This Old Blog

Nikon D600 with 24-85mm f/3.5-4.5G ED VR zoom  Olympus OM-D E-M5 with M.Zuiko 12-50mm zoom and HLD-6 grip system I have been holding back purchasing replacement equipment for my stolen 4:3rds gear for quite some time. I wanted to wait as long as possible before making any kind of commitment to any camera, let alone a given vendor or product line. I wanted to be sure I was making the right purchase. To that end I've gone through a considerable amount of foot work and research, pinging a number of knowledgeable folks, at times pushing the limits of friendship with endless questions (sorry, Matthew). I have yet to make the purchase, but I've narrowed my choices down to just two cameras, the Nikon D600 and the Olympus OM-D E-M5. Nikon For some really odd reasons, Nikon sellers (B&H and Adorama, just to name two) have been selling the D600 body with the 24-85mm f/3.5-4.5G ED VR zoom for a smidge less than $2,000, the same price the D600 body only was first introdu...

Out with my wife to sup at Lime Grill. This late in the season the sun sets around 5pm, so it was pretty dark by the time we got there. I love the little roses on the large bushes that are planted around the place. In Florida, in December, they're still covered with buds and blooms. I don't know of any time (except when it's really cold) when they don't bloom. Lighting was whatever artificial light was out there. The camera was the NEX 5N, with the OM 1.4/50mm and Fotodiox adapter. The 50mm was stopped down to f/2. ISO was auto-selected 1250 after I dialed in -2EV. SOOC.

Ruby and Mr. Bill, NEX 5N, OM 50mm/1.4 @f/1.4, 1/250 sec, ISO 250 The problem with us "dedicated" amateur photographers is that too many of us pursue it too grimly, never stopping to just enjoy the moment. Every photo has to come out of the camera as a Work of Art, each one perfectly composed and exposed as if our very lives depended on it. That attitude carries over into post-processing, where over saturation, over contrast and over sharpening come into play. It's also a carryover from the early 2000s, when you had to post process if you wanted what the camera's sensor was capable of  recording. So you purchased an expensive computer with expensive post-processing software to go along with your expensive DSLR and you became an expert on post and workflow. And if you were any good at it you wrote books on it and gave seminars. Here we are in 2012, long since past that point, where the cameras now have sophisticated JPEG engines with lots of tunable parameters t...

Sony NEX 5N, 18-55mm at 55mm, f/6.3, 1/1000 sec, ISO 100, auto WB Olympus E-PL2, M.Zuiko 45mm, f/4, 1/4000 sec, ISO 200, sunny WB I was at RDV for my second weekly physical training session (I run three per week). As I was leaving I happened to spy the dramatic clouds over the complex. I had both my Sony NEX and one of my Pens with me, so I took a few very unscientific photos just to see how they would compare photographing the same general subject matter. Both photographs were taken straight from their respective cameras and put directly into this post. Both photos are at the largest JPEG size from each camera. Both cameras were configured to use natural color, and the natural setting was further tweaked so that contrast and saturation were set to -1 on both cameras, and sharpness set to 0 (the default). They are definitely different, but I'll be damned if I'll say which is better than the other. The Olympus seems grayer, more neutral, because I forgot to set it to A...

Today was supposed to an uneventful day, one of the last before I head back to work next Monday. For most of the day it was uneventful until I headed out for PT, and made the fateful decision to take a route to I-4 that lead down Hollywood Way (from Turkey Lake) right onto Universal Blvd, which led directly to I-4 east. It was after I'd just turned onto Universal that a car came very close around my right front and I swerved left to avoid them. I hit a low curb with the left front tire and blew out the tire's sidewall. The other car, in such a hurry to get around me, kept right on going. And that's the way it was, with heavy traffic flowing around, and no-one bothering to stop (there were a number of witnesses). It didn't take long to see I was going to need to put the spare on, the problem being my healing leg getting in the way. So I decided to use, just this once, my AAA Premier service I pay over $300/year for to see if they could schedule a wrecker over to at l...

I have been making reasonable (some might say remarkable) progress this week towards healing in my left knee. I'm pushing myself to do as much exercise as reasonable while I'm still off from work. I've been mixing workouts at RDV in the therapy pool as well as regular "dry land" PT, to the point where I'm doing something every day. I've been doing that now for nearly two weeks. For many of you this may not sound like much, but this past Sunday, three weeks to the day after being discharged from Florida Hospital, I was able to drive to RDV and the pool. And I've been driving every since. Not very far and not for long, but still. Tonight I was able to take both Labs, together, for a regular one mile walk in the neighborhood. They were ecstatic. I'm on track to go back to work next Monday, four weeks after the partial knee replacement. My company is still allowing time off for me to go three days/week in the afternoons to RDV for continuing PT t...

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 (OR...