tinkering

The Old Watch

The Olympus E-PL2 was introduced in late 2010 as the follow-on camera to the E-PL1. It's the slightly down-market version of the E-P2, even though it was introduced about a year after the E-P2. It's smaller and chunkier than the E-P2 (and E-P3) and has a much more distinctive grip, which in spite of its smaller size compared to the E-P2 makes it the easier camera to grasp. With a pancake lens mounted on it (14mm, 15mm, 17mm, or 20mm) the total combination makes for a small nifty package that can challenge anything you care to throw at it, including the fixed prime compacts from Fuji and Ricoh. For my plebeian tastes the E-PL2 and Panasonic 14mm makes for a quite satisfying e28mm class camera.

I've been back to tinkering with the internal settings of the camera. I've set the Custom tone (Menu - First Camera - Picture Mode - Custom) to Monochrome (Picture Mode), Contrast to +2, Sharpness to +1, B&W Filter to Green, Picture Tone to Sepia, and Gradation to Auto. I set the camera to 16:9 aspect ratio, and pulled the image straight out of the camera.

At 1600 ISO you'll see lots of noise grain, kind of like what you'd get if you pushed Tri-X four stops (or more!). And I prefer the warmth of sepia over the cold tones of pure black and white, or at least most black and white papers. There was one Ilford paper I used a long time ago that had brilliant whites and deep, deep neutral blacks, like a good brush-and-ink paint sketch on Bristol board. If I could get that look straight out of the camera I'd use it instead of sepia.

Image was taken hand-held, and I set the focus square to sit over the watch to get the composition I wanted.  I'm thinking cinematic these days, even if I do loose a few megapixels on the top and bottom edge. I think I'll set the E-M5 to the exact setting and put the 45mm on it.

Why this? The joys of experimentation. And just to have a little fun breaking down my self-imposed walls.