Photographic Addition

Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 7-14mm 1:2.8 Pro lens.

As my regular readers are aware, photography is a bit of a thing for me. As in, I did my first degree in photography many years ago, more than I care to remember, but not completed for various reasons. I take a lot of pictures of the models I make, and other subjects that interest me too. And of course, it's useful for taking pictures for blog posts.

Quelle surprise.

For Christmas my beloved surprised me with Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 7-14mm 1:2.8 Pro lens. I've been coveting one of these since I got my micro-four-thirds OM-D E-M5:M2 camera back here. As Susan said to me, this lens provides me with my favourite angle of view that I used to have back in the day when I ran my Pentax MX-5 with a SMC 15mm F3.5.

Here are both cameras and their lenses.

Pentax 35mm film camera next to an Olympus micro-four-thirds digital camera.

The Pentax I bought in January 1982, my Olympus I was given in February 2016. What is surprising or not, is the similarity in size, given that 34 years, 40 if you take into consideration that the MX-5 was released in 1976, between the two cameras.

So size, really comes down to ergonomics.

And while my E-M5:M2 is not a large camera per se, it is larger than Susan's E-PL6 micro-four-thirds rangefinder model.

Distractions

I have been working across the holiday season on several things other than finishing my novel.  Hence the title distractions.

The first two distractions were writing short reviews of books sent to me for review, which of course I had to read.  This time Osprey sent me two books that I could comment on, if not with considerable authority, with enough authority that I felt I could write a brief review for each that would be informative.  Those have now been sent off to John Treadway the editor  of Miniature Wargames.

Wargaming with toy soldiers is a lifetime hobby of mine and over the years I've amassed miniatures and terrain.  My only regret is that I don't get to play as much as I would like, and also not finishing projects in a timely manner.  My excuse is that it's my hobby, not my job.

Anyway, John from Miniature Wargames had also asked me if I could supply some pictures for the next issue of the magazine, because he had an article on BattleTech about the new Alpha Strike rules.  He asked for ten shots, I sent 17, and I believe four made it into issue #406.  Yesterday I saw one of the pictures which is being used for the Dark Horizons insert–a magazine supplement within the main magazine.  At the top is my original picture, and below is the crop they used.

I'm feeling pretty chuffed by this.  At some point, relatively soon, I will be running a photo essay on my other blog to show off the pictures that weren't used.  After all, a lot of work went into making the terrain boards, assembling the models and painting them, and the considerable amount of time it took to take all the pictures.

Speaking of photography, I'm now working on an article–a rewrite of something I sent Henry the previous editor of Miniature Wargames–about how I take the pictures I took: namely getting everything in focus from back-to-front when shooting pictures of very tiny models.

But before that I have my regular monthly article for Galactic Journey to write, and this month I'm reviewing another Golden Age author whose works I read voraciously when I first started reading science fiction.  So, busy with many distractions taking my time up, preventing me from getting on with my novel.

But writing is writing, and I'm enjoying doing what I'm doing, and things fall where they fall.  Makes me grateful for having the day job because I don't have to worry about where the money is coming from.  Until next week, have a nice one.

40 Yards: A Palpable Hit

Back here I was bemoaning the fact I wasn't hitting the target in archery at 30 yards.  Above is a picture of last week's archery practice where I managed on more than one occasion to hit the butt at 40 yards with all six arrows, though as can be seen here not yet getting groups.  Most of the ends, which is what loosing six arrows is called, I only managed to get four or five arrows onto the butt on a regular basis but that's a big improvement from mostly missing or not reaching the distance.

The improvement is down to two things.

First my beloved upped the poundage of my bow through a technical process called tillering.  I've gone from 14 pounds to 16 and now up to 18, which is the maximum that the limbs can be adjusted to at my draw length.  So in another three months I will most likely be getting new limbs, but I'm taking things slow and easy because of my rheumatoid arthritis.  My technique has to be right otherwise I might cause an inflammation in my joints, but compared to Aikido or Iaido, archery is a low impact sport.

Secondly, I've been going most weeks since the end of November to archery classes and practice really does make perfect.  Though I still have to remember to keep my up, fingers under the chin, and the string must touch the nose.  Not to forget posture, posture and posture.  I'm having a lot of fun doing this and it takes my mind off the novel and getting my second rejection.

Apart from archery we have been celebrating my birthday and our tenth wedding anniversary.  We had 46 friends turn up to help us celebrate to eat, drink and be merry.  I must admit that by Sunday I was feeling a bit like a zombie from not sleeping too well after so much excitement and rich food.

I've been spending quite a bit of time re-reading Mastering the Olympus Olympus OMD E-M5 Mark II, by Darrel Young & James Johnson, after confusing myself with programming my camera and then not being able to get it back into hi-res mode.  There were three days of high anxiety where I feared I'd managed to "brick" it.  Fortunately, with a little help from an Olympus camera technician and going through the book I worked out how to fix my problem.  I've now demonstrated the menu button sequence to my friends and every single one has gone WTF over the logic of setting up the hi-res function.

As an aside I re-read the online review DP Review where they say,

"All of this isn't helped by Olympus's trend of adding more and more extra features without fully integrating them.  For instance, the high res mode offers a choice of delays before you start exposure, but this isn't controlled using the part of the menu that adds a delay for standard shooting."

I now understand truly, fully, deeply what those words mean, but I still wouldn't trade my new camera in for any other model because while it's a complicated little beast it is stunningly good.

So that's it for another week.  Have a good one.

NB: You can see me shooting here.

PicoCon 33

I can't remember the first PicoCon that I attended, but it was a long time ago in a different part of my life.  You can read my account of last year's convention here, and the year before here.  This year's the guests of honour at PicoCon 33 were Paul Cornell, returning for a second time, Carrie Hope Fletcher, and Michelle Paver.

A moment of stillness. E-M5:M2 with M. Zuiko 14-42 at 42mm, F5.6, ISO 1600, 1/13th of a sec, crop 1028 x 1207 pixels from 4608 x 3456.

Paul Cornell started the day off with his talk about his recent work: two new novels coming out this year and a third on the way.  He also mentioned his work on the TV show Elementary and his Age of Warcraft graphic novel.  He was still recovering from returning from Los Angeles and clearly still running on caffeine and adrenaline, because three of the four shots I took of him his hands are a blur of motion.

Wearing a cardigan to die for.  Details as before but taken at 1/15th of a sec, crop 788 x 951 pixels.

Next up was Carrie H. Fletcher who I'd never heard of who spoke about her time as an actress and her upcoming novel On the Other Side.

The only non-blurred shot I have.  Exposure details again as before but cropped to 801 x 638 pixels.

The final talk of the morning was by Michelle Paver who was quite stunning.  She talked about writing her historical novels and ghost stories and how she travels to far-off lands and lives with the local people as research.  Absolutely fascinating and her talk about doing research impressed me so much that I bought a copy of Dark Matter, a ghost story set in the Arctic in 1937.

Then it was time for lunch and a chance to hang out with some old friends in the Student bar before going back for a panel where the authors took questions about various aspects of their work.

Group shot.  All details as before, shot cropped to 1700 x 622 pixels.

Finally, I should mention my friend Chad Dixon who recorded everything on Periscope under @lapswood8.  So that's it for another week.

Photography

Picture of new camera taken with old. Lumix G.Vario 14-45mm at 45mm, F5.6, 1/10th of a sec, ISO 1600, 4000 x 3000 cropped to 1200 x 668 pixels.

I enjoy taking pictures and for my birthday, a significant double digit year, my wife bought me a new Olympus OMD E-M5 Mark 2 and she also got me a M.Zuiko  ED 14-42mm f3.5-5.6 to go with it too.

Picture of old camera taken with new.  Olympus M.Zuiko 14-42 at 42mm, F5.6, 1/10th of a sec, ISO 1600, 4608 x 3456 cropped to 1200 x 663 pixels.

For the last four and a bit years I've been using a Panasonic Lumix DMC GF-1.  When I upgraded back in 2011 it was a big thing for me, as I accounted here, which has served me well in getting me fully up to speed with the digital age.

Both are micro four thirds cameras but the Olympus is 16 megapixels while the Panasonic is only 12 megapixels.  You can compare the quality of the two close-up shots for yourselves.  However, this isn't a completely fair test to either camera because what I'd need to do is take two pictures with each, swapping the lenses around because the glass in front of a sensor can make a big difference.  I'd also want to mount both cameras on a tripod too.

Crop 950 x 730 pixels.

Cropped to 750 x 729 pixels.

However, that said, the Olympus picture of the Panasonic camera looks better, though you have to take my word on that as I'm comparing the RAW files and what you're seeing here are the cropped JPEGs.

The biggest thing about the E-M5:M2 also has the facility to have it take multiple pictures and produce a 40 megapixel shot, a feature I'm looking forward to using in the future.  It is also an order of magnitude more sophisticated than the DMC GF-1.  To such an extent that I would consider the Olympus to be a computer that takes pictures because of the programmability of the camera functions.

So tomorrow I will be testing it at PicoCon.  Expect a report with pictures soon.