Happy Seasons Greetings / Merry Christmas

I’ve been head down in non photographic work – that’s why I haven’t been writing on photography that much. 2011 is coming to an end, it’s been a good year, photographically, for me. I got myself an Olympus E-620 to replace my E-330 that failed. And some months later, the E-PL1. I also shot a few rolls of film on my old Minolta X-700 and my new-old SRT-101.

I haven’t gone through everything I’ve shot on my hard disk, but I thought a few shots from flickr would be nice to review.

Above is film shot with real light leaked right edge. The patina of warm browns and hazy unsharpness is a lovely memory of that day’s shooting.

Women’s shoes have attracted my interest in previous years, but this year showed a resurgence of the thick heeled platforms from my Uni days. Of course, if they are in gold, they are super scrumptious.

Paul was kind enough to invite us on his maintenance checks for the Puffing Billy railway. It was a wet day and we were a little exposed to the elements sitting on the side of NWV-1. This was taken with the very special 7-14mm Super High Grade Zuiko Digital ultra wide angle lens. A really sharp scenic lens as long as one remembers to stop down to f/8 to avoid over shallow depth of field.

I saw these Nonya Ladies at the Malaysian Festival in Melbourne. Their sarung-kebaya garb with kerosang reminds me so much of what mum used to wear in her younger days.

I see this some evenings and never tire of its beauty.

Play Misty for Me

There was hesitancy about KLIA, the Kuala Lumpur International Airport when it was first opened. Worries about the volume of baggage traffic, people getting lost and things like that. Now, this hub has settled in to normal operations, it’s a wonder that people were initially concerned. At one terminal, KLIA has an indoor treery. I have not walked into it – I was not aware it was something you did. But this time, the doors are open. The airport is cool and air conditioned – you don’t realise that this is a synthetic environ until you walk into the tree-ry and your lenses fog up. Alejandro (one of my Facebook friends) reckons RainX should work – but I am a bit hesistant on subjecting my 7-14 front element to that – maybe I’ll try it one day one a less expensive lens.

Anyway, you don’t realise how much mass the 7-14 holds in terms of temperature inertia until you wipe it, wait, wipe it, wait, wipe it…..

They’ve even managed to get some weaver birds in (or were they recorded bird calls?)

Looking Wide

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I’ve had my 7-14mm ultra wide Olympus Zuiko for a while now. The fervour to use it as a general walkabout lens has subsided. The mollycoddling of the bulbous front element has subsided. The fervour to shoot at 7mm (14mm equivalent to film) has subsided.

Now comes a more relaxed, patient and hopefully longer lasting relationship with that lens. One of the happenings that lured me away from the frenzy of all-wide was a return to 24mm equiv for the NILCs (Non Interchangeable Lens Cameras), otherwise known as the Point and Shoots. I got myself a second hand Kodak V705 and it taught me that even an NILC can provide good wide angle shots. Maybe not the technical image quality of a larger sensor, more expensive Interchangeable Lens Camera (ILC), but a shot nevertheless, when the ILC is not with you. And often, in your daily life, the ILC is not with you.

I also learnt that learning about aesthetics, perspective, wide-angle-ness is a journey and the more experience, the better my eye for composition and spotting a scene becomes.

With that eye, one can even finesse a wide angle perspective from a non wide angle lens – it’s the old adage of “it’s not what you’ve got, it’s how you use it”

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Major Tom calling

Olympus Master is this really sluggish software on my dual screen desktop. I received three Art effect freebies with the xD card purchase. They're can come in quite useful.

Major Tom was an inflatable piece of artwork at the Melbourne Dream Festival 2008



Ferris wheels are soo much fun.

UWA is not for getting it all in

Image via WikipediaI'm still learning with my Ultra Wide Angle. It can be quite an intimidating lens - it's not demure, genteel or anything like that. Well it is, if you use the bow tie third of it's range - the 12-14mm (24-28mm EFL). But the other third of it's range is emotional, passionate - the 7-9mm.

Here's what Ken Rockwell says about this kinda lens. 

I think there are two kinds of approaches (perspective is a heavily used word in photography).

You have to decide whether you are recording a scene without personal emphasis vs whether you are artistically interpreting and emphasising the scene for the benefit of the viewer.

Some people will say that to shoot the photo, you are already recording a perspective and an emphasis - it's the emphasis you record without explicitly agreeing that you have chosen an emphasis. And that is correct if you are awakened to your power as the photographer. To others, who don't think of themselves as photographers, they just want the scene "as is". Except that they are unaware that people "see" with different eyes, not to mention, from different heights and from different distances.

In this one below, I have decided to emphasise the two ducks, with the rocks and sky as very strong decorative elements. Yes, the ducks are real small but they are the point of the photo.

From Blackburn Lake

In the one below, yes, it's there but not quite there. I wanted to emphasise the retro-ness of the car, the large mudguards, the bulging headlights, the thread pattern on the tyre.

From Zuiko Digital 7-14mm

The one below is actually of a smal sportscar, a SMART. I wanted to emphasise the bulge of the bonnet.

From Zuiko Digital 7-14mm

This last one is scenic and calm and lonely to me. There is no particular shape or geometric emphasis of the bench or the buildings. But the sweep of the foreground grass strikes me as an emphasis. Because it is so quiet an emphasis, it is almost a bow-tie shot.

From Zuiko Digital 7-14mm

A moment in time

Waving in the air, the moment, the ribbon, the feeling

From People

Shopping for dried flowers

We came across this shop. The presentation is gorgeous - dried branches on the top and all. I tried a few perspectives and really got upset when a couple walked past, the man in a tall Jewish hat - they would have completed the scene so well. Unfortunately for some reason, the E-510 decided not to shoot - I lost time holding down the shutter release with no action, then flipped the On/Off switch and it worked too late.



This was one angle that I liked. The detail at the foot of the door, the random squares on the grills make it for me.

Waiting for a fare

Melbourne cabbies now feature drivers from the Indian subcontinent. They are often students making money driving when they aren't studying. Here are some, waiting for a fare.

From Melbourne

Looking Up

There I was, shooting with Janina and John for the first time. I didn't get to meet Brandon, and the weather was fine, then drizzly, then fine again. Janina introduced us to this building interior and I had the 7-14mm Zuiko Digital on the floor, then just holding up.

The lighting in this area was just magical.

Living with the 7-14mm UWA

Once in a while, someone comes by the Olympus DSLR forum on DPREVIEW and asks for any tips on the Olympus 7-14mm Zuiko Digital ultra wide angle (14mm - 28mm Equivalent Focal Length). I'm still on my learning journey, it's one of those journeys where the passage is as important as the destination. Here are some of my notes:

Know that there are two types of shots with this lens. - Exaggerated Perspective vs

Prim and Proper.

To ensure some rightness in the shot, you could

• use a less wide focal length
• use software to offset converging lines
• hold the camera level.
• a flat object, head on.

The lens at widest field of view, actually runs out of DOF (Depth of View) if you use the maximum aperture of f/4. This makes things blurry and give you the feeling of coke bottled zoom.

On the other hand, darkness helps cloak exaggeration and shallow DOF.

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Just a shot

Haven't posted a shot for some time. Well, here's one then. Outside the Myer window, Bourke Street, Melbourne at night. Reminds me of the night terrors that Alan Shore (James Spader) is alleged to have in Boston Legal

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Warm feelings

It's a few days past the anniversary of my Dad's passing away. I was passing the Keilor East Cemetery on the way to a client's office. I had the 7-14mm with me, just in case - Keilor is a place I frequent so it's an adventure going there, with the GPS.

In this shot, there is a contrail from a plane, the sun is actually in frame at the top left. I have another shot, more exaggerated because of the angle of this nearest gravestone. I like this better, even with the flare beauty spot.

I am looking for less exaggerated perspectives at 7mm (14mm EFL) and yet retain the width of view.

The City after dark with the 7-14mm UWA

The Zuiko Digital 7-14mm ultra wide angle is quite a distinctive lens. During the daytime, you need to think about how the 14mm EFL handles circles and converging lines close to you. At night, it's different.

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Now, that's what I call zooming

I was forum chatting with Bassy at the Kodak forum of DPreview and conversation turned to shooting with more than one camera. Click on the photo below (Olympus E-510 with 7-14mm lens at 14mm EFOV to take you to it's source at Photobucket and then hover over the red square, see the blue caption box labelled "ducks" to see the ducks (Olympus C-750uz with 1.7x TCON giving 612mm EFOV).

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Travels with my wide angles

It's not the best of times for other things, but I am with a plethora of wide angle lenses on different cameras - the first time I can say that I have such luxury. Today was a sunny, winter's day. Not a day to be gloomy or depressed. So off in the car, driving, to see what we can see. I stopped at Sienna Falls, a hole-in-the-ground rejuvenation of an old clay quarry (used for Boral Brick materials).

The road really is that steep, it's not just the 7-14mm ZD lens showing off.

Then, we went off to Box Hill to have some Vietnamese beef noodles in soup (tendons) and broken rice. I paused briefly at the top and shot down into Carrington Road

del.icio.us Tags: BoxHill,CarringtonRoad,SiennaFalls,Melbourne,7-14mm,Olympus E-510