New Header - Korokoro Dam Track
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.
