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Thanks to everyone who have supported this effort. It has come a long way since the beginning when there really wasn’t a solid direction or focus for the site. Even now it continues to be in flux and I have no idea where it will go, but I have good hopes. So thanks again for visiting and thanks to those who have given me feedback these past two years. Hopefully you’ll keep visiting as the site continues to grow and change! -carl PS: check out the big version of the silly cupcake photo to the left to see the tilt-shift DOF! 
Nate told me that he was looking to take some new portraits of himself but he felt he’d have trouble taking them on his own since it’s hard to be in front of and behind the camera at the same time. He wanted to reproduce a lighting effect similar to something I have used before myself a number of years ago so it was also a good opportunity for me to teach him some simpler lighting methods and show him my approach to doing this sort of thing.
Instead of using both of his 600Ws Profoto strobes I had us use just one with the reflector dish off to the camera’s left about 75 degrees off the normal. I wanted a fairly hard, directional light to provide the majority of the lighting in the scene. A second Profoto was moved in until it was just a couple feet away from Nate camera right with a softbox mounted and I hung a white bedsheet over it (although I wanted to also try just the bare face of the softbox) to provide a simple reflector and fill in the shadows some. For a backdrop I hung up my single piece of black velvet and eventually I MacGyver’d a black construction paper baffle to prevent the strobe from directly illuminating the velvet. It wasn’t creating much of a bright spot thanks to the velvet but eliminating that in camera prevents the possibility for needing to edit it out of a number of the photos and it was a 30 second task to stick an unused tall lamp on top of a table and clamp the paper to it. Even though the edit itself would have been quite quick I believe it’s always better to solve problems in camera once than fix them many times in post processing. The shoot wound up being pretty fun and certainly brought back a lot of what I remembered doing four or five years ago, the last time I shot with studio strobes in this fashion. I think it also finally illustrated to Nate why I was always espousing the virtue of very simple lighting with minimal sources and fewer fancy light modifiers like softboxes and umbrellas.
Nate and Andrew took me to explore the abandoned Jewel Meats facility in Rochester today. We don’t really know when the place shut down for good but the place obviously had a pretty severe fire as large parts of the building show significant signs of smoke damage although fire damage is somewhat hard to identify in most of the building. The building is largely intact, there weren’t many windows throughout most of the building but some areas had good natural light coming in to shoot with.
I shot primarily with the Sigma 30 1.4 I’ve had for almost a year now but have yet to grow to trust. I have more or less decided that unless I just start using it more I’ll never really know if it’s giving me what I want or if it’s giving me trouble. So far mostly good but under compromised lighting conditions which force high ISO or questionable shutter speeds (for hand-holding), it’s not the best environment for judging lens performance. A fun trip overall and I’m looking forward to some of the other expeditions we started discussing. Both Nate and Andrew know of a lot of locations around Rochester which might be of interest, even for someone as picky as me! I don’t care for the stuff in the buildings photographically (although it was interesting checking out everything left behind in the offices at Jewel Meats), I’m more interested in the actual space, the building itself, and how the natural light has penetrated and transformed it.
… don’t use it! For whatever reason it keeps saying it is running out of memory and when it doesn’t do that it just gives up and crashes. I went back to 4.8 and all is well, I’m not sure what the .1 got me anyway! Olympus has finally made its official announcement after a Nikon-like campaign of leaks and glamorshots. The E-P1 is the first in the rekindled Pen brand and the excitement for it is probably well deserved. In the end it looks like many predictions of the specs are right although nobody could agree on how the E-P1 naming was going to be arranged. The camera comes in a variety of color combinations and even though I said I wanted black-black, the silver-black is starting to grow on me and gets bonus points if the camera can actually brass properly with wear. The camera comes out of the gate with the two new lenses mentioned before (17mm and 14-42) as well as a new low profile flash unit, the FL-14. I’m curious to see how the 12.3 megapixel Live MOS sensor will perform, the 4/3 sensor format still doesn’t appeal a whole lot to me but the smaller sensor does allow for a more compact camera which is perfect for this kind of design and it’s still much larger than the sensor in a P&S camera. With an introductory price of about $900 with the 17mm f/2.8 and optical viewfinder accessory, it’s going to have to prove its worth to me since that’s not a no-brainer must-buy price for this piece of kit in my eyes. I have high hopes for it, not only for Olympus but as always for this whole segment of cameras. To get more of the gory details on the Pen E-P1 I’d suggest going straight to the Olympus site. There are also some lengthy previews already out on this camera: If you’re looking to buy it the PEN E-P1 with 14-42mm lens and the E-P1 with the 17mm f/2.8 and optical viewfinder are both now listed at B&H. 
When I posted about the Olympus last week I didn’t expect to see anything like this just yet, the rumors have said tomorrow would be the big day. The Pen moniker is starting to stick now with more people referring to it by that historic Olympus name. I suppose it’s pretty close, the old Pen cameras (an example below) shot a half size frame (18×24mm instead of the standard 24×36mm of 35mm still cameras) and the 4/3 system is known for its 2x FOV crop “focal length multiplier” although the sensor is actually smaller than half size at 13×17mm. The new model is supposed to come with several color options for the leather and we now see that in addition to the 17 f/2.8 (a slightly wider-than-normal lens) and 14-42 f/3.5-5.6 zoom there will also be a viewfinder accessory that fits in to the shoe similar to what Sigma offers for the DP1 and DP2. If I had to choose I’d like an all black model personally.
I’m not posting this because I think I will buy one or because I’m interested in keeping this site up to date with the news though. I’m more interested in what this will mean for this segment of cameras going forward. Sigma tried but in my opinion has still missed even with the newer DP2 but I give them credit for their efforts and I have been hoping since then that other companies would follow suit. I hope this is just the beginning of a resurgence of small rangefinders and that a variety high quality but affordable models will come out in the not-too-distant future. I will continue to post tidbits about these cameras and anything else that I find interesting as I have been doing. Update!It’s official, the PEN E-P1 has been announced! The PEN E-P1 with 14-42mm lens and the E-P1 with the 17mm f/2.8 and optical viewfinder are both now listed at B&H. Some of my friends have inherited some interesting camera gear and apparently I’m about to receive my very own bag of mystery equipment. All I know is it is supposedly a small backpack filled with high end pre-digital photo gear. I’m curious what all that means since my interpretation of things could be a lot different from how a non-photographer would view things. An inventory and photos of the collection will come as soon as I have received it and had a chance to check it out. No clue what I’ll do with all of it until I know what it is but apparently nobody else in the family would be able to properly appreciate the gear as it sits on a shelf collecting dust so I’m getting all of it.
I’ve mentioned these Samsung NX and Olympus micro-4/3 cameras before and it seems now is the time for the rumor-mill to get going again. Now we have some sharp looking renders of a Samsung NX rangefinder style camera (which could be completely fake of course) in addition to some photos of what might be the Olympus EP-1 which would be their first micro-4/3 rangefinder. Both of these cameras pick up where the Sigma DP1 and DP2 left off for me in many ways and mean that there is hope for high quality compacts still. The Olympus will likely be a nice camera, they usually know how to put together a solid camera but I am much more interested in what Samsung is working on with the larger “APS-C” sized sensor. There’s no telling how well Samsung will pull this camera together, if it happens, since they are less experienced than Olympus but I expect whatever they come out with could be quite nice. The Olympus image comes from 4/3Rumors where they also have a list of potential specifications for the EP-1. They say we’ll all know the truth in six days and that the Samsung will be out sometime in the next few months so this is an interesting category to watch develop. I’m curious how well these rangefinder type bodies will be accepted and what kinds of developments they’ll see in the future. It’s certainly a logical choice for camera designs if they’re throwing away the flipping mirrors of SLR cameras. Update!It’s official, the PEN E-P1 has been announced! The PEN E-P1 with 14-42mm lens and the E-P1 with the 17mm f/2.8 and optical viewfinder are both now listed at B&H. Earlier this week I was contacted by Luke Jefferson, one of the creators of the new Huetility Colorblind Simulator. He let me know about this application he and his colleague have developed that will be available on Saturday, June 6th for the iPhone. This application, their first, is built to simulate the vision of a colorblind person to help users such as photographers, designers and anyone else who works with color understand how the colorblind may view things. The simulator will allow the user to see an image on their iPhone or taken with the iPhone’s camera and will simulate the way someone with a dichromatic color vision deficiency will see things. Since the program and the company are both new I wanted to get some information from Luke about them. I asked a few questions about their background, this application and where they see things going: A brief introduction, tell me a bit about you and what you’re up to:
Tell me about your background and your company:
What is Huetility Colorblind Simulator? Explain what it does, how it works and who you envision using it:
What got you in to the colorblindness business? What’s next for you in terms of future products?
Luke also provided me with some screenshots of the application in action:
The screen shots above show the application simulating protanopia on a photograph I took last summer. Since it is simulating protanopia, which means the observer is missing red cones, it is easy to see that the red areas in the image lose their color. Huetility Colorblind Simulator sounds like it is going to be a very promising application for those who want to make sure their content and products retain high visibility for the colorblind. As Luke mentions in his last response there will be more applications coming in the future and platform support should extend beyond the iPhone. I will obviously post updates regarding those new utilities as they are made available. I hope to post reviews for certain future applications, particularly those designed to help the colorblind. You can learn more about the application by clicking the following link: Huetility Colorblind Simulator If you are interested in getting Huetility Colorblind Simulator yourself you can follow this link to the iPhone App store. The application will be priced at £1.79 ($2.99), not bad for something that many people could find quite handy.
I have never been particularly active in the Flickr community at large, it seems like it would require more time than I really have to get involved to the level that many other people I see are. I have to remind myself to do things like tag my photos or post my photos to group pools since those things don’t occur to me normally. I know that having this site might to contradict this but I don’t instinctively think to run around broadcasting my photography to the Flickr community. I don’t tend to comment on photos a lot and I favorite even less often. Part of this is because it just doesn’t occur to me usually (so I do try to go on Flickr from time to time to comment on some of my friends’ photos) but it’s also because I don’t find that the majority of comments on Flickr are particularly meaningful. I don’t think saying “great shot” to someone is particularly useful most of the time and I’d rather try to provide thoughtful feedback and critique which for the most part would look rather out of place in a Flickr comment stream! In spite of the obvious incongruity between my approach to Flickr and the majority of the activity that occurs on the site, I do enjoy looking at other photography on Flickr. As much as I enjoy looking for inspiration (I wish I favorited more photos that I liked so I could go back and find the ones that gave me ideas) I also enjoy looking at fantastic photography that I might not be that likely to be interested in shooting myself. Most of what I find interesting to photograph isn’t the most popular subject matter, but I still enjoy seeing a fantastic portrait or thought provoking bit of photojournalism. Exploring Monotony
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