Breaking the ponderous camera habit – the Olympus XZ-1

Over the past few years, a small number of cameras have gone against the trend for small, pocketable digital cameras. They were built in response to owners of DSLRs who had got a little tired of the bulk and weight of their DSLR gear. Time and again, diehards would evoke the memory of the Olympus XA or similar rangefinders.

The initial response from the manufacturers and photographer peers was “this isn’t the sales and production trend” – the trend is towards higher and higher megapixels, bigger and bigger ultrazooms – those two numbers sell to would be buyers whilst a small body, with a good lens and excellent technical image quality would not be marketable.

Once the competitive market saturated though, the manufacturers could take a breather and assess whether such a modest sized, modest pixel sized, larger sensor camera might be a saleable, niche product item.

First out the door was the Panasonic LX-3 – I have held and admired my friend’s camera and it is indeed a good camera – good technical image quality, an expansive wide angle, clever automatic mode and built to feel like your money was well worth parting with. Canon with their S90 came with an even slimmer body, less wide lens. Again, it “hit the right spot”.

Olympus is late coming to the game but they have achieved some understanding of this market sector. Their candidate is the XZ-1. David Chua courtesy of Olympus Malaysia was kind enough to let me use it for half an hour during a recent field trip / photo walk.

Now, I’ve had interests in both camps – I shoot a DSLR with several lenses and I also shoot a Kodak P880, V705 and even the Samsung Galaxy S Android phone. I’m used to the purposefulness and explicitness of the DSLR and I am used to the quick draw and shoot of V705 and the Galaxy S.

The XZ-1 is smaller than the Panasonic LX-3 – and more importantly, it doesn’t feel so expensive. That’s not such a negative. When I feel that a camera is way expensive, it interferes with my desire to be casual with it, to use it freely. When I held my friend’s LX, it was with some trepidation and care that I handled it. I placed it gently on the table even though it was dense and heavy. The XZ-1 does have a relatively conspicuous and enormous lens (f/1.8 at brightest) and that’s the part that you might be careful with but the package didn’t make me feel overly precious with it – maybe it has less density.

Update: On second acquaintance, the XZ-1 is thinner, taller than the LX-5. The LX-5 feels denser with more cold in the feel of the metal skin. The LX-5 has a stubby protrusion to help your right hand grip the camera. The XZ-1 is taller and thinner than the LX-5. Somehow it doesn’t feel as cold or dense or expensively precious – it’s a perception thing. My right pinkies don’t seem to curl like when you hold a dainty teacup.

Now, the XZ-1 has a short focal length (physically) lens and yet a small f/no – f/1.8 – this means that often it has tremendously deep depth of field and yet with f/1.8, it grabs a lot of light. I set it on Programmed Mode (“P”), even though it has “A” and “M” – my experience with the Kodak P880 is that the designers know they have a deep depth of field and don’t want to go down the slippery slope of high ISO, grainier photos early – so “P” is not an unintelligent optimisation. For small sensor cameras too, the theoretical bogeyman of diffraction limits appears towards f/8 so the idea is to keep your f/no small mostly. In fact, just set it on “P”, point and click.

And I did, at fellow photographers in our group at a shopping mall called The Pavilion in Kuala Lumpur – it was not dim but it was indifferent light and just right for some casual point and shoot testing. Whilst the gang were practising their manual focus lenses on their E-P somethings (and I had also on my E-510 DSLR), the XZ-1 epiphanic moment is that you just go near, point, the face detect auto focus draws a focus square very quickly and the click is done. Takes longer to say than to action.

The result? Overbright white walls (because the faces were in slight shadown and darker than the walls) but the intelligent auto exposure calculation had optimised for the faces –which was the intent. The JPEG White Balance? Very satisfactory, again, nothing to wring your hands about.

If the ISO had to be automatically raised (I had set it for Auto ISO), then of course, you would have some JPEG smearing, viewed close due to the noise reduction but really for  small, let’s point and click cam, that is the last thing on your mind.

Once outside, I happily pointed and clicked, not being very slow behind two of our group. I’ve been the photographer in a family group with a DSLR before and it’s painful for all concerned – you delay them, you are stiff from the waist down because you’re carrying gear and a ponderous “I am a camera” DSLR. With the XZ-1, I happily bent the body, knees, lowered the camera to chest level to helow waist level, all very nimble like. I’ve seen discussions from DSLR owners about “OMG, the XZ-1 does not have this feature, OMG” – really you are in a completely different mindset when you have such a small camera. You really don’t care.

 

 

My conclusion?

Nice JPEG colours, the package knows which subjects I want sharp and well toned – it just works. A breath of fresh air from DSLR shooting.

Observational vs Expressive Styles

In a recent discussion, a respondent asked what I meant when I said that most beginners start with an Observational Style and progressed to an Expressive Style. My take on this is that when one gets a camera and starts shooting, the scene one captures is what the camera sees, not what one wants to convey. Of course, there are exceptions, people who have what we call, a “natural eye” for the photo but they are exceptions rather than the rule.

That “visualising eye” may indeed be inherent or it may be consciously and explicitly developed. Some “get it” early, some achieve some semblance of it, some work very hard but never “get it” – that side of the brain is so recessive that it appears with difficulty. There’s always hope though, that’s what’s so fascinating about going out with the camera on a purposeful mission – your encounter with the world should bring new, unpredictable, savoured moments – if you feel you’ve “been there, done that”, it’s maybe time to give the hobby or your approach to that hobby a rest or a change.

I often see beginners on the DPR Beginners Forum ask – “which camera, which book, which website, which tutorial DVD” and on. And yes, there are products that will provide information but information is not knowledge and knowledge is not “soul”. You really need to go out, hang out with people who have soul, who have passion, to get some Shutter Therapy otherwise, as much as you read about cameras and menus and settings, it is hard to develop your aesthetic appreciation and artistic skill in a vacuum. Of course, there are exceptions.

On a fresh and upbeat topic, I’ve just met up with a nice bunch of guys and girls – they’re members of the Malaysian Pen Lovers / Zuiko Lovers Group. David Chua is the Olympus product and brand evangelist (he assures us it is part time and he has his own clients as well as a young family) and the fabulous Robin Wong turns up when he can to contribute and lead as well. Robin’s written a blog article of our meetup as well: Robin Wong: Olympus Walkabout in KL

The youthful exuberance and joie de vivre is infectious. You really have to walk in their shoes


Add to that, age old memories of that little hill that hold Stadium Merdeka and downtown Petaling Street and it is a magical journey, a revisit to the past and the dilapidation that is here today.


Robin comes from Sarawak, and he sees Kuala Lumpur with new eyes and new visualisations. I do too, as a visitor now, rather than someone who went to two schools in the city. There are so many offbeat visuals jostled within the life and living today. Many family businesses and even shops have extinguished and torn down, but there is still a lot of grit and texture to see.



It’s not an easy life in the streets, in some respects, the whole world has shaken off its lethargy and it is no slack life anywhere else. The work in KL, however can be demonstratively hard.



As the city develops into more styrofoamed, artificially contrived shopping malls, where the environment and appearances are manipulatively manufactured out of textureless blankness are we merely textureless visually or do we still run lives of challenge and difficulty like we’ve always run?

Monte Zucker's Lighting Tips

Worth a read.

in reference to: Light Control | Monte Zucker: Portrait and Wedding Photography Teacher (view on Google Sidewiki)

Advice to newbies asking “is this photo good”?

Some random thoughts that occur to me when I look at photos that newbies show:

• When anyone shows a photo, we look at the photo in its entirety. It's very difficult to look at a photo for "exposure" alone and not assess composition. It's like one bangs the keys on a piano and then one asks, was that a good piano? Without playing a recognisable tune, the banging of the piano overcomes any aesthetic appreciation of the quality of the piano.
  
• Aesthetic appreciation varies with the person and with his mood.
  
• Some people are more direct, some less. Sometimes you learn more from a direct remark, sometimes an ego gets hurt. That's life.
  
• Just because someone buys a camera does not mean that someone is an artist or wants to be an artist. Cameras are no longer expensive now and everyone can choose to get one. People buy cameras to fulfil a need and that need may not be artistic. They may simply want to record and event, a memory. They may indeed want to “show” or “show off” to family and friends where they were, what they saw and they did not plan or did not have the opportunity to take more than a second to point and shoot. Or they may want an artistic shot but decades of mind numbing mundanity has grimed its patina onto their consciousness.
  
• I've also noticed that cultural environment / economic environment / geographical environment / opportunity means that people point the camera at something quite different with quite different sense of aesthetic. Some of the photos look downright ugly to me but it may well be that I do not view them in the context that the shooter views them.

On the other hand, you want standard, good old fashioned classic advice and criteria, then have a look at this Kodak Tutorial.

del.icio.us Tags: photography

What’s my motivation?

Unlike professional photographers, amateur photographers don’t have the simple expedient of picking income as the reason behind their photos. And, unlike the non-photographers – those who consciously identify themselves as “I’m not a photographer”, the keen amateur photographer must be guided by some motivation or go rudderless snapping at anything and everything with equal abandon. Newbies with an expensive camera keep asking “Am I ok? Is this ok?” – funny, they don’t ask this when they have a cheaper camera – they just go ahead and shoot.

Looking at the Vivian Maier collection, I’m awed. Impressed with why she shot, what she shot. Then I look at my own work and I ask myself, why. Would I come back and look at my own photos? Do they satisfy some inner urge in me?