I’ve been totally getting into my TIDE project whilst in Costa Rica, really loving the craziness of having a waterproof camera and continually congratulating myself for buying the Pentax W60, that was until it broke last week.

Ironically (and annoyingly) it’s all still waterproof and functional, the problem is the screen has packed in so you can’t see what your taking or adjust the settings & modes, not ideal. I could get by (just) as it’s presently set to ‘AUTO’ which is *OK* for a selection of ocean shots as it’s a somewhat wild and random activity anyway (which is most of the fun..!), however it would be nice to be able to choose the underwater mode or make a movie.

Luckily we’re in Florida now for ten days so I took advantage of the facilities on offer and dropped into Best Buy yesterday for a pre-researched Olympus Tough 6000 purchase (which they had), however on the next stand I noticed the *just released* groovy little Fuji Z33, ooh, a $100 cheaper too, best have a play with it. Initially I wasn’t impressed with the in-store test shots but after dropping the ISO from 1600 (doh..!) to the statutory 100 things became acceptably sharper and I bought it there and then ($199 – bargain).

As a former Nikon pixel poker I was quite amused at myself and the resulting choices for the purchase, times are indeed a changing as I bought it without even checking the lens diameter (I’d previously never touch anything less wide than 28mm), quite amusing also considering the nature of me as a self confessed geek to drop technical specification into last place. The combined process was more or less as follows -

• It looked nice and caught my eye (it’s blue)
• It was waterproof
• It was cheap
• It took SD cards (which I have)

The lens diameter I honestly never bothered to check until I got home, nor was I bothered about the mega-pixel density (well let’s admit it, all compacts are much of a muchness in that area these days, and who really needs 12mp in a compact), however am I over geeking geek-ness here? I’d like to think it’s not all 0′s & 1′s with both aesthetics and an eye for design also in our mix somewhere, take my personal choice of (personal) computer for example. I use an Apple Mac partly for it’s design construction (I love the Air) but predominantly for the way the OSX operating system functions (I’m not interested in a Mac as purely a lifestyle choice). As a Linux developer I love and use it’s UNIX base with resulting stability being a distinct no brainer against the flakiness of Microsoft. Yes I could use Ubuntu but for computing on a personal level it’s iTunes which is my achilles heel, mind you in the new world of Spotify (it’s playing to me now) even that’s dropped a few notches down the ‘can’t live without’ it list (although I do still need my iPod sync-up).

Anyway, yes, I have (another) new camera, and I suppose at the end of the day my choices for buying it were just different to those of cameras I’ve had in the past, I’ll let you know how I get on with it.

The question is – did I buy the right colour? Now I’m having a dilemma……..

*UPDATE* – The supplied software is garbage, it doesn’t connect via USB to OSX, nor can I get it to do so (wish I’d brought my card reader…! )

Although in my possession for over six months I haven’t as yet blogged properly about my favourite camera so far (aside from the Samsung NV10, so actually I’m lying), it’s the lovely (and *almost* pocket size) Olympus E-410 DSLR, I suppose this could be a ‘long term’ test report then, quite a first for me.

While still relatively small in comparison to the big boys even my little Nikon D40 kit became too bulky for lazy me while I was in NYC last year, I just couldn’t be arsed with the array of lenses, filters, tripod and associated camera bag required to lug it all about, so I eBay’d it, got a good price too – $750, very good, especially as it had been treated to the beaches of Costa Rica for six months.
So, what next, well size was a priority but years of trials and delusion had made me aware that no matter what you just don’t get DSLR quality shots from any sort of prosumer, I’d already bought a Panasonic FX500 for pocket widescreen-ness (since eBay’d also) but superb as it was there was no RAW, and it wasn’t DSLR quality, even with that wondrous little 25mm Leica lens (it was bloody good all the same), so what to get?
The answer came from (funnily enough) a camera shop window, not just any camera shop though, B&H Photo in Manhattan, THE camera shop, although in this instance I never even had to go in as they had an ad in the window advertising the worlds smallest DSLR, it immediately caught my eye and as soon as we got back to the apartment I fired up eBay with a search for the Olympus E-410, yes, the worlds smallest DSLR, just what I was looking for.
In the end I managed to get a refurb, second user, shop display or whatever it was with a 14-42 (28-84mm) 4/3rds kit lens and warranty for a mere $400 (£200 equivalent at the time, when the exchange rate was good to us Brits), fucking bargain, I loved it the moment I took it out of the box, without even switching it on (I’m so fickle).

Anyway, I’m not going to go into any major technical analysis (none in fact) as there are plenty of other sites for lens polishing, and to be fair most DSLR’s of around the 10mp mark really are a much of a muchness (again – unless you’re a lens polisher), no, its the aesthetics of this groovy little thing which do it for me, it really is a joy and it’s shape and grip are quite reminiscent of an old 70′s film camera, dead nice, it really feels quite retro and is very satisfying and solid to operate with everything dropping in easily where you want it after a few outings. The only small gripe would be it’s use of CF media over SD, but there again that’s only as I already had a fistful of SD cards and had to buy a CF for it so fair enough, it’s just a personal thing.
General use has proven most pleasing and has covered such personal achievements as my Berlin KONEKTION:KOMUTE project from last September. To be honest I haven’t used it much after that as three months back in the UK didn’t really inspire me, I fully intend to though, when the time is right, especially as I hope to be back in Berlin for the Summer, a month just wasn’t enough.

There we have it then, a review (?) of the Olympus E-410, they take good pictures, they’re cheap, look cool and will easily drop into your bag without any fuss, an Olympus is also a welcome break from the cult of Nikon with all their pixel poking and lens polishing – buy one.

*EDIT* – I forgot to mention the 4/3rds ‘Pancake’ lens available for the Olympus(es)……check it out, these are a fixed  25mm (50mm equiv) @ a lovely f/1:2.8, offers up a field of view more or less on par with the human eye and makes the E range even more compact. That’s one cool lens, nothing like this over at Nikon either – LOL.

We finally made it to MOMA and what a total treat it turned out to be. I had no idea they were hosting a major exhibition by two of my favourite (and personally influential) photographers – Bernd and Hilda Becher, I was almost speechless with excitement when I discovered the gallery and it was for me undoubtedly worth the $20 entry fee just for that exhibition alone, I wouldn’t have dicked about trying to get in for nothing on the free admission Friday sessions had I known (the queue put me off – it was down the street and round the block…!)

For those unfamiliar with the Bechers iconic and pioneering method here’s a brief overview of their work and this related exhibition by Peter Galassi, MOMA’s Chief Curator of Photography -

“The German artists Bernd and Hilla Becher, who began working together in 1959 and married in 1961, are best known for their “typologies”—grids of black-and-white photographs of variant examples of a single type of industrial structure. To create these works, the artists traveled to large mines and steel mills, and systematically photographed the major structures, such as the winding towers that haul coal and iron ore to the surface and the blast furnaces that transform the ore into metal. The rigorous frontality of the individual images gives them the simplicity of diagrams, while their density of detail offers encyclopedic richness. At each site the Bechers also created overall landscape views of the entire plant, which set the structures in their context and show how they relate to each other. The typologies emulate the clarity of an engineer’s drawing, while the landscapes evoke the experience of a particular place. The exhibition presents these two formats together; because they lie at the polar extremes of photographic description, each underscores the creative potential of the other.”

I was so bowled over I immediately ordered the book as soon as I came back to the apartment.

Bernd Becher taught at the Düsseldorf Art Academy and influenced students that later made a name for themselves in the photography industry. Former students of Bernd’s included Andreas Gursky, Thomas Ruff, and Candida Höfer. Andreas Gursky is another of my personal icons and interestingly holds the record for the highest price paid at auction for a single photographic image. His print 99 Cent II, Diptych, sold for GBP 1.7 million (USD $3.3 million), quite something…!

The exhibition runs until August 25th (six days left..!), I’d most definitely recommend checking it out if you have time.

You may have picked up on the fact I like to take a few photos, previously to this blog a section of my job was to support the I.T infrastructure for Heritage digitisation at the Science Museums two Northern sites – the National Railway Museum in York and the National Media Museum in Bradford ( formerly the National Museum of Photography, Film & Television ), as such you could say I’m quite ‘au-fait’ with digital imaging method & archiving standards ( in fact if you need any advice get in touch, seriously, I’d be glad to help ).
Here’s a ‘very’ simplified and quick heads up about the three main file formats just to put this post in context -
( *NOTE* – PDF, although a superbly interesting option is not mentioned due to it still being on the undiscovered periphery of image archiving and process, there will be a more in depth entry on vector vs raster graphics at a later date also covering IPTC embedded ‘metadata‘ )

• JPEG – The lowest form of image file encryption and the most widely used. Data is compressed using encryption algorithms which leads to smaller file sizes but a loss in quality with varying levels of visble pixelation at full size, mainly suitable for web use, family photos etc, not ideal for larger prints. Viewable on any computer.
• TIFF – Loss-less file format and the de-facto standard for picture libraries @ 50mb per file with 8 bit Adobe RGB colour space, gives larger file sizes but stable for archiving. Viewable on any computer.
• RAW – This is the interesting ( and troublesome ) one, RAW is the closest thing you can get to a true digital negative, the image data is pure and untouched exactly as it hit the cameras CCD when the shutter was pressed, it offers the photographer an enormous range of post processing flexibility and a true base archive file BUT requires bespoke plugins or software to open and process ( unless you’re a Mac iPhoto user, OSX 10.4.10, good old Apple ). RAW gives a much smaller file size than TIFF ‘on disk’.

RAW then, unfortunately it’s not as simple as obtaining the plugin for say Nikon or Canon, that would be ideal, but of course it couldn’t be that simple. RAW interpretation differs between camera models ( and even model revisions – i.e Nikon’s D40 RAW plugin won’t decode D40x RAW images ), rather irritating to say the least and even more so when image processing giants such as Adobe ( the giant of giants ) not only lag behind in releasing upgrades to match new products but can and do annoyingly ( and expensively ) push version upgrades. For example the Photoshop RAW plugin required for Nikons D40x is only available for the latest CS3 suite, leaving users up to CS2 with the potential to end up with a camera full of images they can do nothing with unless they upgrade to CS3, and it isn’t cheap. Luckily ( ? ) Adobe offer a downloadable convertor free of charge, a stand alone application which will convert D40x RAW files ( NEF’s ) into Adobe’s own RAW format, the DNG file, which opens up fine in CS2′s RAW window.
So who’s to blame for this mess? Adobe are pioneering the cross platform, cross brand DNG and I suppose it’s refreshing that ‘someone’ is actually trying to standardise this area, to their credit certain camera manufacturers are also adopting this format – namely Hassleblad and Ricoh, two major players but still not as major as Nikon or Canon who seem to have no interest whatsoever in pursuing this.
Software and/or related device compatibility is a continuing problem in the digital world and the end user is more often than not manipulated into being out of pocket, remember the VHS vs BETAMAX ‘war’ in the 80′s? ( now back to haunt us once more as BLUERAY vs HD ‘DVD’ ), an unavoidable side effect of technological progress or a noticeable reflection of companies trying to corner the market? Whatever the reasons, both or either, it is as ever the end consumer who suffers, ironic considering there would be no demand for any of it without us.