Shutter Therapy

My personal road to knee surgery recovery continues. Today was my second visit to RDV, with more exercise. More tissue is healing and more feeling is returning across the knee. Flexibility continues to slowly increase. In spite of the increased flexibility I'm still just a passenger, which requires that my wife drive us around. When we arrive at any given destination I get out and help do whatever is necessary, such as carry items to the car.

This photo was taken as a local Bubbalous we'd stopped at to pick up our smoked Thanksgiving turkey. On the way back to the car I spied this combination of items which triggered something odd in my mind. Right before we left I grabbed a shot of this with my Olympus E-P2 and the Panasonic 20mm opened up to f/1.7, the 20's fastest aperture. Ignoring the "quality" of the image for the moment I want to direct your attention the lack of distortion in the photo, all those very straight lines. The JPEG was converted from Raw (ORF) in Lightroom 4.2, with no distortion correction applied. The straight lines came right out of the camera as it were.

Compare this to the latest Olympus 1.8/17mm µ4:3rds lens which Olympus is currently selling for $500. Just about everyone who's tested the lens has damned it with faint praise, except for Lenstip, who came right out and bluntly stated that "it lags behind everything you were used to when dealing with Olympus optics." One particular con was "very high distortion", especially in Raw. When the lens was announced I'd thought I might get the new 17mm and sell the slower 2.8/17mm and Lumix 1.7/20mm. But now, maybe not.

Earlier in the day we drove Lucy in her new fancy carrier to see the vet. This is her yearly checkup. She was vocal on the way over to the vet. Once in the examination room we let her out and she was happy until the vet wanted to check her ears. That's when she tried mightily to climb back into her carrier. The vet used the carrier to help hold her, and her ears were cleaned. On the way back home she was very quiet and snuggled down into her carrier. Funny how that works out.

Technical

It was good to have the Olympus E-P2 and the Panny 20mm with me today. The Panasonic 20mm image quality is superb, especially when compared to the Sony E-mount 18-55mm, and it would appear, to Olympus' latest 17mm. I have discovered the real differences between the Olympus Pens and the Sony NEX. If you have the time to compose the photo, and are in an artistic mood, then the Pen and its various primes are my go-to tools. But if I have to grab-and-go and I need to know I'll have something reasonably adequate no matter what, then the NEX is the camera to use. It's also the best camera to set up on automatic and hand to someone else. All those photos of my MAKOplasty were taken by the nurse after I set the 5N to full auto. And they all turned out just fine. I'm going to keep both systems.