Photokina 2012 - The Press Day

Traditionally the day before Photokina is a press day, filled with overlapping press meetings from dawn till late night. As I am not (any more) a journalist and don´t have (any more) a press card, I (can) only visit those meetings I am invited to attend. This year I dropped by at Olympus, Canon and finished the day at Leica party. The exact information and specs of all the new stuff can be found all over the internet and on manufacturer sites. I am not going to copy them here. Just some notes from my point of view.

Olympus

The new PENs have just the same capability as OM-D if you think about purely about image quality potential. Same sensor, same processor. Although they look superficially the same as earlier PENs, they are totally new cameras. Of course they are otherwise stripped down in many ways if you compare to OM-D. No EVF, IBIS works only 2-ways and so on.

New PENs have a really nice and working connectivity through Toshiba´s new Flash Air card. The card creates automatically a password protected hotspot which is just as automatically found by iPhone and Android phones. Olympus has a free app for both platforms. This app reads automatically thumbnails from the card inside camera and then you can choose what to do with images; save them in phone, send them to facebook or other social media, send as emails, send to Apple photo stream or what ever. Flash Air hotspot is turned on and off in camera so it draws power from camera battery only when needed. Olympus app will be downloadable in October when cameras start shipping and Toshiba Flash Air card is included with each PEN.

You can use Flash Card and Olympus app also with OM-D but there is no password protection and the card is on all the time if camera has power on. Hopefully we have firmware update for Flash Air support for OM-D and suitable older models. This was one of my requests for Mr. Terada from Olympus.

Olympus intoduced a new, black mFT 15mm f/8 Lens Cap. They really call this lens as Lens Cap and it is listed as among accessories, not lenses. It is thin as a body cap, has lens cap feature when closed and has 3 lens elements. It has two settings when open: hyperfocal focusing with DOF from 1m to far away and close-up focusing with DOF starting from 30cm up. Image quality should be almost on the same level as with kit zoom at same focal length and at best aperture which is not bad at all. Price starting at 79€ but I guess it will soon be more like 50€ or given away as an extra.

Previously announced mFT 60mm f/2.8 Macro is now ready to be shipped. It focuses up to 1:1 magnification. This black lens is weather sealed and has internal focusing. The focusing mechanism is the most complex of any Olympus internal focusing systems including zooms. There are three groups that move relatively to each other by stepper motors while focusing. Actually the lens is surprisingly light and small, even filter thread is 46mm. I have been told from inside Olympus development that the image quality is better than with the famed FT 50mm f/2 Macro. Price is set at 499€. Lens hood, which is a very clever collapsible model, is not included. It should be, even if the price was slightly higher. As said, 60mm Macro is ready to be shipped and I was promised a test example next week.

Olympus showed a working prototype of mFT 17mm f/1.8 wide angle. This lens has similar construction (no weather sealing), finish and snap manual focusing feature as mFT 12mm f/2 lens. It is shorter but a little fatter than 24mm lens as seen in the image above. Again I have been told that image quality is very high, although I heard yesterday it being compared to a lens which I do not see as high enough in my scale... Hopefully expectations are fulfilled as this is for me THE most expected lens of all, otherwise I will be VERY, VERY, VERY disappointed. I should be getting a test example later this year and shipments should start early next year. I know that many of you don´t like it but the color is silver only at this point.

And then there is also the already infamous Limited Edition Black 12mm f/2 lens. The price with matching black metal lens hood and metal lens cap is an outrageous 1000 euros. In my book this fact is just as stupid as Hasselblad Lunar. Olympus, this not the way to treat enthusiast and pro shooters! Luckily we in Finland have the reasonable Olympus Finland which has set for every black 12mm set, which they can import, a price of 850 euros. Sadly they could get less than 100 sets.

Olympus has upgraded XZ-1 into a more ambitious XZ-2.

One thing I also have researched lately is video sound, and I have tried these Olympus recorders. Sadly I have not enough knowledge and background experience to write about my experiences as yet.

Canon

Canon introduced EOS 6D, which is their smallest and lightest full frame DSLR. It has also built in GPS and wifi. If I was still interested in this camera category for my own use, I would be very interested in EOS 6D. Looks and feels good. When I compare EOS 6D to Nikon 600, they feel like cousins and one could see them even as twin brothers. It all depends on what you are looking for. Pricewise they also start at same level slightly above 2000€, but I would see them both dropping very soon just below 2000€. APS-C size has another dent in it´s shield.

Of all Canon news, the most interesting is Project 1709, which goes now into closed beta. This peculiar name contains a cloud service for images. For Canon it is partly about strenghtening their brand and extending their product portfolio better from equipment into service and content. Actually this extention means now the general audience as in b-to-b field Canon is there already. Canon´s cloud is not only for keeping and indexing images, it is also for printing them out as various products. And that´s one area where Canon is strong with its printers and digital printing machines. The screenshot above shows how you can build a timeline of images inside Project 1709.

Other than these and new printers Canon had excellent food, company and weather at their 25th Anniversary of EOS System at Rheinterrassen.

Leica

Directly from Canon it was time to move to Hall 1, which is now taken by Leica. While Canon presentation was typically Canon, which means strict company hierarchy plus slide with three points after slide with three points, Leica was very casual and smiling.

More than smiling, it was also touching when Nick Ut and Kim Phuc were called on stage. In 1972 Kim Phuc was 9 years old when she and her brothers and cousins were hit by American bombing during the Vietnam war. Kim Phuc was burned by napalm. Nick Ut was then a 22 years old photojournalist who took pictures of them running away from continuing bomb blasts. Nick went on to drive Kim Phuc to hospital and only after doing this took care of his images. One of images with naked and burnt Kim Phuc in the center, and those other children, some soldiers and bombing around her, caught the attention of everyone who saw it. Nick won Pulitzer Prize and this image is now part of our collective memory.

Later Nick Ut traced down Kim Phuc and helped her in her life and they have stayed in touch. Kim Ut was now awarded into Leica Hall of Fame. To see these two people on stage and hear their stories about this image (which I have seen so many times) and their lives was already worth coming to Cologne.

After this, the lights went on and we had the chance to see the extensive photgraphy exhibition Leica has gathered in their Hall. Well done Leica, superb!

Leica introduced also new products:

- Paul Smith designed Leica X2 version, which, for me, means just a very colorful color scheme. However, for me the Leica way of pimping camera models is kind of honest way to do it as they don´t pretend to be anything else than what they are. Leicas.

- The Leica M, THE real news, which is now a true full format mirrorless system camera. It can be used as a traditional rangefinder camera but just as well as a modern fully digital camera with EVF and live view monitor for both stills and HD video.

- The Leica M-E, which is slightly stripped down and adjusted successor of M9

- The Leica S, which is a slightly scaled down and enchanced version of previous model S2.

Leica is getting rid of model numbering in their earlier fashion of M8 > M9 > etc. Leica M is from now on Leica M just like Porsche 911 has always been Porsche 911.

New products caused a huge hulabaloo around them with everyone taking zillions of pictures. And then everyone was ready to party!

But now, I must leave to a meeting at Leica Hall where I have a better chance to see and try new cameras. Maybe more of them later...

-p-

Olympus E-P1: Infrared

E-P1 is turning out to be a capable camera in more ways than I hoped for. One of the happy surprises with it is its capability to shoot infrared images. 

Almost immediately it was obvious that E-P1 has a different IR response than my Canon and Nikon DSLRs. They are not sensitive to IR and E-P1 is. That was seen in standard landscapes with sky in view. High sky has a very different tone. Below is one of my early cloud shots with E-P1. No filters used here.

It is really easy to make tonal adjustments in Lightroom to make skies almost black and get moody images like this one. Of course you need nice clouds to start with ;-)

That´s, by the way, one of E-P1´s other strong points. Clouds just happen, you need to have a camera with you right at that precise moment.

In the Internet I had previously noticed some sites on using Olympus 4/3 cameras for IR images. This information came back to my mind after these cloud experiments. So, I tried to experiment some more with IR filter. I had Cokin´s square A007 filter, which is the same as 89B (Wratten) or R72. Images below are shot keeping this filter in front of lens during exposure, just by hand. Even this clumsy trial proved the point for me and now I have ordered threaded IR filters for my lenses. Here´s some early advice if you want to try. These images were shot as JPGs and adjusted tonally in Lightroom.

• You can compose with IR filter in front of lens using LCD screen. It is not necessary to remove filter like with normal DSLR.
• E-P1 focuses nicely through filter, just point into a contrasty area.
• E-P1 exposure metering works fine. Just compensate +3 or +2 EV.
• You need a lot more exposure than normally, roughly 8-10 stops.
• It is possible to shoot noisy handheld images at ISO 3200-6400, even ISO 1600.
• You get a really nice quality by using tripod and ISO 100-400.

Kit zoom at 19mm focal lenght, 13 seconds, f/8, ISO 400, tripod. Image is not quite sharp because I was handholding square Cokin filter against lens, which caused some vibration. 

17mm pancake prime, 1/40 s, f/2.8, ISO 6400

Olympus E-P1, hands on

In my previous blog I was wondering Olympus´ zeal of retroing with E-P1. Yes, I do like it´s styling, it´s pretty, but these things are quite trivial in the end, I really did not feel like using an old time Pen camera while shooting. This is a modern, small system camera and that´s fine with me.

I had for three days this Olympus two lens kit shown in picture above: E-P1 body, zoom 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6, "pancake" prime 17mm f/2.8 and optical viewfinder VF1 which is intended for 17mm lens. This body was a pre production camera which is apparently close to the final production camera. Its firmware version was exactly 1.0. Pre-production cameras may have differences, so all my writings and photos tell about a camera that is as good or, possibly, in some cases slightly worse than the final production camera. 

My experience is not a camera test telling about every operation or characteristics of the camera. I tell how well the camera suits to my own needs, using only part of Olympus E-P1's features. 

Configuration 

The first task with a new camera is to configurate it to suit my way of using a camera. Here E-P1 was excellent. It has really good and varied menu options and also faster shortcuts for main functions. It was easy and logical to learn, review and adjust camera´s functions. A PDF manual was available but, in reality, I needed only to check some of the things to be sure that I had got it right. 

While shooting, in addition to shutter button, the main buttons for me are focusing, exposure program shift and exposure correction. These are all managed by three right hand fingers. The picture below shows the most important functions for myself. 1) Camera's power button. 2) Thumb locks focusing with the AFL / AEL button. Focus point is shown on LCD as a green movable frame and focus lock with a green circle. 3) Program shift with vertical dial in upper right corner. LCD displays shutter speed and aperture, and Ps symbol as indication of program shift. 5) Exposure correction is done with two fingers, middle finger and thumb. Middle finger presses a button next to shutter button and thumb rotates vertical dial to the desired correction. Exposure correction is done in 0.3 aperture steps within + - 3 EV values. 4) Shutte button has exposure lock as like normal when pressed halfway down. This is exactly the same way I use my own DSLRs. 

I used both AUTO-ISO and fixed ISO 100 sensitivity. They are quick to change. AUTO-ISO is working well and sensibly, although it can not be configured further. Lowest sensitivity is sadly ISO 200. Why on earth it can´t be ISO 100? 

First impressions 

I used the camera mostly with separate viewfinder. Almost immediately, it was obvious that the viewfinder angle is narrower than the 17mm pancake lens. Equally quick was to check that it corresponds very closely to kit zoom`s marked 18mm focal length. So, I had to get used to crop a little tighter with 17mm lens. I was expecting that in this price range the optical viewfinder image should be slightly rounded, but still I would have liked to be surprised. But I can live with this. A good feature with finder and kit zoom is that 18mm position can be seen at the bottom of the viewfinder. It is therefore easy both to crop exactly or zoom a little wider or tighter as necessary. 

In a DSLR I use thumb focusing in servo mode. Press the button, and camera focuses where I want. Keep the button pressed, and camera focuses and keeps the moving subject focused. This can also be configured in E-P1. Unfortunately, in servo mode camera just keeps focusing, there is no locking in the same way that I am used to. Focusing follows a moving object, but it is quite slow at least with this firmware. Even user rmanual says that the camera is trying to focus on the moving object. That´s honest. So I rejected servo mode without further tries, and I can´t see this camera suitable for anyone who needs to shoot something like dogs running. Single shot thumb focusing keeps focusing distance locked unless I want to focus again. This keeps camera´s shutter lag very short. If you don´t need to focus, E-P1 shoots as fast as any comparable camera.

The camera seems to be very well made with it´s metal shell. Inside that there is a plastic composite structure typical in this price category. Also lenses seem to have well made plastic structures. Kit zoom has some play like there is with all brands. Sensor (or more accurately filters in front of it) is exposed when you change lenses, which is not the best situation. In any case, shutter curtain is open at this moment.

Camera´s recording medium is an SD or SDHC card, which is the most sensible choice of such a camera. 

There was a nice leather shoulder strap attached to the camera. I thought first to change it into a pocket camera style wrist strap but actually shoulder strap worked nicely wrist-wound like with DSLRs. E-P1 has just and just enough weight to be hang on shoulder.

Exposure 

I used the camera only in Program AE with ESP (multi pattern) metering, because vertical dial makes it possible to alter shutter speed/aperture pair. Camera exposed generally accurately and logically. Of course there were cases where I wanted to depart from what camera suggested, but actually even less than with eg. Nikon D3x´s multi pattern metering. I shot both at ISO 100 and AUTO-ISO and it had no effect on accuracy.

E-P1 has of course manual exposure, shutter and aperture priority modes and "intelligent" AE. I did not try those this time but in the future I would surely use this camera also with shutter and aperture priority modes.

White Balance 

Olympus E-P1's automatic white balance is one of most accurate that I have come across. I felt some need to correct afterwards, mainly open shadows and cloudy scenes needed some wamth and less magenta. Some of this is surely an issue of taste. So, I ended up this time using only AWB as there was no need for any other setting.

Lenses 

I was surprised by the quality of kit zoom at around 18mm focal length. It has nice sharpness and contrast, and keeps straight edges fairly well. There is some chromatic aberration, otherwise this performance would be kind of unnatural for a cheap kit lens. In fact, I prefer kit zoom to 17mm prime at this focal length. I did not compare them by shooting the same subject but somehow kit zoom images had a better mojo. At longer focal lengths it zoom shows some lack of contrast which is typical for this group of lenses. It´s therefore sometimes difficult to use lens wide open to make subject stand out, when subject does not pop out by sharpening. But here by sharp I´m speaking about A3 size prints. In smaller sizes images are sharp enough. Typically kit zoom´s negative feature is lack of speed, especially at long focal lenghts. The other side of same thing is small size, and especially nice is collapsible construction for easy carry around.

17mm prime left me with somewhat lukewarm impression optically. I don´t mean that it´s bad but E-P1 sensor is better than this lens. Again on the other side is camera´s extremely handy size with this lens and reasonable maximum aperture. Better still is that this lens gives plenty of depth of field for candid street photography. Already aperture 2.8 gives practically the same  depth of field as aperture 5.6 in a comparable 35mm lens for 35mm camera. This 17mm lens proved out to be extremely carefree lens, it´s easy to use for candid photography and difficult to really fail.

Stabilizer and dust removal 

I had IS on all the time at the general IS1 position. Other options are disabled, or following a moving object horizontally or vertically. I am so used to optical stabilizer that I actually forgot the existence of IS as I did not notice it working at all. Therefore I did not test any shooting situations with stabilization on or off. I just noticed that images were sharp all the time. Olympus says that IS has max. 4 steps efficiency which is plenty. Anyway IS working like this emphasized even more the positive carefree nature of E-P1.

Dust, I did not see any in my pictures, which a good point and illustrates the efficiency of Olympus dust removal. Namely, this sample camera had already seen a lot of usage judging from fingerprints and dirt on all lens surfaces when I got it. 

Shooting speed and focusing

I tried: In RAW-only mode E-P1 shoots 12 frames at 3 frames per second before buffer is full and I could not shoot any more. The last frames are not really any more at 3 frames per second but close enough that I counted them in. Obviously this number depends also on memory card speed and mine were Sandisk 30MB Extreme IIIs. Like I wrote before, I used E-P1 clearly in two steps: first focusing then exposure and they are not related to each other. In this method the camera shoots exactly when I want and makes also possible relatively fast continuos shooting.

When focusing is configurated into thumb button, E-P1 doesn´t halt to wait for autofocus and while there´s generally lots of depth of field, E-P1 is really suited for street  and candid photography. With a little practice this is doable already from almost maximum aperture with 17mm lens without any need for re-focusing.

Autofocusing was very reliable, I did not have any problems. Autofocus does every time a kind of iiuu-iiuu-bling operation which means it does not just snap on like with best system cameras. While E-P1 is definitely not an action focusing camera, I did not consider it as slow for my subjects and when needed I shot with pre-focus. With optical view finder I used only central focus point because optical VF doesn´t show any information. I pointed optical VF´s center to where I wanted to focus, pressed button, heard bling and re-framed. Actually this works clearly faster than the very same operation manually with a rangefinder camera like Leica M8. Other focusing points are of course usable when shooting via LCD.

Battery 

The camera's battery was a disappointment after experience with latest DSLRs. It is smallish and runs empty after some 200 shots when walking with camera on. Here I must notify that I do not know the history of this sample camera and it´s battery. Also the battery is not charged very quickly. On the other hand this battery is so small that it is easy to carry around a couple of spares. And again on the other hand, my opinion is that E-P1´s ergonomics would have been better with a larger grip. For instance a centimeter protruding grip wouldn´t have made E-P1 any bigger but there would have been some space for a litte larger battery. But now I guess I´m already stepping into region of Pen design ideology. I can do with a few small batteries. And especially those who intend to shoot video with E-P1 should prepare to acquire extra batteries.

The camera's power button is conveniently next to the shutter. After running out of power once I started to tap power off whenever there was nothing to shoot immediately in sight. The camera starts up again reasonably quickly. 

Pen only from the front, rear is digi 

E-P1´s Pen design ideology is seen only from the lens side, so a grip would not have been shame. Namely from the back side it is a very ordinary digital camera. Thats no reproach as all the button´s are located in proper places.

LCD screen is big and bright, exceptionally usable in the sun. Sadly LCD goes totally black for vertical images when I´m wearing my polaroid sunglasses. The screen resolution is modest by current standards. Maybe Olympus has aimed for brightness and less battery drainage instead of resolution? Anyway judging image sharpness was a bit challenging for me. LCD was handy in some cases and I used it when needed. Especially I used it in close focusing situations (eg. flowers) where I framed and sought focus by moving camera slightly back and forth. I other cases auto focus is precise and LCD is needed only for composition. LCD screen can be also used for setting exposure, especially with live histogram.

RAW and Olympus Studio 2 

I shot exclusively in RAW format. During shooting, there was nothing special to it, and the only time I hit buffer limit was during before mentioned test. Camera was ready for the next shot all the time. After shooting I copied sdhc-card into computer and opened images into Olympus Studio 2 software. During test it was the only MAC RAW converter for E-P1 I knew.

This was my first experience with said software. By features it looks good. There are plenty of adjustments, even overlapping, they are precise and adjustment ranges are mostly generous. In spite of all this, using software was painful, to be honest. First some overlapping adjustments and their distribution into two separate tabs made workflow unintuitive. Worse, no adjustment is saved into or with RAW image. Saving means rendering a TIFF or JPG image at those settings, and RAW image loses everything. Next time you have to start again from scratch. Adjustments, for every image if you want, can be saved as a separate recipe which then can be downloaded again or copied into new image. Even worse than this was enormous slowness. I tried software in a MAC Pro quad with lots of memory. After any adjustment you have to wait and wait and wait, especially in 1:1 view. This experience sends Olympus in my list to the same category with almost all other Japanese cameramakers. This category is semi-well made and thus useless RAW converters. My Gallery of E-P1 images shows somewhat incomplete images because my patience simply run out. There is some under or over corrected CA, some over or under sharpening and some imbalance in the relationship between sharpening and noise reduction. I simply couldn´t cope with screen update after every adjustment of every image to adjust them individually. Anyway, these images tell all the essential things about E-P1 image quality already now.

Image quality

Lately my cameras in use have been Canon 5D MkII and Nikon D3x with some of their best lenses. So, I had to adjust my rating scale for quality when I judged E-P1 images because now the level of quality is not the same. It can´t be, naturally. But when I compare with the best  P&S cameras like Panasonic LX-3 I must say that we are not there either. E-P1 is in between, clearly better that P&S, clearly worse than full size DSLR. This is what I frankly waited and hoped for.

At ISO 100 of the quality is particularly good. Sharp and pixel structure allows good degree of sharpening control. Good color. Some noise in the shadows but nothing to be worried about even in larger prints. However, there is a surprisingly big difference already between ISO 100 and ISO 200. Noise grain gets bigger and starts to creep up from the shadows. In DSLRs I use, I have become used to see not much difference here in normally lit images. This fact makes it especially sad that Auto-ISO´s lowest sensitivity is ISO 200.

With bigger ISO´s noise is more and more prominent but very gradually after that leap at ISO 200. For me ISO 1600 is the practical limit, I can tolerate noise up to there but not above. The nature of noise is what usually is called film like, monochromatic. To be honest I have seen a lot worse years ago when I had to use sensitive color films. What I like is that highlight areas stay sharp and clean, high ISO speed and noise crawling up from shadows to medium to three quarter tones are tied together. My Gallery images are sharpened in Olympus Studio 2, where it can be done only for entire image. Better result can be obtained in Phostoshop where sharpening can be contained into less noisy areas of image.

All in all, I´m very happy with image quality at ISO 100. Other sensitivities are usable as needed and in relation to E-P1´s purpose for me. One issue that I noticed is some smearing of red color, but I leave it to be investigated later with other RAW converters. Anyway, this level of quality is totally different from times with Olympus XA, dramatically better. At digital age this is so easily forgotten as standards are creeping up year by year.

Other Features 

I did not try any other features. I did not try the video. I do not try long exposures times . I do not try flash photography . No Art settings nor any other of camera´s many features and possibilities. Description of the camera's full range of features and more detailed technical information can be found on the Olympus website. This short test period left much for the next time because I just wanted to make sure of one thing. 

Sum summarum 

The very thing that I wanted to find out was: Is this finally my new Olympus XA? Is this a fast and precise acting, responsive, but smaller and lighter camera than DSLR, which can be carried around and be available almost everywhere and with which I can just go to shoot without fretting image quality compromises? The answer is: Yes. There are always some reservations, but now I know quite well E-P1´s limits for me and the limits are wide-ranging enough. 

I know very well that m4/3 system will soon see even better cameras, and mirrorless/EVF cameras will be seen in other systems with larger sensors. But still, my waiting ended here. 

-p-