in Olympus E-System , Friday, January 30, 2004

...well it may just be me, but this is far from easy. Olympus supply a really bizarre tweezer tool which seems to be mainly designed to make life difficult. First of all, if you're going to try this, read the instructions. But not too carefully, because they're not very helpful. The trick is that everything is actually far less tactile than you'd expect. To start with, there is talk of a tab that needs to be pulled down using the tweezers. Well, first the aperture that gives access to this tab is too small to get the tweezers into. What actually seems to happen is that somehow you sort of brush the tweezers against the tab (certainly you do not "pull it down" as the instructions say) and then the screen swings down. Although "swings" is again too strong a word. Collapses is better. Then you've got to remove the screen by grabbing a protruding tab with the bloody tweezers. The thing is, this would be much easier if this tab was the same size as is illustrated on the instructions. It isn't, it's tiny, and again the tweezers seem to be designed to thwart you. By this point one starts to wonder if all this poking around in $1700's worth of camera is such a good idea. Anyway, once you've grabbed it the old screen doesn't so much slide out as (you've guessed it) fall out, although by some miracle it didn't (a) jam itself behind the mirror or (b) fall on the carpet. So, next step, grab the new screen and insert it. Well getting it out its bag is challenge #1. It obviously liked it in there. Then, using aforementioned tweezers, one simply places it on the holder. Now this is really where I lost the plot for a while. I expected to slide into some locating grooves or something, and much head scratching ensued. In fact, as it turns out you sort of balance it on the holder and push the holder back up. Somehow everything stays where you put it. It all feels a bit flimsy but it seems to work. Next, remove the grid screen, very carefully blow air on it to remove the dust that somehow went along for the ride, and put it back in again - at least you'll know how to do it by now! Is it all worth it ? I think so. I found with the standard screen, in what is after all a very small (albeit very nice) viewfinder, you need all the help you can get to keep horizons horizontal and so forth. But the instructions on such a delicate operation could be a bit clearer. And those tweezers should go back to the medical lab they came from...

Oh so that’s how you post images…

in Olympus E-System , Thursday, January 29, 2004

Just worked out how you post images in Movable Type blogs.

This was taken this morning just after I got out of bed.... sunrise over Monte Generoso. Taken with the E-1 at 400ASA, 14-54mm lens, ESP metering, only 1 coffee.

Every morning I think if I was a real photographer I'd be out there at 6am.

Studio RAW conversion

in Olympus E-System , Wednesday, January 28, 2004

I've just done a test of RAW conversion using the High Function and High Speed options. I applied zero sharpening in Olympus Studio, and then used PhotoKit to apply capture sharpening. I read RémiG's article on sharpening. I can't reproduce his results: In my case (a winter landscape, similar in type to his test image), there is a slight difference in the results. The HF version seems to have a little extra edge contrast, but it is marginal and only really discernable at 200%. What is slightly more worrying to me is that the two versions have slightly different colour casts. Possibly this has something to do with the (reported) poor color management implementation. But certainly I don't see this "painterly" effect he reports. On this evidence, I don't see much point in HF. However, it will be interesting to look at the results of upsizing. It is possible that HF has slightly more detail. Either way, I'd say that Olympus Viewer and Olympus Studio are two good reasons not to buy an E-1. They're not totally unusable - and maybe are better than Canon's efforts - but they're really not very impressive. If my software team produced this sort of stuff their next career move would be selling burgers...

Web Site Story

Just for fun I thought I'd register my E-1 with Olympus. Seems like a good idea, doesn't it ? Of course you'll only know you can do if you've managed to find a link in the twisted maze of web sites that Olympus has managed to publish so far.

Starting from what appears to be supposed to be the main site now, you can follow a registration link (at the top right), which brings up a form which some genius has decided should be implemented in Flash (and is served from a Japanese domain). This has 9 steps (screens). When you get to screen 2, if you're in Europe or the US, you'll find that you can't select your country. You click on "other countries", and, hey presto, you're dumped here. You select your country, and depending on the selection, fun things happen. If you select Switzerland, you end up in the olympus-pro.com world, rather than e-system.com, but you can't actually register your product. You can however sign up for a newsletter, which apparently is in German. Olympus realise that Belgium, for example, is multilingual, but in Switzerland they haven't noticed yet. Never mind. If you choose "United Kingdom" instead (going back first, not from the drop-down, that takes you somewhere else..) then hey presto you can register your equipment, using an HTML form, and choose any damn country you want. Progress! And it tells you "because we know what you have, we can inform you about the new firmware updates you require". Well I'll believe that when I see it. However you do get an email response thanking you for your application to the Olympus E-membership programmes, which you may well not be aware you'd submitted.


Has anybody got bored enough to work out if there is any logic behind all this ? I assume that http://www.olympus-esystem.com/dea/ is the main site, but really I'm far from sure - http://www.olympus-esystem.com has a different design and doesn't appear to link to /dea, whatever "dea" stands for, and Europe links all end up at http://www.olympus-pro.com.


I'm baffled.