Jeep unveils 2012 Grand Cherokee production-intent concept

Jeep unveils 2012 Grand Cherokee production-intent concept: At the Houston Auto Show Jeep has presented a new production-ready concept for the Grand Cherokee 2012 model.

Source : Google Reader

Monash University 2011 Graduate Show – Part 2

Monash University 2011 Graduate Show – Part 2: An exclusive report from the Melbourne-based Monash University 2011 degree show with the final projects of the Industrial Design undergraduate students. Part 2 of 2.

Source : Google Reader

A day of mourning for Kodak and SOPA/PIPA NOW REVISED.

A day of mourning for Kodak and SOPA/PIPA NOW REVISED.:

Was life easier back in the days when you just had to be good at your job?

Is protection from rank piracy really that difficult to conceive?

Notice: Edited at 3:14 on 1/19/2012 to include a counterpoint. Please read.

"Like most things in life the internet is a trade-off. A compromise. We give up some privacy in return for "connectedness." We give up some traditional protections of ownership to be able to conversely grab stuff that we want "with no consequences." At least that's the way it seems. I'm profoundly disturbed by what's happening in regard to laws that protect intellectual property and content versus the "need" to freely steal whatever we want, whenever and wherever we want it, but I might be sitting on a different side of the table than most people. You see, I write books and I create photographs that have value and which can be sold to people for actual 20th century style money. But my paradigm works only if most people play by the rules. And it seems, more and more, that they don't." (end of original content).

I wrote a long column about how the SOPA and PIPA laws would be better than nothing for content creators. I was wrong. I've been taken to school by dozens of bright and impassioned people who understand the technical aspects of the web in far greater detail than me. I have also had phone calls from two IP lawyers who are personal friends who calmly talked me through the pros and cons of what I was thinking and what I had written. Not to mention my photographer peers who just waded right in with no gloves on...

I was wrong. I decided to take down what I had written this morning and leave up the thoughtful examples that one of our readers sent to me, by way of e-mail. I have come to agree that "the ends don't always justify the means."

I want to thank everyone for their patience and politeness in this, very rare, instance in which I was obviously thinking incorrectly. I am glad, with my new knowledge and guidance, that the legislation got killed. Chastened by my own lack of depth. And fearful that my attorney friends will send me big invoices (which I will not pay since I did not solicit their advice...). I am truly gratified to have such compassionate and thoughtful friends as readers of the blog.

Now I'll just get back to writing about photography. Seriously, Thanks.

Counterpoint by a long time reader of VSL. For balance.

How about an alternate point of view from one of our well informed readers? Okay. I've redacted his name and contact info at his request.

"I am big fan of your blog about photography and read each post. Even

calling me a hobbyist photographer would be generous, yet your writing

about the issues surrounding professional photography always engage

and inform me. That is why I was so dismayed to see you defend

SOPA/PIPA in your recent blog posting. You see, while I might be a

hobbyist photographer, I am expert on the internet and specifically

software on the internet. I have been working in that sphere for 16

years and can assure you my opposition (and most peoples opposition)

to SOPA/PIPA is not due to our desire to make all content "free".

Rather, I am a strong proponent of copyright and IP protection, but I

am strong opponent of poorly written laws that are both technically

and legally idiotic.

From a technical perspective, the very idea of "foreign" vs "domestic"

website is ludicrous and impossible to define. For instance,

blogspot.com (which I'm sure you recognize) is hosted via google using

data centers around the globe. A person in Belgium accessing your

website maybe accessing that data via a data center in Brussels,

Chicago, or both and would never know the difference. You are the

person uploading content to this website yet you have no ability to

know if your website is "foreign" or "domestic' and neither does a

judge, google who hosts your site, or anyone visiting it.

Let me give you an example of the kind of use case that us in the

technology business are so worried about:

1. You, disgusted with Google over their stance on SOPA/PIPA, decide

to leave the freely available blogspot hosting service, and recreate

your website as is (without the blogger header) by using your own ISP,

which you pay for.

2. You want to be able to provide the same level of service as your

previous blog (ads for your books, speedy loading, rss feeds), so you

pay your ISP for a content network, and search engine optimization,

and you take your new site live. (thus making it a foreign site)

3. Further, now that you have all this infrastructure, you decide to

start selling your books yourself through your site, and get a

contract with a payment processor and create a little web store.

4. Everything is going swimmingly, you have easily paid for your

infrastructure and more!

5. On your website you post a link to another website that contains

public domain photographs.

6. That website then posts a copyrighted photograph. (You are now

facilitating infringement)

7. A competitor of yours files a SOPA "private right of action"

against your site and gets a ruling in their favor (without your

presence or defense).

8. Your competitor can now cause your amazon ads and payment processor

to stop doing business with you, destroying your new found revenue

stream, and you have no recourse to fix this problem. Further, even

if you prove that you didn't infringe copyright, your competitor is

immune from civil action for invoking this law.

Notice in that use case, never did you actually violate any copyright.

If you think this is far fetched, it is because you have not worked

in the internet technology world. I can assure you that actions very

similar to this are already happening under the similarly bad, yet

less poorly written DMCA. The same coalition came out (with less

effective protesting) against that bill because of how easy it would

be to abuse and how poorly it understood the technical problems it

faced. Nearly every complaint brought against the DMCA before it

passed have come true.

That is why we are fighting SOPA/PIPA so hard now. It isn't because

we want content creators (you do realize that software people are

content creators as well?) to be digital sharecroppers making money

for google without compensation. It is because these laws end up being

the weapons that litigious companies use to blackmail small technology

companies and small content creators. They hinder content creation

and technical innovation, all to support large content companies that

do little advance the actual content creators or the American people

as a whole.

Thank you,"

My day of mourning for the passing of Kodak.

Kodak filed for bankruptcy today. I suppose it was inevitable given their track record of dis-innovation over the last decade. But I come here today not to bury Kodak but to praise them. They were the iPhone of their day, bringing quick and pain-free imaging to the masses while making glorious products for the Olympian gods of the photography of their time.

When the company emerges from bankruptcy they'll be not much more than a high end supplier of big inkjet machines that make printed brochures and prints from photos. I guess they don't get that the next big revolution is to finally, truly go "paperless." Paperless was one of the early promises of digital. It's just taken a bit longer to get there than we thought. And Kodak is charging right into.....the paper market. Inkjets spewing on paper at a time when even my generation is flowing to the screen and the cloud.

Ah well. At least we'll have fond memories of Instamatic Cameras on 1960's family vacations. Our first tentative steps as baby photographers with Tri-X and D-76. Our first flirtations with color via Kodachrome. Our self assured steps into business with large and medium format Ektachromes. And even our "step off the cliffs" into digital with the DCS series of cameras.

I'll never forget the darkness and quiet as I rolled countless rolls of 35mm film onto unforgiving metal reels for development. I'll always savor the memory of a gorgeous face looking back at me from the black and white magic of an Ektalure print in the development tray. A tray filled with Dektol.

Likewise, I won't forget their enormous financial and ethical support of the efforts of the ASMP and the PPof A to train, educate and guide generations of professional photographers into profitable businesses. I won't forget the free film they gave me for a trip to Rome or the samples of new products they routinely handed out for our use.

I won't forget the things I learned in the books they published. From my Kodak Photo Data Guide with incredibly valuable (to film and large format photographers) charts and graphs for using filters, computing reciprocity, calculating depth of field and so much more. I remember when the Kodak Photo Data Guide was a bible among practitioners young and old. The same with the Darkroom Data Guide with it's matrix of times and temperatures and developer dilutions.

They were the software and firmware and back end of all our businesses. And they rarely let us down or allowed a bad product to hit the market. Not a lot of "rev 1.99's"

Kodak made Rochester, N.Y. not only a nice place to live (by all accounts) but also a cultural hub and a locus for all things photographic. They gave back. To photographers and Photography. And I think we all need to be thankful for the incredible foundation they built upon which we stand today.

Who will step up and take their place in the digital age?

©2010 Kirk Tuck. Please do not re-post without attribution. Please use the Amazon Links on the site to help me finance this site.

Source : Google Reader

A day of mourning for Kodak and SOPA/PIPA NOW REVISED.

A day of mourning for Kodak and SOPA/PIPA NOW REVISED.:

Was life easier back in the days when you just had to be good at your job?

Is protection from rank piracy really that difficult to conceive?

Notice: Edited at 3:14 on 1/19/2012 to include a counterpoint. Please read.

"Like most things in life the internet is a trade-off. A compromise. We give up some privacy in return for "connectedness." We give up some traditional protections of ownership to be able to conversely grab stuff that we want "with no consequences." At least that's the way it seems. I'm profoundly disturbed by what's happening in regard to laws that protect intellectual property and content versus the "need" to freely steal whatever we want, whenever and wherever we want it, but I might be sitting on a different side of the table than most people. You see, I write books and I create photographs that have value and which can be sold to people for actual 20th century style money. But my paradigm works only if most people play by the rules. And it seems, more and more, that they don't." (end of original content).

I wrote a long column about how the SOPA and PIPA laws would be better than nothing for content creators. I was wrong. I've been taken to school by dozens of bright and impassioned people who understand the technical aspects of the web in far greater detail than me. I have also had phone calls from two IP lawyers who are personal friends who calmly talked me through the pros and cons of what I was thinking and what I had written. Not to mention my photographer peers who just waded right in with no gloves on...

I was wrong. I decided to take down what I had written this morning and leave up the thoughtful examples that one of our readers sent to me, by way of e-mail. I have come to agree that "the ends don't always justify the means."

I want to thank everyone for their patience and politeness in this, very rare, instance in which I was obviously thinking incorrectly. I am glad, with my new knowledge and guidance, that the legislation got killed. Chastened by my own lack of depth. And fearful that my attorney friends will send me big invoices (which I will not pay since I did not solicit their advice...). I am truly gratified to have such compassionate and thoughtful friends as readers of the blog.

Now I'll just get back to writing about photography. Seriously, Thanks.

Counterpoint by a long time reader of VSL. For balance.

How about an alternate point of view from one of our well informed readers? Okay. I've redacted his name and contact info at his request.

"I am big fan of your blog about photography and read each post. Even

calling me a hobbyist photographer would be generous, yet your writing

about the issues surrounding professional photography always engage

and inform me. That is why I was so dismayed to see you defend

SOPA/PIPA in your recent blog posting. You see, while I might be a

hobbyist photographer, I am expert on the internet and specifically

software on the internet. I have been working in that sphere for 16

years and can assure you my opposition (and most peoples opposition)

to SOPA/PIPA is not due to our desire to make all content "free".

Rather, I am a strong proponent of copyright and IP protection, but I

am strong opponent of poorly written laws that are both technically

and legally idiotic.

From a technical perspective, the very idea of "foreign" vs "domestic"

website is ludicrous and impossible to define. For instance,

blogspot.com (which I'm sure you recognize) is hosted via google using

data centers around the globe. A person in Belgium accessing your

website maybe accessing that data via a data center in Brussels,

Chicago, or both and would never know the difference. You are the

person uploading content to this website yet you have no ability to

know if your website is "foreign" or "domestic' and neither does a

judge, google who hosts your site, or anyone visiting it.

Let me give you an example of the kind of use case that us in the

technology business are so worried about:

1. You, disgusted with Google over their stance on SOPA/PIPA, decide

to leave the freely available blogspot hosting service, and recreate

your website as is (without the blogger header) by using your own ISP,

which you pay for.

2. You want to be able to provide the same level of service as your

previous blog (ads for your books, speedy loading, rss feeds), so you

pay your ISP for a content network, and search engine optimization,

and you take your new site live. (thus making it a foreign site)

3. Further, now that you have all this infrastructure, you decide to

start selling your books yourself through your site, and get a

contract with a payment processor and create a little web store.

4. Everything is going swimmingly, you have easily paid for your

infrastructure and more!

5. On your website you post a link to another website that contains

public domain photographs.

6. That website then posts a copyrighted photograph. (You are now

facilitating infringement)

7. A competitor of yours files a SOPA "private right of action"

against your site and gets a ruling in their favor (without your

presence or defense).

8. Your competitor can now cause your amazon ads and payment processor

to stop doing business with you, destroying your new found revenue

stream, and you have no recourse to fix this problem. Further, even

if you prove that you didn't infringe copyright, your competitor is

immune from civil action for invoking this law.

Notice in that use case, never did you actually violate any copyright.

If you think this is far fetched, it is because you have not worked

in the internet technology world. I can assure you that actions very

similar to this are already happening under the similarly bad, yet

less poorly written DMCA. The same coalition came out (with less

effective protesting) against that bill because of how easy it would

be to abuse and how poorly it understood the technical problems it

faced. Nearly every complaint brought against the DMCA before it

passed have come true.

That is why we are fighting SOPA/PIPA so hard now. It isn't because

we want content creators (you do realize that software people are

content creators as well?) to be digital sharecroppers making money

for google without compensation. It is because these laws end up being

the weapons that litigious companies use to blackmail small technology

companies and small content creators. They hinder content creation

and technical innovation, all to support large content companies that

do little advance the actual content creators or the American people

as a whole.

Thank you,"

My day of mourning for the passing of Kodak.

Kodak filed for bankruptcy today. I suppose it was inevitable given their track record of dis-innovation over the last decade. But I come here today not to bury Kodak but to praise them. They were the iPhone of their day, bringing quick and pain-free imaging to the masses while making glorious products for the Olympian gods of the photography of their time.

When the company emerges from bankruptcy they'll be not much more than a high end supplier of big inkjet machines that make printed brochures and prints from photos. I guess they don't get that the next big revolution is to finally, truly go "paperless." Paperless was one of the early promises of digital. It's just taken a bit longer to get there than we thought. And Kodak is charging right into.....the paper market. Inkjets spewing on paper at a time when even my generation is flowing to the screen and the cloud.

Ah well. At least we'll have fond memories of Instamatic Cameras on 1960's family vacations. Our first tentative steps as baby photographers with Tri-X and D-76. Our first flirtations with color via Kodachrome. Our self assured steps into business with large and medium format Ektachromes. And even our "step off the cliffs" into digital with the DCS series of cameras.

I'll never forget the darkness and quiet as I rolled countless rolls of 35mm film onto unforgiving metal reels for development. I'll always savor the memory of a gorgeous face looking back at me from the black and white magic of an Ektalure print in the development tray. A tray filled with Dektol.

Likewise, I won't forget their enormous financial and ethical support of the efforts of the ASMP and the PPof A to train, educate and guide generations of professional photographers into profitable businesses. I won't forget the free film they gave me for a trip to Rome or the samples of new products they routinely handed out for our use.

I won't forget the things I learned in the books they published. From my Kodak Photo Data Guide with incredibly valuable (to film and large format photographers) charts and graphs for using filters, computing reciprocity, calculating depth of field and so much more. I remember when the Kodak Photo Data Guide was a bible among practitioners young and old. The same with the Darkroom Data Guide with it's matrix of times and temperatures and developer dilutions.

They were the software and firmware and back end of all our businesses. And they rarely let us down or allowed a bad product to hit the market. Not a lot of "rev 1.99's"

Kodak made Rochester, N.Y. not only a nice place to live (by all accounts) but also a cultural hub and a locus for all things photographic. They gave back. To photographers and Photography. And I think we all need to be thankful for the incredible foundation they built upon which we stand today.

Who will step up and take their place in the digital age?

©2010 Kirk Tuck. Please do not re-post without attribution. Please use the Amazon Links on the site to help me finance this site.

Source : Google Reader

On Politically and Legal Safe Ground. My review of the Nikon F…

On Politically and Legal Safe Ground. My review of the Nikon F…:

The Nikon F. Image by Kirk Tuck ©2012 Kirk Tuck. This image has been post processed.

We were ready to be impressed by this one from Nikon. It had gotten such good previous press. And there are things we like about it but let's get the less positive stuff out of the way first. This camera is not digital. It only takes physical film but it does operate in a semi-open system architecture. You can use any brand of spooled, perforated 35mm film, available from a wide (but ever diminishing) circle of suppliers.

We were horrified to find that instead of a bad, dim, dark rear LCD screen that requires the viewer to keep his or her eye centered behind it to see it properly, Nikon have left the screen off altogether. We'll presume that this was an attempt to keep manufacturing costs down but...we at VSL feel like that's just one step too far. Of course, LCD's may not have been available at the time of design but surely they could have put a little cathode ray tube back there, just to, you know, preview stuff.

Which brings us to our next criticism. No Menus. None? Nope. Astounding. I fiddled with the damn thing for nearly an hour, trying to find a way to auto bracket or to fine tune exposure. I couldn't even find a color space setting. Now that's primitive. In frustration I sent the camera to our fully equipped and space age lab for further analysis. Within days they had researched, poked and prodded and found the source of the design defect. In a word: battery. The camera maker had forgotten to include a battery in the package. Or a place to put a battery. It was all so mysterious.

We did some more research and consulted with a very, very old photographer (over 40!!!!) and he let us know that this Nikon F body was actually designed that way. He showed us how to read a meter that lives outside the camera (but be careful, you'll have to choose a film first) and how to set the few controls available. And we were off and running. Kinda.

We stepped outdoors, put a slight pressure on the shutter button and ..... nada. No focusing. Defective lens? Not according to our consultant. The lenses were meant to be focused by hand, like the Zeiss lenses currently on the market. We tried turning the lens barrel, as instructed, and were rewarded with improved focus. But even though we looked everywhere we were unable to find the diopter. With our eyes and that old screen we'd be lucky to get 50% of the stuff we shoot in focus, and that's outside in good light!

The buffer in the camera is pitiful. No matter how much time we waited between shots the camera would always stop at 36 frames and not budge. At one point we even left it "on" overnight to see if the buffer would clear but, no. And it's apparently WORM (write once, read many) technology because once you've hit the buffer you actually have to introduce new memory. And that's not cheap.

The top shutter speed is a dismal 1/1000th of a second and the shortest timed exposure is 1 second.

Here's our executive summary:

While we were anxious to buy into the hype surrounding this camera we knew at the outset that we'd been sold a "pig in a poke." When attempting to first load "film" memory in the camera the entire bottom fell off. Right onto the ground. The camera lacks even the barest degree of customization ability and it shoots only as quickly as you can push a lever 120 degrees with your thumb.

On the other hand, the non-battery lasted forever and the lens was fast, sharp and well corrected. Our recommendation? If you're into fast shooting, extreme sports, quick work, total control or.... just about any metric you can imagine then this camera is definitely not for you. So, how are they positioning it in the market? Would you believe they are trying to position it for professionals? Our prediction? They'll need a lot of marketing (and just the right kind) if they are going to make any head way with this one.

See our gallery of 4x6 inch prints on the refrigerator....

Here are the specs:

Big.

Heavy.

Slow.

Construction: Metal on metal and more metal. With metal. Everywhere.

Positives: We were unable to destroy it in any fashion. We even used it to chock the wheels of a large school bus on a perilous incline. We liked the noise it makes when we push the button.

Stayed tuned. Next month we'll be reviewing the Canonet QL17. Camera, Icon or Ruse?

©2010 Kirk Tuck. Please do not re-post without attribution. Please use the Amazon Links on the site to help me finance this site.

Source : Google Reader

Pure retro on my Panasonic and Olympus Cameras. The manual, Pen FT Lens test EXTRAVAGANZA.

Pure retro on my Panasonic and Olympus Cameras. The manual, Pen FT Lens test EXTRAVAGANZA.:

I'll start with a little bit of background. In the 1960's Olympus starting making cameras that used a half frame of 35mm film instead of the full frame. They called these "half frame" cameras. Most of the cameras were little compacts that were very light weight and easy to use. People who made small prints bought them to save money. And, even back then, people were trying to shove cameras into their pockets...

The half frame is really the same size as a "full frame" frame of 35mm movie film. Honest. What we consider full frame is actually "double frame." But I don't want to head down that rabbit hole right now. Having enjoyed a certain amount of success in the market the designers and dreamers at Olympus thought that there would be demand for a more sophisticated camera system that would keep the half frame film size but include some really cool things like a rotary, titanium shutter that syncs at all speeds, interchangeable lenses that are really, really good, and a mirrored reflex finder. Which made the camera a genuine "SLR." This was known as the Pen F system.

The camera was used by plenty of photojournalists who embraced the camera for the same reasons people are flocking to mirrorless cameras in the present: They were smaller, more discreet, easier to carry and very capable. In fact, one of the most famous photographers in the 20th century, Eugene Smith, appeared in ads for the Pen F's and shot with them on assignments. My favorite ad for the Pens is one in which Olympus showed how the whole system can fit in a shoe box.

But the reason the system had legs and sold reasonably well was the lenses. That's something Olympus has always done well. I won't go in for the standard hyperbole and suggest that they made lenses that are just as good as the current Leica M lenses but they were damn good and the half frame lenses were specifically designed for the smaller rectangle of film that the smaller cameras shot so they were optimized for higher resolution than the typical 35mm lenses of the day. It makes sense, the frames would have to be enlarged to a much greater degree in order to make the standard, black and white 8x10 inch prints that were the lingua Franca of the day.

What finally killed the Olympus half frame cameras? In a word? Color print film. Why? Because the labs begged for automated printers and those printers were never designed to deal with the odd ball size of the negatives. If people couldn't get film printed cheaply they weren't really interested. So what worked well in the days when people did their own lab work, and when labs handled each negative individually, didn't work as well in the age of automation. Too bad because it's a great little system. I should know, I have five of the Pen FT bodies and the collection of lenses in the first photo, plus some duplicates of my favorites in the Olympus equipment drawer. The one guarded by angry black Mamba snakes...

When the new, digital Pens came out I realized that the shorter lens flange to sensor dimension would make mounting lots of different lenses on the bodies a pretty straightforward deal. When I heard that adapters were already being made I jumped into the micro four thirds cameras mostly in order to breathe new, digital life into a collection of lenses that were interesting and, in some cases, a little exotic. And I have not been disappointed. But I'd never done the real test where you mount the lenses on the highest res digital camera you own and put that on a tripod with the self timer engaged and start looking at how the glass performs....wide open. And stuff like that. So I did. And I found out some interesting stuff.

Two 1,000 bulb LED lights make for a quick and simple photo set up with lots of lumens for stopping down and using the slowest ISO on the GH2. I think that's 160. The black flag to the right is serving no purpose whatsoever. It just happened to be there when I was setting up.

I chose to the Panasonic Lumix GH2 for my tests because the sensor is acknowledged, at this juncture, to be the highest res of the m4/3 tribe. It's also easy to use in a studio setting. Set preview to constant and shoot in M and you'll see each change you make to aperture, shutter speed and ISO right on the screen. Tap on the screen to increase magnification for fine focus...

Let me introduce you to the motley crew of lenses and say a little something about each one. I feel like I'm introducing family. Why am I in so little hurry to snap up the new primes coming to market? Because I think I've already got cooler ones. Take the 60mm 1.5, for example. No other company makes anything nearly as cool for the smaller cameras. Center sharpness is okay at full aperture and, like most lens designs of the time, you'll want to add some contrast to your files. These lenses are not post processing free but when done well you can squeeze really good performance out of them. When you hit f3.5 you are sharp from corner to corner and it's a very convincing sharpness. Hell yes, I use it for theatre shots. And portraits in dark and moody coffee shops and more. It uses the same lens hood at the 50mm to 90mm zoom lens. It's becoming rare and a bit costly but if you find a clean one you might want to put in on your camera and give it a spin. If you shoot portraits I can pretty much guarantee that it's a struggle your credit card will win.

Reader Note: you can click on any of the photos and they will come up much bigger in a separate window. I uploaded files that are 1200 pixels on the long edge so you might want to depend on the text for my observations about their performance.

above and just below: the 60mm 1.5

In every system there's one lens that shows up everywhere. Like the ubiquitous 50mm 1.8's for 35mm cameras. Or the 18-55mm kit zooms for APS-C cameras. In the Pen F hierarchy that lens would be the 38mm 1.8. It's small, light, fast and well corrected. This was my everyday shooter in the film days. While most of the Pen F lenses are able to be used wide open they tend to mimic standard gauss designs in that the center is sharp at or near wide open and stopping the lens down brings greater and greater corner sharpness. By f4 the lens is really good and by f8 it's as perfect as you could want it to be.

Above: think of the 38mm as the budget "system lens"

I think of the 70mm f2 as the equivalent of the standard 35mm 135mm lens. In particular, I think of mine as the 135 f2 L series of the Pens. It's not nearly as sharp as that much more modern lens, when used wide open but it sharpens up nicely one stop down and, by f4 is monster good. If flares a little in contrajour light so I try to always use it with a hood or shade the front element with my hand... It's a great "candid" shooter.

the 70mm. half the weight of the chunky 60mm.

There are really two lenses that haven't jumped through the time travel portal with the same success as the longer focal lengths. Those are the 20mm 3.5 and the 25mm 2.8. The 20mm is widest Pen F lens that ever got made and it's really nothing to write home about until you stop it down to f5.6. And alarmingly, at least with my copy, it tends to start flying apart with diffraction softening right at f11. By the time you get to f16 you'll think you forgot to focus. Which actually brings up something we need to talk about. There's a lot of focus shifting, as you stop down, in some of these lenses (especially the zoom). If you focus wide open and then stop down you may or may not have some safety with depth of field but you'll be way better off to stop down first and then focus. Which is how the older lenses work on the mirrorless camera anyhow. If you need a 20mm you might want to pass on one of these and head straight of the Panasonic. The 20mm 1.7 Panasonic may be one of the most beloved optics of the entire family m43 system...

I've gotten detailed shots from the 20mm Pen F lens but I've had to boast contrast a lot to make them work. And adding a bit of saturation won't hurt either...

Above: the 20mm 3.5. Not quite the sharpest of the flock.

Now. Someone get me a drool bib. This is one of my favorite lenses of all. The fabulous 40mm 1.4. I think of it as the high speed standard of the entire small camera universe. There was faster and very rare 42mm 1.2 but it wasn't as well corrected as the 1.4 and weighed nearly twice as much. I shot some flat stuff in the studio today which is represented below. At 1.4 it's decent. Not a lot of micro detail in the files. But one stop down brings it to parity with just about anything out there. At f2.8 it's sharper than the Canon 50mm 1.4 at 2.8 and even a little sharper, to my eye, than the Zeiss 50mm 1.4 at 2.8. When you hit f4 it's like you put a macro lens on the front of your camera. Sharp and contrasty over the whole frame. Kinda like that Olympus 45mm 1.8 they've been shopping around.....only this puppy is a two thirds of a stop faster. And it looks even better because it's black.

It's my photojournalist wannabe lens. I love it for portraits and candids and street shooting and just about anything that requires a slightly longer prime optic. The Panasonic camera seemed to swell with pride when I put this on the lens mount.

The crowning achievement of PenF lens design.

Not because it's exotic but because it's nearly

PERFECT.

Reader tip about lens adapters: I have three different adapter rings that allow me to mount Pen F lenses on the m4/3 digital cameras. All three of them will allow the lens to focus past infinity. That means that the focusing scale on the lens barrel becomes meaningless. And that reduced the lens's usability as a zone focusing "street shooter". If I had the time I'd probably figure out the positions for hyperfocal distances and mark them on the lens barrel with a red dot but.....I'm too lazy. Or I spend too much time writing. At any rate you are now warned not to trust the infinity setting on any legacy lens mounted via an adapter. Test before you set to infinity and go out for walk. Even with the wide angles. Especially with the wide angles...

And, Olympus knew how to do hoods. Nice hoods with

thumbscrews. You tighten, they stay in place.

Which brings me to a lens that is an enigma to me. The 25mm. For the longest time I thought this lens and the 20mm lens were not very good and not very sharp. Today I changed my mind. This is the first time I've put them on a tripod and then used live view to focus. My focusing skills with the smaller format are a pale ghost of my medium format focusing skills and I think it's because the finders on the Pen F cameras are old tech, very dark and the DOF of the short focal length makes everything look like it's in focus in the viewfinder (when viewed tiny) while it's not sharp if blown up.

Today I put this lens on the GH2 and focused at 8x magnification and shot test shots. And I like them. There's good detail everywhere. It's not going to replace a fast focusing and bright lens like the Leica/Lumix 25mm 1.4 but it's very well done and, when stopped down to 5.6 it does a very nice job with subjects that give you enough time to check focus. Sad about the lack of true infinity on the adapter rings because it's a focal length that would lend itself to zone focusing and shooting from the hip.

the 25mm 2.8. Beautifully made.

And now revealed to actually be sharp.

Which brings me to the longest half frame lens in my collection, the 150mm f4. If you play the equivalent game this optic gives you the same angle of view on m4/3 as a 300mm on a full frame film or digital camera. This is another lens that never really satisfied me until I put it on the EP2. With the benefit of adjustable (by focal length) image stabilization I was able to hold it still enough for distance shots to discover that it is really well corrected and sharp. One reader of a previous post about this lens pointed out what might be veiling glare but I think it's really just the lower contrast of a design from the late 1960's when a lower contrast lens with good sharpness was actually a benefit to people who shot black and white film in contrasty situations. You could always add contrast in the darkroom with graded papers or multi-grade papers but you couldn't bring back blown highlights or blocked shadows.

It was an epiphany to actually put the lens on a tripod and do the two second self time as a release mechanism. The magnification works against hand holding. Especially on the GH2 which doesn't have IS in the body. If used correctly I find the lens to be quite good wide open and at its best when used at 5.6. With a judicious boost of contrast and a moderate dose of saturation in your favorite post processing program you'll have snappy photos with some nice compression. And it works well as a long lens for video. As long as you're on the sticks.... A big benefit, vis-a-vis full frame, is that it's 1/3 the size and weight of the bigger format's equivalent.

Go long. And pack light.

I like the 300 f4. Especially now that I know

the sharpness issues were really just

my lazy technique.

Back in the late 1960's zoom lenses were really just a novelty and most of them (with the exception of the Nikkor 80-200 f4.5) were unsharp and unsatisfying. But this lens from Olympus is pretty good. Not nearly as good as the single focal length lenses above but head and shoulders above most of the dreck that was available way back then. I wasn't old enough to shoot back then but I used the older zooms when I was on a budget in the earlier times of my amateur career as a photographer.

The focal length is not long, is corresponds to about 100mm to 180mm's but it seems just right for a guy who likes to do classical portraiture. While it's not stunningly sharp at 3.5 it's pretty nice by the time you get to f5.6. And.....it's a constant aperture zoom. Nothing changes as you change focal lengths. It's not a true parafocal zoom. It does shift focus as you zoom which means you'll want to refocus every time you shift focal lengths. If you press it into service for video you'll find that it shifts the image a lot as you focus. The way to use this lens is to line up your shot and lock in your parameters, then shoot your scene and move on. I wouldn't try to follow focus with this one.

An early telephoto zoom that acquits itself nicely at

f5.6. And it's less than a quarter the volume of

a Canon 70-200mm L lens. This one I could

carry all day long....

While I'm not going to review it because I never really use it I also have a 2x converter for the system.

I haven't been able to suspend my belief that

older teleconverters suck so I've only tried this

once, on the 150 and handheld. If it's not sharp or

if it is sharp, how would I know? I'll try it sooner or later

and let you know.

40mm wide open.

40mm at f4

60mm wide open.

60mm at f3.5

70mm wide open

70mm at f4

20.

24.

38.

40.

60.

70.

50 on the zoom.

60 on the zoom

70 on the zoom

90 on the zoom wide open

90 on the zoom at 5.6

150mm.

20

60

70

90 on the zoom

150.

Physical Construction: The Olympus Pen F lenses are made in the way we've come to expect products from the height of the industrial age to have been made. Knurled metal barrel that are designed to offer just the right friction for your fingers, with areas of small indents alternating with big scallops to provide the sense that you'll always have a great grip. The lenses are small but dense and feel as though they are made to last a photographer's lifetime. And the proof is in the pudding. Several of the lenses I have trace their origin back to around 1968. And they were well used. But the focusing rings are still smooth and sure in operation, the spring back for the auto aperture is still free of drag and the mounting rings look brand new. Even the stop down button and the locking buttons are made of well crafted and robust metal. If there is plastic anywhere on any of the lenses I've not been able to find it.



If Panasonic and/or Olympus introduces focus peaking in their next generation of cameras I'll be in heaven and will probably put off buying the current, popular primes for a long time.



Recommendations. Of the lenses I've listed, most, beside the 38mm's, are going to be too expensive to be practical purchases. Both Panasonic and Olympus have better performing (and easier to focus) wide angle and wide/normal lenses than the 20mm and 25mm. The sweet spot for me would be the 40mm 1.4, the 60mm 1.5 and the 70mm f2. All are wonderful lenses that are competitive with just about anything you'll find today ( provided that the glass is in good shape and not fogged in the least).



If I had to choose just one it would be the 60mm 1.5. It's physically beautiful on the camera and the view through the EVF, or even on the rear screen, of the GH2 is wonderful. With one touch of a button I'm able to fine focus at 8x and, one stop down the lens doesn't miss a beat. A far cry from the slow kit lenses that most of us suffer with.



Since I own the 40 and the 60 Pen F lenses I've put off buying the 45mm 1.8. But I keep seeing images that impress me. If I do buy one it will be because I have become to lazy to manually focus my 60. But for now, I'll persevere.



So why do I write this when probably no more than a few handfuls of people have any interest in MF lenses for mirrorless cameras? Because the Pen F lenses deserve some recognition. They set a standard in their days that's taken forty years to be re-invented. And that's very cool.



Thanks for reading.



Below, the full sized, 4000+ pixel test of the 60mm at f3.5. Jpeg (8 quality) sharpened. click it and see.

©2010 Kirk Tuck. Please do not re-post without attribution. Please use the Amazon Links on the site to help me finance this site.

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