So, those few of you who follow me will have noticed that I’ve been a little, well, absent. Those who know me will probably guess why. Those who don’t can probably surmise from the photograph that accompanies this post: it turns out that two children under two actually take rather a lot of time out of one’s day, time that might otherwise be spent, say, blogging.
Nevertheless, time is not the only reason. It turns out that, with the arrival of the progeny, my photographic focus has shifted somewhat. I started this blog in order to push myself to take more photographs. It turns out that it wasn’t a blog I needed, but children.

I would estimate that 90%, if not more, of my photographs since my son was born two years ago have been, well, of my kids. I’m getting pretty good at it. The problem is, of course, that these are personal, and not really for public consumption. Please don’t get me wrong; I don’t mean that I don’t want people to see them – I’m not one of those who believes that posting photographs of one’s children is somehow going to lure paedophiles to the warm glow of one’s home. That way madness lies.

No. I simply mean that it’s boring. Grandparents love photos of Noah and Holly, Uncles and Aunts to a certain extent, and friends can cope with a few here and there. But, frankly, I doubt you could care less. So, with a dearth of interesting images, I rather dried up.
So, although I can’t promise that I’ll not post photographs of my little gene-bearers, I’ll try to expand my repertoire a little. I’ve. Even thinking about photography a bit, and a couple of blogs have got me thinking as well. Maybe I’ll treat you to a couple of my more choice bon môts.

Yes, I’m the kind of guy who uses the phrase bon môts. I don’t apologise for it.

A couple of notes on the photograph above, jut so that it’s something a little more than just a photo of my newest offspring. Holly was being changed in a smallish, all-white bathroom. It was dark outside, so the only available light was a tungsten bulb above her – not the greatest circumstances for a great photo.

So, what’s a photographer to do? She was in a great and photogenic mood, so I did something that I haven’t done for ages – I turned to a splash of off-camera flash. I took a flashgun and put it on the toilet (I know – classy). I attached a wireless trigger (I’ll go into these at a later date, but basically they are little widgets that allow you to be up to 100m away from the flash, as opposed to attaching it to the top of the camera) and aimed it at the ceiling. The light bounced off the ceiling and all the walls, nicely approximating that “it’s everywhere” light you’d get by mounting a whole load of strobes around your subject. I set the camera on full manual (no reliance on the camera’s metering – I relied on experience and had the exposure nailed within two test shots) and from then on, I fired away.

As I said, I’m getting pretty good at this photographing-the-children lark…

In any case, my liking for this little camera is in no way diminishing (I have since had a little go on the first m4/3 camera, the Panasonic G1. More on this in another post.). I thought someone out there might be interested in how it works as a landscape camera. And the answer is, erm, quite well, actually.
One thing that I did not (for some reason) expect it to do well was a long exposure. So I thought I’d test it out. I got hold of a cheap IR filter, which, along with the fact that the e-p1 has a pretty effective IR filter (God, I haven’t explained that well. Perhaps I shall someday) means that exposures with it are quite long. The photograph above was shot with the kit lens at its widest setting (14mm) at f6.7, with the shutter open for 20 seconds. The camera locked up for about another 20 seconds, for noise reduction voodoo. The results, as far as I’m concerned, are absolutely great. I’m not going to go into 100% crops and the like, but I can tell you that it is sharp, noise free, and generally beautiful. I’m pretty gobsmacked, actually. Now, I’m not by any means a big landscapist, but if I were, I suspect I’d be ecstatic with this result. Certainly, the tonality in the above image is, to my eye, lovely. You may well not like the image itself; I do, in fact, and I normally hate my landscapes. But I think it’d be quite hard to fault the tonality of the thing.

The upside of this is that I am finding more and more applications in which the e-p1 is far more than adequate, and I am picking up and carrying around my dirty great D700 less and less. It’s not something that I was expecting, to be frank, and it’s very pleasing indeed. A little less philosophy in this post, I’ afraid, and a little more photo geekery. Hope that’s not too off putting – if anyone wants to pop back in a few posts time, I might have some proper camera prn for you. I gave in and tricked it out a bit (with a purpose, I promise…)

Anyway, the long and short of it is that, after a long and very interesting discussion with the owner (well, I assume he is the owner), I got what turned out to be a very good deal on a Cooke Ivotal 1 inch 1.4 c-mount lens, which mounts beautifully (and looks good to boot) on the Olympus.

First of all, the disadvantages. The focusing ring, whilst smooth, has a fair amount of resistance, and a lot of travel, so focussing is by no means quick with the lens. In fact, it’s glacial, which is something of a disadvantage. Another thing (and this is by no means the lens’ fault) is that with the adapter that I purchased for it, the focussing scale and aperture markings are on the bottom of the camera, so you have to actually turn the whole thing over to zone focus or set a specific aperture. These factors do make using it a little clumsier than I would like, and has diminished my enjoyment a little.

The other thing is that, inevitably, there’s some fairly heavy vignetting going on. I don’t mind this at all, and if one shoots in a square format, it’s not really an issue. But it does mean that the lens has a very distinct look, so it’s not really a general application lens – you’re going to have to live with, and take advantage of, the fact that it looks vintage.

So these are the downsides. What it does give me, however, is a 50mm equivalent, fast lens. If I have my physics right, the equivalent depth of field on a 35 mm camera at 50mm would be that of a 2.8 lens, which is nice, although obviously won’t isolate your focal point to the same degree as a 50mm 1.4. You still get the advantage of the 1.4 speed in terms of light flooding in, however. Again, tasty. It has a dreamy look in low light, or when facing into a bright light source, but appears pretty sharp in good light, even wide open.

Looking back at my previous post, this appears to be precisely what I opined over. So, is it what I wanted? Hmm. Yes, and no. As in all things, it’s a bit of a compromise. Being used to modern lenses (even my oldest manual focus nikon lenses could still be called modern, in terms of the principles of their design) this one is taking a bit of getting used to. The slowness in focussing is certainly something of a bugbear – I’m used to my Zeiss 40mm Summicron, which has a focusing tab, and which is quick and accurate. This lens is neither.

It also seems rather difficult, for some reason, to take advantage of the sharpness that is there. I don’t know why that is, but it’s certainly an issue. Im going to have to investigate this further, but again, maybe it’s just being spoiled by modern lenses and autofocus. Maybe I just need to care a little less. (By way of an aside, I was surprised when looking through the Henri Cartier_Bresson book just how many of the subjects were manifestly out of focus. And how I cared not one jot.)

So, talking about this lens is difficult. I’ll certainly be hanging on to it (although, investigating on ebay, and taking into account the price that I paid for it, I could actually turn enough profit on t to pay for the Panasoinc 20mm outright. Now, there’s a thought.). As photography is a visual medium, It’s probably best if I just post some photographs below – hopefully that will give you a better idea as to whether this is a path you’d consider taking yourself.

Addendum: Having uploaded these photos, I find that I really quite like them. Hmm. Maybe I need to re-appraise…

Auofocus, my friends. I don’t want it. I don’t want it all to be too easy. Of course, I could turn it off. But, and here’s the rub, I know I’d use it, and my photographs would suffer as a result. This is stupid, of course. I’m an intelligent man, these things shouldn’t make a difference. But I’m afraid they do. It’s writing in pen, not pencil; it’s leaving a black run as the only route down a mountain; it’s commiting to leaning in for the first kiss, where your intentions are unmistakable. These are the things we do because they’re harder, and they challenge us, and the results cannot be separated from the method.

No-one makes a 20mm 1.7 compact lens other than Panasonic, and they don’t make a manual focus version. Hence my bind. Maybe I’ll try using the 17mm as a purely manual affair, and see how I get on. If it works, I’ll upgrade. Otherwise, I’ll have to venture down other, hitherto unchartered, avenues.

“Aperture-priority exposure mode with the main command dial set to control aperture. Sub-command dial set to enable instant exposure compensation. LCD set to display a live histogram. Manual focus but with the AEL button set to activate autofocus. Finally, auto ISO with a maximum limit of ISO 800, so the camera will freely adjust the ISO between 100 and 800, according to available light levels.”

If you follow the link, you’ll get a nice, illustrated diagram showing how all that looks, which is far clearer than trying to follow the wording above*.

The point of this, of course, is that you’ll notice that I, and Mr Hickey, talk about how it is set up. The fact is, this thing is astonishingly customisable. This, naturally, makes it a little tricky to set up in the first place, as there are a lot of options, but once it is sorted, you don’t have to think about it. The combo above (I occasionally use the auto ISO, but not always) is, in my opinion, the optimum one for quick and precise control of the camera, and, in fact, allows for quicker control than my Nikon D700 (Yes! I have a big camera! Ooooh, look at me.) It also explains the reason why I haven’t used the optical viewfinder; the info that you need to use the camera at it’s full potential is on the screen, notably if you are going to use a manual focus lens. And besides which, it’s just not meant to be used with an optical finder. It’s not made that way. I love a good rangefinder, and that’s what I was hoping to recreate with the e-p1. But what’s the point if you can’t even focus? Ok, I’m going to caveat that, in order to make sure you don’t think I’m an ignoramus: what’s the point if you can’t focus, and your working method or preference rules out zone focusing? There, that’s better.

Which brings me to my comment on the optical viewfinder. It’s great, it really is, but you have to want to use zone focusing to use it. The autofocus speed is a wee bit too slow to rely on getting there in time to catch the moment, and you’re guessing what you’re focusing on anyway if you have your eye to the glass. The problem is this: zone focusing is a pain in the backside without a focus scale on the lens. Yes, you can do it by prefocusing, but you lose the focus point each time you turn the camera off, or nudge the focus ring. Olympus could do two quite simple things to help here- provide an on-screen focusing scale, and provide a hyper-focal option. That would make the e-p1 with optical finder quite a nice little street shooter.

And I’m off on another tangent. Every photographer goes through a period where they think they’d make an awesome street photographer, an Henri Cartier-Bresson or a Joel Meyerowitz, wafting around in a little home made noir movie, all dramatic lighting and sexy cigarette smoke. I certainly have, because the great street photographs look a) cool and b) effortless. A tip: it’s hard. Not hard to do but, as with so much in life, hard to do well. Apart from anything else, you need balls, you need a great eye and, above all, you need lots and lots of practice. Having said all of this, I’ve had a bit of a crack at it. I don’t have the dedication to be any good, and on top of it all, I live in Croydon, where I’ve witnessed a photographer getting beaten up because someone thought their child was in the frame when they took a photo. Scary. However, I was in New York, I was walking through Manhattan, and I had this little camera with a 17mm lens and optical viewfinder. My wife was distracted, so I could get away with paying attention to photographs, not her (Sorry dear. You’re very patient). And I managed, once I’d got to anticipating the slight shutter lag, to find it was a reasonably credible shoot-from-the-hip street camera. Focus at 2ft, f8 and go. In fact, that was what I did with the shot above, and a number of others. And yes, this is the one that got me vaguely accosted (and, not inconsequently, the best shot of the lot. See? Balls.)

Oh, God knows how I’ve got here. I started off talking about how it handled, and I ended up at street photography? Well, it all ends up at the same place. I’m not a great street photographer, and the e-p1 is not a great street photography camera (and yes, the more observant amongst you will notice the problem with that sentence. Can you say “unreliable narrator”?). However, if you wanted it to be, it could be, I guess. A wide-angle manual lens with a focusing scale on it, a viewfinder to match, and learning to compensate for the slightly less than instant shutter response (don’t forget, the shutter has to close before it can open again. A quirk of the system.). Yes, that could work. The limitations on the pioneers of the genre were far, far greater, and look what they did.

So once again – know your tool, and work within its limitations.

*I’m pretty happy that the excerpt that I’ve quoted above is reasonable, and will serve to send readers to Mike’s superb site, rather than steal from it. If anyone, including the author, thinks otherwise, please let me know, and I will be happy to adjust accordingly.

Addendum – here’s an interesting exercise. Go to the flickr hivemind, and tap in e-p1 street (or I could save you the key presses) and see how many of the photographs, or how many of the photographs you like, were taken with a m4/3 lens, compared to a 3rd party Voigtlander or Leica manual lens. I haven’t done an exhaustive survey, but it seems to me that the majority have repurposed an old lens for street photography, not gone with a modern, made-to-measure autofocus option. Interesting.

Anyway, I was, naturally, talking about how I couldn’t really got on with the camera. Yes, it takes good photographs, but it didn’t give me any sense of inspiration. Until one fateful day, when I decided not to take any photographs. I decided, instead, to take some video.

Alright, Prestney, you go off and humour yourself. Why did this make a difference? Well, to get to the bottom of this, you need to understand the video function of the Olympus. It’s really good. My first day of using it, I manage to produce 7 minutes of footage which all but made my family cry, so well did it capture the innocence of youth. You get selective focus, so it looks like you’re using a much more expensive camera. It works pretty well in low light. It’s a joy to use, although, not being a cinematographer, I would guess that it is risibly simplistic in ways that I can not even begin to understand. Nevertheless, I was smitten. But why, Ben (I hear you ask) had you only just discovered this?

Fine. I’ll take you back still further. I had tried out the video function previously, but it hadn’t worked for me, for two reasons. Firstly, the noise. The microphone in the camera is really very good, but it’s in the camera. The lenses have a clever, odd, focus-by-wire thing, whereby even manual focus involes the movement of motors and cams and screws and, probably, pulleys and winches. This means that any focussing that you do produces a loud ratcheting sound on film, which sounds like, I don’t know, a bag of spanners. Or drum and bass. Unpleasant. The second reason is the focussing itself. As I’m sure you know if you’re interested enough to read this, the focussing speed of the Olympus is slow. There. Said it. Not unusably slow, not slow enough to be a deal breaker, but way too slow for action or moving subjects. In the world of still photography, there are ways round this. In the world of video (so I thought), you need quick, imperceptibly quick, autofocus. And continuous autofocus on the e-p1 is truly horrible – a succession of hunt-back-and-forth single focus sessions, not continuous focus at all. So I gave up on it.

But then I had a thought. I was brought up on manual focus (a Nikon FE). What happens if I put a manual lens on it? A bloody revalation, that’s what. I bought a Nikon to micro 4/3 adapter, threw on a Nikon 50mm 1.8, and away I went. Now we were talking. Continuous focus! And silent, too! Yes, of course it was a bit more work, but just like picking up an all-manual camera, you learn quickly. My focus now wasn’t tied to whatever was in the centre of the frame, I could change the aperture settings on the fly, and, most importantly, depth of field was mine to command. All the things I’ve taken ten years to learn photographically, and I was relearning them in a new medium. Excellent work.

Of course, after a day of this, I realised what I had been missing. My favourite camera, for sentimental reasons as much as anything else, has always been the Nikon FE that got me into serious photography. I have long opined to anyone who would listen that if they made that camera with a digital sensor (I wouldn’t even want a screen! Promise!) I’d use it like no other. I realised that taking an e-p1 and sticking a manual lens on it reproduced 95% of that feeling. I had a Leica 40mm, which suited its diminutive size, so that went on it next (and has hardly come off, I might add). And to top it all, I started using the damn thing on its own terms. In other words, I stared using the screen. I think I have to admit that no-one is going to come up with an eye-level viewfinder that I really want to use outside of the rarified world of the DSLR, so why fight it? The screen is not, as I had assumed it would be, an unusable, second rate method of composition and focus, as a decade of SLR use had trained me to believe it would be. If the only thing that’s standing between you and a m4/3 purchase is the lack or expense of a suitable eye-level viewfinder, this old dog would humbly suggest that you rethink, or at least give it a go. Anyway, most of the time at least, I’ve got a pretty good idea before I even glance down at the screen what I’m going to be getting.

And now I love this camera. Take away the autofocus, judge things by eye, and use the screen as it was meant to be used. The 40mm Leitz is the 35mm equivalent of an 80mm (Oh christ. I don’t think I’m up for explaining that right now. You all know what I mean, right?), which is frankly an odd focal length for me, but I’m getting used to it, and, like any imposed restriction in photography, feeds the creativity. I love seeing things slide in and out of focus. I love the fact that it’s now a superb portrait camera. And yes, I love how it looks, and how people just assume that I’m lugging around an old, if curiously new-looking, 35mm rangefinder. All of these things make me happy.

And most of all, I’m taking pictures again, because it’s always with me. That has to be a good thing? Right?

What I have always enjoyed, however, are review diaries. They are, above all, about a long term relationship with a camera, and, even better, are unashamedly partisan. Bias is fine, as long as you declare it, or make it obvious in your writing (for those who need a masterclass, please check out Mike Johnston at The Online Photographer. An inclusive bias, indeed.) And anyway, as Fitzgerald notes, life is much more successfully looked at from a single window.

So. I’ve had an e-p1 for about, ooh, three months now. It is not a cheap proposition and, to answer the inevitable, no, I would not have it as my only social camera, let alone my only camera. I had sold some unwanted gear to get a Sigma DP-1 a year or so before, but whilst I consider it a great little camera, it just didn’t suit me in the end, especially as my particular one had an execrable battery life. So, I sold that, an that went some way towards funding the little Olympus. The twin lens kit seemed sensible. I didn’t think I’d use the zoom (surprisingly mistaken) and figured I could sell it for more than, effectively, I bought it for. I thought I’d love the 17mm pancake, and use the optical viewfinder almost exclusively. Again, wrong. The 34mm equivalent lens is just a little too wide for my preferences, and although it is a perfectly capable lens, I just can’t seem to get used to it.

So I took it on holiday with me, first to the south of France, then to New York. It worked. It was a perfectly serviceable, workaday camera, and I got a bunch of high quality, tourist snaps. I wasn’t very impressed with any of them. It told me two things: firstly, it did what it said it was going to do very well indeed. The images were great, you can use it instead of a DSLR when you don’t have the space, and so on. But I was having no fun with it. And it showed. Grr. The digital age reared it’s head once again. All perfection, little soul. Where was the soul? Does it not look the part? Do people not stop and take a little, jealous second glance at it? Is it not a beautiful little object in it’s own right? Yes, yes and yes. So why did I not feel like picking it up every time I walked out of the house, like I did with the Canonet GIII QL17, 40 years it’s senior, for which I had paid the princely sum of £23 a month or so previously?

I took it with me, out and about, throughout the summer. I couldn’t work it out. Then I did something that I thought was, frankly, ridiculous, and which had nothing to do with why I bought the damned thing originally.

I’ll tell you about it next time.