Olympus E-3: First Impressions

Categories: Cameras & Accessories Reviews

This has been a long wait: in a market where the life of a digital camera can be measured in months rather than years, the three year wait for Olympus' follow-up to their i* (where * can be either '-conic' or '-diosyncratic', according to your taste) E-1 DSLR has been an ice age. While competitors' cameras, and even Olympus' own consumer DSLRs have leapt ahead in resolution and specification, the E-1 has soldiered on with its modest 5 Megapixel sensor and tank-like build quality, continuing to delight those of us who value a photographer's camera over one designed to tick specification checkboxes. That's something of an Olympus tradition – like that other industry iconoclast, Apple, Olympus have rarely headlined on numbers, but have usually delivered where it counts: build quality, lens quality and sheer usability - I'm actually sitting here with my heirloom Olympus OM-2n beside me, rediscovering just what a joy it is to hold and use – I really do believe that cameras that feel the product of precision engineering by people who care inspire better image creation than those that come across as marketing-led, cost-driven consumer electronics. So does the new 10MP E-3 fall into that most desirable of categories?

Firstly though, a small disclaimer: This isn't a press review camera but my own beast, purchased with semi-real money. Nor is this intended to be a 'numbers and menus' review - life being far too short for that – but rather my first impressions of it and how it performs in daily use.

I've also have had a Canon EOS 5D on hand, so I'm now working on some comparisons with that, for publication as soon as I can set some Photoshopping time aside.

Apple & Intel Photographic Workflow: Update

Categories: Reviews Software

With the first three ranges of Intel-powered Macintosh systems all now shipping, I and many other power-hungry users are keeping a close eye on the availability of key imaging and workflow software products in the Universal Binary form that allows them to run natively, at full speed, on the Intel machines.

There's a wide range of software available to support all or part of the photographic imaging workflow, and this is my own update on the current release state of my favoured workflow applications, including both those I use day-to-day and those I'm trialling, reviewing or considering.

Apotheosis of the PowerBook

Categories: Computers Reviews

The MacBook Pro is a very cool, very fast and very shiny computer. But, as of now, largely pointless for me: until such time as core applications for the photographer and image munger are released as Universal Binaries, I'd simply be paying more for a machine that ran Photoshop and its ilk more slowly than my existing machine (under the Rosetta emulation environment), and which wouldn't run some plug-ins at all. Unless I was using Aperture as the heart of my workflow (which I can't, due to its current, "limitations" in RAW conversion), the only benefit would be that the Finder, email and text editor would run ludicrously fast (and they're fine already). The first generation MacBook Pro has also taken some backward steps in its specification that smack of a rush to market.

TfT: Technology for Travellers

Categories: Communications Computers Software

I do a great deal of my photography, writing and geekery on the hoof, and am often to be found staggering around assorted strange parts of the planet, swaying like an overloaded Christmas tree under the combined weight of camera, computer and communications gear, and all those bits and pieces that I've slung in, "just in case". So, Welcome to the review area – this is where I'll be reviewing technology and tools that really work (or, for that matter, which don't) for those of us who spend rather too much – often too much – of our lives on the road, in planes and, on occasional, up to our individual or collective armpits in mangrove swamps. In particular, it's aimed particularly (but certainly not solely) at the needs of the digitally-driven travelling and expedition photographer – from the casual traveller through to the semi-pro and onward to the full-on hairy professional.

I concentrate on reviewing stuff that has at least a nodding acquaintance with the notion of portable⁽¹⁾, and which is actually useful once away from the beaten track of broadband-enabled hotels and the Starbucks monoculture. Included are computers, phones, PDAs, communications services, cameras, accessories to any of the the foregoing, luggage, books, useful web sites and, of course, the power sources that help keep everything going.

The Powerbook is Dead…

Categories: Computers Reviews

…Long live the, ah, MacBook.

So we're starting with sad note in technohistory: I've been surgically attached to both the name and entity of Powerbook since it first appeared rather more than fourteen years (and to my laughingly named Mac "Portable" before that), so I'm unlikely to convert to the casual dropping of, "I'll just grab my MacBook…" overnight. Or possibly not ever. And what happens when Apple migrates their Power Mac range to Intel - do we end up with the Mac Mac?

But enough of the sentimental maundering – this is supposed to be about what the Intel shift means to travelling photographers and meedja types, for whom a <whatever>Book is their weapon of choice, and for those Wintel frustratees who are considering a shift, now that direct platform comparisons are possible for the first time.

First things first, then – just what is a MacBook, and what's changed from the previous generation of PowerPC-based machines?

Design

A full specification is available on the Apple web site, so I'm not going to reiterate that, but concentrate on what's changed, for better and worse. The basic industrial design remains as for the 15" Aluminium PowerBooks, albeit in a case that's 1cm wider than before, but a couple of mm slimmer – almost back to the thickness of the PowerBook Ti. Depth remains the same. Strange to tell, that little extra slimness is much more significant for travelling than the extra centimeter of width – I'll happily trade a bit of footprint for something I can stuff into the narrowest possible space in a crowded equipment bag. A good start then. Now for the rest…