Olympus E-PL1 with M.Zuiko 45mm lens. Small LED tabletop light from inside, around 5 Watts. 2 stops overexposed in camera, half a stop of that reduced again in post processing. Converted from raw and into b&w using RawTherapee 4.0.9.

That’s how it looks when having a late night smoke, outside, during the rain.

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A drawing of her Mama. Olympus E-PL1 with the M.Zuiko 45mm lens, shot from my tripod using the not so bright daylight.

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Well the first link leads to an english spoken (or rather, written) site, tho what they write about is a German product: Someone of Wired drove the Volkswagen XL1 concept car, in Germany. You always wanted a car which no one can afford, but which will bring you from Frisco to LA and back with 3 gallons? Read it. That’s probably how cars will look in the not so distant future.

While you can’t buy concept cars, you can buy something like the new Lexus IS, about which the German Zeit Online reported after a press announcement from Toyota from this Wednesday. It’s a hybrid like the Prius, only stronger – and according to Toyota it takes 4,3 liters on 100km (about 60 miles per gallon or so), which is good for this type and class of car.

If you’re interested in low fuel consumption, here’s a list, with Diesels on the left and gasolines on the right. I like these Toyotas.

Especially this one, which is for fun. Mike Johnston from T.O.P. (see link on the right) wrote about it. And now Clemens Gleich, for Heise Autos. It’s the Toyota GT86, or the Subaru BRZ.

I know and like Clemens since a while, and like him I like the Triumph Street Triple – the best motorcycle I ever rode so far. But for himself, he found something he even liked more: the KTM Duke 690, fourth generation. 70HP and about 160kg, ‘nuf said. If your roads have curves like ours, you should probably try one.

Oh, and if you like motorcycles in general and understand German (Clemens’ articles are hard for any translating engine), you should probably look at his own site. You might even find a good photo or two, since he can do that as well.

Enjoy…

From one of our latest weekend shopping tours, someone brought home a small brochure from one of our big and good food supermarket chains. I looked at all those recipes and saw not only how nice you can process the food you get there, but also how nicely it can be photographed. Thought about scanning the whole thing, but then again, these aren’t my photos, and I didn’t fancy long email exchanges with the marketing and legal departments of whoever has the copyright for those.

So I just put it onto our table, added one of my cameras and a colour target, and bounced my studio strobe over the ceiling to take a photo of it all:

A camera, a target, and a brochure with very nice food photos. Olympus E-520 DSLR with the ZD 2.0 50mm Macro lens attached.

Whoever made those photos inside that small, A5-size brochure did a very good job. Next time you’re out shopping for food, grab one of these if you still can find them. Same for clothes chains or whatever product you’re interested in. You can learn from everything.

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Heavy weather. Olympus E-PL1 with Panasonic Lumix 14mm lens. Converted using only RawTherapee 4.0.9, which gave me much smoother transitions and more dynamic range than using the Olympus Viewer 3 (or -2). So the out-of-camera image is brighter and it has more contrast, it’s maybe more pleasing at first sight – but it also blows both the highlights and the shadows considerably more. Which means that you won’t get the full dynamic range out of that sensor when working with either the jpg or the raw file through the Olympus software. Almost like the difference between out-of-camera files of Canon and Nikon.

Since I didn’t use the Olympus software, I had to correct lens distortions myself. And it’s also not as sharp as the out-of-camera or out-of-Olympus-Viewer-3 output.

And while I write this, we’re back to heavy rain.

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No comment. Olympus E-PL1 with Panasonic Lumix 20mm lens.

This morning, “Tuna” the cat was a bit frustrated because of the weather as well. She went in and out and back in again, definitely in the mood for hunting. Since she didn’t like it outside, she looked for anything that moved inside:

“Tuna” the cat. Olympus E-PL1 with Panasonic Lumix 20mm lens. Daylight.

Let’s see what the day will bring. But most probably it won’t be somewhere out there…

Update, from the same evening:

Zuleikha put some stickers onto one of Mitchie’s boxes, and asked me to take a photo of it. Et voilà:

“Take a picture of these stickers, Papa!”. Olympus E-PL1 with Panasonic Lumix 20mm lens. Simock E300 studio strobe bounced over wall at 1/4 power, which still gave me an aperture of f/3.2 across half of the room.

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This is as good as I could frame it using Mitchie’s 20mm lens, and without getting anything else into the picture:

Like an old friend. Olympus E-PL1 and Panasonic Lumix 20mm lens. Straight out of camera, only renamed for consistency.

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A tripod, two light stands, and a bookshelf. Olympus E-PL1 with Panasonic Lumix 20mm lens.

Somehow I managed to focus on those photo magazines in our bookshelf instead on my main subjects. But that doesn’t matter – I wanted to show the (reflected) light here. And like every landscape photographer knows, you have to act quick. When you see it, you have to take the photo – a few minutes later, and that light will have changed dramatically.

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There’s a whole wide world behind your walled gardens (or: the world through our fence). Olympus E-PL1 with the 14-42mm “kit zoom”.

Nature taking back. Olympus E-PL1 with Panasonic Lumix 20mm lens.

Mass murder. Olympus E-PL1 with Panasonic Lumix 20mm.

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“Tuna” the cat, sleeping. Olympus E-PL1 with its 14-42mm “kit zoom”.

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