October 24, 2011

Olympus E-PEN Lite 3 and the Happiest Moment

Take a look at the photo below and what do you see?

In the frame t here are two very sleepy cats, the bigger one being our resident alpha (castrated) male – Cendawan the Bengal, with Belimbing, one of the two kittens we rescued from the neighborhood.

happy moment – brrrrrrrrrrrr good morning!

And if these cats could speak and label a photo, both of them would title it “My Happiest Moment”

Nothing beats a lazy evening nap right next to the window facing the garden with running water from the pond. Especially if you are a cat.

a slightly failed attempt in forcing a Happy Moment out of Tembikai

The photo above, on the other hand, is a slightly failed attempt to get Tembikai to cooperate with Haze in executing a good Happy Moment capture.

So picture one – score!

Picture two – maybe not so much…

Which brings us to the Happy Photography Contest by Olympus. The idea is simple, we want to freeze those happy and awesome moments in our lives, but barring a technological break through in cryogenic and time freezing nonsense, we have photos.

The mechanic of this contest is as follow:

• Write a blog post titled “My Happiest Moment”.
• Include a photo in your blog post that describes your happiest moment. It can be a pre-existing photo, or you can go out and shoot something that represents that moment
• Download this file containing Olympus Happy Photography logo variations, choose one of the colour variations and include it in your blog post as well
• Upload the photo of your happiest moment and submit the permalink of your blog post in this form.

A pretty awesome deal, yes? There is no purchase required to enter this contest. Do head to http://www.nuffnang.com.my/olympus2011/ to check out more details.

Olympus E-PL3 with the 40-150 kit lens and external flash

Some 1.5 years ago, I got my hands on an Olympus E-PL1 camera and did a review, the camera was small, responsive, and produces quality that rivals much bigger SLR cameras.

Now I got with me the latest iteration of the same line of Camera from Olympus – the Olympus PEN Lite E-PL3. Not only this camera spots a bigger 3.0 LCD that can tilt (very useful for events), full HD video recording, faster auto focus, more focus points, higher ISO, faster shutter speed… etc etc..

And the amazing thing is, they’ve made it even smaller!

Look at the photo above, I don’t have a big hand, and even then the PEN Lite with a telephoto lens and the external flash (included) sits comfortably in my palm. Technology is amazing.

more product information at http://www.olympusimage.com.my/products/dslr/epl3/

You know that this camera can be won by joining the Happy Photography contest right?

pretty impressive output on low light condition – Haze at work

I took the camera for a bit of a test drive and these are some of the test shots. The PEN Lite is pretty easy to handle, and the autofocus is now much faster too. Compared to my old SLR rig, this baby is only some 1/3 in weight and I would have no trouble taking it everywhere (will work handsomely underwater, with the Olympus PT-EP05L housing)

Diorama art filter, outside Pavilion KL

The much loved ART filters is now expanded. There are six to choose from, with art effects to add composition effects as well as ability to do art filter bracketing too. With the art filter bracketing, you can generate multiple pictures with different Art Filters from a single shot, allowing you to experiment with different effects to see which one works the best. Pretty cool feature isn’t it?

The six filters are:

• Pop Art (i & ii)
• Soft focus
• Grainy Film (i & ii)
• Pin Hole (i/ii/iii)
• Diorama
• Dramatic Tone

Soft Focus art filter – how cute can a car get?

The photos on this post (except for the one with the PEN Lite in it, duh!) are all taken with the PEN Lite with no extra processing on the computer. I only re-sized them before posting.

If you haven’t seen one of these baby in real life, do try your hands on one at any camera shop carrying Olympus. It is amazing how technology has advanced and be able to pack so much in such a small body.

Pin Hole art filter – a street less traveled

Since I work with food photography quite a bit, I also took the PEN Lite for a test run on some food shots.

Penang Curry mee and Char Kuih Teow

The shot above showcase the advantage of the big sensor found in the PEN Lite, a compact camera will not be able to create that out of focus effect (bokeh) of the char kuih teow while focusing sharply on the curry mee. This was done with F/4.0, now imagine if you use a prime lens with bigger aperture. *slurps*

wine and dine at Favola, Le Meridien

The second picture is a simple shot of a glass of wine taken at 1/10s, ISO 1600, 58 mm at f/4.4. This again showcases the ability of the PEN Lite in handling very low light situation. The image stabilizing system works superbly, and the CMOS censor processes ISO 1600 without much (if any) noise at all. I’d have to use a tripod for this with an older DSLR, but this is done with my bare hands.

Now I wish to have one complete with underwater housing and underwater flash,  Happy Underwater Moment?

In the mean time, I have more candidate photos for  ”My Happiest Moment”.

Cendawan as my scarf 

Before going to Sunway Pyramid, I was trying to wear Cendawan as a scarf, obviously the kitteh wasn’t very impressed with my fashion sense, but kitteh did not use claw attack. *phew*

Haze with gingerbread man

Hooo look there’s a gingerbread man! Haze actually had to line up to take this photo, who doesn’t love gingerbread man?

Mr. Sunway Lagoon duck and me

This is a very very distant cousin to the more famous uncle, Donald, or is he? Niether of them wears pants that’s for sure.

specially decorated Olympus PEN Cameras

Olympus is also running roadshow at Midvalley Megamall from 26-30th Oct. If you want to get your hands on the PEN Lite or check out other Olympus PEN systems, this is the perfect time.

Furthermore, there’ll be specially decorated Olympus PEN Cameras on display at the roadshow too, so do check it out.

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