Sunday 23 May 2010 at 9:34 pm
Since taking my last header picture I've acquired a couple more Olympus cameras - an
OM-1n,
Pen EES2 and a new
EP1. Other manufacturers have fancier and better cameras but no one really seems to cover the breadth that Olympus achieved from the consumer Pen series in the 60's and 70's through to the Trip and pro-am OM in the 70's and 80's - they lost their way a bit in the 90's (although the
OM 4Ti is regarded as one of the greatest manual SLR's ever) and 00's but came right at the tail end of 2009 with the revamped Pen EP1.
The EP1 is a fantastic camera - cult retro look combined with nice handling it takes some beautiful shots (obviously limited by the takers ability in my case!). Initially I thought the biggest drawback would be a lack of flash but its low light capabilities are actually pretty impressive.
I find the biggest problem (and this applies to digital cameras in general) is that the immediate feedback means you use it less; or you use it more but you tend to keep less. With a film camera you just have to keep shooting to see what comes out. As a result I'm actually shooting more rolls of film than digital pictures. In general I'm enjoying the results of film a lot more than digital; particularly shooting in black and white.
So todays header is from my
Pen FT and some
Fuji Provia 100 film - taken while walking along the
Korokoro Dam track near Petone (a Wellington suburb).
I've had to crop and scale the picture so you don't get the grain of the film as much as you should. If I'd had more time I'd have liked to mess around with the Depth of Field a little more to try and get a lot more of a blur in the background ('
bokeh') but thats life.
I'll definitely try and get some EP1 shots up next time.
Sunday 09 May 2010 at 4:01 pm
Great comic strips to help the grammatically challenged -
Sunday 09 May 2010 at 3:58 pm
Nice article on time and how humanity needs to start thinking about the long-term -
Eight Thoughts About Timescale.
Brilliant -
Toronto subway etiquette posters.
Nice chart -
Stages of a Photographer. I think I'm at the 'Everything I shoot is rubbish' stage.
Charles Stross writes about the recent Adobe/Apple Flash spat -
The Real Reason Steve Jobs Hates Flash.
ArsTechnica does a rather nice review of
Ubuntu 10.04. As of v 7 or 8 its actually been pretty usable by a mere mortal (ie your parents).
Sunday 18 April 2010 at 5:26 pm
A place to share Unix environment config files
dotfiles.org. Great idea and resource. Shame I don't do much unix stuff anymore.
All sorts of things are falling under Microsofts new 'Forefront' banner (ISA is probably the most well known) - now their meta-directory product is coming under the same brand
Forefront Identity Lifecycle Manager. It still seems overly expensive but the feature-set does look enticing.
Nifty -
Why you can't work at work. My most productive time is probably from 7 to 9am - after that my day becomes primarily interrupt driven.
The art of writing is starting to disappear - I'm not a great writer by any means but proof-reading colleagues written work does make me wonder what happened to the education system in the five to ten years I between my schooling and theirs. Writing well, creatively and with humour appears to be a niche
Clothing for Correspondence are happy to fill - you send them an item of clothing and they'll write something for you. Their samples are great - particularly the references !
Saturday 13 March 2010 at 09:04 am
Pretty much their entire 'Le Pop' album is awesome - finding a corresponding decent live video is a bit tougher. Small P & S cameras shooting video is not a great recipe for audio/video goodness.
Check them out doing - "
To the Sea.
Full marks for striking rock poses with an accordion and smiling relentlessly throughout the performance.
Still waiting for them to tour in NZ - they'd kick-ass at one of our arts-festivals, wine-festivals or even St Patricks day festivities.
Come down-under
Katzenjammer. I should start a petition.
Saturday 13 March 2010 at 07:21 am
Via Boing Boing - a guy poses as a 10 year old and writes letters to some interesting people -
Little Billy's Letters to famous and infamous people.
The letters and the replies will put a smile on even a jaded face.
Saturday 13 March 2010 at 07:20 am
Just trawling my site logs - traffic has slowed recently (a bit like my posting) - starting to get hits from China and the Ukraine originating from some odd source addresses. That doesn't sound good.
Better backup my site . . .
Tuesday 23 February 2010 at 6:05 pm
Make sure wherever you work (or even when you deal with your personal data) you have a plan for moving and archiving historical date -
Avoiding a Digital Dark Age.
Fantastic (if a little grim) -
World Press Photo Competition Winners 2010
Infographic - which health supplements are actually beneficial -
Snake Oil Supplements.
Why most people no longer care about the file-system -
/the/path/of/most/resistance. Very very true - at a home-user level the apps are now infinitely more important than where stuff is stored - just leave iPhoto/iTunes to look after itself and forget about where it puts things.
Friday 12 February 2010 at 8:37 pm
A new header - this is from the first roll of Fuji 400 I put through my Pen FT (mostly shot with the f1.4/40 lens but some through the standard f1.8/38). The majority of the pics were a OK but not great. The grain of the images is superb - adds a character you just don't get on a digital image. So far I'm happy with 1 in 3 pictures - just as well I get to take twice as many pictures with the same amount of film !
I have put some Fuji Velvia 50 through - success rate dropped to maybe 1 in 5 - the pictures that came out well were great but the composition was lacking. I can also see why many people recommend shooting one-stop higher than recommended with this type of film as a fair few of the pictures were way darker than I expected.
Next on my list is some Ilford 125 Black & White film.
Meanwhile my cheap Trip 35 is still doing a stirling job - with its simpler point & shoot mechanism I'm getting a much higher hit rate. Highly recommended if you're after a cheap film camera with a retro-vibe.
Friday 12 February 2010 at 06:36 am
A plug for a friends new book - if you're into the fitness-thing then pop over here and check out
The Corporate Woman’s Health & Fitness Journal.
