Really Right Stuff

Wednesday, February 18, 2004

With all the talk of accessories and rumours of 3rd party E-System components, it is worth mentioning that one already exists: the Really Right Stuff Arca Swiss style plate for the E-1, model number BOE-1 A. This is a really worthwhile addition to any E-1 system. I use a Acratech ball head, with an Arca Swiss style clamp, and in combination these produce a very stable platform. I also have an 84D plate for the 50-200mm lens. It isn't a perfect match - unlike the body plate it isn't a specific design - but it works. There is also a photo of an E-1 / HLD2 with an RRS plate at Digital Outback Photo, but I don't have this one (yet), neither do I know the model number. Anyway, RRS stuff is highly recommended.

4-3system.com

Quick post for today:

Jon Ragnarsson has updated his Four Thirds System web page. Well worth a visit for E1 fans.

I’ve had a chance now

Tuesday, February 17, 2004

I've had a chance now to evaluate the differences between the Olympus Studio RAW conversion, and the new Photoshop CS Camera Raw 2.1. So far it isn't an easy choice. (an inhabitant of Novaggio, Ticino, taken with the 50-200mm lens, handheld) ACR has the big advantages of histogram display and responsiveness. The live over / under exposure warnings you can get when dragging the exposure / shadow sliders are really good. So for exposure control, no problem. ACR wins. Olympus Studio just has a single slider for increasing or reducing exposure, and, incredibly, no histogram in the RAW converter. On the other hand, the noise reduction algorithms in Studio seem more sophisticated. ACR insists on applying colour noise reduction by default, as I've said before, but both experiment and general consensus indicate that except at ISO 3200 the E1 doesn't suffer much from this kind of noise. What is also nice in Studio is the (presumably) intelligent lens distortion correction. There's nothing like this in ACR. It does have vignetting and chromatic aberration correction, but, again, these are not known as E1 faults. However, ACR does have one big advantage, at least according to Digital Outback Photo's Digital Photography Workflow Handbook (highly recommended by the way), which is that the internal resizing algorithm is very good. Certainly comparing 2:1 with 1:1 ACR output I could see little significant difference. So, whilst it is nice to think that Studio has some E1 specific tricks up its sleeve, especially since I paid for it, on balance, unless you've got a lot of time to spare, are really worried about lens distortion, and don't care too much about exposure correction, Photoshop CS ACR 2.1 seems the way to go. At least until Olympus decides to put some real development effort into Studio.

the next morning

Sunday, February 15, 2004

well I did manage to drag myself out of bed but it wasn't easy! This is the first photo I processed out of about 60. Taken with the 14-54mm lens at 14mm, manual mode. Now at ISO 100 with noise reduction on. The results are much better, but still the shadow end is pretty noisy. Of course on slide film I wouldn't have got close. Probably the next step is using the "digital neutral grad" technique, exposing one shot for the shadows and one for the highlights, then combining.

Early morning onwards

Saturday, February 14, 2004

Well I managed to drag myself out of bed this morning at 6am to catch the sunrise. I managed to fill up a 512Mb CF card remarkably quickly, and cursed myself for leaving the new 1Gb card I'd bought at home. So out of 47 or so photos, one of which you can see here, 6 or so are now fully processed and printed. I'm quite pleased with the results - these are not easy lighting conditions for a camera to cope with. Having said that, I spent most of the time in manual mode, using the histogram to check exposures. Unfortunately, when I first set up, I tried to get a light meter reading at 400ASA. I realised it wasn't going to work, so switched to manual... but forgot to change ISO. So I ended up with everything at 400. I have to say there is a lot of noise in deep shadow at 400 - a very unpleasant mottling. Of course, I also completely forgot noise reduction mode. I've now programmed in a Reset with mirror lock up and noise reduction for twilight conditions. Also, I processed everything using Adobe Camera Raw 2.1 - possibly I would get better results with Olympus Studio, but this is a test still to be done. In parallel to all this I'm working on a comprehensive web site update, reprocessing some 200 photos, scanning new ones, and updating scripts - and I managed to fit in a second, late afternoon photo session. Maybe I'll have another go at sunrises tomorrow...