Best Mirrorless for below US$1,000

Go Fuji and Olympus!

Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mark II is Out

Nice piece of camera. Certainly no need for me to change it but for those who want high res studio shots and a bit more for their movie, it's something worth considering.

New Hydration Bag

I had to clear vouchers before they expired on Sunday and didn't know what to get. The bag I wanted wasn't available, so this was the next best thing, hope it'll be a good purchase!

Side Note: Photos below taken with the Nexus 5 using Google Camera's Lens Blur feature...like pro only the first photo (except the second which is a bit wonky) =P

NB Scape Run & SDM Individual Photos

Run this evening at Scape, followed by a quick photo session of the Sundown Marathon finishers.

Two problems I faced, the flash I brought along was alright but I ended up washing out the colors when photographing under the entrance, decided to skip the flash. Secondly, the lighting in the area was very odd. There's nothing really wrong with it as u can see below, but the face detection, though could detect faces, could not get a focus lock! I tested it away from the entrance and it hit spot on, but back under the entrance it kept focusing behind despite catching the face in the viewfinder.

Resorted to turning off facial recognition to take the photos, thankfully they turned out alright.

Lunch @ Valley Point

Met up with Kee Wee for lunch earlier when I sent my camera in for servicing.

Good lunch and good chat. 1 hour later camera was also ready for pick up. Awesome.

Lytro Illum - Light Field Camera goes Pro

30-250mm equivalent f2 lens. Light field tech. All for $1,599.00

You can not only change the focus, but redo the aperture as well.

This is really cool stuff, would love to see where it leads to next!

Google Updates Stock Camera - HOLY CRAP! (Lens Blur Feature)

Google just pushed an update to the Google Stock Camera, with a single new feature that's quite mind blowing - Lens Blur! (Article by Google Here)

It's essentially a fake blur stitching two photos together, very much like the HTC One M8 and new Galaxy S5's refocusing feature, but instead of having to buy one of those cameras, you just need to update the app!

The camera requires you to take a photo of a subject, and slowly raise your camera so it can snap a second shot, this allows the camera to work out the distances between subjects and then process the final image.

The above photo is taken without the lens blur feature, the bottom is.

The best part? You can adjust the blur, and refocus areas!!!! Samsung and HTC must be feeling a bit annoyed right now since they tout it as a feature in both their devices.

There are some downsides.

One, it doesn't work if ur subjects are too close, doesn't matter for me I think.

Two, the file size is shrunk, your 8mp photo is reduced to a miserable 1024 x 768 resolution...that's really low, low enough that when u put it up Instagram, the image is pixelated.

The second con is the one that gets me the most...I wished the resolution was higher, especially since I'd probably only love to use this feature and share an image on instagram. Still considering this was an unexpected update with a pretty nifty feature, it's still more novelty than anything else, but definitely a good one to have. I hope they'd upgrade the resolution for the lens blur photo, but for now this will do pretty well.

Kitty Portraits #14

Taken with the 45mm f1.8.

Al's right about the compression at that focal length, I agree with him though understanding the reason behind it and actually seeing it are two different things..wow.

Best. $250. Spent.

Wholesale Market Walkabout - Olympus 45mm f1.8 Test

Went to the wholesale market today to get mushrooms and asparagus for home and decided to bring the 45mm lens out for a try.

It's mainly a portrait lens but I also wanted to see how well it was for candids. Guess I'll have more time to play with it in Hong Kong, but so far I'm liking it.

Olympus 45mm f1.8 Purchase

This was an impulse buy. I have to reason to get this lens, even though it was selling at $350 second hand online.

And then yesterday while browsing, I noticed one guy had spoilt market and sold his at $250! Next thing I knew, the following similar lenses were going at that price too...huat ah!

So I figured I might as well, if I really don't like it I'll sell it away, it's still cheaper than renting a lens on a whole.

Plus the size...goodness the size!

Picture wise? Below's a quick shot of the cat, couldn't get him to sit still for long and I'm too tired to process anything. This is SOOC.

Jam Session - Messing w CAF (Olympus OM-D E-M1)

Further messing with the CAF while at Novena last night.

All shot at iso4,000 f1.4 at Shutter 1/640.

Pan-Leica & Oly 25mm Glass Comparisons by Robin Wong

Robin Wong wrote a really good article comparing the differences between the Pan-Leica 25mm f1.4 and the newly announced Olympus 25mm f1.8 lens. It's a long read, but it laid out a lot of pros and cons of both lenses.

The Pan-Leica I own is an awesome lens, the CA and edge sharpness don't bug me as much, and I don't have the focusing problems Robin faced during his review, but it's good to know that at half the price, the Olympus 25mm f1.8's only con against the Pan-Leica is an ever so slight difference in bokeh, but everything else (at least, on an Olympus body with camera correction), it's able to match or exceed the Pan-Leica in performance.

DOF between the f1.4 Pan-Leica (Left) and f1.8 Oly (Right)

So which bugs you more? If you're a pixel peeper, and complete edge sharpness is your primary concern, I think the Oly is perfect, if low light shutter speed is what you're going for, the Pan-Leica will add that edge for you at a price. That said, the Olympus 25mm is no slacker, and probably worth the purchase for those seeking to get their first 50mm equivalent.

You can read the entire article in his post link HERE.

MiniCAM - Portable Steadycam Rig

Saw an image Jialiang posted on his Facebook page and decided to google and see what the heck it was.

If video's your thing, this looks pretty damn awesome! Straight out of Taiwan, this is one of the most versatile steadycams around!

It's now into its fifth iteration and it initially looks like some odd tripod that would probably topple, I was curious exactly as to how well it performs...and then I saw a demo video made 3 years ago with version 1 of his product.

Of course the parkour videos were what suckered me in to watch the videos in the first place, but the stability is really impressive! The EM1 has an awesome in-built stabilizer but it's not gonna handle the rough runs and jerks you'd get from such an activity.

If I was still exploring video like I did during my teens, this would've been a dream.

I dug through their videos, and found another product that I felt was pretty innovative, a pro-tripod that could have one of its legs converted into a monopod.

It's really cool to see so many innovative gadgets emerging from the west these past few years, mostly cheap imitations, but when something really good passes by, it's good to take a second look.

Olympus OM-D E-M1 - Continuous AF Shot Succession

Figured I might as well put it up, this is a follow up of last night's blog entry. (Article Here)

These were shots of Adrian taken at 1/800 shutter, Panasonic Leica 25mm (50mm Full Frame equivalent) f1.4, iso 4,000. Unedited.

I didn't burst full sets for most of my shots, most topped out at 4 shots before I released the shutter. This is one of the few that had a decent succession so I'm using this as an example.

The shot I picked from the 7 photos was the 3rd shot, and later edited via Aperture.

Final Edit