I have installed WordPress to my website today. My new photoblog, photography.efixmedia.de, is online as of now.

Therefore, this blog is effectively discontinued. If you would like to keep up with my photographic work, please bookmark my new site or subscribe to its RSS feed. Thank you!

This blog will soon be discontinued in favour of a new, dedicated photography blog on my own site. It will probably take me some time to get things working, so the new site won't be running until the end of the month. I just wanted to inform the visitors to this blog in time.

The new site will (hopefully) be updated more frequently, and I will post pictures, small reviews, opinions and links to things that seem interesting. Time will show how great an audience it will have, and it might gain features in the future.
As I am advancing as a (hobby) photographer, my desire to share my work and opinions advances as well, beyond the possibilities LiveJournal and dedicated forums have to offer.

The new site's address will be photography.efixmedia.de (which is not yet activated, though).

Thank you for reading this blog, and please stay tuned on my new site, soon!

Today, Chicago based photographer Steve Huff posted a picture I took of Emil in his "daily inspiration" column. I feel very honoured by this!

See the post here: http://www.stevehuffphoto.com/2010/01/12/daily-inspiration-21-watching-the-snow-fall-by-felix-esser/

Snow everywhere in the northern hemisphere. Here, too, it's been snowing nearly continously for the past three days. Pictures from Marburg and Großseelheim, taken with the E-P1 + 14-42mm kit lens and adapted OM 50/1.8.

Großseelheim covered in snow. E-P1 + M.Zuiko 14-42/3.5-5.6 @ 14mm, f/9, 1/320 sec., ISO 200


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Olympus has announced two interesting lenses for 2010. First, the 9-18 wide zoom, which I will surely acquire for landscape and architecture shooting, if the price is going to be reasonable.

But now for the longer focal lengths. I have an E-P1 with the 14-42 kit lens, the Panasonic 20/1.7 for low light and, since recently, a legacy OM 50/1.8 + adapter as a portrait lens. Before getting the PEN, I had a Panasonic FZ30 which offered a tremendous 35-420 eq. zoom lens. I do not actually need that great a focal range very often, but especially for holidays I'd like to have something longer than 100mm eq.

So I'm thinking ... should I get the Panasonic 45-200 as an addition to the 14-42 (it is already available at reasonable prices, and prices should become even more reasonable by mid-next-year), or should I wait for the announced 14-150, which will surely be more expensive, since new, but would save me changing lenses every five minutes (which would be sure to happen on a holiday trip with the two-lens solution).

I guess this decision can't be made right now. But I guess, that

• if it's going to be a question of budget (considering I want to get the 9-18), it'll be more likely that I'll get the 45-200.
• if budget is not going to be so big an issue, it'll be a question of IQ and performance (I heard the 45-200 to be [relatively] soft at the long end, but have good [and quiet] AF performance).

I guess I'll just have to wait until the 14-150 is available, and see how it performs in tests ...

1. Shooting RAW is real fun. After developing, the pictures look so much better and so much more like I want them.
2. I don't actually use my Fuji F200EXR anymore, since the Olympus E-P1 is so much fun. I think I'm still going to keep it, as a back-up or second camera. One never knows.
   
3. I just got a legacy OM 50mm/1.8 lens from eBay, for portraiture mostly. Said to be a nice little lens. Now I need an adapter, which are offered from 25 € up to 200 € :-)

UPDATE:
I decided to upload a little out-of-camera-JPG-vs.-developed-from-RAW-comparison picture. Here it is. On the left: ooc original. On the right: developed, filtered, adjusted. Notice the much less blown-out highlights in the right picture's histogram, whereas the overall image is brighter. Also, the shadow areas are not so dark anymore. That's one of the great benefits of using RAW - in developing, you can save a great deal more tonal range. Also, I moved the crop area a little, since the RAW files are saved with 3:4 aspect ratio, yet I always use the "classic" 3:2 ratio for my images.



P.S.: So far I always shot with the lowest contrast and saturation settings, to be able to get the most out of the JPGs in post-processing. Yet, I was never able to tweak the images that much, that a result like that on the right would have been possible.

A handful from my walk through town today. Now that most fall colors have begun to vanish, there are only some remnants left. Thought I'd capture them before they're all gone ...


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All pictures (C) 2009 by Felix L. Esser
Camera: Olympus PEN E-P1
Lens: Olympus M. Zuiko 14-42mm/F3.5-5.6

Today I received the custom leatherette body kit for the Olympus PEN E-P1, manufactured by Aki Asahi Custom Camera Covers in Japan. I had seen it on pictures before, but actually having it applied to my E-P1 makes it look absolutely fabulous!



But this body kit, which by the way fits neatly to the pattern on the grip, not only makes the camera look more like a classical rangefinder, it also improves handling of the camera since you can no longer slip from the shiny metal. Also - no more ugly fingerprints!

Applying the kit was really easy, and making the edges a little wet really helped aligning it. Then, it just slipped onto the body. Fits perfectly. Thanks, Aki Asahi! :-)

Tonight, Olympus announced the E-P2. As it came out, the camera is neither a successor to the E-P1 (which would have been a bit early), not is it a higher-end or more DSLR-like Micro Four Thirds camera like the Panasonic G1/GH1. It simply is a slightly updated and improved version, an alternative that offers some changes you might consider relevant or not.

Chief among the improvements over the E-P1 is the large additional plug-in electronic viefinder with a 1.44 megapixel resolution. The E-P2 is still lacking a flash, and autofocus is probably still slower than on Panasonic's models.

So not much that justifies migrating from the E-P1 to the E-P2, if you have not already considered switching to the GF1 anyways.

A little more relevant seem the two new lenses which are announced for early 2010, namely a 9-18mm wide-angle zoom and a 14-150mm wide-to-tele-superzoom. Just a little more relevant, though, because there are already comparable lenses from panasonic, namely the 7-14mm and the 14-140mm HD. Olympus has also announced a lens roadmap for 2010, with a fisheye, a wide prime, a macro lens and a tele-zoom to come. Yet, you can already have most of these from Panasonic, also with optical image stabilization in some, which has some advantage over the in-body stabilization.

So some new stuff, but not to get too excited about. I personally am excited to see the forthcoming tele-zoom (for which there are no specs known yet), but I will probably get the Panasonic 45-200mm for its OIS and focal length.

... and one picture of Emil :-)

Copyright: Felix Lájos Esser
Camera: Olympus PEN E-P1 with 14-42mm kit lens
Post-Processing: Paint.NET



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