A Few Weeks In.

Well, I am a few weeks into my first month with a good old camera. I have thoughts.

The Olympus E-1 has proven to be a piece of technology that handily ingratiates itself. It is not without it’s flaws, however, and many of these are related to its age. A camera that came out in 2003 will never be able to win hearts with brutish specifications like sky high megapixels.

There is a joy in knowing that such an old camera works at all, and that it has its own character to the images it makes is just a bonus on top of that.

The colours! Yes they are everything people wrote about prior to my purchase of the camera. There is a magic all of its own in the Kodak manufactured CCD sensor housed inside this rugged old tank of a camera. It is only 5 megapixels, but it makes those 5 million dots count for something with the way it renders colours.

Then there are the lenses. The system was not the most developed in its short lived run. Olympus did still mange to provide a number of fabulous examples.

One of my favourites so far has been the 14-54mm lens, which was one of their mid-range zoom lenses. It is a versatile zoom range, equivalent to 28-108mm on a full frame camera, but its most impressive trick is a great close focus - not quite true macro but close enough that it means I do not have to change lenses when photographing small subjects.

The plot twist, or word of warning, here is that this is my second copy of the lens. My first had a slight focusing issue that meant it would always focus behind the actual focus point making capturing sharp shots impossible with any level of consitency. Future Olympus DSLR cameras in the series would allow for autofocus adjustments, but the E-1 does not have such a feature so a second copy of the lens was sourced and it works without issue on my copy of the E-1.

I also have to make special mention of something that could easily be overlooked, but the camera has brilliant ergonomics. This is one area where you can safely make a statement without caveats about the age of the machine, it is just brillant in the hand. This is especially true when used wearing gloves. The weather in January has been incredibly cold and as such has made glove wearing a must!

With the handling giving such confidence, the speed of operation only adds to this, it is easy to forget sometimes that you are holding a camera that it is now over twenty years old. There are moments you are reminded of this though. The focus system (while mostly fast and accurate) is limited to three focus points, and they are all basically in the middle of the frame. Focus and recompose methods of image taking are essential to the use of this camera.

Low light can be an issue, but it is a strong reminder that many things can be overcome with good technique and use of assitive tools like tripods and slower shutter speeds afforded by them. The shutter mechanism itself is well damped and does not appear to negatively impact the image making due to uncrontrollable slapping of the mirror.

Most importantly thought is the thought that if the light is not good enough to make a photograph on this camera then maybe that particular situation just doesn’t have the right kind of light for making a photograph. Modern technology and high ISO performance has meant many poor lighting conditions can be overcome through brute force of specification.

This camera has made me a less complacent photographer. Where I would normally ride the shutter speeds dangerously slow safe in the knowledge my image stabilised camera would be able to correct for that, this camera actually forces me to think about the trade off between increasing ISO on a camera that is limited in its capabilites in that area compared to setting up a tripod and slowing down the shutter speed that way.

Ultimately this is not yet a review of the camera, I will save that until the end of the month, but it is a good time to check in and let you know my thoughts.

Safe to say I am really enjoying the camera and have developed some techniques for getting what I think is the most out of the files it produces and will share some of my post production techniques in another post.

Until next time I hope you are enjoying whatever camera you have and are trying new things every time you go out with it!

Making The Most Of 5 Megapixels.

Chapter 1: A Light-tight Box.

James Warner