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Olympus Tag

03 Aug

Posted at 09:28h in Blog, Dick's Rant by

Don't wince. This isn't a bulletin with viruses or politicians in it. It's concerned with cameras. Briefly, Olympus - the makers of the Zuiko lenses and the Olympus OM-D micro 4/3 cameras - will be selling their imaging division to a Japanese consortium in September. Some people have imagined that this will be the end of Olympus cameras - I suspect it will be nothing like that at all. The consortium - Japan Industrial Partners - is very likely to get the camera division in toto - and that will mean R&D, plans, tools, machines, patterns, materials, and perhaps even factories. I would think that it will also receive the bulk of the optical workers that the camera division has been using for the last decades. it would make sense to transfer the people skilled with the brand at the same time. So what does this mean to you, the Australian camera user? I would suggest that it means you'll have an opportunity to get some very good camera gear and lenses in the next few years: a. There will be a flurry of...

29 Jan

Posted at 07:57h in Blog, Dick's Rant by

Let's face it. With Olympus there is always going to be something new coming out. As with many other manufacturers, the have rolling program of new and updated equipment that takes advantage of new sensors, new circuitry, and new operational features. They spread these over several levels of sophistication in their products and try to have something for everyone to buy. And that's the operative term: buy. They make, you buy, they have enough money to make more. In this case you are buying a new version of Olympus's OM-D E-M5 camera...

05 Nov

Posted at 07:30h in Blog, Dick's Rant by

You might be forgiven for thinking that wireless triggers are simple things. So they are, when all you wish to do is tell a circuit to close at a distance from the camera. You put a transmitter on the hot shoe of the camera, a receiver under the speedlight out in the distance, and fire away. As long as the things are plugged in correctly and the AA batteries are fresh, it works every time. When you start to go TTL, however, and start to introduce different models of different maker's flashes, the whole thing becomes as complex as a spider's web. Here's a collage of images from the different trigger systems here in the shop on just one day. Beware that not all triggers made are shown - you have miles to go in this forest before you can sleep...

16 Oct

Posted at 07:43h in Blog, Dick's Rant by

The one with the Olympus Voice Recorder in it, please. I want to remember your every word. To be honest, I want to remember every word I've spoken as well, and I can't. This makes it very awkward later in front of the partner, kids, and in-laws. They cross-check my stories and you only have to get it wrong once to never hear the end...

01 Oct

Posted at 07:10h in Blog, Dick's Rant by

Not to mention the camel exhausts and general air pollution of Cairo and surrounds. I not to mention this because a friend is  touring Egypt - the cities and the Nile up as far as Aswan - and has sent back some glorious photos via our social network. Unfortunately, I think many of them have been taken with a mobile smartphone and the lens has not coped well with the atmosphere. Perhaps it has been fingerprinted as well...

20 Sep

Posted at 07:49h in Blog, Dick's Rant by

I have to be careful with that title - I tried typing in Olympus Superzoom to the net to see what help it could be and it routed me off to old eBay sellers who have 35mm cameras for sale. Eek. I wanted to see if there was a comparable model from them that matched other major makers - something that had a small sensor but an enormous lens out the front. The sort of thing that cruise and safari tourists take overseas. It looks as though they might have had something like that some while ago, but are concentrating now on the things that can be done with their Micro 4/3 line of mirrorless cameras - and that they have just come out with a new lens to do it. The lens Carlos showed me is the Zuiko 12-200mm f:3.5-6.3 - possibly the longest zoom range lens for any mirrorless camera. It's the 35mm film equivalent of 24mm to 400mm. And we never thought of that in the day...