It was one of those lazy Sunday afternoons, where I was stuck with nothing to do.
Sitting down on the rattan chair, watching my decrepit garden slowly being overrun by weeds, I glazed on the barbecue grill. It had been a while since we had a cookout. Hmmm.. now, since I am thinking about it, maybe looking forward to have one before the month ends. At the bottom of a grill was the fan I use to flame the fire, and it's made of palm frond. The shape really looks like the playing cards "spades" insignia, that posed an idea for a photographic subject. Now that looked like something worthwhile to shoot.
50mm, f/2.8, 1/640s, ISO400, -0.3ev
I panned my E-3 with the Zuiko Digital ED50mm F2.0 Macro lens at various angles looking for interesting images. Many angles and composition later, I saw this effect. It looked cool. The palm wavy effect, coupled with fading of both ends of the fan created a dreamy yet eerie abstract. To add depth and tone, I positioned the fan's edge facing the lawn to compose the greenish fade out to the image. I was thinking of red, rather than green; however, I think not to change the color in post-process. I can live with that.
Aaaaahhh, life simple pleasures are sometimes just a click away. Never close your eyes for you might miss the beauty the world can give.
Weird as it may seem, but the E-5 has put back my lost Mojo recently. I feel reborn, with the new spur to create images with my E-3. Since I got the E-30, the E-3 got a rather 2nd class treatment. It spends most of its time in the dry box, only to be used as a backup for event shoots. It is simply because of the more superior E-30 image quality.
Somehow, the E-5 experience has breathed in new spirit into the E-3. I can't explain the sensation, but boy am I glad to shoot picturesque with the E-3 with greater purpose now!
Recently my 16-month young boy has been very active walking and climbing at anything in the house. I make a point to follow his movements using the E-3 and the Zuiko Digital ED50mm F2.0 Macro. The choice is simply due to portability and ergonomics.
50mm, f/2, 1/400s, ISO1600, -0.3ev
One instant time, I saw him playing with the day curtain. Without hesitation, I pressed the shutter to capture the glowing moment. I was amazed with the E-3's matrix metering to handle the strongbacklight and its rapid auto focus to tame the erratic 50mm lens.
Sometimes I have to ask myself that some things are meant to be simple. And this old workhorse has proven itself to be worthy again.
Oh, yea.... for those interested to buy my E-3, please contact me directly. It's on sale to finance my E-5 pursuit!
* A word of caution, image may not be suitable for vegetarians.
Urrrgggh... no E-5 to shoot with!
What should I do to remedy the pain??
Wait a minute... why don't I pixel peep some of E-5's pics. Since I didn't have time to do it due to severe time constraints during the E-5 weekend madness, now is the perfect time to nit pick some of the images that I captured.
* Please take note that the E-5 used for this blog review was a pre-production unit with Firmware 1.0.
Well, to be honest, the rapid shots I did with the E-5 mostly were events type, and not really pixel peeping material. I had a hard time finding a handful out of hundreds. So far, I found one.
E-5 with Zuiko Digital ED35-100mm F2.0
33mm, f/4.0, 1/250s, ISO200
All the shots I posted in my 4-day blog with E-5 are either straight-out-of-camera JPEGs or straight-out-of-Olympus-Studio RAWs. I did not do any postprocessing with regards to any image enhancement techniques.
Well, for this image, I did some work with the GIMP software. I just upped the contrast with masking and bumped the sharpness a tad with High Pass Filter. Other than that, nothing was done.
To start with, I am going to nit-pick on the exposure. This image was metered with the ESP 49-point matrix metering system. I believe there's not much tweak in the current E-5 compared to the E-30. Notice that my exposure was not set to biased -0.3ev as I usually do with the E-3 and E-30. This was purposely done during the test to see how the E-5 metering cope with high contrast scenes. When I processed the RAW file in Olympus Studio, I noticed that the cook's white hat was in Zone XIII or IX as there's no detail at all. I tried to pull down the exposure by 0.7ev, and the whole histogram shifted within an acceptable shadow-highlight range. Typical, I told myself.
Thus, the best way to deal with this is to pre-set 0.3ev in the Exposure Shift function of the E-5, or just bias the EV by -0.3 using the dial.
As can be seen the highlight is blasted into kingdom come, image is 100% crop
Actually, there's enough range to cover this scene from Zone II to Zone XIII but instead the ESP metered between Zone III and Zone IX, as the shadows still show some detail but the highlight is burnt. I don't blame much on the meter, as the overall scene is biased to be darker, and in the effort of the AE to compensate for potential underexposure, it overexposes for the goodness of the cook's hat.
But there's still space for shadows to show detail, image is 100% crop
Hmmmm.. I wish Olympus can produce a much improved ESP metering system, but for a seasoned E-system user like me, I know how to cope with it.
Okay, enough with the exposure stuff. I will now move on to nit-pick on the resolution of the whole system with the Zuiko Digital ED35-100mm F2.0 lens.
In general, I am very satisfied with the edge sharpness of the image, and somehow I didn't get sharp focus at the center of the image when it's cropped 100%. As the general rule, I used f/4 in many situations to get acceptably sharp images for event shoots. Maybe there's not much depth-of-field for this shot, maybe f/8 should do it. Ah well...
If only I have used f/8 aperture, then this would be sharp. Then again, I won't be able to get the mood I wanted, image is 100% crop
The below image that is slightly off to the bottom left of the frame exhibits excellent details, especially the grains of spice used to marinade the lamb can be clearly seen.
Texture is detailed clearly with details of the spices used, image is 100% crop
And finally, the last image below really shows the details even at the edge of the frame. I have nothing much to comment on the E-5's ability to resolve the SHG lenses. I salute Olympus for a job well done!!
The fabric's weave on the collar can be clearly seen even at the edge of the frame, image is 100% crop
Wow, I found another picture with edge-to-edge sharpness. This is even better than the sample above. Why? Because this picture was straight-out-of-the-camera-JPEG without any additional sharpening done!!!! Please click HERE to get the full 12MP resolution, and marvel at the amazing detail with shots made by the Zuiko Digital ED35-100mm F2.0 at WIDE OPEN F/2.0!!!!!
The two hours I took to write this blog has been a good therapy for me to cope with the E-5 withdrawal. I don't know how long will this last; maybe I need to write another blog tomorrow!!
How about commentary on how accurate AWB is compared to preset WB?
This is the day. The sad day. The day I have to return the E-5 to Olympus Malaysia.
E-5 with Zuiko Digital 14-54mm F2.8-3.5 mk2
On my way to work, a small mishap happened. I ran out of gas!!! A small miscalculation on the reserve. I was just 1km away from the nearest petrol kiosk. But then, it turned out to be a blessing.
While waiting for the ELITE Expressway Patrol to pass by, I managed to make some C-AF rapid shots. The fast moving cars at the excess of 100km/h (55mph) were just perfect!!
As I had experience shooting C-AF sequence at 5fps with RAW + SuperFine JPEG (total of 18-20MB per shot) during my kid's concert yesterday, the limit of the buffer was 7 frames. As can be seen in the panorama stitch shot above, I was stuck after the 7th frame!
About the C-AF performance? Well, most of it was based on technique and approach. In this case, my experience was about 70-80% hit rate. This was the only clean sequence I got out of 4 attempts. To tell you the truth, if I had been doing this type of shots day-in day-out, the hit rate might have been in the high 90%.
A quick landscape shot of the ELITE and KESAS expressways interchange
After my mishap was settled, I sped off to Olympus Malaysia office at Mont Kiara. I was thinking, I might as well milk out the last drop of pixel out of this E-5. Yeah, that's a great idea! The indoor shots were between ISO800 and 1600, while outdoor shots were at ISO200. All using Dramatic Tone, as I was at high emotions actually!
Dark parking bay below the office.
Olympus office is somewhere here.
At Olympus, I was greeted by Mr Yang (not a real name). I shared my experience, and felt very sad about it. We exchanged experiences shooting the E-5, and he showed me some great prints at A3-size to show the edge-to-edge details. Well, I haven't printed my shots yet, and boy were the prints looked great!!
After about half an hour chit-chat, I bid farewell, just after we were joined by Mr Big Boss. I also exchanged experience about the shoot with him, and also tried to lobby them to loan a couple of E-5s to our small community's upcoming trip up Mount Ledang (the MyChiaroscuro.net). Hope they agree to the idea, because brother Robin Wong will be joining the trip, too.
Entering with sadness...
Olympus cameras display
I just wished that I just could just grab hold of the bag and ran away!!
Well, now I am having a severe E-5 withdrawal syndrome. My mood is a bit off, and strangely when I arrive home I immediately grab hold of the E-3... Three days were just not enough!!! And, I apologize for any shortcomings of my write-up regarding the E-5 as I did not have much time to really study and test its capabilities.
It's going to be a tough few weeks for me to cope with the loss!!
It's a cool morning today, the sky seems quite blue. Let's start off the day with some technical discussion. Olympus has briefed me about how they achieved "Highest per pixel sharpness" with the E-5. What this means is that with whatever technology that Olympus has, hopefully it's cutting edge, the Truepic V+ "Fine Detail Processor" looks into each pixel and process the sharpness and moire to ensure the best image quality the sensor can capture. Also, the Optical Filter, aka AA (Anti Aliasing) Filter is much weaker than the E-30 to allow more resolution from the Zuiko Digital lens to pass to the 12M Live MOS Sensor. In effect, the only changes made from the E-30 to the E-5 with regards to image capture are these two.
From the sample images, I have started to see improvements on the sharpness of the E-5 over the E-3. I have yet to take some E-30 images to compare, though. I might do it today or tomorrow. I apologize for not having time pixel peep, as I only have 3 days to test this camera.
I managed to make a shot to compare the E-5 and E-30. All settings at default, with ISO200 base and pre-set Sunny WB. Noise Filter is OFF.
1st Image is E-5; 2nd Image is E-30. Click on the camera name to see full 12MP resolution.
From my first impression, the E-5 exhibits sharper resolution, but it's really hard to tell. I think I need a better sample. Hmmm.. maybe later in the afternoon if time permits. Now it's time for breakfast.
What a long and hectic day. In the morning rushed to my aunt's house for the Aqiqah feast (it's a celebration for the birth of a child, where it's recommended to slaughter a lamb and have a feast with family and friends). This time around, I mostly used the Zuiko Digital ED35-100mm F2.0 lens.
The roast lamb being prepared for the feast.
Prayers for child's well-being and family's prosperity
Matrix metering seems able to cope with strong backlighting
At ISO 1600, the shadows are well controlled in strong backlighting
AF is responsive to follow children's playtime action
Colors are still vivid at ISO1600
Later at noon, we rushed to our kid's kindergarten concert event at Shah Alam Convention Center. I decided to leave the Zuiko Digital ED14-35mm F2.0 in the car, and solely used the Zuiko Digital ED35-100mm F2.0 lens. Most of the shots will be from a long distance, anyways. I think all shots in the grand ballroom was shot at ISO1600, and I am very satisfied with the results. The FL-50R became redundant.
See, focus, snap. The AF is fast to rapidly record in split second to get the mood.
Eagerly waiting, the E-5 AF was so quick to lock within milliseconds to capture the moment even at low light
I see Ultraman flying in the hall
Costumes and colors galore in this concert event, and the kids had a great time
Well, that sums up the 3rd and last day of shooting with the E-5. I will be returning the camera on Monday afternoon, during lunch time. I don't think I have time to squeeze during working hours to churn out more shots or explore the E-5.
Well, I started the day early today. Drove off to a spot near my house to shoot sunrise. Ohhh... what luck, it was cloudy. I got to think of something else.
I went back to the house, and thought of doing some simple comparison with the E-3. No, it won't be the ISO thingy, nor the resolution thingy. We should know that in no way the E-3 can top E-5 in both categories, so I won't bother doing it. What I thought was, how about a test for Auto White Balance accuracy.
E-3 with Zuiko Digital ED50mm F2.0 Macro
Auto White Balance, ISO100
E-5 with Zuiko Digital ED50mm F2.0 Macro
Auto White Balance, ISO200
It was cloudy, and I always have this opinion that the E-3 Auto WB tends to be warm. I took a couple of shots, both with base ISO and tried to see what happened. Both cameras had the external WB sensor On. Voila!! To my eyes, the E-5 has better Auto WB for cloudy skies. This is good!! Now, when will the sky clear for sunlight shots?
Okay... it started to rain. Seems I am grounded for today; no point shooting in the rain as I did it yesterday. I guess some product shots of the E-5 was due.
As for the rest of the day, I will be doing some weekend errands. Let's see how to fit in the schedule for some more test shots.
Throughout the late morning and early afternoon was spent at Ikea. We got ourselves a pair of study desks for our kids. Well, that's done, oh ya, I didn't bring the E-5 along as Ikea don't like to see a photographer with a behemoth of a camera and lens running around its store.
Later in the afternoon, I sent my kid to tuition and had an hour or so of spare time. It is about time to test the video capabilities.
E-5 with Zuiko Digital ED14-35mm F2.0 SWD
E-5 with Zuiko Digital ED14-35mm F2.0 SWD
Dramatic Tone art filter, with S-AF at 4 different points
My observations are as follows:
Video is smooth with crisp details captured by the Zuiko lens.
When using Art Filter, expect lost of smoothness or details depending on the type of filter used.
Auto Focus in single mode works, with the adjustment of focus to the selected AF point (there are 11 to choose from) can be made by pressing the shutter button.
SWD lens have smooth CDAF action, with some subtly soft ticking noise captured by the microphone
Jitter is visible in locking focus for the 14-35mm f2.0 SWD lens. Non-SWD lens like the 14-54mm F2.8-3.5 mk11 does not exhibit visible jitter in locking focus.
AF seems to be very responsive in strong backlight and lowlight situations.
Done with the videos, I waited at the front entrance of my kid's tuition center. I saw the nice sunshine hiding, but waiting to reveal itself from the clouds. It's time...
Though it was raining in the morning, it turned to be uber hot in the afternoon. This is typical Malaysian weather. Looking at the sun, I remembered a long time ago during my days as a novice photographer. One of my many teachers taught me how to make the brightest star seen on Earth appear as a star! It was a two step approach; underexpose by 1 or 1.5 stops, and shoot small aperture f/16. Well, the real challenge to do this shot were the patience to wait for the clouds to clear, and the strong eye to withstand the bright sun!! I think I made like a dozen of shots, and this is the best I could get. By the way, by counting the rays, you can know the number of iris blades in the lens. In this case, there are 18 rays, thus 9 blades.
E-5 with Zuiko Digital ED14-35mm F2.0 SWD
14mm, f/22, 1/250s, ISO100, -1.0ev
Wow.. I am beat!!
I just assembled my daughter's desk, and painted it pink. Now waiting it to dry before putting in the second coat.
I am not sure I have time to do some wireless flash shooting tonight.
For tomorrow, it will be a long day! Firstly, there's an open house and aqiqah invitation in Shah Alam in the morning; where I am expecting a lot of people to be there. Later in the afternoon, my son's kindy will be having the annual concert at a hall in USJ1.
What an eventful day tomorrow. I need to recharge the batteries, and not to forget myself!!
Let's have a piece of New York Cheesecake, and be merry.
Before I went to sleep, I managed to do some lowlight stuff. I set the exposure value at around 2.7EV, which was a room lit with two 60W tungsten bulbs. The subject distance from the lamp was about 5 feet.
The exposure is f/2, 1/20s, ISO1600. That is quite dark indeed. The AF seems to be very responsive.
I am now a very satisfied Zuiko Digital ED14-35mm F2.0 SWD user
The E-5 really does justice to both resolution and AF speed for this lens!!!
As promised, I picked up the Olympus E-5 test unit from the Olympus Malaysia office at Mont Kiara during lunch.
Weather-proofing legacy from the E-1 to the E-3, and now the E-5
As always, I was briefed by the Olympus Malaysia executive, Mr. Yang (not a real name) with regards to this little monster. In summary, Olympus sees E-5 as having 4 major improvements or sales pitch.
Highest pixel sharpness
Dust-and-splash proof body
World's 1st 3" Hypercrystal LCD with dual-swivel weather-proof monitor
Dramatic Tone art filter.
To me, the real deal from his presentation was on how Olympus worked on the image quality. Learning from the E-3 debacle, the new TruePic V+ is the super-engine behind the new and improved sharpness. Simply put, the new image processor kicks ass!! Compared to TruePic III+, the E-5 does not require a strong AA filter to reduce the Moire. In effect, with lower strength AA filter, the overall resolution captured by the 12MP Live MOS Sensor is maintained. The TruePic V+ then effectively cleans the Moire.
He also pointed out that the Art Filter now is no longer part of the camera Modes, but part of the image parameters; it's in the same category when selecting Natural, Vivid, Mute or Portrait. This is a good thing, as the camera settings are retained in the Mode selection which enable me to change any image parameters that I want such as ISO, F-number, WB and shutter speed.
My first touch of the E-5 is rather ordinary, as it is really an E-3 construction. The balance, heft and ergonomics are the same. The changes at the back panels are negligible for me. But one thing I notice is the LCD screen presentation. The crisp images are a welcome for chimping; well, I am a chimper! If you think E-30 trumps E-3's LCD, then E-5 is KING!!!
There's this new battery, BLM-5, which is white in color and has a charge of 1620mA. It's compatible with BLM-1 with the exception that it only can be charged with its own charger. Bummer!!
One caveat, though. Although it was confirmed the Firmware to be 1.0 (production), he told me that the AF performance is still not stable. Hmmmm... so much for drawing AF speeds conclusion.
Right after the briefing, I straight away dived into the menu and quickly changed the settings to my liking.
After a quick lunch, I did a quick shoot. Since this test unit is loaned over the weekend, I do not have much time to lose.
A quick trip to Kuala Lumpur City Center was the easiest. The sky was getting darker as the strong winds blowing in the dark clouds. I had to move fast!
In this 30-minute rapid shoot, I shot in Art Filter 10, aka Dramatic Tone. I also shot in RAW for processing later using Olympus Studio. Oh ya, that reminds me to update the Studio to support E-5 RAWs. It has been a while since I did the last update.
UPDATE!! The Olympus Studio is using the latest software; meaning I can't RAW process the Dramatic Tone art filter!!!
Towards the last 5 minutes, rain was pouring. Nothing to worry here, as the whole system is weather-sealed!
E-5 with Zuiko Digital ED7-14mm F4.0
Dramatic Tone art filter that tries to mimic HDR effect
Upon coming back to office, I happened to bump into my colleague who owns a Canon 7D. Without hesitation, I offered him a look at the E-5. He being a hardcore Canonite, was not smitten with the E-5 with the exception of the Dramatic Tone filter. He deliberated the E-5 for a while, and end up asking about video. I told him it's not full 1080p, only 720p. Well, he's not that particular about it, nor am I. But the funny thing about his question was how to activate the video!!
It was hell when there's no manual to guide me, and I scrolled into the menu many times to look for the button. To no avail, it's not in the menu. After 5 minutes scrolling, we never stopped noticing that the AF points button has a video icon next to it. Pressing the button won't do anything except selecting the AF points. I was feeling embarrassed with my Canonite friend. Then, I thought to myself... Oly tends to do things differently, being odd mostly!! Though there's a button for video, it's shared. Thinking outside the still photography box, and into motion photography box, I concluded that "Hey, what if I activate the Live View?". And yes sir, the AF button is transformed into the Video button. Whew, but why, oh, why do I need to press 2 buttons in sequence to activate the video?
Going back home, I had to walk about half a kilometer to the parking lot. There's a mega construction going on down the lot, and I took a shot.
Comparison of Natural colors with Dramatic Tone. Click texts to see full resolution, and feel free to download as these are set as Creative Commons.
Zuiko Digital ED7-14mm F4.0, 7mm, f/7.1, 1/400s, ISO200, -0.3ev.
It's night time already. Time to make some the low light shots.
For tonight, I am just warming up to the feel of shooting high ISO; thus, won't be making much time writing techno-babble. For a start, the ISO acceptance seems to be up by 1 or 2 stops from E-30. In effect with E-5, I am starting to use ISO1600 as my confident level before having to sweat out perfect exposures (see, with higher ISO, perfect exposure is very vital for low noise images). This is also based on the Noise Filter set to Low, which is my default setting.
E-5 with Zuiko Digital ED50mm F2.0
50mm, f/5.6, 1/30s, ISO1600
There are some complementary tin-can-bottle images depicting ISO increases by 1 full stops from 800 to 6400 in my portfolio. You are free to download these, as I changed them to Creative Commons. Most of the images are full copyrighted, sorry.
Maybe tomorrow I will try to focus on some comparison among the E-5, E-30 and E-3. For a start, I might plan for some AF speed tests (though E-5s AF is not stable yet, at least for the test unit I am using now), or some high ISO tests. Let's see how things go tomorrow.
