Zuiko and the Orchid Gardens

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It was the first time I ever set foot at the Kuala Lumpur Orchid & Hibiscus Garden. Since it was on a weekday, I got in for free. During the weekends or special holidays, there is an RM1 entry fee.

I needed some shutter therapy lately. The amount of stress at work is quite high, and a relaxing stroll in the gardens should be good to lessen the strain. It was a bright cloudy day, which in effect, produced the best lighting condition to shoot flower macros. This was a good thing, because for some unknown reason I left my FL-50R flash at home. The soft diffusion by the clouds meant that the sunlight was evenly spread out without any harsh shadows; thus, the need for fill-flash was moot.

The only lens I brought along the E-3 was the Zuiko Digital ED50mm F2.0 macro lens. It proved to be more than enough for me to capture the beauty of the flowers in the gardens.

Upon entry, I was greeted with lush and bright colors of the orchids; white, red orange, purple and even green orchids! The richness of the colors brought in some therapeutic effect to my mind, body and soul. Throughout the entire trip I was immersed in the nature's beauty.

Indeed, such a beautiful creation, the flower is.

And it brought me great relief and satisfaction, too!

Zuiko and a Football Legend

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This picture was taken quite a while back, around June.

Santokh Singh aka Iron Man was one of Malaysian football stalwart in the late 70s early 80s that qualified for 2 Olympic games, Munich 1972 and Moscow 1980 (in which Malaysia boycotted due to the Afghanistan invasion). Malaysia at the time was easily considered among the elite in Asian football (twice 3rd place), and the players at the time included Dato' Soh Chin Aun (Towkay), Jamal Nasir, James Wong, the late R. Arumugam (Spiderman) and the late Mokhtar Dahari (Super Mokh).

I remembered watching them on the small black & white TV screen chasing the white speck of a ball. Yes, resolution was non-existent compared to the 720p resolution we have on Astro TV nowadays! I was merely 7 or 8 years old at the time, and was very proud of them. Those were the time when it was proud to play football. (Eventually I changed sports code to Union Rugby in my teenage years after experiencing the football grassroots politics at school level that may be one of the actual cause of the pitfall of Malaysian football now).

E-30 with Zuiko Digital ED35-100mm F2.0

100mm, f/2.8, 1/200s, ISO800, -0.7ev

The talk was short and entertaining. See, this was done in June, when the FIFA World Cup Finals mania was at its peak. And, the spirit of Malaysia Olympic Team 1980 was rejuvenated to rekindle the football glories past. Santokh was a simple chap, and his witty quips made the crowd laugh. When asked to comment on the current football situation, he passed.

I think many of the 1980 Golden Generation wouldn't want to make statements that actually most Malaysians already know. It's a continuous debate among all walks of life on how to cure the Malaysian football disease, and it has been 30 years since! Until now, there's none. I bet cancer and HIV have a better chance of getting a cure than our national football team. For one, there's no way in my lifetime to see Malaysia play a minute of football in the FIFA World Cup Finals. I can guarantee that.

Aaaah.. such a sad state in our football is in.

At least, I learned one thing from Santokh though. One person did ask if he had any advise to the young players to at least bring back some pride or fresh air to the state of our football. Santokh's answer was simple, "Just have the 3D's! Determination, Discipline, Dedication!".

Though, I still remember when Malaysia lost to England 2-4 in June, 1991. That was entertaining football and the Malaysian players actually were at awe with Gary Lineker. Eventually, he scored all goals for England. Hmmmm.... I thought Malaysian football was getting better.... Ohhh Boy, was I wrong. The icing on the cake was the big bribery bust of 1994/95 which hurtled Malaysian football to the Stone Age!

Zuiko and the Palm Frond

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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.

:)

Zuiko and the Shrouded

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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!

Zuiko and E-5 Withdrawal

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* 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?

Zuiko and E-5: Day 4

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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!!

Zuiko and E-5: Day 3

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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.