Encounters with my fish

You know how when you buy something and then you notice that other people have the same thing? Like when you have an Olympus and you spot other people also have an Olympus? Or if you bought some red soles and other people also have a Christian Louboutin?



Well, I finally acquired a fish, something that I had been eyeing for a long time.

I was leaning close to a wall for photos of street art. With a fisheye, you get closer than Robert Capa would say "close enough".

A couple came by. I saw that she also had a camera, aiming at the wall and stepped back to give her space. She gave me a huge smile and said "my lens is very wide". I peered closely and I thought I saw a Canon fish.

I wonder how her photos turned out.

Last post for 2011

Well, it’s the last day of 2011, Lovely agapanthus waving in the sun. I just saw a honeyeater perch on a stalk and feed off the agapanthus. Watched in awe until I thought, hey, the Olympus E-620 is near. Missed the shot but hey, it’s such a relaxed state of mind.

Thanks for the good company of Marg and David, I had a lovely time in shirtsleeves, light breeze on the face, peering into the complexion of huge Lotus blossoms at the Blue Lotus. Could’t be more enjoyable.

Looking forward to a new year. May 2012 be blessed and good things to all.

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.

Inexpensive Wide Angles in your pocket

I like wide angle perspectives. So much so, I bought the widest ultra wide available for my DSLR – the Olympus Zuiko 7-14mm. It wasn’t cheap and I would normally not go out and spend money like that, but I just had too, it was a special birthday and all.

I still like wide angle combinations which are more pocketable though. Pocketable wide angles are not easy to get – the small sensors in pocket, compact cameras mean that a “normal” angle of view lens for these cameras is already 4mm optical focal length. Making a wide angle forces the optics to go 2mm, 3mm which is really small.

I was happy to come across a second hand Kodak V705.

There are two lenses on it. The equivalent 23mm wide angle is a good lens but doesn’t focus (I think it’s a fixed focus) so it can’t go macro. The second lens – a zoom, does focus but either the exact camera I have is not good or the camera does not have a very good mechanism in that one. Ready-to-shoot time for the camera is fast, right after the sliding lens cover unhides the lenses, the 23mm is about ready to shoot and there is little or no shutter lag because the 23mm does not need to focus.

The camera is chunky though, it is small but not slim.

Looking around for other cameras (do you call it window shopping if you use Microsoft Windows?), there are a few wide angle compacts – but I like low cost because I expect the camera to be tossed around, sometimes with keys in my pants pocket.

What else is there that is wide angle and inexpensive?

There’s the Olympus FE-4000 Magenta. This has a 26mm equivalent wide angle lens, 4x optical zoom.

It’s about AUD 240 It has a 24mm equivalent lens with zoom to 120mm. It’s about AUD 199. I can’t yet find a review but there’s one for the FE-5020. PhotographyBLOG carried out a review.

The Panasonic DMC-FX40 is another inexpensive model with a 25-125mm equivalent zoom. Photography BLOG has a review. It’s about AUD 199 too.

Finally, the little known Kodak M420 with a review here – It’s not available in Australia – well, I did say it was little known.