Please allow me this moment to share a personal story from this past week. For over three years I've been growing my hair out. My purpose was to donate it for the making of wigs for those fighting cancer. The time finally came  to get the ponytail cut off.

 Before the cut

This brief article is a response to a discussion on the Olympus Mailing list regarding noise patterns in boosted image files from the Canon 5D Mk2. Evidently, this camera may have a pattern noise which becomes visible when the exposure is boosted during RAW conversion. I know that my old Minolta A1 has tremendous pattern noise caused by internal RFI, but what about my old Olympus E-1? The E-1 has been known, from the outset, to be a noisy camera, but it is also known for a wide dynamic range and color fidelity. What happens when you apply an extreme boost to an E-1 RAW file? 

Nearly two years a go we moved into a condo which lacked space for a darkroom. I used the garage for the darkroom by setting everything up on my workbench along one wall. The challenge there is light leakage through the cracks in the garage door and the total lack of temperature stability. With winter arriving, this is a serious concern. My plan has been to build a dual-purpose darkroom and tornado shelter in a corner of the garage, but that has yet to materialize.

My battle is not atypical of most photographers wanting to print and process their own B&W prints. Fortunately, in my case I was able to finally figure out a solution...

Have we finally reached the point of "enough" pixels in our sensors? Have we reached the point of diminishing returns?

For all practical purposes we probably have. Sensors now pack so many pixels the limiting factor in resolution and detail capture is now optics. Optics will improve, but the reality is the sensors in our cameras are better than nearly all common output. This is especially true for professional photographers doing anything other than some commercial work and bedspread-sized landscapes prints which cover entire walls.

Where then will the manufacturers go next? Their survival is dependant on us buying new cameras and without "MORE PIXELS" screaming at us, they have to go another direction. But what direction will that be? Is it the end of packing more pixels into the space and if so, how will this get marketed? The answers to these questions may be surprisingly easy to project...

This past weekend was spent in western Michigan to attend a wedding. While there, I did get two opportunities to go down the the Lake Michigan shoreline. The weather was outstanding and I shot both film (Fujichrome Provia 100F) and digital (Olympus E-1). The following picture was taken with the E-1. This picture was taken with the camera pointed directly towards the sun, with the sun just a few degrees above the image area.

The image was processed in Olympus Studio2 with the settings of WB 5300 -1, Contrast +2, Saturation CS4 and Lens Distortion Correction turned on. Camera was set to Aperture Priority, F8, -.7 Exposure Compensation and the shutter speed was 1/1000. Lens used is the Digital Zuiko 14-54 set to 14mm.

The bottom portion of the image was cropped off to provide a square image format. Other than cropping with -0.5 rotation, resizing and border addition, there has been absolutely no image manipulation applied.

Lake Michigan Shoreline, Muskegon County, Michigan

I will admit that I am surprised that Olympus chose to introduce this specific camera right now.  I was fully expecting it to have been a February 2010 release. I suspect that Olympus bumped up the schedule on this camera for three reasons:

1. Panasonic GF1. In a head to head comparison to the E-P1, the GF1 is a slightly superior camera, but in comparison to the E-P2, the playing field is leveled.

2. The E-P1 sales exceeded projections. With extremely rare exception, the major camera makers preplan the entire production run of digital cameras and will not implement a subsequent run unless the projected sales amount exceeds that of the projected sales amount of another scheduled model. If the model is selling out, Olympus will promptly shift sales and marketing efforts to another model already in the pipeline. Rumor and inuendo says the E-P1 sold the majority of the entire production run the first month and numerous stores still haven't gotten a single unit yet. If you look at the model history of Olympus cameras, you'll see the common consumer-electronics method of producing just enough units of any one model to bring yourself to the next trade-show. Other than the E-1 and E-3 you are hard pressed to identify any model of camera that stayed current for two cycles.

3. By moving up the E-P2, this creates space for the model that I am projecting to come in the next few months. This projected model is not styled like the E-P1 or E-P2 but will be more "modern" in shape with a plastic body similar to that of a slightly downsized E-330. The recent financial reports coming out of Olympus indicate several new models of Micro FourThirds and FourThirds cameras coming out in the next few months. In fact, if history and financial disclosures are any indication, I am expecting a wholesale upgrade of ALL existing models in FourThirds. I am still expecting the next rash of cameras to have a higher pixel-count, possibly as high as 14.7MP.

I stand by my projections. As stated in the article, the model I'm projecting is not the E-P2.  You will also note that other than the plug-in EVF and hot-rodded focus-tracking, there is essentially no new feature in this camera--just the standard year-over-year model freshening. We all know Olympus is more creative than that.

In my opinion, the E-P2 is the camera the E-P1 should have been on introduction. If you are interested in this model and it meets your demands, I wouldn't hesitate to purchase it. The live-view EVF addresses several criticisms I have of the E-P1 and the focus issues have been largely addressed.

Ken

Shadow Walk 

Let's face it.  We're gear-centric people who tend to look towards newer and better technology to make us better photographers. Nikon and Canon both have recently introduced cameras with exceptionally high ISO performance making low-light photography more and more feasible. But what can be done with the opposite extreme in cameras? What about the lowly cell-phone camera?

I took my new Palm Centro cell-phone with me on a walk downtown and explored the photographic opportunities after dark...