Ken:
You are sending this to Olympus as well, right? Too much for me to
digest in one sitting, but invaluable real world observations. And
whether Olympus has already heard these before or not is immaterial:
send them a report.
Thanks
Earl
AG Schnozz wrote:
>The past three evenings I photographed an annual event, which
>I've done for seven years now. In less than 10 total hours I
>shot slightly over 1,000 pictures. All digital. There is some
>Olympus content here, but also some operational notes, so hang
>in here.
>
>The Olympus E-1 performed flawlessly. About 800 of those
>pictures were taken with the E-1 and other than human error, it
>was perfect. I think I've identified the "killer feature" of
>the E-1. It's the quietness of the shutter. To be able to keep
>firing away (no flash) during quiet moments without disturbing
>anybody is worth the price of admission. I needed to get
>photographs of the keynote speaker (a rather important dude),
>but his facial quirks and other habits made getting the shot
>extremely difficult. Over two evenings I shot over 200 pictures
>of him to get a handful of acceptable shots. The shutter never
>bothered anybody. Yes, my Minolta A1 is quieter, but it comes
>with other baggage--namely imaging noise and shuter delay.
>
>High-ISO noise. No, the E-1 isn't noiseless at higher ISO
>settings. In a few instances I did have to utilize ISO 1600,
>but ended up with 800 for non-flash and 400 for flash pictures.
>Stage lighting was setup for video, so it was right on the edge.
> Working distances ranged from 20 feet to 200 feet.
>
>Weight. Make no mistake about it. The E-1 isn't light. With
>the 14-54, Stroboframe and flash, it starts to get a bit tiring.
>I'm glad I don't have to haul a 1Dx with L glass around. My
>hands didn't go numb right away, but I noticed last night that
>numbness finally kicked in. It was a gradual thing and even
>this morning I'm running maybe 10% feeling in my fingers.
>
>Monopod. See previous note. This is a required piece of
>equipment. I told my wife last night that the monopod has
>become one of my most critical pieces of gear. I have a Bogan
>QR plate (with recessed screw) mounted on my Stroboframe so I
>popped the heavy-duty ballhead from by Bogan 3001 on the top so
>I could quickly engage and disengage from the monopod. Great
>idea, but I'll need to go to a smaller/lighter head as it
>doubles the weight of the monopod making it quite top-heavy.
>
>White Balance. I'm less than pleased with the WB in the E-1. I
>couldn't get it to match to lighting. Most non-flash picture
>will require color fixing. In comparison, the A1 nailed the WB
>perfectly. The E-1's WB bias is Blue-Red, whereas the A1's is
>more Blue-Orange. This is an area of concern with me and I'll
>continue to devote time and effort to plugging this hole.
>
>Thanks for the Memories. The E-1 allows you to save four
>different settings or presets. Unfortunately, this requires a
>total of three fingers to accomplish. I had two setups--one for
>flash, the other for ambient light. I programmed ISOs, WB, and
>manual exposures for each setup. I did have a third for the
>studio portrait shots, but that's another story. With the
>Minolta, I can switch setups with a turn of the mode dial. One
>finger--very convenient and most usable. The E-1 is much more
>bothersome to change in a high-speed working environment. I'm
>glad Olympus allows me to save these settings, but I'd love to
>see them implement it in the same fashion that Minolta has done.
>
>Tilted top-panel display. You ever wonder why they tilted it?
>Ever try to read the top display when the camera is at eye-level
>on a tripod or monopod? Nice job, Olympus. Now I understand.
>
>It has a good beat and you can dance to it. The A1 has a
>built-in feature that I used to great success. The question is
>how do you get a back-facing shot without actually being up on
>stage? Either remote control the camera (wasn't an option for
>me) or put the camera on Intervalmeter. This I did. I had it
>fire off a shot every minute for three hours. I started the
>sequence about 15 minutes before the start of the event and came
>back afterwards. The backdrop was black fabric, the small
>tripod was setting on a ledge with a 2-inch lip. All of the
>reflective aluminum I had either behind/below the lip or I had
>covered up with the nifty little lens-bag Olympus gives you with
>the 14-54. As the camera is black it disappeared into the
>backdrop. Unless you knew exactly where to look, you couldn't
>see the camera and even that was marginal. But the camera could
>see you.
>
>Portraiture. I had to do portraits of about 75 people. Hung the
>backdrop in the green room, stuck up a single studio flash in a
>softbox and placed and fired. My wife helped get them situated.
>We were under time pressure and I did all 75 in about 20
>minutes. Talk about hoofing it! With digital I had instant
>feedback to verify the smiles/eyes. Second and third shots were
>necessary on a few people, but we were able to do it without
>hesitation. Having the 4/3 crop meant that I could shoot for
>printing and not worry about cropping. I did shoot these in
>RAW. Ate up half my storage doing so, though.
>
>Speaking of RAW, I shot nearly the entire project in JPEG SHQ.
>Where necessary I'll use Noiseware to clean a few shots up, but
>nearly everything is as-is. Will do a batch process to convert
>the colorcast in the blown WB shots.
>
>Analog Zuikos. I used the 100/2.8 and 200/4 for a number of
>shots. The 100/2.8 turned out to be about the perfect lens when
>I shot from the back of the room or balcony. The distance to the
>stage gave me a full-length shot (person occupies 75% of frame
>height) in portrait orientation. The extra F-stop was also handy
>to keep shutter speeds or flash power requirement in check. I
>either shot the 100/2.8 at F2.8 or F4. Results are excellent.
>
>Flash notes. I used 2200 mah rechargable AA's in the Vivitar
>flash. A full-power flash to full-power flash cycle was about
>five seconds for fresh batteries, but got down to eight seconds
>by the end of the evening. I had to go to half-power (and opened
>up a stop) as one particular sequence was extremely tight
>timing-wise. I left the flash on or in standby mode (standby
>preserves all of my ISO/Fstop settings) for over three hours and
>fired around 200 pictures on a single set of rechargables! 2/3
>of those pictures were full-power. I had two spare sets of
>rechargable batteries, but never touched them any of the three
>nights. Last year I went through three sets in just one
>evening!
>
>Gripes. The 14-54 is too big to stuff in a pocket. I'm used to
>carrying a handful of lenses in jacket pockets. White Balance
>oddities as mentioned above. Inability to change batteries in
>the E-1 without removing it from the stroboframe. Although i
>did eventually figure out a way to rotate it a little to get
>access to the battery. Autofocus is very good, but could always
>be better. Slow review. I'm used to instant review with the
>A1, but with the E-1 you've got to wait until the buffer is
>written to the storage. It was an issue when shooting those
>portraits! Unfortunate position of the WB instant-set button.
>On at least a half-dozen occasions I accidently pressed that
>button. 1-minute sleep time caught me napping. I learned to
>wake up the camera before I actually need it.
>
>I did a lot of in-camera editing. Whenever I had a spare minute
>I zapped the obvious outtakes. One thing I absolutely hate
>about the E-1 is the gut-wrenching fuzzyness of the review
>images. You have no clue whether or not the picure is sharp
>enough or has to be redone. The quick zoom in/out function is
>great, but the image quality is baaaaad. Take a lesson from
>Konica-Minolta, folks.
>
>The E-1 performed better than I expected. All of those horror
>stories about imaging noise is just that--noise. Let's put it
>in perspective here. Two years ago I shot this with the OM
>equipment and Portra 400 VC. Those pictures were just as "noisy"
>as the worst of my E-1 pictures at 800. 1600 is obviously
>noisy, but consider the shots. I can see where a Canon with
>ultra-clean high ISO performance would be nice, but the trade
>off with shutter noise offsets the whole equation. Using the
>monopod allowed me to use ISO 800 with no problems.
>
>I've already got an order for a half-dozen 13-19's of pictures
>shot at ISO 1600. Guess they aren't too bad.
>
>AG
>
>
>
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