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Lympa Log - Leica R lenses on Olympus E-330 DSLR Photos and Text © Gary Todoroff  2006 All Rights Reserved

 

Mar 8

 

Time to finally get this blog posted on my web site! I took photos to include with what's here so far and am looking forward to some real shooting with all the new equipment and “adapted” Leica R lenses.

 

Olympus impressed me from the beginning with the handy and versatile C-8080. It has served well in capturing the action and intensity of the US Coast Guard on duty. Here a patrol safe boat keeps around-the-clock armed guard at the Boston Liquid Natural Gas Terminal. © Gary Todoroff, Photographer, Coast Guard Art Program, November 2005.

 

Some nice feedback already - LUGger, Scott Gregory from London, Ontario forwarded another link to National Geographic photographer, Alex Majoli. There is also a link there to some his online portfolios:

http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=7-6468-7844

Margoli commented about how his "point and shoot" digital rangefinders made such fine prints for National Geographic. The prints told the story - it didn't matter what kind of camera took them.  I agree.

Here's another example of the kind of detail and creativity the Olympus C-8080 gave me. This is inside a Coast Guard Falcon HU-25F jet. I first shot a couple of test shots in Manual mode with bounce flash from my attached Metz 54MZ-3. The digital feedback makes it easy to get the f-stop adjusted for flash to balance with the shutter speed set for the proper exposure outside the cockpit. When everything looked right I asked for a roll to right over Cape Cod. Those "Semper Paratus" Coasties are always ready to oblige! Capt Bob Durfey, who got me started with the CG Art Program, titled this one, "Straight and Level". © Gary Todoroff

A cropped and enlarged detail from above shows both the angle of bank and the quality of resolution given by the C-8080 built-in "ED High Resolution" lens at the full-wide 28 mm zoom setting. This lens made me an Olympus fan.

The new DSLR live-view capability of the E-330 should continue to give me the same kind of photographic creativity as the C-8080 provided in the above photographs. The Leica and Zuiko interchangeable lenses on the E-330 are icing on the cake!

One other thought before I call it a day - Put a Leica or Olympus lens on that E-330 baby and it looks fantastic! Kinda' like hoisting the sails on a proud square rigger. How could you NOT take great pics with such a cool-looking clean, mean, fighting machine!

Mar 9, 2006

Nothing but rain today – getting over my cold, so I'm more concerned for my health than a few raindrops on the E-330. So let's try some inside tests while weather and head cold clear. My first problem - I could not get the on-camera flash to properly set off the studio strobe light with built-in flash-slave. That process has worked great with the C-8080, especially with the “Slave” flash set to the lowest “1” value to just pop enough light to trip the slave.

 

However, it was obvious that the only light I was seeing with the E-330 was the output of its own built-in flash. So let's see what a call to Olympus tells me.

 

 First Olympus Tech Support Experience

A support tech answers the phone in six minutes of hold time. The flash sync question needed consulting with techs higher up the chain.

 

At 20 minutes into the hold time, I began searching out the flash settings on the E-330. Maybe “Manual” flash setting would work, since I had read that it gives a 1/64 power setting that could be akin to the C-8080 “1” Slave setting.

 

Going to flash settings by pressing Menu, I found that the Manual option was blacked out – no way to get to it. After a few more menu searches, I found under Tool-1 (the little wrench symbol) menu that there was a “Manual Flash” option that needed to be set to On. Then when you go to flash settings (Auto, red-eye, etc), you now see the option which says “Full”. By selecting that and setting the option to 1/64, I was able to get a weak flash output that tripped the studio slave at the proper time. Seems that in any other mode, the flash is doing a quick (measured in milliseconds) pre-flash that helps to determine exposure, but which also pops the slave flash before the exposure is made.

 

Now into 38 minutes on hold, the background music was getting boring, then the very beginning of the phone menu interrupted it again!. Time to start all over? Fortunately this time, a real professional answered within a couple of minutes - Sanford, a tech out of the Orlando support group. Sharing backgrounds in mainframe and midrange computer software, we hit it off just great. Seems that Olympus in marketing studies found that most pro shooters could care less about the revolutionary DLSR tilt screen. The E-500 series therefore carried on a more traditional DSLR approach – you know, the one I mentioned already where the digital camera is still supposed to behave as if it is loaded with film.

 

However, the E-330 seems to have brought together some very creative people at Olympus who were willing to step outside the box to design a camera aimed more at the advanced amateur. Without the preconceived DSLR limitations, they put together this amazing E-330. The live view capability actually amounts to a second camera inside based on the Olympus Stylus 800 with its Bright Capture feature. It drives the LCD in the back (in A mode) and apparently also gives the E-330 an advantage in low-light focus.

 

You could tell that Olympus tech support was having to gear up fast for this new camera, with only a few cameras out there. Since it's so new, Sanford seemed interested in some of my comments, too. I left him with a couple. The OK button in the middle of the toggle arrows is the right way to go. Some Olympus and other models have it off to the side instead of handy, right under your thumb.

  My Mode Setting not the Same as On the C-8080

Also, I really like the eight “My Mode” settings on the C-8080 and use five of them myself. The E-330 has only two My Mode settings and they are not as easy to get to. The ability to quickly set the camera for how I use it under different conditions really speeds up operations. Apparently that can also speed up the camera, too, reducing the all-important lag time between shutter press and actual exposure. In any automatic mode, the camera must do things before the photograph. If you preset things like white balance to sunlight and ISO to a specific value instead of Auto, than the camera has less to “decide” before exposure. The My Mode capability is a great way to set and forget those manual options. The more you can preset the better. Setting everything to manual just shoots the camera right now – bang! Of course the downside is that your own head is needing to set some things now, which could slow you down.

 

Sanford also talked about the commitment at Olympus for the E-series and the firmware updates to do what they (and you and I, let's hope) would like the camera to do better. The firmware is easy to download, too, as I can attest from updating my C-8080 awhile back.

 

 FourThirds is An OPEN System

We also talked about attaching film-based lenses to the E-330. This is a camera definitely designed with the new Zuiko digital lenses to match it. Older lenses are designed to focus all wavelengths in a cone of light rays on the film. Digital lenses bring the light to the pixel “buckets” on the chip in a parallel fashion, more perpendicular to the plane of the chip. So film lenses may show a decrease in useable apertures at the more wide-open end. You just need to test each lens/digital body combination to see what works. Some camera companies designed the digital bodies to account for older film lenses, but the E-330 was designed specifically for its digital lenses.

 

Using the computer analogy, a broader discussion included the concept of the FourThirds standard as an Open System, much like PC computers are. More proprietary approaches in cameras are more like the Apple computer, which mostly requires Apple parts. For the PC (an Open System) anyone can read the specs and play in the market. Competition brings PC prices down. Same goes for the FourThirds standard, which of course, Leica has even adopted with its zoom digital lens to go on the new FourThirds Panasonic due out at year-end. “We're a FourThirds player,” Sanford said, and with companies like Sony and Sigma jumping on board, options for bodies and lenses could be huge in the wide-open FourThirds world.

 

The E series is manufactured by a company formally called Olympus Optical Inc., and I could detect the emphasis on optical. They are mainly a lens manufacturer. Expect some very fine glass from this place in the pro lenses – not cheap but top of the line quality.

 

Sanford walked me through the magnifier window feature for manual focusing and he encouraged me to learn all the modes on the E-330 – what they do and what they don't do. Eventually, you'll probably use a small percentage of all that's available, but it is those features that will make your photography more creative.

Last item today - some fun names for this blog and the Leica/Olympus combo came up on the Leica User Group (LUG). After consideration, I think my name, OlympaLeic, is cumbersome.  Phillipe Orlent just offered the name "Lympa". Cool, just two syllables with Leica on BOTH sides of the 'ymp'. Lympa it is.

Top of this Lympa Web Log Page

Mar 10, 2006

 

Finally time to take this “Lympa” on the road and see what she can do. Recovering from a few days of cold and flu, what better trip to take than to the snow.

 

Along the way, some horses made for interesting foreground to a hillside vista. So much for wide scenics - as soon as I stopped the car, of course, they came trotting over to say hi. “Wait a second while I change lenses,” I replied, and mounted the Leica APO 70-180 Vario-Elmarit to the E-330 (same set-up as the Index page big photo at the small photo at the top of this web page). One horse went back to grazing, but the other fellow knew an interesting camera when he saw one.

Olympus E-330, Leica Vario APO Elmarit 70-180, 1/320th Aperture Priority.

Of about six shots, two were really sharp. Focus wasn't too difficult through the optical viewfinder, but the horse kept moving out of the very narrow depth-of-field. Shutter speed was fast enough, but his slightest movement would put his eye out of focus. Instead of turning the focus ring on the lens, I just tried to move the camera in and out as he moved.

Crop of the full frame photo above.

Ol' brown eyes realized I didn't have any food to offer at about the same time I realized the light was fading fast, and I still wasn't up to the snow line yet.

About 25 miles south of Eureka, the drive west from US101 out of Rio Dell takes you up Monument Mountain Road, across Bear River Ridge, then down the Wildcat, skirting the rugged southern edge of Cape Mendocino. Even those geographic titles don't do justice to the wilderness called The Lost Coast. (See my web page, Millennium Last Light, for another photographic story about this remote part of the world. Also see a later Lympa Log page about the last sunset of 2006 at 31.Dec.2006 Cape Mendocino )

 

Monument Mountain Road below the snow line.

This is one of the most active seismic areas in North America - those lines in the road

are more likely from earthquakes than from heavy traffic!

E-330, Zuiko 7-14mm/f4, 1/60th f5.6 @14mm zoom.

Up over a thousand feet elevation, last night's snow had melted from the dirt road, but still blanketed the barren meadows. Traffic was unusually heavy – about ten cars in twenty miles of driving. However snow kept the speeds down and drivers' hands up in friendly waves.

 

As usual, I never seem to start early enough. Light faded fast along Bear River Ridge. There are always too many good shots along the way - a bit like life, I suppose. A sudden snow flurry was a nice surprise. Traffic had ebbed to slack tide, so I mounted the E-330 kit lens and stopped in the road to take one last scenic photo out the windscreen.

Bear River Ridge Road. The flip LCD made for easy framing of the photo. I turned

the engine off to stop vibrations and rested the camera on top of the car dashboard. 

Olympus E-330, Zuiko 14-45mm f3.5-5.6, 0.5 sec, f4.5 @ 26mm zoom.

Bear River Ridge Road "T's" into the Wildcat two or three miles west of the above photo. Friends live in a house nearby, the only dwelling for a couple miles. Their lights were on, and by now the tradition had been established of my casual drop-ins, though usually on my New Year's Eve pilgrimage to the edge of the world for the Cape Mendocino sunset (Millennium Last Light,). Snow and warm hearth made it feel more like Christmas on this visit. I brought in the new camera to show it off and got one last photo for the day before driving down to Ferndale to complete the photo road-trip loop back to Eureka.

Graham tries to tire out 18-month old Jack for bedtime, unsuccessfully.

The tilt screen was very handy, allowing me to steady the camera on

the counter-top and still compose the frame and catch the action.

Olympus E-330, Zuiko 7-14mm f4.5, 1/50th, f4.5 @ 14mm zoom, 1250 ISO

 

All in all, the afternoon was wide-ranging both in lenses and new experience with the E-330. This camera is a complex new tool, and my percentage of successful shots was not up to par. However, I could sense the potential for a new level of creativity and a whole new need to read the manual! Many hours will be needed to learn and apply what the camera can do, then boil it down to the 20%  that works for me of all it can do. I hope to post some comments shortly about the mistakes I made and some features of the camera that I discovered, both good and some that seemed a bit confusing.

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