For quite a while I’ve wanted to try the 500px photo sharing site.  I’m pretty bored with Flickr, although I’ve got some friends over there, because I don’t think it presents photos very well, it’s become very cluttered, and it is very, very focused on the now. I don’t think the date I took a particular photo has much bearing on what I set out to do. 

So I’ve gone back a bit and assembled a specific 12 photo portfolio looking at one specific place, Kerlingarfjöll in Iceland.

All of the photos in this set were taken with “ancient” technology, the Olympus E-1, a camera limited to 5Mpx output. And they were taken before I’d really got a grip on digital, and generally the apertures are way beyond the diffraction limit. So they’re not going to be exhibition prints.

But as an exercise in revisiting the past through a completely new portal, it’s quite interesting.

Seems a little less trivial than Flickr, somehow, and more worth putting some effort into.

The last 5 weeks or so have been pure hell. Essentially non-stop 12 hour working days, with hectic weekends in between. No time for photography. No time for life. This weekend was supposed to be the start of some sort of recovery period. I spent most of Saturday comatose, but today, Sunday, after shovelling last night’s snow fall, I thought I’d spend some quality time printing out a few images. Relaxing, enjoyable, right ? Yeah, sure. So come 5:30pm I’m ready to kill somebody. In fact if I saw somebody, anybody, with an Adobe corporate t-shirt on, I’d whack them hard with the snow shovel.

Having been deceitfully tricked by Adobe into upgrading to a Photoshop CS5 I neither needed nor wanted before Christmas, I finally got around to trying to print from it today, to my Epson 3800.

I had read, ages ago, that Adobe, principally, but with Apple and Epson’s help, had managed to screw up printing (nothing important, just printing) and that there was some issue with v2 ColorSync profiles.

Some issue. Right: like print absolutely F*CK ALL except a pale cyan background.  I’d heard about this, vaguely, but I though it had to do with white areas having a cast, not the whole print.  I tried everything. Reinstalled the 3800 driver, re-started, etc etc, eventually dug into ColorSync and found that the profile (built with ColorMunki and carefully optimised) was indeed a v4 (naturally, since that’s up to date, and worked fine with Photoshop CS3 on the same OS - 10.6.8 - and the same printer). Trying a v2 profile, for a different paper, gave me a print.

So now I’ve got to rebuild all my profiles. Wasting stacks of paper. Until the next time I fall for one of Adobe’s useless, eye-wateringly expensive, bug-ridden pieces of crap they call “upgrades”.

Please, somebody, anybody, out us out of our misery and create a realistic Photoshop alternative. PLEASE!!!

Although the whole end-of-year list thing makes me a bit nauseous, I’ve seen so many “Top 10”, “Best of 2011” etc lists of photos that I felt I should do my own.  Actually it wasn’t very easy. I didn’t think I’d taken 10 good photos on 2011. I’m still not sure I have, but anyway, here are 11 I like. And it’s quite a diverse set.

2011 was probably not a classic year for me so far as photography is concerned. Work, and especially commuting, really eats into my time and destroys inspiration.  Nevertheless, according to my Aperture library I took 3915 photos, and that doesn’t include film. In 2011 I completely avoided high latitudes. The highlight was 10 days in the Aeolian Islands in March. I didn’t quite get the shots of Stromboli erupting in winter light that I envisaged, but I got closer than before. I also greatly expanded my library of Ticino mountain streams / rivers, especially Verzasca and its tributaries, and Calanca. I should probably do something with those one day. The rest largely come from various short breaks and holidays.

January: Plaine Morte glacier, Valais, Switzerland. Olympus E-PL2.

February: Rome at night, near the Trevi fountain. Olympus E-PL2.

March: Stromboli eruption, from outlook on the old summit trail. Olympus E-3.

May: Tuscany, the standard shot. Olympus E-PL2.

May: Tuscany, Abbazia di Sant’Antimo. Olympus E-PL2.

August: Ticino, Val d’Osura. Olympus E-3.

August: Sea cave, Marettimo, Aegadian Islands. Olympus E-PL2.

September: Cefalu, Sicily. Olympus E-PL2.

October: Val Calanca, Graubunden. Olympus E-3.

November: Val Verzasca, Ticino. Olympus E-3.

December: Val Bedretto, Ticino. Olympus E-PL2.

Do you detect any kind of personal style in this motley collection ? I don’t!

According to my email archive I “met” Bruce Percy online about 4 years ago, although it seems longer. I’d discovered his website some time before, and eventually got in touch, and we’ve had a low key conversation ever since. Over that time, Bruce’s progress has been meteoric. If ever there’s someone who has followed a dream with grim determination, it’s him. On the other hand, my own photographic progress curve has at the very best been flat…

Anyway, this isn’t about me, it’s about Bruce Percy’s first physical book, entitled “The Art of Adventure - 40 Photographic Examples”, a very clear, and explicit reference to Ansell Adams’ “Examples - The making of 40 photographs”. A bit of a cheek, you might think ? Or perhaps more a question of setting the bar very high.

The quality of the book as an object is striking. Despite his protestations to the contrary on his blog, Bruce clearly has a perfectionist streak, or at the very least a very fine attention to detail. The layout, the typefaces, the print quality, the feel and heft of the book strongly belie the fact that it is his first “real” publication.

So what about the content ? Well, there’s a surprise awaiting the casual browser, because alongside his very characteristic landscapes featured on the dust cover, a equal amount of space is given to his travel photography and especially portraiture. While Bruce admits to Michael Kenna - who wrote the preface - as a key influence, there’s more than a touch of Steve McCurry in there too. Pretty heady stuff. Funnily enough, Adams’ book also surprises with its wide range of content, moving far beyond his famous landscapes, and including portraiture.

Following the Adams model, each photo is accompanied by descriptive text which discusses motivation and thoughts on the shot, along with brief technical details. It’s far less wordy than Adams’ book, and in a way this might be the book’s weakness.

Adams’ book is clearly very didactic on nature. The photos serve to illustrate the text. It’s a textbook, in fact. In Bruce’s book, on the other hand, I’m tempted to say that the text distracts attention and detracts from the photos.  In presentation, the book is a monograph, but once you get inside it, it gets a bit confusing. In fact it ends up feeling like a extended mix of one of the author’s eBooks.

In the spirit of Constructive Criticism, personally I don’t think this part of the project works that well. It would have been better to give the photos the space to breathe that they so much deserve, and perhaps bookended them with a set of essays. Because in fact Bruce is also an excellent and engaging writer (not to mention a gifted musician, dammit) and one could say that the photos in turn distract attention from the text. There are of course plenty of photography books that use a similar photo / text mixed layout - but they tend to be “how to” books to one extent or the other, not principally art. And this feels like it should be an art book.

So what about the art then ? Well, Bruce Percy has carved out a very distinctive landscape photography style. A lazy characterisation would be to describe it as sort of Michael Kenna in colour, but actually that’s much too easy an analogy. Kenna is clearly an influence and in some cases a starting point, but Bruce is quite obviously his own man and no copyist. His style is quite removed from the general UK Landscape community. It can verge on abstract, but always retains detail, depth and strong composition. It’s often very much about movement and silence. It’s very, very dark blue violet. It’s very romantic. It’s a touch nordic. And I would imagine it polarises opinion. Although his photos are almost always exceptionally beautiful, they’re never gratuitously pretty, and I doubt he’ll get far in the picture postcard market. Sometimes he pushes his style to extremes, and he’s clearly got a streak of bloody-mindedness about him, because the photo he chose as the front cover is one of his most extreme. I have to confess I’m sometimes in two minds about actually liking his style, but I have no doubt that I admire it.

His portraits are perhaps more conventional, but only to the extent that Steve McCurry, or John Isaac, are conventional. They speak of a strong empathy and sense of communication with the subjects, which given that the average landscape photographer is a withdrawn sociopath is all the more remarkable.

But you know what ? You need to get a copy for yourself. “The Art of Adventure - 40 Photographic Examples” isn’t perfect, but there can’t be many more impressive first publications out there.

No time to blog. No time for anything but work and Christmas / family stuff. I’ve written several posts in my head, including an overdue review of Bruce Percy’s Making of 40 Photographs, a catastrophically late of Roberto Buzzini’s fabulous Via Alta della Vallemaggia, and a sort of reply to Mike Johnston’s list of desirable cameras. But they remain in my head.

So, instead, here’s some of this month’s random walk-by Ricoh GR shots, straight from camera JPEGs, no editing whatsoever.

some deep & meaningful street photography

the obligatory morning coffee shot

commuter hell

so near, so far

I’m off for a mercifully short trip to the Untied Kingdom for the first time in ages. So here it is, Merry Christmas.

Well, one of my other cameras is a Ricoh. Actually 3 of them are…

I’ve written quite a lot of stuff here about the Olympus E-System cameras I use, but I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned my long-standing relationship with Ricoh. Since I’ve been using my Ricoh GR film and digital cameras for something close to 15 years, I thought it was time to redress the situation.

I first encountered Ricoh cameras back in 1998 when I was looking for a replacement for my broken-down Minox 35GT to take on a trip to Venezuela. The shop I went to, a Minox / Leica specialist, recommended I look at the new Ricoh GR-1 instead. The GR was a beautifully built camera, in a magnesium shell, with a fixed focal f2.8 28mm lens, and full manual control. I bought it on the spot, and never regretted it. In fact in marked a turning point for me in photography, as it really opened my eyes to what difference a quality lens can make. And the Ricoh GR lens was up with the best - so much that it was recast as a limited edition and very sought after Leica SM-mount lens.

The GR-1S doing what’s it better than me at: street photography

If the GR-1 had a downside it was, at least for me, reliability. My GR-1’s autofocus module broke and had to be replaced out of warranty. It wasn’t cheap. I later added a GR-1S as a backup: the main difference between the 1 and 1S was a threaded lens ring to which filters and a lens hood could be added. Again, I got great results from it, but again it failed, this time the film transport giving up. Ricoh also released a GR-1V, which had a sort of manual focus option and, at last, manual ISO setting. Later they also released the GR-21, with the same body but a fabulous 21mm GR lens. Unfortunately the price of the GR-21 was stratospheric, and it arrived too late on the market to hold its own against the digital tide.

Roll on several years, and Ricoh finally responded to calls from the GR user community and released a digital version, the GR Digital, or “GRD”. The GRD carried on the GR philosophy, in a similar but slightly smaller body, but with an 8Mpx digital sensor, and, unfortunately, no optical viewfinder. The GR lens was reborn as a 28mm equivalent, f2.4. The optical viewfinder issue was sort of solved with a rather expensive external viewfinder, but since this displays no shooting information, it is a bit of a compromise. The biggest problem with the GRD was the excessive time between captures, at least when recording RAW (and honestly, I can’t really understand why anybody in the market for such a specialist camera would be shooting exclusively JPEG).

A year or so later the GR Digital 2 solved several of these issues, and also came in a “creative kit” with a 21mm adapter and a new, smaller optical viewfinder. The pixel count increased to 10Mpx. After some hesitation between this and the equally attractive, but different, Ricoh GX-200, I decided it was time to take the plunge. The GRD2 has been with me for a while now. It’s as much a pleasure to use as it’s film ancestor, and Ricoh have carried across their unparalleled attention to the user experience to the digital domain. The camera has probably the best menu system on the market, across all classes, and beautifully designed features like the adjust lever and other manual controls, and the high level of customisation make it apparent that this camera was designed by people who take photographs and understand photographers. Added to this Ricoh was one of the few manufacturers to adopt the DNG format for Raw files, making software incompatibilities largely vanish.

A sort of thematically linked shot from the GRD2

If the GRD2 has one downside, it is, once again, reliability. Maybe I’m unlucky, or maybe I’m careless, but for some reason my GRD2 has become quite reluctant to start up. On power up, the lens extends, and the camera is ready to go. Except when it isn’t. Mine starts up, extends then lens, and then quite often hunts a bit, and then gives up. It can take several attempts to coax it into life, by which time the opportunity is usually miles away.

The GRD2 also has an excellent macro mode, allowing focussing down to 1cm, really taking advantage of the fantastic lens.

A macro shot from the GRD2

Many people use the GRDs for black & white work. There’s a whole Flickr gallery devoted to this, and probably others. Apparently the GRD1 was particularly good for this, the later models slightly less so. Anyway the GRD2 has worked for me.

Somewhere in California: a black & white conversion from the GRD2

It’s also an interesting infrared camera, just about hand-holdable at ISO200 in strong sunlight.

Somewhere on an island: an infrared capture, b&w conversion from the GRD2

The GRD3 came along some time later, with an improved f1.9 lens, an improved, but still, thankfully, a 10Mpx sensor, Ricoh being one of the first companies to opt out of the pointless and counterproductive megapixel war. However, there wasn’t really enough here for me to be tempted to upgrade. A nice thing about all these upgrades is that Ricoh kept them very anonymous. All 3 versions simply have “GR Digital” written on the front, and “Ricoh” on the back. Nothing else. Only a GRD owner could tell them apart, and even then not without a careful look. Ricoh certainly are not making their customers pay to buy a mobile advertising banner, unlike the vast majority of other camera manufacturers.

Ricoh’s introduction of the totally bonkers GXR system, looking a lot like a GRD on steroids, only with interchangeable lens/sensor modules, made many fear that the GRD, and the GX for that matter, had reached the end of the road. GX + GR = GXR. However, a GRD4 has in fact recently seen the light, and in carries on in the tradition of it’s predecessors in looking pretty much exactly the same, and carrying just the label “GR digital”. The new stuff this time around is pretty interesting: stabilisation, new hybrid autofocus, a new state of the art LCD, even better menu system and even more customisation. These, combined with the GRD3’s updates, makes the GRD4 seem a worthy update over the GRD2, even if unfortunately due to the different lens housing the GRD2’s 21mm and lens hood adaptors don’t fit.

Up close: a macro shot from the GRD4

Ricoh cameras, especially the GRs, have that mysterious factor which attracts a devoted following. For some reason there also seems to be high correlation between GR fans and Olympus owners - I don’t know why, it’s just an observation. There’s a Ricoh forum, which is largely dedicated to the GR, although the GX and GXR get a share of activity. There’s plenty of GR goodness on Wouter Brandsma’s blog. Sean Reid’s review at Reid Reviews (subscription required, but well worth it) starts off with the thought “why doesn’t every serious photography have this camera ?”.

Indeed… well, provided you enjoy a 28mm field of view!

The background current of film pushing against the digital torrent seems to be continuing unabated. An notable new twist is the increasing interest in, or at least marketing push, of film emulation software, of the likes of Alien Skin Exposure or DxO Filmpack. Personally I’m not that interested in faking it - I don’t see much value in disassociating the result from the process, and anyway I’m not that impressed with the results. I can understand the value to illustrators and publishers, in particular for some of the more extreme effects like aged 1962 Agfa consumer prints, but in general if you want it to look like Ektachrome, why not use Ektachrome ? It’s not that hard!

Michael Reichmann recently reviewed DxO Filmpack, and didn’t lose the opportunity to give film a bloody good kicking.

I respect Michael’s experience, although I have some reservations about the direction he’s been heading in since - apparently - money became no object. His photography seems very inconsistent these days, which is a pity. Ten years ago it could be inspirational. Now, despite his protests to the contrary, all he really seems to do is to test cameras, just with a limitless travel budget. Anyway, my point is that there are other photographers who I respect who seem to have a rather different take - from famous ones like Michael Kenna, to emerging stars like Bruce Percy, “alternative” web gurus like Kirk Tuck, Robert Boyer, and seemingly the entire readership of Great British Landscapes.

I could point to Bruce in particular as a clear example that Michael is just plain wrong. Using film - Velvia and Portra I believe - seems to have helped him to develop a very distinctive and personal style. Do his photos suffer from any of film’s perceived weaknesses ? I don’t think so. In fact, when you see so many landscape photographers piling on contrast, blocking out shadows and pushing contrast to (usually, unwittingly) squash down to get that Velva effect, it is a touch ironic. Especially when the same ones spend hours hurling invective at each other in flame wars on who’s (digital) camera has the greatest dynamic range. Then again I don’t much care for Velvia - classic Velvia that is - myself.

Reichmann again “My second impression is to once again confirm how truly poor film based imaging is / was compared to todays’ digital capture. Using a variety of images I went through every available colour transparency and negative emulsion looking for one that appealed to me more than the original processed with my usual workflow. Not a single one even came close.”. Well I beg to differ. Unless pixel peeping comes into, I can easily recall a handful of classic Michael Reichmann film images. I can’t say that so much of his digital work has stick in my memory. Maybe it’s because of the diluting effect of the avalanche of images.

From my own perspective, the image below is one I took a very long time ago, on Kodachrome 64, before I was really into photography. I’ve been trying to recapture that quality of light ever since. The closest I’ve got on digital, I think, is with the Olympus E-1’s Kodak sensor.

But digital seems to be unable to record my impression of subtle gradations such as those in this sky. It has a tendency to turn pinks into yellows or indigos, or just sees blue. Digital doesn’t get it. Probably it has something to do with white balance software. Possibly - probably even - it is representing the “truth”.  I’d never argue that film is better than digital. Then again I’d never argue the opposite. But dismissing out of hand just makes so sense, in the context of anything either than throw-away photography.

I’m pleased to say that the latest report for Switzerland for the Carbon Disclosure Project has rather a fine photograph on the front…

It’s not too often that I get photos published, although possibly if I tried harder I might, but I can’t pass up this opportunity for a little tiny bit of self-promotion!

A very interesting client too:

The Carbon Disclosure Project launched to accelerate solutions to climate change and water management by putting relevant information at the heart of business, policy and investment decisions.

Certainly sounds like a cause I can subscribe to.

The photo itself was taken back in 2004, using an Olympus E-1. Who says that 5 Megapixels are not enough ?

I’m not completely unaware of the current misfortunes of the Olympus Optical Co. That the company is being steered into the abyss by a bunch of arrogant management jerks is no great surprise - that’s one thing that there’s no shortage of.  If anything it might serve to at least tone down some of the more unpleasant aspects of Japanese culture, such as the pathetic obessession with “loss of face”. But never mind all that. What I’m find really disturbing is the general level of idiocy revealed on the various interweb fora, where people (I use the word reservedly) are practically foaming at the mouth in outrage at Olympus and of course Olympus cameras (I really am starting to believe that, yes, most people in the world ARE more stupid than me, at least on the evidence I see). 

But it does sort of make me wonder if maybe I need to think about changing camera systems.  But not for long. I am worried that Olympus will go out of business, which is certainly possible, but not because I’ll lose face because I’ve got an Olympus (actually the logo is taped over. Has been for years. Helps avoid idiot conversations), but because the ONLY company making a reasonably large-sensor camera with a 4:3 aspect ratio might stop doing so. And then what ? Yep, only choice will be the mindless apeing of the 35mm frame, a ratio which only came about by happenstance in the first place.  Well, maybe Panasonic will carry on, or buy Olympus, who knows.

I’m finding I take more and more vertical format shots, without really being conscious of this. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t in “35mm format” - it’s too narrow.  Without Olympus, the next step above compacts is, er, the Pentax 645D, which I’d love to own, but is way above my pay grade.

Steppin’ out… actually taken with my Ricoh GR, not an Olympus

Actually for selfish reasons I sort of hope Olympus does go down the plughole. Then the lemmings will rush to buy Nikons or whatever and even fewer people will be shooting 4:3, and I’ll have less competition. Not that I’m competing.

Prompted by a series of posts by Mitch Alland, I decided it might be interesting to take another look at a RAW processor I’d not seriously considered in the past, Raw Photo Processor, or RPP.  RPP is not your usual run of the mill RAW processor.  It concerns itself only with the initial steps of translating the RAW file into a finished photo, and, unlike others (the author claims - I’m not 100% convinced), recalculates from the raw data for each applied edit.  It works a bit differently from a user interface perspective too, foregoing sliders for direct numeric input, and in most cases refreshing the preview only on demand. However, it isn’t as hard to use as it seems on first glimpse.

Mitch Alland reports that “it’s been a revelation because RPP does a much better job in raw development than Aperture: it simply produces better resolution and better color”. So it seems worth taking it for a spin.

Here’s a comparison of a file output from Aperture at default settings (above) and from RPP, with a contrast curve applied in Photoshop, below:

As you can see, the white balance is significantly different. I’m not sure which is “right”. The RPP version is very neutral, but I couldn’t say for sure if the Aperture (actually, in camera) version is capturing an accurate cast. RPP white balance works well on Auto, or Custom, but In Camera is a bit strange.

As for detail, well, yes, I’d say that RPP visibly delivers a touch more, but it’s not going to be noticeable to the average audience.

RPP also delivers more image. On this Olympus E-P2 shot, Aperture outputs a 4032 by 2034 pixel image -which is to Olympus’s specifications. RPP recovers more, providing 4090 by 3078. I believe the “extra” pixels have something to do with calibration, but apparently they do contain usable image data.

The big difference between basic RPP and basic Aperture processing, disregarding white balance, is Aperture’s Boost slider. Basically, RPP delivers a file with Boost set to 0. According to Apple, Boost applies a camera-specific contrast curve directly after RAW demosaicing. It is actually remarkable what a difference it makes - this, effectively, is the “look” or magic sauce of a RAW converter. Of course it’s a subjective judgement as to whether this is a good thing or not.  RPP gives you the best shot it can at providing you with the basic ingredients, and it’s then up to you to make the most of these in subsequent post-processing, be it in Photoshop, Aperture, Lightroom, or whatever.

It’s difficult to make a quick judgment on the real-world merits of RPP, but using it gives you a clearer idea of what’s really going on behind the smoke and mirrors, and potentially it might just give you a quality edge.  In any case it’s a useful tool to have. And it’s free - although donations are appreciated.

One of my favourite-ever lenses was the Canon FD 135mm f2.0.  This fast telephoto would let me pluck a detail out a scene, beautifully sharp, with the fore- and background smoothly blending into a creamy smooth bokeh. And it had great contrast. And I gave it away, with most of my Canon FD gear, to the daughter of a friend who wanted to study photography but had no way of affording the gear. 

I never really found anything to compare to that lens, but now maybe I have: the Olympus m.Zuiko 45mm f1.8, which has the added advantage of being almost absurdly low-priced.  Mine arrived today. And here’s a sample of what I’ve found it can do.

Stray leaf. Olympus E-P2 with m.Zuiko 45mm f1.8, wide open

So far I’ve found that the E-P2 tends to underexpose by 1/3 to 2/3rds of a stop with this lens compared to the 14-45mm. But that’s not much of a problem.

This is a fun lens to use, much more so in my opinion that the highly-rated Lumix 20mm. It is light, but well built, with a large, well damped focus ring. It looks gorgeous. And the results are pretty much guaranteed to bring a smile to your face. This is a must-have lens for and Micro Four Thirds camera owner. And an absolute bargain.  I’ll post some more examples soon.

This is time of year where the days draw shorter, where weekends get taken up with life’s trivia, and going out to take photographs just doesn’t happen.  And in fact I’m getting a but tired with all the trappings of photography, and can’t help but wonder what it’s all for.

So it’s a good time to re-discover the Ricoh GR Digital slipped into my jacket pocket.  This wonderful little cult camera is such a pleasure to use that it demands that photo opportunities be found.  Even after a hard saturday afternoon’s shopping.

Caffeinated. Ricoh GR Digital in B&W mode, Ilford FP5+ simulation in Nik Silver Efx Pro.

I know of a least two great photographers working daily with this camera (and similar models), Mitch Alland, who’s street photography from Bangkok is endlessly fascinating, and Wouter Brandsma, who’s transformation of everyday trivia into photographic art is an inspiration.  Not really what I do, but that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate it.

Lasersoft Imaging released Silverfast 8 towards the end of August. Unfortunately, they don’t yet support my main scanner, although they do support my CanoScan 9000F, but they have just released a public Beta of Silverfast 8 HDR. Since most of my time with Silverfast 6.6 is spent using HDR, this was welcome news.

Since it has come during a bit of a lull in both photography and especially scanning, I haven’t really had much reason to try it, but yesterday evening I thought I’d give it a go. Note, this article is written under the influence of a combined throat infection and heavy cold.

The big thing about Silverfast 8 is the user interface redesign, but that’s not the only point. However, it really dominates the update, so here it is.

The Silverfast 8 HDR Studio user interface

and here it was:

The Silverfast 6 HDR Studio user interface

Silverfast 8 introduces a modern, compact, unified user interface which, although remaining a little idiosyncratic, is a huge improvement.

I haven’t run anything approaching a full session, so I’ll just list a few early impressions. These are taken from running on MacOS X 10.6.8.

Positives:

- hugely improved UI. Massive step forward
- installs and runs following normal guidelines, including access to preference panels, etc. Uses standard OS toolbar.
- detachable tool panel, so you can “roll your own” UI to some extent
- ability to turn various edits on and off in preview (like Aperture or Lightroom)
- ability to run Silverfast 8 and Silverfast 8 HDR concurrently - I think. I’m not 100% sure as my trial of Silverfast 8 for CanoScan 9000F has expired, but I can open both launch screens at the same time. I can also run SF 8 HDR and SF 6 HDR (or AI Studio) at the same time.

Negatives (remembering that this is a Beta):

- allows quit without warning to save edited images
- the colour cast slider seems to have vanished. Now the level is set in Preferences only

Neutral:

- the image manager, Silverfast VLT, which works as a front end to Silverfast HDR 6.6, is gone.  This is not necessarily a bad thing as it is somewhat buggy and has some very poor design choices. However as a way of building up Job Manager lists is was pretty good. Maybe it will return.
- seems stable. No crashes so far.

Generally all the tools remain the same, including the superlative colour correction tools, but they’re easier to use and understand.

All in all it looks encouraging. Let’s just hope Lasersoft come up with a pricelist which takes into account that it’s not 2001 anymore, otherwise selling a product like this into a dwindling market is going to be pretty challenging.

The Aeolian Islands form an archipelago of seven volcanic peaks poking above the sea to the north of Sicily and the  Messina Straits. Of those seven, one, Stromboli, is active, and has been in constant (“strombolic”) eruption for  at least 2000 years. Another, Vulcano (the name is a bit of a giveaway), is a smouldering stratovolcano which last blew its top about 100 years ago, and must be thinking about a repeat act in the not too distant future, based on its past record.  Lipari, the largest island, is classified as active by geologists, and has some low key fumarole activity scattered around. The rest are dormant or extinct. Salina, with it’s distinctive twin peaks, is the second largest, and fairly busy by Eolian standards (i.e sleepy). Panarea is a small, discrete high end tourist resort, with the relicts of a massive explosion, Basiluzzo, featuring active undersea vents, a kilometer or so offshore. Filicudi and Aliculdi are car-free, timeless, sleepy dreamlands which you’d love or loathe. All seven are linked by a web of hydrofoils and ferries. If you ever happen to have read Christopher Priest’s novel “The Affirmation”, or his “Dream Archipelago” short stories, this could well be the setting for them.

Lipari, and Salina’s twin peaks, from the rim of Vulcano’s crater.

The Dream Archipelago

I have always been vaguely aware of the Aeolian Islands. They seemed to be a distant, mythical, far off place which was hard to get to, and about which little was said. I just knew I wanted to go, and finally at the tail end of a two week  vacation in eastern Sicily (also highly recommended, especially Etna), I had my first opportunity. Three days in Lipari, a quick glimpse of Stromboli, an afternoon on Salina and a hint of Vulcano and I was hooked. The next trip  was exclusively to the islands, included cameras, and a first ascent of Stromboli.  The second, earlier this year,  was exclusively photographic, out of season, and featured Vulcano and Stromboli, and some serious near-vertical trekking.

Alicudi and Filicudi, spied from Lipari.

Vulcano and Stromboli are the obvious attention grabbers, especially Stromboli, so for now I’ll concentrate on these. I’m really at a loss to say which fascinates me the most. Stromboli is more spectacular, more isolated,  more wild and, I guess, more romantic. Ingrid Bergman certainly thought so. Vulcano is more accessible, has fewer  restrictions, is pretty spectacular itself, although you need to seek it out a bit more, and from a photographic  perspective arguably has more potential. I’d hate to have to choose between them.

The volcano looms over the church of San Vincenzo on Stromboli.

Vulcano

Vulcano’s main feature is the Grand Crater. It is truly impressive, about a km in diameter, with the rim between 400 and 600m above sea level. The north west side is riddled with fumaroles, of varying activity, and wide  deposits of sulfur and other minerals. The crater itself is sprinkled with large lumps of obsidian, which you  really would not want falling on your head.

Sunrise through sulphuric fumes, Vulcano.

The contrast between the bright yellow sulfur, the deep blue  Mediterranean sea, and the equally blue sky, is full of potential but not so easy to exploit well. Especially when  the pretty yellow patches are associated with enthusiastically poisonous fumes emanating from the fumaroles and  tending to creep up behind you when you least expect them. Please note: if you do visit Vulcano, don’t let the relaxed attitude to public safety put you off. In a nanny state like the UK these would be seriously fenced off. They can be lethal, and stumbling around a steep rocky smoke breathing toxic fumes is not a fun way to spend your time. But then again, with care and attention to your getaway route, you can get extremely close. Of course, then  you’ve got to watch out for boiling water and scalding steam. Hey, it’s a volcano!

Obsidian and sulphur, Vulcano.

The climb up to the crater is quite straightforward, but don’t carry too much gear, and do carry as much water as  you can carry, and a snack. There’s no bar or gift shop up there!  If you’re taking photographs, honestly you want  to go for the sunrise or sunset slot. Sunrise is better (clearer air) but sunset can be spectacular.  To get to  the path, just follow the road south out of the port, skirting the crater. About 2km from the dock you will see a  path to your left.  Don’t even think about shortcuts, the path is the only safe way, and any shortcut is going to  be much harder.  The path zigzags up the side of the crater. At the first hairpin, a recently installed feature is  a kiosk where you might be asked to pay 2€ for entrance. This is not a con, but an official move to raise funds to  protect the area and improve access. The results can already be seen in a much improved upper section of the  path, which previously could be quite tricky.  However, the kiosk tends not to be manned at 5am ...  Initially the  path is pretty steep. Take your time, plod along. It’s not as bad as it seems and all will be forgiven when you  get your first glimpse of the crater.

The Grand Crater, Vulcano.

And it will get you prepared for Stromboli! Stromboli is a different kettle of fish. The crater zone is  approximately 1000m above sea level, which is where you’ll be starting from (sea level, give or take 50m).

No pain, no gain

The  climb is steep, unrelenting, frequently exposed to the Mediterranean sun, and as you get higher you’ll be walking  on volcanic sand and ash. It takes between 2.5 to 3.5 hours, depending on the conditions and the group. Because  you’ll have to go in a group. Health & safety regulations introduced some years back in reaction to several  accidents as well as increasing volcanic activity now dictate that you must go with a recognised and licensed  mountain guide, who will always have at least one assistant, and stays in constant communication with the emergency services. Most guides are local, multilingual (at least to some extent), and have extensive knowledge of aspect or the other of the island and volcano, be it geology, vulcanology or botany. Several are qualified scientists. So there is no rip-off here, the guides are well organised and responsible, and the charges are quite  reasonable (around €20). But there is a supply and demand problem. In-season (basically Easter to August), demand  is very high, and groups are large and constrained. In theory each group should spend no more than 30 minutes on  the summit ridge (not including a rest at the lower platform, at about 850m).  This is in part a restriction for  safety reasons, to minimise exposure to toxic gasses (including carbon monoxide), and in part a limitation to  allow the maximum number of visitors per day (and all groups aim to be there or thereabouts at sunset). After  such a climb, it can feel pretty disappointing to have so little time at the summit, so try to go out of season.  Rules are more easily bent, the atmosphere is more relaxed, and 90 minutes on the ridge is not unheard of - by  which time it’s dark anyway.

Smoking vents, seen from the lower platform, Stromboli

Shooting a volcano

So, photography. Well, really, don’t take too much gear. Really, if you’re exhausted when you reach the top,  you’ll be in no shape to take good photos, especially as you’re going to have to act and react quickly.  First of  all, if you’re in a large group, try to be at the front for the final stretch. You’re going to want a front row  view. Second, or actually no, first of all: safety first. This is a dangerous place. One slip, and you’re quite  literally toast. Nobody is going to go down into to the rift to rescue you. No photo is worth that. Do take a  tripod. Forget filters, you don’t need them, and you’ve got no time to fiddle with them, with the exception of a  UV / Skylight to protect the lens from ash and dust ... which quite possibly will be raining down on you. That’s  why the guide gave you a helmet. Put it on. I would recommend a mid-range zoom lens, with a 35mm equivalent of  around 70-200mm. Take a wider angle if you feel you can take the weight (but honestly, there are few worst places  to change a lens), but you probably won’t use it. I’ve taken an XPan up twice and got almost nothing worthwhile. A  remote cable release is good to have as well.  Observe first: try to avoid seeing the world through your  viewfinder. The experience of being 500m away from an erupting volcano is literally awesome, and pretty much unique at least in Europe.  Identify a good candidate for photos, usually a crater which is producing eruptions  every few minutes or so, frame your shot, set up your exposure, check your histogram, and focus manually. Set up  your motor drive (actually, set up as much as you can before the climb). Then hold your cable release, enjoy the vista, and wait for the opportunity. If you hold your nerve, you’re in with a good chance to get a great shot. If you just flap around reacting to the volcano rather than observing and waiting, you’ll end up with a lot of  blurred shots with something that might be lava in the corner. It’s really not dissimilar to shooting fireworks.  Planning and anticipation are key.

Third time lucky ? It took 3 visits to Stromboli before I caught this!

The show just keeps going on.

Then sooner than you want it’s time to go down, but actually this is almost as much fun. You won’t go down by the steep path you came up on, but rather by a wild, head-torch illuminated semi-controlled slide down and across the relict ash slope on the south side of the volcano. You’ll take about 45 minutes to reach the village. And you’ll want several beers to go with that well-earned pizza.

And now ... the easy way up

If you feel like a (relatively) more relaxed and less constrained experience, alternatively you can walk  out towards to east of the island, past Piscinas, past the Punto Labronzo lighthouse, and follow the old path up the ridge overlooking the “Sciara del Fuoco”. You are allowed to climb up to 450m without a guide, and you can get as far up as a  platform which povides great views of eruption craters along the top of the ridge, as well as (if you’re lucky) lava flowing down the slope, and ejecta crashing into the sea below. It’s a different experience, but equally rewarding.

Overlooking the Sciara del Fuoco, Stromboli.

And there’s a lot more to the Eolian Islands than Volcanos. The best time to visit, in my experience, is late  March, but it varies a bit year to year. At that time things are pretty quiet, the tourist infrastructure hasn’t really got going, and finding a guide is not 100% guaranteed ... but just relax. It’s all part of the experience.

Not just volcanoes. A natural arch on Lipari’s west coast.

Getting there

The most reliable, year-round link is by hydrofoil from Milazzo. Both Ustica Lines and Siremar operate regular  services. Departures to the outer islands, including Stromboli, are much less frequent out of season. Milazzo is reachable from Catania airport, by a combination of public transport (entertaining but slow), or by taxi service  (fast but more expensive). In-season some bus services link both Catania and Palermo airports with Milazzo.

Stromboli Guides

Both Magmatrek and Antonio Famularo are highly recommended and very professional. Out of season they provide a joint service.

It’s not all hard work…

I took a set of XPan frames of a scene in Iceland back in 2009, with the express purpose of seeing if I could make an HDR composite from them, and get the gritty, high contrast, low saturation “grim up north” look so beloved of brands such as 66 North.

There are 3 exposures, one “normal”, one 1 stop below, one 1 stop above. I decided to try running them through Nik HDR Efex (NHE from now on).  On the first try I fell at the first hurdle. Although NHE has an auto-align feature, it cannot cope with input images with different sizes. Since I had tidied the scans up a bit, they were all slightly different.

The 0EV (middle) exposure

So I rescanned all three using exactly the same size, and tried again. Unfortunately, it is absolutely impossible to get three completely independent scans exactly aligned, so alignment was still required. At least now they were the same size. So, back into NHE. The input processing takes something like 15 minutes or more with these large images, but again the results were hopeless. The alignment was completely off.

So I decided to try pre-aligning with Photoshop’s Auto Align. This worked fine, very well in fact. So having nearly perfectly aligned images, I fed them back into NHE. And 15 minutes later, NHE mangled them way out of alignment. Back to the drawing board. I turned off “alignment” in NHE, and gave it another go. This time it worked, or well enough.  In terms of alignment there are still some artifacts at 100% zoom but for smaller viewing sizes it works.

So then it was off to fiddling with the wide range of settings in NHE, and eventually I got something close to what I wanted.

The HDR look: Somewhere grim in the Westfjords

However, with film as the input, NHE makes grain explode. I had to do a lot of cleaning up, especially in the sky, and the results are most certainly gritty.

It would probably have been a lot easier to do it with digital, but there is a rather unique look coming out of film here, and have got a process that sort of works, I might try refining it.

Every now and then my thoughts turn to new cameras. Although I certainly keep up with a fair sampling of camera pr0n sites, I don’t really get caught up much in day to day gear lust these days. There’s very little that excites me, and most new releases nowadays are 90% marketing and 5% rehash. Look at the Olympus E-P3 for example: a smoke & mirrors AF system (well, actually no mirror, but whatever) and a new screen which isn’t actually much of a step forward. Yawn.

What ails me now is more of a gear malaise.

I’m not even vaguely under the illusion that a different camera would make me a better photographer, but I do wonder if maybe there is some scope for making more of my opportunities.

I’ve got lots of cameras. On the film side I’ve got a full Hasselblad XPan system, which hopefully will last many more years. On the digital side, I’ve got the Olympus E-System, with E-3 and E-400 bodies and a full set of mid to high range lenses, several of which are widely considered to be top of their class. I’ve got a Micro Four Thirds system for casual use, and finally a Ricoh GRD for when I’m feeling minimal. And they all get used.

It’s the E-System which seems the weak point. This is what I use for “serious” photography, and it fits the bill - up to a point. The E-3 body is a fantastic tool and an excellent piece of engineering - albeit without the “inspiring” feel of the E-1. The 12-60 and 50-200 lenses are gorgeous. But there’s no getting around the image quality issues. It isn’t bad - in fact in many situations it is more than adequate - but it has relatively narrow dynamic range, relatively poor high ISO performance (offset by a very, very good image stabilisation system), and relatively low resolution. Relative to what? Well, almost all the competition, sadly. The question of course, is does it make a real difference ?

There are a lot of arguments in favour of sticking with the E-System. I’m very attached to the 4:3 aspect ratio; I originally went for this because of it’s close match to the 645 format of the unfulfilled object of my lust, the Pentax 645. I’ve invested over 8 years of time & money in this system, and I’m very familiar with it. Again, and always, those Zuiko Digital lenses.

Then of course there’s a big argument against. Although rumours of an E-50 are floating about, there is a very strong possibility that the E-5 could be the last of the line.

So what about camera envy? Well by and large, and on the basis of real world experience with friends using top end Canon and Nikon systems, I don’t really suffer from it. There’s something about Canon cameras that doesn’t appeal to me, and Nikon is like a foreign country. I could not make head nor tail of a D700 I picked up, wanting to take a quick shot. But there is one .... the Sony A900. That is close to nirvana. Huge sensor, huge viewfinder, and crammed full of Minolta DNA. Back in the old days I really, really admired the Minolta Dynax 7 & 9, and the A900 is a direct descendant of these. And then there are those Zeiss lenses.

And then there would be the crippling invoice. I don’t even dare to think how much it would cost to build up an A900 based system with the range of my Olympus setup.

And the A900 has a fairly big drawback, in that it doesn’t have Live View and a hinged screen like the E-3. It looses out in versatility, but the trade offs are pretty attractive.

Of course there is another option: the Olympus E-5. It’s practically identical to the E-3, and has the same basic 12mp sensor as the E-P2, but according to reviews, it manages to extract a remarkable amount of detail and finally matches the potential of those lenses. It sounds good, but then again, it’s very incremental, quite expensive, and probably not the quantum leap I’m looking for.

The MFT system is ok, but has certain serious drawbacks, as I’ve mentioned, and doesn’t seem to be likely to accomodate an f2.8 200mm in the forseeable future. It’s good for wide to short telephoto focal lengths, but not longer.

And then of course there’s the fact that to the average viewer none of these amounts to much. World-class photography can be done on most systems.

And yet, I have this gear malaise…

And some more Lavertezzo.  XPan this time, (very) early one day in August.  It isn’t an obvious location for the panoramic format, in fact this session is the first that I’ve managed to get some halfway satisfying shots from. Usually, outside of winter it is more or less impossible due to the amount of people swarming around.  In fact, in this case, a couple had actually camped out on the rocks. Fortunately they were still asleep. Or at least lying down.

Anyway, I’ll just let the pictures do the talking…

Following my recent tirade against Vuescan, Ed Hamrick, the creator and publisher of the application, took the time to defend his point of view rather than just completely ignoring me. It’s only fair to reproduce his message in full:

Hi David,

So, apparently my posting on SilverFast struck a nerve? Business isn’t bean-bag - and competition can be brutal. Yes, I know it offends the sensitive but that’s life.

If you’re vaguely interested, VueScan isn’t struggling.  My free upgrade offer is going strongly, and I’m selling $3M per year of VueScan licenses.  It’s a good business.

And you dismiss the one-line comments people make about SilverFast.  It’s actually quite interesting.  Every one of the comments in the list of 1000 comments came from someone
who had actual experience using SilverFast and instead deciced to buy VueScan.  People really, really dislike SilverFast - it’s hard to use, the bizarre three-letter and four letter acronyms aren’t helpful, the blizzard of icons in the user interface are non-intuitive, and they’re really dumb with their pricing.

I actually read the comments, and personally pay very close attention to my user’s criticisms of VueScan.  I answer every e-mail from a customer personally.

I get approached all the time with bundling offers.  Plustek wrote to me last week to get pricing for a bundling deal.  They’ve approached me every year for 4 years They don’t like SilverFast either.  However, bundling is a stupid business strategy and I don’t do it.  I might offer free bundling to Plustek just to help drive LaserSoft out of business, but LaserSoft really isn’t much of a competitor.

And yes, most of the scanner market is well-served by MFP’s.

My web site doesn’t push VueScan Mobile at all - it’s below the fold and only comes up if you come to the page from an iPhone or iPad.

You’d be amazed how many grateful letters I get every day from people saying thanks that they don’t have to use SilverFast any more.

You ask why I have the free upgrade offer?  It’s simple, it’s a way to help drive LaserSoft out of business. That’s why I’m considering offering free bundling deals to anyone currently bundling SilverFast.

At least your review of VueScan was somewhat fair (although you made some trivially simple mistakes because you were hell-bent on finding problems).  You might also try a shorter USB cable.  Many of the cables shipped with Minolta scanners have gone bad over the years and problems with high-speed programs (like VueScan) can be solved with a new USB cable.  SilverFast 6 doesn’t have
these problems because they’re using Rosetta because they’re a PowerPC application and slow (and come on, Intel Macs were released 6 years ago).

Some guy named Erik Vlietinck at it-enquirer.com , who’s a complete witless incompetent, made a review of VueScan vs. SilverFast where he claimed that VueScan did a preview at half the speed of SilverFast.  When I posted a comment that perhaps he was using a higher resolution
preview than VueScan, and that he could solve this with the “Input | Preview resolution” option, he deleted my comment to his review and deleted my user name.  What a weasel.

Let’s see if you have the balls to post my response.  I doubt that you do

Regards,
Ed Hamrick

I don’t really want to get into a further argument here. I probably went over the top in my original post, but I was genuinely annoyed at what seemed to be, at least to some extent, a serious and unprovoked case of a pot calling a kettle black…  So, I’m feeling a bit guilty, but I’m used to it.

But one thing I will say: I didn’t go out of my way to try to find fault with Vuescan. If it worked better for me than Silverfast, well, I’m not going to cut my nose off to spite my face.  But it didn’t.  I’d say they’ve both reached the boundary of what can be achieved at this level.  It must add that Ed misunderstood my connection issue - it was the Canoscan that Vuescan couldn’t find, not the Minolta. True, I didn’t put any effort into debugging it, but then again, with Silverfast it just works and always has.

Finally it comes down to individual preferences, and I’m more comfortable with Silverfast. But… consider that I chose Olympus over Canikon, Mac over PC, Aperture over Lightroom ... I tend not to go with the flow. Vuescan is vastly popular and by all accounts deserves to be.  But neither Silverfast, nor the Laserscan people, are the Evil Empire.  There’s a fine line between marketing and dishonesty, and few companies can truly say they’ve never, ever crossed it.

I don’t want Lasersoft to be driven out of business. I’ve spent years using and learning how to get the most out of the software, and for me it is ultra-reliable and enjoyable to use.  So, hopefully, Ed can enjoy his well earned $3M and leave the scraps to the competition… and let naive idiots like me subsidize them.

At some point when I was away in the last two weeks, and certainly later than August 30th, this site went down due to a very strange issue, which I have, for now, fixed, but without understanding it.

In the unlikely event that anybody actually tried to access it (I don’t get a lot of visitors…) I apologise, and in the even more unlikely event that anybody could give me an idea of when this started happening (no way was I paying criminal data roaming fees to check every day) I’d be very grateful.  I noticed on Thursday September 8th, but I couldn’t do much about it with just an iPhone and a very bad, as well as expensive, data connection.

I’m on vacation in Sicily. It’s absolutely not a photo trip, but Sicily can be painfully photogenic at all sorts of level, so good casual opportunities do come up.

WARNING: high levels of sarcasm ahead, may offend.

It started with a week on the island of Favignana, which was good enough for the likes of Selgado, Burri, and a gaggle of other Magnum photographers, so it should be good enough for me. But ... they, very luckily for them, did not have an Olympus Pen-since-1959 EP bloody 2 “camera” with them. I am coming to loathe this all style and no content device. It is by far the worst camera I have ever used. Considered as a device to prevent photography it would rank pretty highly. But that wasn’t what it was intended to be, alledgedly.

It’s difficult to know where to start, but perhaps I’ll be slightly unfair and start with the add-on electronic viewfinder. Now, this camera is unusable without the EVF. In fact it should be returned as unfit for purpose without it, because the screen is abysmal. I loathe using a back screen as a framing tool, but on my Ricoh GRD at least it can be done, quite effectively even. On the EP2, forget about it: the screen is dim and coarse. So, EVF it is. And this EVF is rated as one of the best in the business. But guess what, it still sucks. It doesn’t pixelise, it has very low delay, it even has pretty good dynamic range. But it doesn’t have enough. Under harsh contrast there is just no way I can get a fix on the highlights and shadows. It burns or blacks out stuff which my eyes do not, making it impossible for my brain to instinctively make exposure decisions. It just gets it the way. And of course, when I apply exposure compensation, it reacts. No! Don’t do that! I know you can, but if I’m sussed enough to understand what exposure compensation means, then it really is not going to help me if you keep moving the electronic goalposts around. And that’s just for starters. I could go on for a lot of paragraphs about how an EVF screws up DoF preview as well. And then of course there’s the idiot fact that the camera has to be turned on to look through the viewfinder (this is “progress”, I believe), which is unfortunate given the gusto at which the EP2 drains its battery (very easily twice as fast as the E400 with the same battery). Of course, all this applies to any EVF camera, not just the EP2, but the scary thing is that this EVF really is - relatively - very, very good. But it ruins photography as an enjoyable experience, and that’s scary.

So, what about some specifics? Let’s start with “manual focus assist”. This zooms the center of the VF area so you can focus more easily. Well fine, provided (a) the object you want to focus on is in the middle, which if you’re slightly beyound idiot level it quite probably isn’t, and (b) you’re not interest in the object’s context. Ok, so you can turn it off, provided you can remember where the option is in the labyrinthine menu system - I’d happily swap it for the “art filter” position on the mode dial - and it is genuinely useful in Live View mode, on a tripod, when you’re moving the focus point around. It is absolutely a pain when it engages when you as little as think about glancing at the focus ring, ruining another shot. And yes you can turn it off. If you remembered to, and if you’ve got several minutes to waste in the menu system.

Ah yes, the menu system: ever since the E400, Olympus cameras have had the “super control panel” screen for direct access to shooting parameters. It’s actually pretty useful and has been widely copied, like a lot of good innovations from Olympus. I’m fairly sure the EP2 has it to, but I cannot for the life of me work out how to get at it. If it is there, and not just a figment if my immagination, it is anyway but 1 of 3 completely seperate systems for configuring the camera. One well designed one would suffice.

(ok, finally I worked it out. Press “OK” several times to cycle through the modes.)

The electronic level is very nice. It would be even nicer if it could be combined with the display of basic shooting info, like Aperture, Exposure, that sort of thing.

Then there’s more general stuff about the ergonomics and user interface. In A-mode, which is pretty much all I use, if you press the exposure compensation button, the value highlights in the display and you can change it with either the thumbwheel or the control dial. I try to avoid the control dial. If you click the button a second time, both the aperture and compensation values highlight, and now you can change the aperture with the thumbwheel and compensation with the dial. Or is it the other way around? And why, anyway? The opportunity for error is endless, especially if you have to use the control dial.
The control dial is a truly stunningly bad example of industrial design. Like many similar devices, it also functions as a 4 way pad, with the 4 buttons providing a quick entry point to things like ISO and White Balance. Useful, but not when the thing is so fiddly and sensitive that when you just had that shot lined up of Elvis climbing out of his flying saucer, you discover that you’re in 12 second self timer mode. Or something even more obscure. Even when you’re intentionally using the dial, the slightest misapplication of pressure can have you at ISO 3200 in a microsecond. Reversing out, however, would take a while longer.

Finally, because otherwise this could go on for ever, a word about the standard 14-42 lens. In order to pretend that it is small, Olympus made it collapsible. This provides yet another potential roadblock in getting the shot. And attaching a filter to it, especially a polariser, is an exercise in frustration. Turning the polariser almost always throws the focus completely off, and triggers an error message. And when you remove the filter it feels like you’re in serious danger of dismantling the lens inner barrel. Yet another ghastly Pen experience.

Kodak Films? Unfortunately, no ho bisogno, grazie

Ok, you can get good results out of the EP2, all being well, but for me at least it provides little enjoyment and kills spontaneity. So much that the whole point of the thing seems weak.

On a general note, in 2 weeks, some spent in very photogenic tourist spots, where everybody has a camera, I have not seen one “compact system camera”. No micro four thirds, no Sony NEX, no Samsung. Plently of Lumix and Fuji bridges, plenty of Canikon DSLRs, even a sprinkling of Olympus DSLRs, some high end compacts and of course hordes of digicams. But the world takeover by compact system cameras? I see no evidence of that on the streets.

So, what ‘s the alternative? I don’t always feel like carrying a DSLR around, even a small one, and compacts have their own compromises and lack creative control. Film seems tempting. A small SLR, maybe, but even an Olympus OM isn’t all that light. Or maybe a Voigtlander or Zeiss Ikon rangefinder ... but again, these involve compromises. Maybe somebody will make a CSC actually designed to encourage photography, but I’m not holding my breath.

But as far as the Olympus EP2 is concerned, I think I’ve had my fill. The worst, and possibly the prettiest, camera I have ever owned. And it seems I’m stuck with it.