theatre of noise

Tank Performance In Cork

2012-01-07T00:00:00.042Z

Now this is a great way to kick off the year! I will be performing with Ed Devane, John Daly, Harry Moore and Mick O'Shea at Triskel Christchurch, that hub of artistic activities in downtown Cork.

Join us at the entirely civilised time of 2pm, 14 January 2012. Even if you need a coach back out of the city, you will still have time for a pint with us afterwards.

People often ask me (as recently as this afternoon) what exactly it is that I do. Sound art, live improvisation, electroacoustic composition... there are many possible descriptions. But I also like the term chosen here, "experimental music" since it does not attempt to define the content of the activity. All you know is that you're getting music, though that should be understood in the most extensive sense of that term -- "organised sound" as Varèse defined it.

You also know it will be "experimental", a word that simply means the music could fail. That rules out songs, rehearsed structures of any stripe, and idiomatic music like jazz. But it includes everything that extends our relationship with sound and the culture that surrounds sound.

That's where I live.

For Tank, the five performers will be on stage simultaneously, but not playing together. Rather, we will experiment in turn, one following on from where the last has left off. Or at least that's how it was explained to me!

One week from today we shall see. More to the point, we will hear. I am looking forward to it!

A big thank-you to Tony Langlois and Harry Moore for organising this event, and asking me to take part.

Record Sleeves Designed For Charity Competition

2012-01-06T23:00:00.051Z

This is a single cover for a design contest TalentHouse is organising for the Teenage Cancer Trust. Secret 7" involves inviting regular folk like myself to show off their artwork. A number of winning entries will be exhibited and one cover chosen to house the actual record on release. There are seven participating bands. I ended up making covers for four of them. (What can I say -- not all were equally inspiring.)

Vote for each entry by clicking on the link I provide, which will take you to the corresponding page at TalentHouse. Then click the "Support Robin" button. It costs nothing and helps me out!

Vote for my take on The Cure's classic "Friday I'm In Love"
here. I tried to evoke a nice sunny, but at the same time nostalgic, feeling.

You will notice that the official entry has no text and is included in a frame. That is how they asked for it. I'm disappointed I had to remove the typography since certainly that's an integral part of any design.

Vote for this sleeve for "Only If For A Night" by Florence + the Machine here. My daughter introduced me to this band. I was first struck by their cool name and then by their creative soundscapes.

Vote for this sleeve for Noah and the Whale's "Old Joy" here. The gospel vocals are nice enough but the drone that sets in towards the end of the song is fantastic. Yes, this is my hand and ring!

Finally, vote for this sleeve for "Black Flies" by Ben Howard here. It was difficult to find just one image to match this song. But I kept coming back to one line: "Maybe you were the ocean when I was just a stone." This is my own photo from the lovely west coast of Ireland. And yes, it was taken on an island, just so it ties in with some of the other lyrics.

Strange Attractor Catalogue Launch

2011-12-06T13:00:00.171Z

My post about the Just Listening CD release reminded me that I was in Cork not so long ago for another launch event, also celebrating a sound art publication by Farpoint Recordings. Until now I've neglected to write about it here, likely because of that annoying Facebook entity. (Items I write about there I might forget to write about here.)

It is a timely matter again, since Saturday saw the Dublin launch of Strange Attractor at the RHA Gallery. Since I couldn't be in two places at the same time I missed out on Dublin, so these photos here of the Cork launch (Saturday 12 November 2011 in the Crawford Art Gallery) must suffice. Read on for an overview of the book and DVD.

Strange Attractor was a durational project initiated by Anthony Kelly, David Stalling, Danny McCarthy, Irene Murphy and Mick O'Shea in November 2010. It ran as a residency at the Crawford Gallery, curated by Dawn Williams. The exhibition was comprised, in a refreshingly unorthodox fashion, of two galleries of visual art (some of these being the traces of past performances) and a series of sonic events. Throughout the first four months of 2011 various artists -- international and local, famous and not -- were invited to improvise with the core group. Over this period certain structures unfolded, or perhaps even dissipated.

I was honoured to be one of those artists, and so on Wednesday 20 April played for an hour in the beautiful upstairs gallery at Crawford, a place of natural wood and light, non-parallel lines and random seating. That gig I documented in this blog post and furthermore in a recording I have available on SoundCloud. (Perhaps you'd like to listen to that as you continue reading?)

Now, the project has been catalogued in a lovely tactile book, full of photographs by Patricia Klich. There are essays by some of the participants (David Toop, Steve Roden, Steven Vitiello, etc.) but no analysis from the core performers. In fact, O'Shea has described their communal sonic acts as "conversation without words". From this I judge their silence on the linguistic front to be a deliberate strategy in order to keep open various non-linguistic opportunities. Certainly there was no discussion before I joined them for an improvised session. And none after, for that matter.

The catalogue also includes a rather extensive DVD. It's rather easy to get lost in all the material here, and the "best" tracks are not the most obvious, so let me provide a guide. First, there are stereo audio recordings of some of the performances, including the original "system" and the guest sessions with David Toop, Stephen Vitiello, Rhodri Davies, Alessandro Bosetti, Steve Roden and Jed Spear. These range from nine to twenty minutes in length, and so provide an extensive body of work. "Bonus" pieces include "Spectrosonic Drawing" (13:58) by Mick O'Shea and "Hive 1-3" (9:19) by Anthony Kelly and David Stalling.

Secondly, there is the video portion of the DVD. Maciek Klich's "Strange Attractor Documentary" (30:39) consists of interviews with the core group plus Dawn Williams, Lee Patterson and Alessandro Bosetti, inter-cut with performance footage. There is a raw video of the David Toop and Mary Nunan set (16:18) and a similarly rough look at Stalling and Kelly's television installation "Further Into A Place" (2:54). "Remote Camera" (5:24) documents Irene Murphy's performative sculptures from a viewpoint that is sometimes her own and sometimes not.

Best of the lot is Laura Vitale's "Performance with Lee Patterson" (10:11). Carefully edited so as not to disrupt the listening experience, this video focuses on some of the sound-making events that take place in a "typical" Strange Attractor. The excellent sound quality (the best of the bunch) makes it easier to link visual cause with acoustic effect. The lack of words or any framing device is not a limitation.

Thirdly, the CD contains a great number of photographs by Patricia Klich, edited together into video montages for each particular performance. Given that these are silent I am not sure who might sit through almost an hour (!) of stills. It's certainly not worth it to find my dour visage at the beginning of the "Lunchtime Attractors" set. Even when I'm having fun, the level of concentration sets my face most grimly!

"Pinhole Photography" (2:48) by Harry Moore, a look at O'Shea's poster designs (1:18) and a close examination of Mark Hall-Patch's excellent "A Chronology of Cork Sonology" poster (2:52) complete the DVD. Though I am sure I have forgotten something other than Danny McCarthy's "Found Sound (Lost At Sea)" which, near as I can tell, is exactly seven minutes of silence.

With over two hours of music, plus all the other features, it's hard to imagine better value for money. Excepting, of course, for the host of free concerts that spawned this volume in the first place. If you missed them, do keep an ear out for what this gang does next. One thing is certain: they are unlikely to be standing still.

Just Listening - Ireland Calling CD Now Available

2011-12-05T22:00:00.151Z

Despite the fact that I am one of the participants included on this CD, it has suddenly become one of my favourite releases of recent years. Just Listening - Ireland Calling has a cumbersome title, but is in all other ways an effortlessly pleasing release. Recorded live in Limerick this past April, this disc documents the Just Listen showcase of contemporary Irish experimental improvisation. And it is a rich scene indeed!

Organised by The National Sculpture Factory, the concert invited curators from across Europe (and beyond) to check out the best in local talent. Though the bulk of the festival was in Cork, the concert itself took place in the Church Gallery at the Limerick School of Art and Design (LSAD).

Farpoint Recordings has presented this disc in a lovely minimal design (courtesy Doreen Kennedy). Notes by Bernard Clarke, host of Nova on RTE Lyric FM, provide a historical context. The sound quality is excellent, and the fact that each performance has been distilled to five minutes helps keep interest over the duration. Normally I find it problematic to listen to an excerpt of a longer performance, but here I only occasionally sensed that a longer musical structure has been curtailed.

Indeed, the sudden conclusion to "{Glow}" by Sunfish only adds to the drama of the track, already one of my favourites on the disc. Starting with growling tones that sound like pitched-down cello, skitterings of itchy tension are joined by a shimmering drone, to form a complex sound world that simply does not need an accompanying film. Harry Moore and Tony Langlois are masters at filling the spectrum with finely articulated musical material.

A second effect of the recording process is to both smooth out some rough edges and render clearer the detailing evident in the performances. Paul Hegarty and Vicky Langan, trading under the name La Societe des Amis du Crime, were loud and percussive in the flesh, which was a fine thing to witness. But here one can get a sense of the arrhythmic clusters of metallic tones with much finer acuity. The cognitive interference pattern generated by these two interpretations is a bonus effect.

On the other hand, merely listening to Katie O'Looney's piece loses an important performative dimension. It's impossible to imagine "Open Eyes Of Themis" was all created in real-time. Sitting amidst a custom-built instrument assemblage, Katie simultaneously played synthesisers, percussion and other sound devices like some twenty-first-century "one man band" (sic). But if you are in Cork on Tuesday, 13 December 2011, you can see for yourself. She is performing at Stet Lab.

It is not only for this reason that I find the fixation on "just listening" inappropriate. Listening is insufficient to apprehend the gestural components of electroacoustic improvisation, and hence limits what one can take from a performance. If this were not so, would we bother to attend a live rendition at all?

This is doubly true in those cases where sight appears to contradict sound, or at least calls into question where the sound is coming from, how it is being generated and so on. I am likely unique among the performers in that, not only was I exclusively using a laptop, I was neither using external sound sources nor pre-recorded samples. And yet my performance was just as much an improvisation, just as likely to fail, as the most experimental acts on the day. Maybe more so.

Those attending my performance were presented with these same ontological and epistemological questions. But in this instance they were generated by the very fact that my performance rig is more commonly associated with pre-recorded, sample-based or loop-centric music. Live you couldn't tell what I was doing, and the sensory disparity between sight and sound generated tension. On record you can't tell that you can't tell what I am doing. And so the very fact of this lost connection is lost.

For those present at the concert, this CD highlights such contradictions. Taken as an entity sufficient unto itself, the disc (far better than most) conveys a powerful account of contemporary non-notated musical practice. If you've read this far, you owe it to yourself to pick up a copy and put it on infinite repeat.

Postscript: It's too late to mention the launch party last Saturday (3 December), except to thank Stephanie, Dobz and the rest of the Sculpture Factory for organising it. Held as part of ArtTrail 2011, the launch took place in the otherwise disused Elysian building, candidate for Most Ironic Place Name Ever.

Here is the full artist line-up. I only had the space here to touch on a few of the intriguing tracks. Apologies to the other artists.

Ed Devane & Amanda Feery
Ellen King & Tim O'Leary
Neil Quigley
Liam Slevin & Kevin Tuohy
Francis Heery
Katie O'Looney
Eileen Carpio
Sunfish (Harry Moore + Tony Langlois)
Robin Parmar
Linda O'Keeffe
Artificial Memory Trace
Anthony Kelly & David Stalling
La Societe des Amis du Crime (Paul Hegarty & Vicky Langan)

Farpoint should be selling the disc by the time you read this.

LaTeX Tip: TeXstudio

2011-11-25T14:00:00.016Z

I have spent the last few days designing documents with LaTeX, using the XeTeX engine. The process has produced some great results, but a good amount of digging was required to find out rather obvious things. This series of articles will hopefully save you this time.

I will assume you've installed TeX Live in the default location, which is C:\texlive on Windows 7. There are two distributions that use XeTeX and only this one worked for me, as I wrote previously. Of course you don't have to use Windows; these are cross-platform open source applications.

The first thing to do is get a good text editor! You may already use an editor that has a custom TeX mode. If so, great. Otherwise I suggest something like TeXstudio. This provides syntax highlighting, easy access to common commands, auto-completion, outline folding, and command line integration. Working any other way is a needless pain.

Wikipedia has a comparison of TeX editors. You may think it a good idea to get a graphical WYSIWYM ("what you see is what you mean") editor so you don't need to compile your mark-up manually to see the result. But my experience is the opposite. I tried LyX and was disappointed by the usability. TeX markup is text; it's best to view and work with it as text.

The next thing to do is set up the correct commands in TeXstudio, so that you can compile your work and view the results in a single keystroke. Use the menu to navigate to User > User Commands > Edit User Commands. Name a new menu item XeTeK and copy and paste the following for the command string: "C:\texlive\2011\bin\win32\xelatex.exe" -interaction=nonstopmode %.tex | tmx://internal-pdf-viewer. Now go to Option > Configure TexStudio and choose the big graphical tabs from the left-hand panel. Then find the same menu item you just defined in the right panel, in Menus > User > User Commands > XeTex. If you double-click on this you can choose which key to bind to this command, say F1.

Now each time you want to see the result of your editing, tap F1 and the PDF will be generated and displayed in a separate window for inspection. This viewer remembers your position in the document, which is handy. In all ways it acts like a slim version of Adobe Reader.

Similar configuration will apply to your chosen text editor. Oh yes, if you have a favourite, why not comment and let me know? TeXstudio works fine, but has some non-standard peculiarities, such as the way Search and Replace works. I wouldn't mind taking your advice and getting something better, so long as it works on Windows and is free to use (since I already have a commercial editor).

More LaTeX tips in my next article.

And The Winner Is... TeX Live

2011-11-22T21:00:00.055Z

Well, after all that rubbish I went through earlier in the day, finally some results! TeX Live installed correctly the second time. Of course it decided to place itself in the root of C: drive, not where nice-behaving apps should go. But I'll see if I can re-locate it later.

Right now, it's down to the business of laying out equations. In this follow-up article I will compare renderings of two LaTeX engines and three typefaces.

First, some more fiddling. I needed to update the compilation paths in my editor TeXstudio to point to the new installation. Then I created some shortcuts to make life easier. The F1 key now compiles the layout code using the pdfTex engine; F2 does the same for the XeTeX engine. Both steps result in a PDF that gets auto-displayed using the editor's built-in PDF reader. It's almost possible to forget everything is being done on the command line. It's WYSIWYG with a small delay built in.

Here's what the older pdfTex engine produces using the default Computer Modern Roman typeface. It's thin and far too light. (Click to see at 100%.)

Here's the same pdfTex engine with Utopia Regular (with Math Design) as illustrated at the FontCatalogue. It's very much nicer. The text is more compact and tracking seems massively improved. The justified lines flow with a great deal more visual appeal.

Finally, here is the XeTeX engine rendering the Cambria typeface that came with Windows 7 (and Vista). The advantage of this approach is that any and all system fonts you may already have are at your disposal. You can exactly match LaTeX documents to others you may produce using different tools. This is a far more compatible and flexible approach.

Cambria is lighter optically than Utopia but is easy to read both on the screen and on the page. I am a big fan of the "C" fonts Microsoft had designed for Windows. Certainly they are head and shoulders above previous offerings. I even prefer them to anything Apple has given us. Cambria, Calibri and Consolas all get used a fair amount.

But I have to say that for mathematics this version of Utopia is superior. Maybe I need to find something better than Calibri for this application. At least now I have the entire world of Type 1 and OpenType to choose from!

For those of you interested in the internals, here is the conditional section of my .tex file, found near the head. It's set up so either engine works properly.

\ifxetex
 \usepackage{fontspec}
 \setmainfont{Cambria}
\else
 \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
 \usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
 \usepackage[adobe-utopia]{mathdesign}
\fi

And here is the section of the document on display.

Usually you will want brackets that size automatically, so 
use \textbackslash left and \textbackslash right. Here are 
examples with and without using these commands:
$$(\frac{x^2}{y^3})$$
$$\left(\frac{x^2}{y^3}\right)$$

If you want a solved equation to format nicely, use the 
"eqnarray" block, or "eqnarray*" if you do not want line 
numbers. If you only want to suppress certain numbers, use 
the former but put \textbackslash nonumber before the line-
ending double slash on those lines you want blank.

\begin{eqnarray*}
  10xy^2+15x^2y-5xy & = & 5\left(2xy^2+3x^2y-xy\right) \\
   & = & 5x\left(2y^2+3xy-y\right) \\
   & = & 5xy\left(2y+3x-1\right)
\end{eqnarray*}

You can perhaps see why I want to use LaTeX. After learning the syntax, editing equations in this manner is far preferable to other methods.

(If this has helped you save time then consider donating using the PayPal link in the sidebar.)

Reasons To Despair, Or, Installing And Using LaTeX

2011-11-22T19:00:00.062Z

Shake me or something but it's 2011. I'm not sure why software is getting more complicated and more broken instead of the opposite. I suppose I "ask for it" by expecting to install a geek-level text-based document layout package like LaTeX and have it work like it should.

I recently decided (tardy by a couple of decades) to have a look at LaTeX, since I often need to produce different printer-ready output in an easy and powerful fashion. The various WYSIWYG packages designed for this purpose are either a) rubbish, or b) expensive. I'm getting tired of laying out basic files by mouse when a keyboard is more efficient. After many years of HTML I am quite used to tag-based layouts. I coded for an awful long time, so this approach doesn't scare me.

The final straw is that I've had to lay out some math formulae recently, and that is a horrible process in a graphical editor. LaTeX has been performing this task for three decades. It's open and free, so why not?

I must pause to comment on the horrific typographic convention by which one is supposed to format the name LaTeX. Not only is the capitalisation ugly but you are also supposed to shift letters around in the most awkward of ways. There are even easy CSS sheets for this, but I refuse to make an ugly word even worse. I should have taken notice that this doesn't exactly bode well for the design brains behind the application. But then again it was made by and for academics -- a group not exactly known for being a (ahem) font of design wisdom.

The first difficulty lies in comprehending exactly what all the parts are and what they do. LaTeX is a markup format, an engine to process this format, various output transformations, an optional text editor to help with the basic data entry, one to a thousand optional packages (most of which are not really optional), pre-cooked fonts, and so on. So the easiest way to get started is to find a complete distribution someone has put together. Making a decision about which one to use is not for the faint-hearted. But it is exactly the newbie these initial decisions target: paradox.

A bit of reading and hacking around with a basic install got me creating PDF files pretty quickly, which was nice. It turns out that one of the variables in the previous list is more or less a historical curiosity. Though some engines target intermediary output formats with cryptic names and purposes, any contemporary LaTeX engine will create a PDF as a final document.

Looking at the resulting PDF I saw something surprisingly familiar. Yes, this is the spindly typeface I'd seen in dozens of document files over the years, all generated by LaTeX using the default typeface, Computer Modern Roman. That's short for You've Got To Be Kidding Me I Have To Read This? It's an even worse typeface than Times New Roman, which is quite an accomplishment. And this from a product that is supposed to be the zenith of publishing?

Not only that, but it's not easy to change the typeface. Even when you do, you cannot simply use any OTF or TrueType font on your system, but are restricted to those that have been pre-processed so that LaTeX can understand them. Even then, it's easier to change the face for the whole document than in any small part. So it turns out that LaTeX is pretty poor at handling fonts. Which, last time I checked, was a rather important task in the whole document production world.

If you're interested in what's readily available, you can have a look at the FontCatalogue, which manages to collect together some of the least usable typefaces on the internet. (It's not their fault, since they are simply documenting the state of affairs.) I couldn't find a decent Humanist or anything else I looked for. Arev looks nice and bold for screen work. Utopia was my pick of the lot.

After more reading I discovered XeTeX, which corrects this massive oversight by giving access to system fonts, plus some new commands to easily map these into your document. By this time I was using the MiKTeX 2.9 distribution, but even so it took me a while to figure out that it already came with XeTeX, which is one processing engine amongst many (confused yet?). Apparently, all I had to do was change my compilation statement and let XeTeX work some magic.

Oh, did I forget to mention? Everything is run on the command line or with batch files, like in the good-old days. But that problem I solved by obtaining TeXstudio, a text editor optimised for LaTeX, which includes handy command statements you can edit and assign to quick keys. Programmers will recognise the model of the Integrated Development Environment (IDE).

Compiling my document with XeTeX all sorts of basic things broke. Tracing down the cryptic error messages indicated that I needed to uninstall (or at least stop using) certain packages that were fine with a different Tex engine but not with this one. That's funny; aren't they supposed to be compatible? Otherwise the text files need to be versioned for different engines; a nightmare waiting to happen.

That done, I tried to use Cambria but got masses of errors, some of which said I had not declared a document correctly, even though I certainly had. Reading around various old net threads I discovered that "Undefined control sequence" occurs when trying to compile with the xetex.exe command line instead of the xelatex.exe command line. Wait a minute! I am using XeTeX and the docs did not scream out to actually use the differently named XeLaTeX? That seems deliberately misleading.

That fixed, the errors remained. More net threads convinced me that certain incompatibilities between installed packages were causing mysterious "problems". But everything installed had come from the same distribution, so why should this be? Hmmm, OK. I'll uninstall MiKTeX and instead grab the only other distribution that seems to support XeTex, one by the helpful moniker TeX Live. So I download and run. Bam! I get an error about Perl failing. Perl? I'd rather make Smalltalk to an AWK. (<- Geek humour.)

A bit of reading and I discover how to run the install using a text menu (now we have really time-travelled!), which bypasses the Tk interface running on Perl. And I've been waiting a long time for this install to get done. Unnaturally long. Like, I wrote this entire article waiting!

Oh hold on, I spoke too soon, it just finished. Oh no, it didn't. "Access is denied." After 40 minutes (I am helpfully informed -- don't you love apps that rub salt into wounds?) the package "tds" (whatever that is) has crapped out. Of course I have no idea why, but I am advised to read the log. So I do. The log has slightly less information on this matter than the screen. For example, it does not advise me to read anything further. Which may be just as well.

I'll try to run it again, as it recommends. We'll see how this works out. I have small hopes. Very small.

But to any of you following along, I recommend you stick to whatever barbaric and inefficient method you currently use to lay out books (I did my last one in OpenOffice Writer).

Because it has simply got to be easier than this.

General Strike in Oakland

2011-11-01T22:00:00.026Z

Tomorrow, 2 November 2011, in Oakland there will be a General Strike. The stated purpose is to shut down the usual flow of goods and money that signify a system dominated by capital in its most oppressive forms. This is in direct response to the attempted dispersal of the Oscar Grant Plaza occupation. Among other things the police brutality on this occasion resulted in critical injuries to a an American veteran of Iraq. I will not attempt here to justify or document any of these activities, since the Occupy movement is far too complicated and diffuse to be summarised simply.

Here is an article with many graphic pictures that documents the incident in which police fired a gas canister into a crowd, resulting in the aforementioned injury.

Here is the website for Occupy Oakland.

When I look at the news that doesn't make the news, I feel like I am living in some kind of a science-fiction novel. It's scripted by P.K. Dick. I trust it will have a happy ending.

I will have more to say about this movement at another time. I have serious critiques of the philosophy behind the movement. But really, that doesn't matter. Solidarity matters. I am in complete support of the Occupy Oakland movement. This is based in my past activities in "mainstream" politics, my work as a member of various cooperatives and social groups, my continuing development as a practising anarchist artist, and so on.

Every day we need to live our lives as a General Strike against economic and political oppression, by which I simply mean over-concentrations of power in the hands of a few who have no mandate to speak for the majority. My hat is off to those people putting their ass on the line.

Sonic Vigil 6 (2011)

2011-10-19T12:00:00.101+01:00

Where can you hear 14 of the finest improvising sonic art performers play for over seven hours for only a fiver? Only at Sonic Vigil, Cork's annual mega-festival of everything that is loud, delicate, ferocious, quiet, expressive, innovative and down-right thrilling!

I am especially pleased to announce that I am on the bill this Saturday 22 October at Triskel Christchurch in Cork City.

My set is at 7pm but you'll want to see as much of the show as you can. Drop in and out during the day starting at 2:30pm sharp. As a bonus, video artist Claire Guerin will be accompanying the sound artists.

Now in its sixth year, Sonic Vigil is presented once again by The Quiet Club (Ireland) and Gurenrekorder (Germany). Download the PDF catalogue from their site.

I have been preparing for Sonic Vigil by selecting possible source sounds and tweaking my performance instruments. My set will continue some of the themes I explored at Strange Attractor in April. I will be using a mix of processed live sounds and those previously recorded on location. These I capture by three methods: air pressure microphone, contact microphone and induction coil. Thus the performance channels acoustic sounds as well as those that generally go unheard -- the silent sea of electromagnetism in which we swim.

My goal is to create a sonic space that questions our relationship to the natural and manufactured worlds. The tools I use for recording and processing themselves become part of the composition. The resulting piece comments on the act of observation and cognition since the process is fundamentally subjective; the origin is my own self. My actions are predicated on the acoustic environment as I hear it at that moment. Not only do my gestures with the microphones have an overt effect, my body and its positioning affects the sounds through capacitance and otherwise.

The "wild-card" is the use of phonography to incorporate previously visited environments. This keeps things fresh for me, and gives me something external against which to act.

The resulting soundscape contains subtle structures and varied timbres that play with concepts of memory and forgetting, ecology and technology, cybernetics and autonomy. This is part of my ongoing practice; every performance is inherently experimental. Please join me on Saturday to see how it goes!

Don't forget you can hear many of my previous performances and compositions over at my Remanence site.

Stolen Mirror Publishing Launched

2011-10-17T15:00:00.004+01:00

"The most prudent and effective method of dealing with the world around us is to assume that it is a complete fiction."
-- J. G. Ballard

Introducing Stolen Mirror Publishing. Our mandate is to develop innovative titles that encourage you to explore your relationship with language, sound and the world around you. Our catalogue will include limited edition books, compact discs and digital downloads. We have no outside funding and so can remain completely independent.

Our aesthetic is based on the mythologies of the late 20th century, concerns we can now view with nostalgia. How quaint was our dread of the nuclear apocalypse! How innocent our belief in multimedia! How laughable our anxieties in the face of the Human Genome Project! How curious our fears of the Millennium Bug!

Stolen Mirror will explore the psycho-geography of the 20th century, excavating this rich landscape for new fascinations and novel romances.

I have been meaning to do this for years, but finally I have jumped into action. There are simply too many interesting works out there, books that are too strange, poetry too outside the formal limits, music that slips between the cracks. Then one day I woke up and realised that I am an editor, designer and photographer; plus I have an understanding of business and printing not constrained by tradition. I have helped other publishers get started and had a hand in a few significant books over the years. So why not channel all this expertise into something I can do with no compromises?

My first book and first CD are my own, but I do not plan on this being a vanity press. Yes, I want to release my own works; but the main factor was that these were the easiest titles to ready within my time constraints. In case you are interested, the book was edited, illustrated, designed and printed in a mere three weeks. The upcoming CD was put together in one week. This sort of rapid development is rather unheard-of in the publishing business.

Please check out the Stolen Mirror website for more info. Further bulletins will be coming here on the blog thick and fast.

Photos From Cuisle Festival

2011-10-17T14:30:00.005+01:00

The Cuisle International Poetry Festival has come to an end for another year. Four days of readings and activities to please every taste, with many world-class names and some truly incredible words. For my own part my own reading went very well, despite being the first on the schedule. Thanks to all who came out and supported the release of my book! And thanks to the organising committee: Sheila Deegan, Bertha McCullagh, Ciaran O'Driscoll and Mark Whelan.

I made it to every event and tried to get a photo of each participant. Here is a selection from the full set on Flickr. If you are a poet who wants a snazzy new image for your next book jacket, please contact me. I have to fund my publishing company somehow!

Join Me At The Cuisle International Poetry Festival

2011-09-26T14:00:00.000+01:00

I am pleased to announce that I will be kicking off this year's Cuisle International Poetry Festival with a lunch-time reading in the Captain's Room of the Hunt Museum. This is a brilliant setting in an award-winning museum. I am sure if you're a native of Limerick you've enjoyed the eclectic collection before now. You'll need no further urging to join me in this lovely room, Wednesday 12 October 2011 at 1pm.

On the occasion I'll be launching my book Tragedy of the Sun and Stars. Those present will have the first chance to purchase the limited edition. I'll be writing more about that book anon.

The 16th Cuisle Limerick City International Poetry Festival runs until Saturday and features British Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy, the always-amusing Paul Durcan and writers from Ireland, England, Slovenia and Catalonia. Fellow Limerick poet Mark Whelan will be launching a new book two days after myself in the same location. In addition, staple activities like the Young Poet of the Year Award, Slam competition and The Stony Thursday anthology launch will complete the dynamic festival. All friends of words should plan on attending!

More info here.

"Apophenic Ecosystem C10 C30" at TACTIC, Cork

2011-09-12T22:30:00.000+01:00

"The Uncanny is a Freudian concept of an instance where something can be familiar, yet foreign at the same time, resulting in a feeling of it being uncomfortably strange or uncomfortably familiar."

Liam Slevin has curated an exhibition of sound and video works based on this theme, opening Wednesday 14 September at 7pm. Exhibiting artists include Dominic Thorpe, Stephen McGlynn, Erin Gee, Jessica Conway, Dave Fyans, Sarah Lundy, Richard Forrest and Dan Guiney. I am happy I was asked to take part and will make it "down south" for the opening.

If you can't make it then, the show is open until 24 September 24 on the 2nd Floor, Old Government Buildings, Sullivan's Quay, Cork, Ireland. You can find TACTIC on Facebook and at their own dedicated website.

Here is my statement to accompany "Apophenic Ecosystem C10 C30":

I grew up with cassette tape, an accessible and personal medium for storing sound. The act of recording a tape -- inscribing it with songs I chose, personal messages and even original music -- made it my own. But the ferric oxide overlaid its own distinctive signature. Hiss, wow and flutter, frequency filtering and pre-echo combined with peeling tape surfaces, misaligned and dirty heads, recording glitches. The innate properties of the medium made of my sounds a palimpsest that mapped some spectral domain. Listening back, I could sometimes hear strange music I had never recorded. Unexpected voices issued from a foreign land discovered in the space between tracks.

This sound installation consists of 83 tracks played back through two independent and unsynchronized stereo sources. Playback volumes are low enough that the background noise of the tape and the ambiance of the listening room fuse. The result is a meeting of the enfolded sonics of the tape and the open space of the acoustic environment, the past overlaid on the present. This is a machine for generating apophenia.

All original sound material has been sourced from my own cassette tapes, now three decades old.

"Complementarity: An Archipelago" Published On-Line

2011-08-22T17:00:00.013+01:00

(Somehow this post didn't get finished in a timely fashion. I just found it languishing in the land of "draft".)

This spring my interdisciplinary paper "Complementarity: An Archipelago" was published by Alan N. Shapiro, technologist and futurist, on his website.

An archipelago is a sea containing scattered islands. In this paper the term is describes a scattering of texts embedded in a particular context; a cluster without overt pattern but with some as-yet-not-fully-determined connectivity. The context the reader brings to this collection is the axis about which the islands spin. Thus the archipelago is a generative system embedded in a process greater than itself.

From quantum mechanics we know that particles also act as waves, depending on what we are observing. We can see light or an electron in one or the other aspect, but to get a full appreciation of their characteristics we need to balance both concepts in our mind at the same time. Niels Bohr called this duality complementarity.

The article was first published as a chapter in the book Choreography as an Aesthetics of Change by Daghdha. I covered the 2009 launch in a previous article.

Once you've read my short but highly distilled article, check out the rest of Shapiro's site. I've written previously of Shapiro's book Star Trek: Technologies of Disappearance, which is an insightful exploration of this popular series as culture industry and as modern mythology. It's mind-expanding for fans and genre-breaking for those into media theory.

Windows Running Slow?

2011-08-13T14:00:00.001+01:00

Today I was helping my friend Tony Higgins on Facebook. His laptop running Windows XP had suddenly become very slow. And with the complex nature of how programmes interact in a modern operating system this is all too common. Here are the suggestions I gave him for how to sort out the issue. So read on for some tips that I am sure you can find in a thousand other places. But this article also gives me the opportunity to encourage you to listen to Tony's music. Check out his site!

Of course re-installing Windows is the easiest way to get you computer nice and fresh but it's also a pain... you'll need to re-install all your applications, a process that can take days. I have run XP for over eight years without re-installing the operating system, even though during that period I must have tried over a thousand programmes, each one of which is a potential problem and might leave behind crufty nonsense when you delete it.

1. Is your hard drive churning unnecessarily? Make sure you have enough room on your boot drive (usually C:). Otherwise the virtual memory requirements will slow your system to a crawl. If you have a second drive (or even a second partition) assign application (e.g. PhotoShop) swap space to it instead.

2. With no apps running, bring up Task Manager and see what the processor is doing -- should be nothing. Otherwise this activity could be a sign of spyware. Grab Spybot Search & Destroy and use it. Likewise I recommend Panda Cloud as anti-virus since it has a small footprint on your machine.

3. But be aware that antivirus and anti-spyware programmes install components that run in the background and can also slow your computer. I am sure to configure SpyBot so this is not the case. Plus I turn off Panda when I am performing or need all my computer's capabilities on demand.

4. Have you been installing and uninstalling a lot of applications over the life of your OS? A good registry cleaner can get rid of disused entries and make a real difference in performance. I use ccleaner, but it's only rarely needed.

5. Windows Indexing service may be getting out of hand. I have it turned off on my performance machine. See this article.

6. For full optimisation, turn off unnecessary services. Surf Black Viper for more than you need to know.

Hope these tips help! Remember, every computer needs maintenance.

"No Input Software" Paper and Concert This Week

2011-08-09T22:00:00.002+01:00

The newly-founded Irish, Sound, Science and Technology Association (ISSTA) is having their first Convocation (the ISSTC, naturally) this week, Wednesday and Thursday. This is being run out of the University of Limerick, right on my door-step, so of course I will be taking part. First I'll be delivering a paper and then I'll perform a piece that instantiates the ideas in that text.

Wednesday 10 August 2011 at 11:30, I will be presenting a paper on my current activities: "No Input Software: Cybernetics, Improvisation and The Machinic Phylum". If you are interested you can register for the conference and enter into the dialogue! A total of 40 euro gets you a yearly membership to ISSTA, entry to all the talks and three concerts, so it's rather good value. For more information go to the ISSTC 2011 "Overture" website.

Thursday 11 August 2011 at 21:00 I will be performing in concert at the Ormiston building, 9-10 Patrick Street in downtown Limerick. Also on the bill will be Bryan Quigley, JC Bihanic & Amy Kinlon, John D'Arcy, Stephen McCourt and Aranos (Petr Vasti). Tickets are 12 euros.

Here is the abstract to my paper, as originally submitted. Ongoing research means that things might be slightly different in two days' time!

As a general principle, feedback describes a circuit (electronic, social, biological or otherwise) in which the output or result influences the input or cause. Since Norbert Wiener's Cybernetics instantiated the study of regulatory systems, feedback circuits have been pursued in many contexts, not least of all the musical. Louis Barron, directly inspired by Wiener in 1948, built audio feedback circuits that literally burnt themselves up as they played. By 1972 David Tudor was utilising acoustic feedback between transducers in Untitled. More recently, performers such as Toshimaru Nakamura have pioneered the use of the "no source mixing desk", a simple sound mixer with outputs wired to inputs so that the self-noise of the circuits provide the only sound material. The performer modifies this device through re-patching, equalisation and amplitude control, improvising with the sounds as they come into being.

In a similar manner, the author has recently experimented with "No Input Software" in order to test our faith in the digital realm as a site of perfect representation and replication. The paper traces this arc of cybernetic practice, using the writings of David Borgo, Derek Bailey, Nicolas Collins and Richard Orton to draw out relationships with improvisation. Deleuze and Guattari's concept of the machinic phylum, as further developed by Manuel De Landa, provides a theoretical foundation for the study of the dynamic interplay of structures and substances founded in a double articulation. By stripping away superfluous elements, No Input Software foregrounds the self-organisation of the circuit itself and the emergent intelligence that results from evolving non-linear systems. What is our place in this ecosystem?

Autopoieses 15

2011-08-09T22:00:00.001+01:00

Autopoieses 14

2011-08-09T20:00:00.000+01:00

Autopoieses 13

2011-08-09T18:00:00.000+01:00

Autopoieses 12

2011-08-09T16:00:00.000+01:00

Autopoieses 11

2011-08-09T14:00:00.000+01:00

Autopoieses 10

2011-08-09T02:00:00.000+01:00

Autopoieses 9

2011-08-09T00:00:00.000+01:00

Autopoieses 8

2011-08-08T22:00:00.000+01:00

Autopoieses 7

2011-08-08T20:00:00.000+01:00

Autopoieses 6

2011-08-08T18:00:00.000+01:00

Autopoieses 5

2011-08-08T16:00:00.000+01:00

Autopoieses 4

2011-08-08T14:00:00.000+01:00

Autopoieses 3

2011-08-08T12:00:00.004+01:00

Autopoieses 2

2011-08-08T10:00:00.002+01:00

Autopoieses 1

2011-08-08T06:00:00.001+01:00

"Deserted Village" to Première at GAFF in Gorey, Ireland

2011-08-08T02:00:00.000+01:00

If you are in the vicinity of Gorey, County Wexford, next Sunday 7 August, you should drop into the Gorey Arts & Film Festival (GAFF), a "new intimate 1 day event" that is spearheaded by Richard Carr, the man behind the open art publication StudentZine.

Helen Frosi of London's SoundFjord has curated a Listening Post as part of the festival. I contributed a composition created entirely from the ambiance of the deserted village, Achill Island, Co. Mayo. Listening to the sound of the sheep bounce from mountain-side to mountain-side was incredible. I wish I could recreate the same sense of embodiment in space, but instead must be satisfied with some rather more overt sonic manipulations.

More information on the GAFF Facebook page.

Olympus G. Zuiko 40mm f/1.4 Test Part 2

2011-08-07T20:00:00.004+01:00

Following on Part 1, I will present some sample images of the Olympus G. Zuiko 40mm f/1.4 and discuss its usability.

First, to consider the focal length. This lens is DOF/FOV equivalent to an 80mm f/2.8 on full-frame, which is a capable telephoto configuration. The equivalence for APS-C is 51mm f/1.8, which means that it corresponds to a typical fast fifty on the Pentax system I know and love. This is a field of view I enjoy, since I prefer something either tighter than the "normal" field of view (which is 21mm on the Micro Four Thirds format). That's why you'll find me shooting 43mm or even 77mm as a general "walk around" lens on APS-C.

The Zuiko is a pleasure to hold and use in the hand. The focus ring is smooth and tight, so it's easy to lock in focus at the correct point. The design of the E-P1 helps here, since one gets a definite "shimmer" effect on the LCD when focus is achieved. With practice one can depend on this and on use the focus magnification only in extreme cases (narrow DOF at close distances).

The design does have one peculiarity. As you can see from the picture above, the aperture dial is in front of the focus ring. Furthermore it is marked in f-stops on the underside, where you cannot see them. But the visible top-side portion of the ring instead notates the aperture in arbitrary numbers from 0 to 6. I am not sure what the rationale was behind this!

The "0" setting corresponds to wide open, that is, f/1.4. The "1" stop corresponds to f/2.8, which unfortunately means that there is no setting for f/2. It is possible to set the aperture between these two detent clicks, as I did for the tests in the previous article, but I find this annoying. Whole stop clicks continue up to the minimum aperture of f/16 or "6" as this dial would have it.

The lens takes a 43mm filter; since I am still waiting for a hood in that size, I took care to avoid perspectives that might induce flare. Since the glass is near the front of the lens I would definitely mandate a hood both for protection and image quality.

The shot above is deliberately out of focus, and wide open, to show some distinct bokeh effect. The five blades are curved in order to form a smoother perimeter, but they do not form a perfectly symmetrical pattern. I should point out that this is true even on my Pentax FA 43mm Limited.

I shot the mauve flowers at the top of the article at f/2.8, if I remember correctly. My usual portrait sitter Schweppes, below, is pictured at or near wide open. All of these images have been processed using my usual work-flow, in order to get a good result out of the RAW files.

In conclusion, I have to say I enjoy the slim profile of this lens and the field of view it gives me to work with. Focus and handling are a joy. I especially like the ability to get close to my subject. The lens is suitably sharp and renders a neutral image, without "swirly bokeh" effects or mystical aberration glow. Use from wide open is perfectly acceptable, with a peak in sharpness at f/4. For kicks I shot a brick wall and found no overt distortion. (Since I enjoy street art, I do in fact find myself shooting walls.)

On the down-side, the lack of proper f-stop marks and the omission of a detent at f/2 is annoying. The need to compensate the exposure when stopping down is a puzzle. It won't annoy me excessively as I imagine I'll be using this lens mostly at f/2.8 or f/4.

When introduced in the sixties this lens sold for $70. Though it is likely the most abundant PEN lens on the secondary market, copies sell for between $200 and $325, depending on condition and how lucky you get.

Olympus G. Zuiko 40mm f/1.4 Test Part 1

2011-08-07T14:00:00.024+01:00

In this pair of articles I'll present one of my typical lens "tests", which involves shooting at different apertures in a controlled environment, and then roaming about the neighbourhood to take snapshots. The handling of the lens as well as its image quality will be under review.

The "Olympus G. Zuiko Auto-S 40mm F1.4", to give the lens its full title, was designed for the Olympus PEN F half-frame film camera, introduced in 1963. The innovative work of Yoshihisa Maitani (which involved over 50 patents) created an elegant well-built system that was immediately popular and sold millions. I happen to think it's one of the finest looking cameras you can get (the earlier Olympus Trip cameras are nice as well). Thus it was a pleasant surprise when Olympus tapped into this heritage to introduce their Micro Four Thirds cameras, about which I have been writing a fair amount lately. (Though in some ways technically superior, the Panasonic MFT cameras have the same old uninspiring SLR look.)

Unfortunately Olympus have not been offering lenses with the same flair (I must be sure to spell that correctly!) as their old Zuiko optics. So I have resorted to finding legacy lenses on "the internets", an annoying process that involves out-bidding thousands of other photographers with similar thoughts. But sometimes you find a deal (this being the carrot to the internet mules -- but I digress).

At this point you might want to look back at Choosing An Alternative Mount Lens for an ILM Camera for how I narrowed my lens search.

The G. Zuiko 40/1.4 is one of the most popular choices for lenses to adapt, since it offers an excellent optic in a compact size (43mm in length and 165g) -- and it has a fast maximum aperture. It requires an inexpensive ($20) and tiny 9mm adapter for use on MFT bodies.

First, I set up the Olympus E-P1 on a tripod with the timer function, using natural light on an overcast day when illumination was not varying. Using the close focus distance of 35mm, I focused on an arrangement of seashells, so the effects of depth of field and bokeh could be seen. Here are the results for each stop from f/1.4 to f/4. You'll want to click through to Flickr to see them larger. If you do, check out the adjacent images for the remainder of the stops.

The results are agreeable. The slight softness seen wide open disappears by f/2.8 and the bokeh is at all times pleasant. The lens does not appear overly contrasty and the colours are not as vivid as with my Pentax lenses, but I am quite used to that result. These qualities can be "pumped up" in post-processing, should needs be. Indeed, using my usual RAW conversion profile, the wide open result is as follows:

From this I conclude there is no problem with the lens in this regard. All digital images need appropriate post-processing just as all film stocks need appropriate development.

This aperture test did reveal one problem, however, which can be seen starting with the shot for f/5.6. The image is too dark. Subsequent apertures only get worse and the conclusion is inescapable: the camera is not exposing correctly for the lens. Since I do not have this problem with any of my adapted K-mount lenses I cannot tell if the problem is the camera body, the adapter, or the lens itself. Certainly it appears to stop down properly when I do so manually (lens off camera). This is both perplexing and annoying in general use. By f/16 and exposure compensation of about +1.7 is required -- here are the uncorrected and in-camera corrected exposures:

Now I will present the results of the bookshelf test. learning from the previous exercise I compensated for the exposure so as to get comparable results. In this case I discovered that I needed to begin compensating immediately and consistently on stopping down, adding one-third of an EV positive compensation per stop. In practice this will be annoying and definitely sap some of the joy of using the Zuiko.

As you can see, the white balance was off, so this was not an effective test of colour rendition. In other regards it conforms with the results from the first test.

Finally, here is a strip of 100% crops from the centre of the image. I have uploaded the full-sized image so those of you who are interested can download the entire thing. This image has been colour-corrected, but is free of any other processing. As you can see, even wide open the texture of the spine to the right is visible, though small and medium level detail definitely improves with each stop to f/5.6, after which the effects of diffraction slightly limit detail and contrast. (These empirical results conform with the theoretical value of f/4.5, as presented in Choosing An Optimal Aperture To Avoid Diffraction.)

Join me soon for Part 2, in which I present some real-world shots and my subjective impressions of the lens.

Comparing Alternative Mount Lenses on the Olympus E-P1

2011-08-06T17:00:00.008+01:00

The last article considered the range of alternative legacy lenses one can adapt to the Olympus/Panasonic Micro Four Thirds (MFT) system. My goal is to find something more compact than my Pentax 43mm Limited without giving up anything significant in terms of image quality.

In this article I'll use photographs to compare lenses designed for three different mounts, seeing how they look on the Olympus E-P1, and also crunching the figures to see which ends up winning the "I'm tiny! Buy me!" award.

Panasonic 20mm f/1.7

As a base-line I present the "Panasonic Lumix G Vario 20mm f/1.7 ASPH". It's widely considered the best lens of the current crop of auto-focus MFT lenses, with excellent image quality. Certainly I cannot fault it, although the equivalent normal field of view is not my favourite. I prefer either something wider or tighter, hence my consideration of lenses with about half the field of view.

Because the element takes up less than half the radius of the front surface I have not bothered with a lens hood (though perhaps I should) and instead suffice with a small 26mm extension ring. Though you can see it in the photos, I removed it before measuring the following figures.

The lens weighs a 100g and is 26mm long. As you can see it makes a nice compact unit with the camera. It is perhaps unfair to compare it to the other focal lengths present here, but as I do not have a 40mm lens in MFT, it will have to do. After all, I am only using it as some sort of a baseline.

I do wonder why this lens has to be so wide. It's not as comfortable to use nor as petite as it needs to be, optically speaking. Why should the auto-focus mechanism take up so much room? Nonetheless, the lens is remarkably short, which is a more important factor when considering how much space the camera takes up in a bag.

Pentax FA 43mm f/1.9 Limited

Since I am well equipped with excellent Pentax prime lenses, the first adapter I obtained for my MFT system was K-mount. There is no better lens to shoot than the "SMC Pentax-FA 43mm F1.9 Limited", as I discussed at length in previous articles. Alone the lens is 155g and 27mm long, but the adapter doubles that size, since it needs to make up the 26mm difference in registers. The lens is pictured here with its hood, but I removed it to make comparisons fairer. The weight and length of the lens plus adapter are then 240g and 53mm respectively.

As you can see from the photos the advantage of having a flat camera body is rather lost when the lens sticks out an equal distance. I often feel that I may as well be shooting my DSLR, since I need a shoulder bag for either camera. It's not as though this combination is going to fit in a pocket!

Olympus Zuiko 40mm f/1.4

The "G. Zuiko Auto-S 40mm F1.4" was created for the Olympus PEN F half-frame film cameras. I don't yet have an appropriate hood. Without the push-on cap it is 165g and 37mm long. The required adapter is only 9mm deep, so the total length comes to 46mm, with weight 220g. I'll be writing more about this lens, and showing you sample photos, in the near future.

The Zuiko is certainly the thinnest of these three options, without the bulge in the adapter needed to accommodate the full-frame Pentax glass. It has a certain elegance as a result, even if the styling of the lens is, in my opinion, nothing too special.

Conclusions
Here are those results again, sports fans:

     LENS               MASS    LENGTH
     Panasonic 20/1.7   100g    26mm
     Pentax 43/1.9      240g    53mm
     G. Zuiko 40/1.4    220g    46mm

I had thought the Pentax lens to be over-sized on this camera, but the Zuiko in fact only saves me 7mm. Once I attach a suitable lens hood to each, I wonder if there will be a significant difference?

Of course form factor is only one part of the equation. If the Zuiko optics can't cut the mustard next to the Pentax then I wouldn't want to use it. And since I consider the FA 43 Limited to be the finest lens I own, the challenger has a lot to live up to!

Stay tuned for the next instalment.

P.S. I realise that one reason I don't like using the FA 43 Limited is that it does not lock into place properly on the adapter. It is easy to rotate it right off the camera. This is not a problem with older Pentax lenses I have used with the same adapter. And the PEN F lens locks into place firmly. So perhaps if I sourced a different K-mount to MFT adapter it would sort me out. Any recommendations from readers who have used this particular Limited lens on MFT?

Adapters for Pentax K Lens on MFT Cameras

2011-08-05T19:00:00.014+01:00

As a resource, I thought I would supply a list of those brands of adapters I have located that allow the use of Pentax K lenses on Micro Four Thirds (MFT) cameras. You can be sure that these firms will also offer adapters for other such lenses. And they also might very well provide adapters to other camera systems. So this information might be more generally useful.

This is not a list of recommendations as I have not compared these brands. Even the cheapest adapters available from China on eBay are made of aluminum and brass and might very well provide an excellent fitting for your lenses. I have converted all selling prices to US dollars but this does not indicate shipping charges or ease of purchase depending on where you live.

All but one of these adapters assume your lens has an aperture ring; if not, you will only be able to use the lens wide open. The adapters provide no electronic coupling at all. However, they all (should) latch to the aperture lever, so that stopping down the lens is automatic. With the auto-exposure features of the MFT bodies, they are very convenient to use in aperture-priority mode.

Novoflex offers an adapter with aperture control ring, so that newer digital lenses can be used easily on MFT bodies. Very expensive at $240.

Voigtländer have an expensive adapter. I have no idea why it should cost $179.

Fotodiox offers a simple adapter for $40 and a Tilt-Shift adapter for $130. Anyone have experience with that?

jinfinance sells an adapter for $50.

Rainbow Imaging sells an adapter for $23.

Rocks Photographic sells the PIXCO adapter for $22, but this same Chinese brand is available on eBay for $18 including shipping.

Choosing An Alternative Mount Lens for an ILM Camera

2011-08-05T00:36:00.002+01:00

Introduction
In my last article I explained all about register and why ILM cameras allow such a wide range of off-system lenses to be adapted to their bodies. It's one of the main reasons these cameras (Olympus PEN, Panasonic G3 and family, Sony NEX) have proven so popular with aficionado photographers, many of whom have a standing investment in lenses from other systems.

In this article I'll list the systems we might want to use on our ILM and apply my own specific criteria of price, usability and form factor. Happily, a single mount choice will bubble to the surface. (If you apply different criteria you may get a different result.)

List of Lens Mounts
Here is a list of all the commonly-available lens mount systems that have a register under 30mm. I chose that value since it means I can use an adapter on my Olympus PEN E-P1 that maintains the small size advantage of the system. That's what makes the ILM so appealing in the first place. If I want a larger adapter I'll stick to my K-mount lenses. This first constraint limits the choices to old-school range-finder and half-frame systems.

I have rounded off the values slightly for ease of reading, and included the ILM systems in the chart for comparison.

C                 17.5 mm
* Sony NEX        18 mm
* MFT             19.25 mm
* Samsung NX      25.5 mm
Pentax Auto 110   27 mm
Leica M           28 mm
Leica M39         29 mm
Olympus PEN F     29 mm
Contax G          29 mm

I need to explain why "C" lenses are included even though their register is less than the ILM cameras. The reason is that adapters do in fact allow their use, since the difference is only a couple of millimetres. However, this means one needs to be careful that the chosen cine lens does not have protruding parts in the rear, since these might damage the camera. There are also issues of image circle compatibility, with many C lenses resulting in severe vignetting. Nonetheless, this mount has proven popular with certain adventurous photographers.

Applying My Selection Criteria
This list will be my starting point for deciding which third-party lenses to pursue. My goal is to find classic lenses with a nice manual focus feeling, since the MFT focus-by-wire system is poor. I am one of those people who prefers to focus manually, giving me optimal control over my pictures.

There are three more criteria: excellent image quality, reasonable close focus distance and affordable price. By that I mean under 200 monetary units (whatever they may be for you). I simply don't have much of a budget for off-brand lenses for my secondary camera system. So, applying the last criterion first, I eliminate the expensive Leica lenses, along with Konica M-Hexanon and similar compatible systems. This is by no means to slight their ability. If I had a couple of grand I'd be happy to buy one, but my current limit is an order of magnitude less.

The C lenses are also too expensive, but in this case not in an absolute sense. Rather, they are relatively dear for what they are, fetching prices way out of line with their image quality.

The Pentax Auto 110 is an insanely cute system with tiny lenses that nonetheless provide an image circle that covers the MFT format. However, this size was the result of a compromise that now has serious implications. The diaphragm was provided by the camera body. Thus, on an ILM camera, one must use them wide open at f/2.8. Their image quality at this aperture leaves a lot to be desired. In fact, they were never the best lenses from the stand-point of IQ. But no-one really demanded that of a normal lens that weighs 13g.

The Contax G lenses also have a peculiarity: they do not have a focus mechanism, since that was provided by the range-finder body. Various adapters exist that attempt to remedy this, but that jacks the price up. All reports are that the experience remains rather unwieldy. Despite the excellent quality of the standard lens, there are better alternatives. (I notice most who buy these on the volatile used market end up selling them on.)

Olympus PEN F System
That leaves only the Olympus PEN F lenses for consideration, perhaps appropriately enough; my Olympus E-P1 is a digital relative of the PEN after all. The PEN F was a half-frame SLR with a unique design, in that the mirror flipped side-ways into the body instead of upwards. This meant the camera could do without the viewfinder "bump" on top -- and it apparently made for a short register as well.

The PEN F had an uncharacteristically broad selection of lenses for a non-standard film size, though many of these go for a pretty penny on today's market (like any other unusual and potentially collectable lenses). Omitting two zooms and a mirror telephoto, this is what the line-up looked like:

G Zuiko AUTO W 20mm F3.5
E Zuiko AUTO W 25mm F4
G Zuiko AUTO W 25mm F2.8
F Zuiko AUTO S 38mm F1.8
D Zuiko AUTO S 38mm F2.8
E Zuiko AUTO S 38mm F2.8
E Zuiko AUTO MACRO 38mm F3.5
G Zuiko AUTO S 40mm F1.4
G Zuiko AUTO S 42mm F1.2
G Zuiko AUTO T 60mm F1.5
F Zuiko AUTO T 70mm F2
E Zuiko AUTO T 100mm F3.5
E Zuiko AUTO T 150mm F4
E Zuiko T 250mm F5
E Zuiko T 400mm F6.3

When considering which of these to purchase, I first eliminated the three wide lenses. That's because I already own the sharp and tiny Panasonic 20/1.7 in native MFT mount. In terms of image quality it is distinctly superior to other lenses in this system -- this is borne out through measurements, tests and hands-on use.

Likewise I eliminated the telephoto lenses of 100mm or greater as simply being too long for me, remembering that the 35mm equivalent focal length is double all of these values.

While I would love the super-fast 42/1.2, if it ever comes up for sale it would cost my arm. The same could be expected of many of the other less-common lenses.

However, the "G Zuiko Auto-S 40mm F1.4" is almost as fast, and can be found for a reasonable price, since as the kit "standard" lens it was produced in significant quantities. It's praised for excellent optics in a tiny form factor (165g and 43mm long). With a close focus distance of 35cm it meets all my criteria.

There other possibilities, but these hit the market less often. The 38mm F1.8 is that bit slower, but it has the same close focus distance and is even smaller (135g and 35mm long). Those looking for the ultimate miniature lens might hold out for the "E Zuiko AUTO S 38mm F2.8", which is a magical 70g and 14mm long. Of course something has to be compromised to make a lens this tiny relative to the larger "D Zuiko AUTO S 38mm F2.8". In this case it's the close focus distance, which gets bumped up to 80cm.

Like I said before, lots of choice!

I went ahead and located a 40/1.4 at below market value. In a future article I'll let you know how it works out.

Register (Flange Focal Distance) and ILM Cameras

2011-08-02T21:39:00.000+01:00

One of the best things about ILM cameras (don't know what they are? read my last post) is that the lack of the traditional mirror assembly means that a great deal of the depth of the camera (measured from the back plane out towards the front of the lens) can be omitted. This is not a new observation, since it is entirely the same advantage that range-finder cameras always had. They could thus be constructed to be relatively thin and pocketable, which is one of the main reasons they became a favourite of street photographers. (The fact they weren't much good at macro, close focusing or telephoto applications also helped narrow their application domain.)

So it is that every cameras system has a particular register or flange focal distance -- all lenses for the system must be made to that exact specification. The register is measured from the sensor plane to the mounting flange on the rear of the lens. It follows that a lens designed for one camera system might be adapted to mount on a body from a different system so long as a) the correct physical couplings (screw mount or bayonet mount) are adapted, b) the register is matched.

If the lens was originally designed to be further from the sensor, the adapter can make up the missing distance. But there is little that can be done if the lens needs to be closer to the sensor than the camera can physically accommodate. Thus, when looking at lenses to adapt to a given body, we need those designed for longer registers. And the corollary of this is that cameras with short registers can accept the widest variety of existing lenses. And this is exactly the position we find ourselves in with today's ILM digital cameras. Adapters exist to mount dozens of different legacy lens systems on Sony NEX or Micro-Four-Thirds cameras.

I should mention in passing that as well as register and physical coupling, a modern lens mount provides electronic couplings. In this way the camera body can communicate with the lens and learn certain qualities (e.g. focal length and current aperture) of the lens. Unfortunately, we can assume that when adapting lenses to our ILM camera, all such electronic coupling will be lost.

In practical terms, this means that when using an adapted lens we will be focussing manually. We also be setting aperture ourselves, and so require an aperture dial on the lens. Finally, we need the adapter to make the physical coupling for stopping down the aperture; otherwise the camera will only be able to use the lens wide-open. (Alternatively, if the lens has manual aperture switch, we can use that.)

Given that we are spoilt for choice, which lenses should we use? One way to decide is to see which lenses you already own. Since I have lots of K-mount lenses for the Pentax DSLR system, my first adapter was K to MFT. I have already shown examples of the Olympus E-P1 with the superb FA 43 Limited, and have had good success with every Pentax lens I've tried -- M42 mount lenses as well.

Using these adapted Pentax lenses is a piece of cake, since stop-down metering is automatic and the camera meters through the lens perfectly. All I need to do is pick an f-stop on the aperture dial and focus. Nothing could be easier. The feel of using these great solid metal lenses far out-classes the auto-focus mushiness of those Olympus and Panasonic have themselves built for the system.

One problem remains in adapting SLR lenses to the ILM camera. The adapter has to be quite large to make up the register difference, as you can see from the picture at the top of this article. This limits the advantage of the compact size of the system, one of the main reasons to choose it over a DSLR in the first place. Perhaps instead we should be looking for lenses already designed for short registers?

That is precisely what I will consider in my next article. I will list the possible choices and narrow the range by applying my criteria of price, size and usability. See you then!

How (Not) To Name Your Camera System

2011-08-02T17:00:00.002+01:00

(This will be an entirely minor article, spun out of my head when contemplating far more important matters. You know how it is.)

An annoying thing about the new crop of mirrorless interchangeable lens cameras is that we don't have a good name for them. Olympus and Panasonic call the cameras in their Micro-Four-Thirds (MFT) line "New Generation System Cameras", though Olympus is smart enough to de-emphasise this unwieldy term in place of the easier-to-market "PEN". Pentax opts for ILC (Interchangeable-Lens Camera) to describe the new Q, a term which doesn't distinguish this camera from SLRs. Ricoh's odd GXR design is the Interchangeable Unit Camera System. And Sony merely says "ultra-compact camera system" when they need to describe the NEX.

Individual companies don't really need to name an entire class of cameras; they can concentrate on promoting their own brand as "Q", "NEX", "PEN" or whatever. Just as well, since obviously none of their weak and formless attempts at nomenclature will do (Pentax comes closest).

Early in the gestation of this technology, some clever soul came up with the catchy acronym EVIL (Electronic Viewfinder with Interchangeable Lens). Unfortunately this label is inaccurate, since many models forsake the viewfinder entirely; users instead compose photos using the rear LCD. The acronym CSC (Compact System Camera) doesn't say much at all, unless we are in the habit of reading an awful lot into the term "system". After all, digital point'n'shoot cameras with fixed lenses can just as easily form part of a system, once you include screw-on adapters, hot-shoe flash units and other accessories.

The growing movement towards the term MILC (Mirrorless Interchangeable-Lens Camera) has at least the benefit of being accurate, but it nonetheless leaves a bad taste in my mouth -- and not just because of the dairy connection. People tend to write "MILC cameras", which is redundant.

I would have suggested ILM (Interchangeable-Lens Mirrorless) since then you can add "camera" or "system" or any other noun on the end as needs be. And it's easy to say. ("M" is better said after other consonants, since it is pronounced with a preceding vowel.)

But for some reason no-one asked me. I guess that's why I have a blog!

Harry Moore's Sound-Snippets Project

2011-07-27T12:00:00.026+01:00

Harry Moore is an artist who excels at pinhole photography and putting together sounds in ways that make the process of their construction apparent. He teaches photography in Cork. I first saw him play with Tony Langlois as Sunfish. His cute-as-heck box camera attracted my comments at another gig. My occasional presence in Cork led to him asking me to join his latest collaborative project: Sound-Snippets. The project is now bearing sonic fruit, which you can sample at SoundCloud. Here's the description in his own words.

Sound-Snippets is a project. 10 different sound practitioners provide the ingredients for a collective piece. Participants provide four separate sound ‘snippets’, each no shorter than 10 seconds and no longer than 60 seconds. Each of the practitioners assembles the parts in their own style or methodology, providing a range of different versions from the identical material, using no effect excepting the following: volume levels including fades, cross fading or multi layering, duplication. The final pieces are then assembled into a presentation, the number of tracks matching the number of protagonists (10 participants = 10 different versions, all constructed with the same ingredients).

For my contribution I decided to include every one of the source sounds. Then I devised the name as anagrams of the contributors. This was a lot of work but good fun!

I hereby present "42 Episodes in 5 Movements: 1. Solvent Addenda, 2. Henna Cadaver, 3. Brightly Jeer On Holy Joy, 4. Kindly Rearrange Polymer Rhythms, 5. Familiar Noisy Hell".

Walk the Induction Circuit for World Listening Day

2011-07-17T17:00:00.000+01:00

Induction Circuit is a self-directed walk that explores the secret domains and hidden sounds of Catherine Street (Limerick, Ireland). Setting off from a designated starting point with a music player and headphones, the participant is encouraged to experience new sonic geographies.

This piece was created for the Catherine Street DIG 2011. I am mentioning it again since tomorrow, July 18, is World Listening Day. This would be a perfect time for you to open your ears to the secret sounds around you.

All you need is some sort of a personal music player. Grab the sound files from the dedicated website. Budget an hour for the walk -- and enjoy!

My Photo in the Limerick Printmakers Print Show

2011-07-13T23:00:00.002+01:00

The annual Limerick Printmakers Open Submission Print Show is opening tomorrow night, Thursday 14 July at 8pm. I am proud to say one of my photographic prints was selected for inclusion. I won't tell you which one, although it is recent, very pertinent to Ireland today and is on my Flickr stream. It would be great if friends and other interested parties came out to celebrate!

And besides this is one of the more interesting shows of the year, with a very high calibre of work and every type of print on display: etching, lithography, silkscreen, installation works, etc. Andrew Boyle from Cork selected from over 200 entries. And if it's anything like the several previous years I've attended, it'll be fantastic.

The show is the first in the Printmakers new location at 5 Sarsfield Street (formerly O’Sullivan Shoes). The exhibition is open through 3 August 2011, Tuesday to Friday 11:00 to 17.30 and Saturday 10:00 to 16:00.

See you there!

Vivitar Series 1 28mm Review Part 2

2011-07-10T02:00:00.004+01:00

I said most of what I needed to in Part 1 of this review. This article gives you a few more images to look at, since I'm not about to subject the lens to formal testing.

All images on this page were shot at f/4. Though perhaps not exceptional in content or execution, they should illustrate the all-around usefulness of this lens. Just so you know, I've run my usual processing on these photos, including input and output sharpening. There's a little contrast enhancement and the colour of the sky has been boosted in the first picture. Further enhancement could no doubt bring out even more from this lens, but I wanted the pictures to be a useful illustration of the actual lens rendering.

The Vivitar does well both at distance for landscapes and at close focus, an indication that the floating element correction is doing its job. Colour is excellent, contrast very nice and I don't notice distortion -- though I didn't shoot anything rectilinear to really test this.

On the used market this lens sells for quite a range of prices, as is typical of "sleeper" lenses not everyone recognises. If you find it for $100 you've got yourself an amazing deal. The most you need to pay is $300, which I still consider value for money. By the way, it also comes in Nikon and Minolta mounts, though I believe the M42 is in greatest demand.

In case it is still unclear, I heartily recommend this lens. There might be slightly better 28mm options in terms of pure sharpness -- I'm not sure. And there are certainly smaller lenses or those with auto-focus. But you won't find a nicer lens when it comes to handling in the field. I gladly shoot it at f/2.4 and f/4, getting results I am very pleased with.

One final image, this time with creative processing.

Vivitar Series 1 28mm Review Part 1

2011-07-09T22:00:00.151+01:00

It's been a while since I've posted anything relating to the Great Vivitar 28mm Bestiary, mostly because I view the work of compiling those lens variants to be complete. But this is not to say that I don't still shoot with these lenses. Today I ventured out with one of the very special models from that list, the only one to bear the "Vivitar Series 1" name. At f/1.9 it's also the fastest 28mm lens ever made, sharing that honour with the Voigtlander Ultron.

This is a solid mass of a lens, weighing in at 335g. It is 60mm long and, due to its odd flared shape, is 64mm wide at the end of the barrel. I say "odd" but the lens feels very nice in the hand, with a wide knurled focus ring that turns easily and smoothly and stops precisely.

The mount is M42. I have an official Pentax converter to K-mount, and then a K to MFT adapter, so I can use it on my Olympus E-P1. The lens aperture has a switch for A/M. Leaving this on "M", I get automatic metering through the camera body as I change the aperture on the lens.

The aperture dial moves from f/1.9 to f/16 in half-stop clicks. The first full stop after wide open is f/2.8 and I have determined from exposure information that the unmarked half-stop is f/2.4. Wide open the image has the glow typical of very fast lenses with uncorrected aberrations. Remember that for every extra stop, aberrations increase by a factor of nine. After a certain point it becomes simply impossible for the lens designers to come up with an optical formula that will compensate. Many photographers might enjoy using this "glow" as an in-camera effect, but it rarely suits my taste. I am particularly glad, then, that the first click is not at f/2, which would still be glow territory. By f/2.4 the image is completely usable, as the first two sample images here demonstrate.

Bokeh is nice to my eyes when not wide open, but can certainly get busy. Wide open it swirls but not in the over-the-top headache style known to some Russian lenses. You can definitely get creative with the Vivitar if you wish, as the above image illustrates.

The optical formula is 9 elements in 8 groups with an internal focus design that means the lens does not change in length one iota. The down-side is that the front of the barrel rotates, making the use of a polariser annoying. Though I would not generally use a polariser on a wide angle lens, 28mm cannot be said to be very wide in Field of View equivalent terms. On an MFT body this acts like a focal length of 35mm on APS-C or 56mm on 35mm ("full-frame").

Minimum focus is 30cm and there are seven aperture blades. Made by Tokina, the Vivitar Series 1 28mm 1:1.9 was sold in 1978 for $1000 in today's money. No-one except maybe Voigtlander or Zeiss could get away with marketing anything like it for SLRs in this day and age.

I'll conclude my review in Part 2.

Replacing DVD Drive On ASUS Laptop

2011-07-09T17:00:00.021+01:00

DVD drives are made to fail. They are built, like most computer components, to the cheapest standards possible. When your drive fails it's a simple matter to swap it out, though it might help to know exactly which screws to undo and which you can leave alone. Join me for a step-by-step guide that might save you a few minutes.

This walk through is for the ASUS X5EA, but it should be similar for other ASUS laptops. The DVD drive in this unit is the TS-L633C, manufactured by Toshiba / Samsung. It uses a SATA connector and has a custom fascia (AKA bevel) glued in place for this particular model.

Warning
Please note that any electronic equipment that has a built-in power supply or DC converter can still be dangerous even with no obvious power supplied! (If you want to know why, look up "capacitor".) I do not guarantee your safety or the safety of your equipment. Never touch exposed electronics. Ground yourself before opening any gear. Work in a clean environment where you will not be disturbed by children, dogs, cats, ferrets, rodents or marsupials.

Prepare by gathering all needed tools. In this case you need a 2.4mm screwdriver. I always lay out some sticky tape or blue tack in a small container, so that any screws I remove can be secured. There is nothing more annoying than losing a small screw.

Step 1

Turn your laptop over and make sure it is disconnected from the mains. The first thing to do is remove the battery. Locate the horizontal sliding clasp and fingernail insert (red) that allows the battery compartment lid (white) to pull right off.

Step 2

With the battery lid removed, pull down on both tabs to ease out the battery. You've probably done this before.

Step 3

Now you need to unscrew the first of two screws (red) in order to remove the hard drive door (white). This screw is quite small in length.

Step 4

The hard drive door is removed; we can now see the hard drive caddy. More to the point, we can see the screw (red) that secures the DVD drive (white) in place. Undo this. Note that is is significantly longer than the first screw. Don't mix them up!

Step 5

Here I have removed the top panel for illustration purposes. You do not need to do this -- in fact I'd recommend against. Here we can see the SATA connector (red) that the DVD (white) attaches to.

Step 6

Pull on the DVD fascia and it will slide right out. Here we can see the exposed SATA connector and the screw hole now missing the little tab of metal... because it's connected to the DVD unit!

Here I compare an older DVD drive (top) to the SATA connector drive we just removed (bottom). Note that the little securing tab is on a mount secured by two screws. The top drive does not have one, but you can clearly see the screw holes (red). It's easy to remove the tab from the old drive and put it on the new one, should it be missing this important accessory.

One thing we cannot do is put the original fascia on a new DVD drive. This is because it is not secured in place with screws but rather with glue. I could find no way of undoing this, but if you are more successful, let me know in the comments.

Step 8
Go ahead and fit your replacement DVD drive and slide it into place. Secure the screw through the little eyelet, replace the HD cover, insert the battery and replace the battery cover.

When you boot up your computer, it should detect the new hardware. If it doesn't you need to go to the Device Manager and prompt it, then be sure the correct driver is installed. This is usually automatic.

If this article helped you save time or worry, consider buying me a coffee using the Paypal donation button in the sidebar. Thanks!

Olympus E-P1 vs. Pentax K20D ISO Comparison

2011-07-08T21:07:00.003+01:00

This is going to be an article for "pixel peepers" only. Part of me hates to do this sort of thing, since it could mislead some people into thinking that quantitative analysis is what photography is all about. But on the other hand it is good to have an idea of how various gear performs, so one can use it to advantage. The question of image quality at different ISO values comes up a lot on photo forums. I am sure there are many other comparisons like this already extant on the internet, but sometimes I prefer to do things for myself.

I've prepared a rather large image. Click through the following to get to Flickr where you can download it in full-size. This will then allow you to compare the Pentax K20D to the Olympus E-P1. Both cameras are two generations old; the Pentax system has seen substantial improvements to high ISO performance with the K-7 and then the current K-5 models. The Olympus cameras have seen only minor improvements through the recent E-P3.

These images were prepared by shooting a 20 pound note on my wall at the same distance, using a tripod and timed release. I used the same lens, the Pentax FA 43 Limited, mounted using an adapter in the case of the E-P1. The different sensor sizes result in different magnifications, but correcting for these would introduce a false element to the comparison, so I let them be.

The lens has excellent acuity in the middle of the sensor, almost unsurpassed in fact. This peaks at f/4 and f/5.6 so I used f/4 for all shots. This avoids any diffraction effects, which should kick in at f/4.5 on the E-P1 and f/5 on the Pentax K20D. (In fact the similarity in pixel density on these two cameras makes the comparison even more interesting.)

The RAW files were converted to DNG and processed in Adobe Camera Raw, with minimal settings (no noise reduction or enhancement). Some prefer to see images without any sharpening but I consider that all RAW files require sharpening to reveal the detail within. I set the Amount to 50, Radius to 0.5 and Detail to 30.

An automatic exposure curve was then applied to each image in Photoshop. No further processing was performed, even though output sharpening, colour balance, etc. would no doubt be required in a real world case.

The portion of the image you see here is a 100% centre crop, measuring 400 pixels square. For the Pentax this is a mere 1.10% of the total image captured. For the Olympus it is a slightly larger 1.31%.

As a further step I decided to apply Noise Ninja software to the ISO 3200 images in each case. Using the default settings the images cleared up nicely, with some reduction in detail, naturally. One could follow this step with a slight sharpening -- usually an appropriate step, though all image-processing is dependent on the subject and how you wish to represent it.

Discussion
First, there are obvious white balance differences. I made no attempt to adjust for these. There are also very slight exposure differences. These are very difficult to eliminate entirely but they make a significant difference in image analysis, so beware!

The Pentax has more detail at all ISO values, with both greater macro-contrast and micro-contrast. Observe the eyes, the hair, the engraving lines on the forehead, etc. Noise is appreciable and too much for the finest uses by ISO 1600. At ISO 3200 the Olympus has distinctly less chroma noise. However, both images clean up nicely.

The Olympus ISO 6400 is mostly a gimmick, but might work out OK for a moody black and white conversion. One can also enhance the Pentax range to ISO 6400, by turning on a custom setting. I didn't bother, since my experience is it's similarly unusable.

In any case, one can "fake" even higher ISO values by underexposing the shot and compensating in development, "pushing" as we used to call it. Native high ISO settings only make sense if the camera can truly handle them without obliterating the image. Unfortunately marketing pressures push these limits higher and higher each month. Where once the megapixel race drove sales, the high ISO race is currently where it's at. I definitely prefer a camera that retains detail to one that removes detail along with noise. At the very least I require that these settings are entirely under user control, so that built-in noise reduction can be turned off completely.

Conclusions
My preference is definitely for the Pentax images, though there is nothing here that would stop me shooting with either camera. ISO 1600 is usable if one gets exposure exactly correct and fills the sensor with the subject. Otherwise I would stay at or below ISO 800. This conclusion comes not just from these tests but much experience in real-world shooting.

Pentax has a native ISO 100 whereas this is "pulled" from ISO 200 on the Olympus. Advantage Pentax, though I would prefer having ISO 50 available as well.

Jiffy Squid

2011-07-07T01:00:00.020+01:00

One of the best moments in film happens unexpectedly in Mystery Train, Jim Jarmusch's 1989 poem to Memphis. Like most of his films, this has a laconic tone punctuated by moments of complete hilarity. The three linked stories revolve around a run-down hotel staffed by two misfits. Screamin' Jay Hawkins is sublime as a night clerk who becomes irritated by a radio advertisement for a local seafood emporium.

"Jiffy Squid? Turn that damn thing off!"

This encapsulates that wonderful moment when the radio, omnipresent throughout the film, simply becomes too real, too distracting.

Today I was pleasantly surprised to find Smiling Fish brand Crispy Squid snack treat at my local Chinese food emporium. Actually a product of Thailand, this combines all the goodness of dried squid with chilli, soy and sugar. Cracking open the tin I was welcomed by the odour of fish food. The product within met all expectations, tasting exactly as fish food should, according to Susannah who is rarely wrong about such things. We bravely tried a few pieces, but I found it too sweet, of all things!

For some reason this food/film memory reminded me that it's been simply ages since I encouraged anyone to use my Amazon links. You get to buy great stuff and I get a portion of the profits Amazon would otherwise take home. Even if you want something totally different from my recommendation, please use my links to start your shopping adventure and the benefits accrue.

For example, these links take you to the single disk of Mystery Train, but you might prefer the Blu-Ray or one of the boxed sets that packages up the Jarmusch catalogue. I thought everyone was familiar with his films, but that's because I am old. Younger folk have never heard of him, apparently.

Olympus E-P1 Review Part Three

2011-07-01T11:00:00.005+01:00

In this article I continue my review of the Olympus PEN E-P1 begun back in early June with A Review of the Olympus E-P1 with FA 43 Limited and continued earlier today with Part Two. In this instalment I'll discuss the screen and viewfinder options, consider the size issue and look briefly at image quality and other attributes. I'll then examine the brand new E-P3 in light of the deficiencies I found with the E-P1 and summarise the improvements I still hope to see.

Screen, OVF, EVF
This was the first PEN model and there is no option for an Electronic View-Finder (EVF), only an optical finder keyed to the 17mm prime lens FOV. Thus one needs to rely on the rear-panel LCD for all composition. This is a known limitation of this model. The screen is a nice 3" in size but a low 230K in resolution, a fact many critics have noted. I have no problem with this, actually, and find it a decent LCD all things considered. Perhaps that's because I do not expect to do any critical viewing on a camera. This screen is more than good enough for composition. It makes manual focusing fairly easy, since it is obvious when the subject is crisp.

Use of a screen like this in bright light is going to be troublesome. Though there are certain accessory solutions (hoods, shades and magnifiers), nothing beats an EVF in these cases.

Using an optional external EVF has four significant problems: it blocks the flash mount; it increases the profile of the camera significantly; it is fiddly to attach, unattach and carry separately; and it is expensive. Olympus has so-far failed to provide an MFT camera with a built-in EVF. This is incomprehensible to me and is a situation that likely can't last. The Panasonic G3 provides a shining example; I doubt Olympus can ignore this competition for long.

Though one of the new Olympus cameras has an articulated screen, the top-end models so far do not. This is also a disappointment as such an LCD solves several problems and provides very real shooting benefits. First, it can be used to reduce the effects of glare, by tilting in a propitious direction. Second, it can facilitate self-portraits, shooting over crowds and so on. But maybe most important, it can allow waist-level photography for discrete street shooting. Even the simple tilt screen of the Sony NEX, though not fully articulated, accomplishes two out of three of these goals while maintaining a slim profile. Let's get one of those!

A Word About Size
Size is one of the main reasons a serious photographer would shoot MFT over some other system. But size only matters when there is a quantum difference in form factor between two otherwise similar cameras. You can either put a camera in your pocket (point and shoot) or you can't. You can either put your walk-around kit in a small discreet bag (MFT and some APS-C) or you can't. You can either hand-hold the camera (full-frame and Canikon APS-C) or you need a tripod (medium format and larger). Thus, size for me boils down to where you have to put the camera when not in use: a pocket, a shoulder bag, a dedicated camera case / rucksack, or a car boot.

MFT has the possibility of being a pocket camera but then only in its smallest sizes, without EVF add-ons and with the most compact lenses. It is only in these configurations that it has any significant advantage over the small and powerful Pentax APS-C cameras. For that reason I bought the Panasonic 20mm f/1.7 lens alongside the E-P1. Though I was disappointed that further pancake lenses were not available.

Many of the illustrations on this page were made using a K-mount to MFT adapter and some of my favourite Pentax lenses. In doing so I forsake compactness. Not only is the lens larger, but the adapter must make up the difference in registration difference -- any size advantage MFT has is hence lost. Though fun, this might not be a compelling argument for the use of MFT over some of the smaller DSLRs.

The forthcoming Olympus 12mm f/2.0 and 45mm f/1.8 primes fill two important niches in their system. However, neither are pancake designs.

But What About The Images?
I won't say much here, since I presented several photographic examples and discussed my favourite settings in the first part of my review. There I concluded "Colour me impressed. This lens/body combination is brilliant!" I was referring to the use of the Pentax FA43 Limited, but having since tried several Pentax lenses on this body my opinion stands for all of them. The Olympus sensor does a good job and is in no way inferior to the APS-C sensors on the second-last generation of Pentax cameras. However, it cannot compete with the latest sensors, found in the K-x and K-5, when judged at high ISOs. This is a big issue for the hordes of spec followers who examine every sensor minutely for improvements over the previous. For me, in normal shooting, I was happy to use the camera at up to ISO 800. And since that's all I really use with my K20D, I was losing nothing.

In most cases I have been shooting RAW, but I tried some JPGs; on the highest setting they were indistinguishable from the RAW files. That's quite remarkable. Of course RAW will allow more latitude in post-processing. And since the JPG files are not that much smaller, I'll stick to RAW. However, it is nice to know that if I need to do a quick shoot for a client who needs immediate results I needn't worry about the performance of the JPG engine.

I am also blown away by the metering on this camera. I am used to doing my own metering and have even dallied in zone work. This is the first camera I have used where I trust the automatic meter to accurately read a scene. Really. Of course it still isn't perfect and never could be. But I consider this a solved problem.

The auto-focus with the Panasonic 20mm lens is perfectly fine for me. Others complain about performance, but I say there are more important things to fix first. For example, the overall sluggish responsiveness of the camera, which lies somewhere between a point-and-shoot and a DSLR, can really get in the way of shooting. Though some will show shots proving otherwise, I think it's foolish to use this camera for action. There are far better choices. And though there might always be a difference between the performance of camera systems, I am sure that more memory and a faster processor will improve the MFT user experience significantly.

Auto white balance is as good as one could want. Other features worked as advertised. One can play around with funky processing modes or apply these after the fact. It kills time when travelling on a bus.

At least until your battery runs dry. The battery here is a lot weaker than I'd like. For a significant outing you'd need a backup. I get far more use out of my Pentax DSLRs. Maybe I'm spoiled.

I took one video. It looked good. That's about as far as I'm going with that. You'll have to read someone else for detailed video info.

Other Irksome Things
When attaching a manual lens one can configure the IBIS for the new focal length. But there are two problems with the implementation. First, this setting has to be found in the menu system. Second, this figure does not reset when an automatic lens is attached. Olympus should take a leaf from Pentax here: prompt for the focal length and automatically reset if the camera can read the lens value itself.

Bracketing is buried deep in a menu, so I find I never bother using it. Perhaps this should be on the drive menu or somewhere else convenient.

The shortest Sleep setting is one minute. This means that every time one turns on the screen for a momentary adjustment it must stay on for sixty seconds, draining the battery. I would appreciate five second and ten second settings.

Summary
Here are the improvements I'd like to see:

1. Tilt screen for waist-level shooting and glare control.
2. Integrated EVF.
3. ISO assignable to any soft controls or dials.
4. Dedicated focus assist button independent of view modes.
5. Left-hand control wheel.
6. Larger hand grip.
7. Improved responsiveness.
8. Better access to bracketing.
9. Configurable User menu.
10. On/off slider (not button).
11. EV comp button moved away from shutter button.
12. Non-photographic controls moved apart from others on back panel.
13. Re-configured and logically laid out menu.
14. Smarter IBIS settings.

As important are the things I do not want:

a) A smaller body. Too small and one has to start dropping important controls.
b) A built in flash. These are always useless for proper shooting. Any flash I use must be tilt/swivel. Besides, the presence of a flash would cram existing controls closer together.
c) The loss of any existing features.
d) Additional buttons for secondary features unimportant to photography.

All of these are very conservative requests. What I would really like is a camera with complete direct control over aperture, shutter speed and ISO (something like the Fuji X100). One with totally configurable buttons and switches. But that ideal seems somehow impossible to reach in an interchangeable lens system. The only reason for this failure is lack of vision on the part of the manufacturers. But there it is.

What about the E-P3?
It might seem ridiculous to be reviewing a two-year-old camera when many newer bodies have been released. But, quite honestly, I don't think any of these have made significant improvements over the original digital PEN. Certainly the E-P3 is the best of the bunch. So how many of my boxes does it tick?

Almost none. The responsiveness has been boosted and there is now a Magnify button, which maybe solves point 4. The grip is interchangeable; one alternative is available. I haven't seen it but let's be generous and say it satisfies point 6.

The camera now has two Fn buttons, but these need to be assigned to AE lock and EV compensation to make up for the lack of buttons present on the E-P1. According to reports, it is still true that neither can be used for ISO! Incredible!

At most, then, the culmination of the Olympus line only satisfies me on 3 of 14 points and, incidentally, back-slides by wasting space and money on a flash unit.

Conclusion
Do you want a small camera with interchangeable lenses and excellent image quality? Depending on your budget, I advise you to buy a Pentax K-x or K-5 and some pancake lenses. You have access to a much larger system, excellent high ISO images and great ergonomics. Responsiveness, battery life and many other characteristics are superior to Olympus MFT.

The E-P1 system is smaller, but only if you limit yourself to a very few lenses. Otherwise it is not decisively smaller -- you still need a shoulder bag rather than a pocket to carry it. In return it gives up too much in ergonomics and usability. Neither is it really cheaper, at least not if you consider the latest model. This analysis could change in a very short time, should Olympus release a "pro"¹ model made with photographers in mind, rather than targeting people upgrading from point and shoot cameras.

Nonetheless, the E-P1 is a fun camera. If you are happy with the available auto-focus lenses it is very usable. If you wish to use a wide range of off-brand lenses it provides a decent, though frustrating, back-end. Until I can afford a K-5 I'll keep mine. By then maybe Olympus will have done the right thing.

¹ I adopt here common terminology, though I reserve the term "professional" to apply to people.

Olympus E-P1 Review Part Two

2011-07-01T00:30:00.092+01:00

I've been enjoying my Olympus E-P1 and forgetting that I needed to come back here and finish my review -- in any case this is more a usage report than any sort of formal test. There are enough full coverage reviews available from the big sites. While I like reading them to get some sort of a general idea about a camera, they almost always forget to mention those aspects of usage that are most important to me. Rather than this feature or that sensor improvement, I am most often concerned with the usability of the camera day-to-day and second-to-second. The pertinent question is always: Does this gear support my activity as a photographer?

Perhaps today is a good day to reconsider this camera, since Olympus has announced three new Micro Four Thirds (MFT) bodies and Panasonic has already made available their latest incarnation. The Olympus E-P3 is the natural descendent of the E-P1 I have in front of me. Since I am unlikely to get that unit for review, instead I will write up my take on its predecessor. Then I will see how many of the issues with the E-P1 are corrected in the E-P3.

Context
I will remind readers that I bought into the Olympus PEN system to meet three requirements that were not supplied by my Pentax DSLR system. First, the camera is significantly smaller in overall size. Second, it can use my supply of lenses, so I save on additional purchases. In fact, lenses made for just about any mount in the history of photography can be grafted onto the MFT bodies, due to their short registration distance. Third, the E-P1 does not look like a "serious" camera and might attract less attention when travelling and street shooting.

Besides these advantages of MFT cameras, there were further general constraints on I placed on choosing a system. I wished to maintain the availability of In-Body Image Stabilisation (IBIS), since this allows one to take sharp shots in adverse light situations. The final image quality must overall not be significantly diminished from what I was used to. Manual focus must be supported and easy to use. Small lenses must be available, in order to leverage the size of the body -- no point using gigantic lenses as this cancels one of the main benefits. Finally, the cost of the body must be reasonable.

All of these constraints were met by the Olympus PEN E-P1, especially that of cost, since the model is old enough that some real bargain can be found. This is a direct result of the fact that most users chase the newest features and models without consideration for photographic improvements. I note in passing that the Panasonic MFT cameras, while in some significant ways superior, do not have IBIS and look like mini-DSLRs. In this way they miss out on two of my main criteria.

Finally, I must mention that the mirrorless camera market presents many alternatives to MFT, including the Sony NEX, Samsung NX100 and Fuji X100. For one reason or another none of these meets my needs, but they might work well for you.

Ergonomics
Overall I was impressed out of the box with the solid build of the E-P1. This seems like a camera that can take a few knocks, far from the plastic demeanour of most point-and-shoot cameras, and better, even, than entry-level Canon and Nikon bodies. The small front grip and rear protrusion provide something to hold onto, although this is insufficient. There is no reason why the front grip couldn't have been larger, since even if it protruded significantly it would still be behind the plane of any attached lens. This is one place in which aesthetics seems to have trumped ergonomics.

As you can see from the pictures, I use a leather hand strap to alleviate any concerns I may have about dropping the camera accidentally. I consider this an essential purchase. I recommend Gordy's Camera Straps without hesitation. (No kick-back, just a happy customer.)

The top controls are straightforward. Unfortunately the Olympus uses a button for On/Off instead of the superior slider or switch which cannot be accidentally activated. (Panasonic got this right.) I would also prefer the EV compensation button to be not so close to the shutter button. There is plenty of space to make these changes.

The number of controls on the back of the camera make it difficult to find a nice neutral place for one's thumb, which seems to fit best over the speaker. From here one can move it slightly to the right to use the horizontal scroll wheel. This has a positive action with easily-discernible detents, but I wish it was less shiny and slick. (Same for all the buttons, which look quite cheesy to me. This doesn't affect their operation, however.)

The body provides no grip or consideration for the left hand. This is typical but still unfortunate. When using a manual focus lens your left hand will be supporting the lens itself, ready for action. But when using an auto-focus lens the left hand has nothing to do (changing modes not being a constant activity). I would love to see a camera with a second control wheel on the left, so that one could instantly adjust two photographic parameters (say, ISO and EV compensation) while using an automatic lens.

Or how about using this dial to change aperture? That way, one could use the dial for automatic lenses and the lens ring on manual lenses. Either way the left hand is performing the same function.

All of the back-side controls are on the right-hand-side of the screen. This means they are packed a bit too tightly. From a usability perspective one might define two classes of buttons: those one uses while shooting (photographic parameters) and those one does not (control parameters). I would be happy to see the control parameter buttons (menu, trash, play, info) moved closer to the screen (there is room) and away from the photographic parameters.

In particular the AL lock button is placed with the control parameter buttons and far away from convenient use while shooting.

Along with the aforementioned scroll wheel is a second control dial. This has been implemented as a rotary controller, like on the back of Canon DSLRs. This is always a poor choice. Controlling rotation when the camera is held in different positions is always gong to be harder than controlling a linear dial. And this problem is only exacerbated by putting four additional click controls on the rosette (with a fifth in the middle). That's a dense configuration of different controls.

Perhaps I should clarify this critique to forestall certain expected comments I will get from Olympus fans. Certainly one can use all of these controls quite handily, once learned. But there is still significant room for improvement in each area. When shooting in the field the opportunity to press the wrong button or have settings change "by themselves" should be minimised. Unfortunately these have been common complaints of observant users. I'd rather think less about the camera and more about my shot.

To conclude this section I note that the memory card and battery are in the same compartment. The door and latch seem quite plastic in build, but work well enough. Unfortunately, you can't access this compartment when using a tripod.

Software Usability
I would not be the first person to note that the Olympus menu is confusing in its organisation. The first level of menus has five options though one of these must be turned on elsewhere or it remains invisible. Four of these categories gives access to a list of setting. But one of them, the Gears menu, instead has eight further sub-categories. I see no reason to have a three-deep hierarchy here. All twelve categories could simply be available off the bat, with the most used ones first in line.

Furthermore, the grouping of options is quite poor. For example, several aspects of the display are set under the Spanner menu, not the Display menu, which instead also concerns connectivity. Confusing.

A good deal of customisation is provided. Besides many control tweaks, both the Fn button and left direction in the rosette can be re-defined, though choices are somewhat limited. One cannot create a user menu with this camera. In addition, the system for saving user settings is quite obscure.

The biggest issue here is that despite all the options, Olympus seems blind to the fact that there are three main exposure parameters: shutter speed, aperture and ISO. The first two may be freely assigned to different controls. But neither the thumb scroll or the wheel controller can be set to ISO. Neither can one map the Fn button to ISO -- a major oversight.

The most direct way to set ISO is to press the top rosette button. Alternatively, one can press "OK" to get into a menu system. If you preset this to ISO then access to this parameter is fast. Thus one has no fewer than three ways to change the ISO value. So why complain?

Well, this would be well and good except that all of these methods use the rosette. This use conflicts with the display setting used for manual focus lenses. In this special mode a green focus rectangle is placed on the screen. Pressing "OK" magnifies this for fine focus. Pressing the rosette buttons moves it about the screen. The upshot is that when using a manual lens there is no way to directly access ISO at all!

Instead, get this: One has to click Info to change the display mode, click one of the keys to access ISO, change this value, click another key to return to the display, then tap Info to get back to the manual focus screen. Finally click OK to magnify the focus zone. What a ridiculous system!

This is so massive a usability issue that I am stunned Olympus haven't issued a firmware fix. The simplest solution is to allow assignment of ISO to the Fn button. And it's not that firmware hasn't been updated; the current version is 1.04 and significant changes have been made. Olympus simply seems to not care about this matter.

While I am discussing the software interface I must remark on the problem of not knowing what a button will do in a given mode. Info cycles between several different possible views on the LCD. (I am thankful that you can customise which of these are active.) If you hit OK you go into a horizontal-vertical menu system that works rather well for quick selection of a parameter.

However, at this point I expect the Info button to drop out of this menu and continue cycling through display modes as before. But instead it takes on a new function and provides us with yet another view of the same menu options, this time in a grid. I find it annoying that once in the settings menu I need to remember the Info button has changed its usual function. And I really don't think we need this many ways to change the camera options!

That's only a minor annoyance next to the ISO control issue, but every minor issue makes the camera that little bit less usable.

This review will continue in part three.

The New Pentax Q -- Toy Camera With Premium Price Tag

2011-06-24T22:00:00.003+01:00

Well, Pentax has done something peculiar and unexpected: they've announced the world's smallest digital camera system with interchangeable lenses, the Pentax Q. The sensor is extremely small, on par with point and shoot cameras. Called 1/2.3" size (who comes up with these things?), it measures a minuscule 6.17 x 4.55mm. Into this they cram a 12.4MP CMOS sensor. More about that in my analysis below, but first the distinguishing features.

Some of the Nitty, Some of the Gritty
How small is small? Try 98 x 57 x 31 mm and only 200g fully loaded with battery and SD card. It easily fits in the palm of your hand. That's something you might actually lose in your shoulder bag!

The camera has a lot of technology stuffed into its frame. Besides a built-in flash, it has a proper hot shoe, which can also take an optional optical viewfinder. It's got a 3" LCD and all the usual doodads one comes to expect these days. ISO range is 125 to 6400. It's got an AF assist lamp, multi-exposure mode and interval shooting. They even managed IBIS (In-Body Image Stabilisation¹) which should finally put paid to all those arguments that one needs a large body for this "frill". Amazingly, the camera has IR sensors for remote control on both the front and back of the body.

Rather than a zoom, the body kit comes with an 8.5mm f/1.9 lens, which is a fast normal...or so it appears (read on, Macduff²). Also available is a 28-83mm equivalent f/2.8-4.5 zoom. An interesting design choice puts the shutter in the lenses rather than in the camera body. This allows for a 1/2000s flash sync speed that makes many other systems green with envy. The second cool thing is that the lenses have a built-in ND filter -- something I've been calling for ever since video started to be grafted onto SLRs. And of course this unit has video, specified by a bunch of numbers followed by a bunch of letters... as if any of that matters much. I mean, I am sure it's fine.

The system will be completed with three "Toy Lenses". Yes, they not only call them that, it's engraved right onto their barrel! The fish-eye, wide and telephoto varieties are designed to take bad shots right out of the box. That's "bad" in a good way, naturally.

How much will all this cost? The zoom is $300, fish-eye $130 and other toy lenses $80 each. The viewfinder is a whopping $250 and the basic kit is $800. Yes, indeed, that's where the "premium price tag" in the title of this article comes from.

Analysis
If you've been reading my previous posts you know all about lens equivalence. So let's see where this camera fits. Relative to 35mm the 1/2.3" sensor has a crop factor of 5.53. That means that the 8.5/1.9 prime is equivalent to a 47/10.5 lens on full-frame. Yes, you read that correctly: f/10.5.

Apparently the Q compensates by having something called "bokeh control" in the camera. My guess is that this is nothing more or less than a blur filter, likely one with a vignette mask so objects in the centre of the view are not effected. There's no way to fool Mother Nature when it comes to optics, so this new feature really has to be something this lame.

Using the same analysis we find that the zoom starts at f/15 and goes downhill from there. Less said about that the better!

Now let's check out my diffraction table, which I've updated just for the occasion. Given the number of pixels and size of the sensor, the Pentax Q is diffraction limited to f/1.6. This means that even the prime suffers the softening effects of diffraction no matter what aperture you use. This is a reminder that physics can't be beaten!

The bottom line is that the body is loaded with features but the image quality will be extremely limited. There's good reason it's being marketed with the word "toy" prominent. So who is this camera designed for? Obviously not photo enthusiasts.

It doesn't much suit point and shoot users either. They won't get a better result with the Pentax Q than the camera they use now. The Micro Four Thirds system offers a lot more bang for the buck. No doubt it's also true that these same folk will be bemused by finding a prime with their starter kit. That's the number one query I get from people using my cameras: "How do I zoom this thing?"³

It is also my experience that few people desiring a convenient camera will be bothered to change lenses. Anything that comes apart looks like it's broken. Not to mention the tech support issues involving dust on the sensor, etc.

That leaves a target market of people who want something small for the sake of it and which is also expensive enough to demonstrate status. A camera that is fun and shows just how much cooler you are than all your friends with iPhones⁴.

So, the market is rich Japanese kids. It would have to sell for $200 to get much interest from anyone else.

Footnotes:
¹ Shake Reduction (SR) in Pentax parlance.
² Thane of Fife and a pretty sound guy.
³ Next they wonder why the camera is not focusing for them. But that's another story!
⁴ DPreview go way out on a limb and state that the Q is "a fun little camera that should still offer a more satisfying shooting experience than a mobile phone". Wow, really? Let's not aim too high!

Backlink Hell

2011-06-24T20:00:00.000+01:00

Sorry, readers. Somehow back-links got turned on (I didn't do it) and so every post was followed by hundreds of spammy links back to the current article. I am not sure why I took so long to notice this. I must say that the blogosphere is so swamped with spam sites that searching for anything remotely commercial has become quite pointless. I am sure the tide of spam will once again be pushed back, but in the meantime it's annoying.

Since I'm writing, here's a random photo.

Reimaginings

2011-06-18T19:00:00.001+01:00

Today I had a sort of brainstorm and set about reimagining the 4x6 photos I have lying around the house, using common household objects as totems.

"I hope you'll enjoy it."

pincer manoeuvre

danger of asphyxiation

a single teardrop

Mick Hanley, purveyor of fine electronics

stainless

BBQ Sea Bass Recipes

2011-06-17T02:09:00.002+01:00

Tonight I fired up our little BBQ to cook some fresh fish. Of course fresh fish is the only kind worth dealing with. You either have to catch it yourself or be sure someone else has caught it very recently. Same day is the best, but that's not always possible.

That said, there's nothing that wrong with frozen fish. In fact flash-freezing on the boat immediately after a catch is one way to ensure it stays decent until it reaches your table. Many fishmongers thaw out their fish for display, so if you buy it from them it's less fresh than buying it still frozen -- sometimes nowhere near fresh at all.

I am lucky that we have a few Chinese grocers who sell fish. At one I can get a sea bass whole for 3.50 Euro. By whole I mean just that -- guts and scales still in place. But as soon as it's purchased they clean it up ready for cooking. All the benefits of fresh fish with none of the muss! Because as soon as you clean a fish it starts losing flavour.

While I'm on the topic, you should never remove the head of a fish before cooking. Leave the entire thing intact. First, it adds to the flavour. And secondly it is considered disrespectful to the animal to do otherwise... at least in Thailand this is the case.

Cooking fish on the BBQ is so easy, using one of four methods. You can use one of those fish holder metal grill things with any but the softest species. Cook about six minutes, flip and do the same again -- done! (Use your discretion with timings depending on the vagaries of your BBQ.)

In the plank method, favoured on the west coast of North America, you begin by soaking a solid piece of flavoursome wood in water overnight (or at least for a couple of hours). This is so that it won't burn. Place the fish on this slab and put that entire assembly on the BBQ. The aroma of the wood permeates the meat.

The third method is suitable for shark, tuna and other very meaty fish -- skewers! As always with shish-kebab, marinating ahead of time makes all the difference; these fish can easily dry out.

The final method is the one I used tonight: wrapping in tin foil. This essentially steams the fish in its own juices. Steaming is a typically Chinese way of cooking whole fish so I invented a recipe off the top of my head that was a riff on Chinese and Thai cuisine. I mixed the following ingredients together for the dressing/sauce:
* thin slices of ginger (lots)
* thin garlic slices (a moderate amount)
* a couple tablespoons of dark soy sauce
* chilli flakes
* vegetable oil
* Szechuan peppercorns
* dash of sugar
* fistful of cilantro leaves

Laying the bass on a piece of tin foil I poured the sauce mixture on top, laying in long thin slices of scallion. Then I finished wrapping it into a pouch. This was placed on a medium-hot BBQ -- because I couldn't get the coals blazing in the on-again off-again rain.

When done I served this with plain white rice and some green and yellow peppers I had grilled. Perhaps I should have done some other veggies but instead I cooked a second fish!

This one had the same sliced scallion and cilantro, with lemon juice, salt and pepper. With cooking the onions became sweet and accentuated the flavour of the bass itself, but none of the ingredients overwhelmed the delicious fish.

This fed only two of us because we were both starving. Yes, we had a fish each! If I was cooking other courses, then half a fish per person might do it.

Let me tell you there are few dishes more wonderful! The spicy recipe is lip-smacking good and the other version is a subtle delight.

Trinity Abstracts

2011-06-12T23:00:00.001+01:00

This is a selection from abstract architectural details taken at Trinity College Dublin. I used the Pentax FA 77 Limited on the Olympus E-P1, as discussed in recent articles. There are more samples if you click through to the Flickr thread.

Choosing An Optimal Aperture To Avoid Diffraction

2011-06-09T16:00:00.024+01:00

Stopping down your lens aperture to get greater depth of field can result in such a small opening for light that diffraction begins to limit the image quality. This is a well-known phenomenon, but what is less appreciated is how soon this effect kicks in. Photographers who commonly stop down to f/22 or f/32 for macro shots (one typical example) will want to read on. And sensor size also plays its part, which is why I am considering this topic now, in proximity with my equivalence article.

Rather than repeating information, I recommend you read Cambridge In Colour for a clear explanation of the diffraction limit effect. You will see from that article that it is not actually the sensor size that is the important factor, but rather the size of the pixels that make up the sensor. As sensors become smaller so do pixels, in general, but the relationship is not exact.

The following is a chart of many popular cameras, including some for historical interest. After each the sensor size is given along with the diagonal pixel pitch (in micrometers). The chart is ordered from smallest to largest pixels and you will see that this mostly matches up with sensor size. In the final column is the maximum aperture before diffraction starts reducing resolution. The first figure is the actual calculation and the second figure rounds this off to the nearest actual f-stop number (including half and third stops) you can use to avoid diffraction effects.

This number was determined by multiplying the pixel size by 1.054, using the formula provided by Nathan Myhrvold in Luminous Landscape's equivalent lens article.

Update 24 June 2011 Rather than simply use the pixel pitch from DXO Mark I now calculate this from the maximum resolution figures for the given sensor. I have also added the Pentax Q as a lower limit.

--------------CAMERA    -SENSOR   PIXEL   ----APERTURE
            Pentax Q     1/2.3"    1.53    1.62   1.60
           Canon G10    1/1.63"    1.79    1.88   1.80
            Canon G9    1/1.63"    1.98    2.09   2.00
       Canon G11/S90     1/1.7"    2.04    2.15   2.00
       Panasonic LX3    1/1.63"    2.18    2.30   2.20
       Panasonic GH2        MFT    3.67    3.87   3.50
        Panasonic G3        MFT    3.75    3.96   3.50
            Canon 7D     APS-CC    4.16    4.39   4.00
           Canon 60D     APS-CC    4.27    4.50   4.00
       Olympus E-P1*        MFT    4.29    4.53   4.50
      Panasonic G1**        MFT    4.31    4.54   4.50
         Nikon D7000      APS-C    4.75    5.00   4.80
          Pentax K-5      APS-C    4.74    5.00   4.80
          Pentax K-7      APS-C    4.99    5.26   5.00
    Samsung NX100/10      APS-C    5.02    5.29   5.00
         Pentax K20D      APS-C    5.03    5.30   5.00
        Sony NEX-3/5      APS-C    5.12    5.39   5.00
         Nikon D300S      APS-C    5.44    5.73   5.60
          Pentax K-r      APS-C    5.44    5.73   5.60
           Sony A700      APS-C    5.50    5.80   5.60
          Pentax K-x      APS-C    5.48    5.77   5.60
           Nikon D90      APS-C    5.48    5.77   5.60
         Pentax 645D       645D    5.93    6.25   5.60
           Sony A900       35mm    5.95    6.27   5.60
  Canon 1Ds Mark III       35mm    6.32    6.66   6.30
    Canon 5D Mark II       35mm    6.39    6.74   6.70
   Canon 1Ds Mark II       35mm    7.08    7.47   7.10
            Canon 5D       35mm    8.07    8.50   8.00
            Nikon D3       35mm    8.41    8.86   8.00
          Nikon D700       35mm    8.41    8.86   8.00

* also E-PL1, E-PL2, E-P2, E-30
** also G2, GF1, GF2, GH1, G10

The results are quite surprising. Increasing the f-number beyond f/4 on the Olympus E-P1 degrades quality due to diffraction. The Pentax K-x allows f/5.8 and even the Nikon D700 only f/9. The Pentax 645D does more poorly than one might expect, a result of cramming the sensor with megapixels.

One conclusion we can draw is that commonly used zoom lenses on the E-P1, those whose fastest aperture is f/4 or higher, are diffraction limited all of the time! And this is unavoidable, since it is based on an immutable law of physics. Technology improvements cannot help us here!

However, one should not take this to mean that no smaller apertures should ever be used. Obviously one will need to stop down more to gain depth of field in many typical use cases. Realise however the trade-offs in doing so.

Further, this information can be useful in choosing optimal apertures for a lens. Knowing this, I will now try to use the 20/1.7 between f/2 and f/4, where possible.

FA 77 Limited on Olympus E-P1

2011-06-08T19:00:00.030+01:00

The adventure continues. After my recent posts using the FA 43 Limited on the Micro Four Thirds Olympus E-P1 camera body, I spent a couple days shooting its larger cousin, the FA 77 Limited. I must say that this combination is a little unwieldy, given the large size of the adapter as previously noted. But it's totally worth it in terms of image quality.

These first two images are from a photo shoot with my daughter, who needed some head shots. I was using my Pentax system with off-camera flash, controlled by radio trigger. The image stabilisation gave me the freedom to shoot hand-held, while I used a tripod to position the flash for best effect. I am far from a flash expert and often work by trial and error. But I do like the Metz 58 since it has two beams. The main flash head can be pointed at a wall or ceiling for diffuse light while the second beam points forward for direct illumination.

But anyway, after the main session I switched the remote trigger to the E-P1, not really knowing if it would work (it did). I fired off a bunch of candid shots while Roisin was relaxing and got some of the best frames of the session! Essentially I had exactly the same advantages of my Pentax system: off-camera dual flash, in-body image stabilisation and a superlative lens.

Examining the results there was no appreciable difference between the photos taken with the K20D and the E-P1. (I am sure that in fact there is an incremental quantitative difference, but it is not noticeable without stringent testing.) This little camera continues to impress!

I took this shot at minimum focal distance, so the out-of-focus region is all in front of that point. With the FA77 on the MFT body it does seem like the minimum focus is quite a distance away, but this is a psychological effect due to the small camera. But also, having to hold it out from the body to compose on the LCD means that the lens is in fact closer to the subject than I would like.

Just another example, taken at a longer distance, to show colour. I do find the E-P1 rendering to be a little off using auto white balance, but I am happy enough making these fixes in post-production. The 77/1.8 is FOV/DOF equivalent to a 100/2.3 on the Pentax, which is a very useful lens, in my experience. Of course I stopped down a little in order to get sufficient subject matter in focus. Otherwise only one bird would have been sharp.

In conclusion I am amazed at this combination of photographic equipment.

FA 43 Limited Compared On Two Camera Systems

2011-06-07T16:00:00.017+01:00

Here are some photos taken of the same subject at the same distance, with the FA 43 Limited lens. Shooting the same lens on different systems will not get us photographic equivalence. Nonetheless I was curious to see the overall image quality. On a full-frame camera 43mm provides a perfect normal field of view; on the Pentax K20D it provides the field of view of 64mm; on the Olympus E-P1 it is FOV equivalent to 86mm.

Here it is on the K20D, shot at ISO 200 and f/2.8. As always, click through for larger images in Flickr if you wish to examine in more detail.

Here is the shot on the E-P1, also at ISO 200 and f/2.8.

To aid in comparison I took a 100% crop from the centre of the image at various apertures. First the K20D.

And then the E-P1.

I will make three observations. First, I used Auto White Balance with no processing; the difference in colour is apparent. Second, the increase in noise in the E-P1 images is apparent.

Finally, the E-P1 produces smoother bokeh. I have no explanation for that.

Equivalence of Camera Systems

2011-06-06T17:00:00.220+01:00

Introduction
Now that I can use both the K20D and E-P1 with the same lenses, I thought it interesting to directly compare images taken with each. This might reveal something about the different sensors and in particular shed light on the thorny matter of equivalence. This article is an update and extension of my previous Sensor Sizes Explained. I will correct some errors¹ made there and deal more plainly with equivalence. Unlike some of the other large and confusing tomes on this subject², I will be as simple and clear as possible.

Lenses Are Invariant
To get the obvious out of the way first, a 20mm lens is 20mm no matter what camera it is attached to. And the maximum f/1.7 aperture is the same as well. The lens does not magically change attributes when attached to a different body. It has the same magnification ability, the same light transmittance and so on. It is, after all, the same lens!

Second, consider that the aperture (f-number) indicates the intensity of the light that makes it through the lens. The larger the sensor the more light it captures at a given aperture. And the more light that gets to the sensor the better the image, all else being equal. Here "better" could mean signal to noise ratio, resolution, dynamic range or some other measure.

Looking at this another way, a smaller sensor needs to be magnified more than a larger sensor to get to the same size final output, whether this target is a print or image for screen display. This means greater distortion (in the pure technical sense of that term) and hence lower image quality (IQ). All else being equal, a larger sensor produces better IQ.

So why don't we all simply use the largest sensors possible? The first reason is cost. In practice a larger sensor also means a larger camera, one that is bulky and calls more attention to itself. Portability, cost and discretion are valid reasons to choose a smaller sensor, so long as one realises that IQ will, of necessity, suffer. Often that's a fair trade-off.

It is remarkable how often these basic principles are forgotten in debates on internet forums!

Field Of View and Depth Of Field Equivalence
The next proposal may come as more of a shock. As photographers, we don't care about focal length or aperture. We choose a focal length to frame a scene, from top to bottom and left to right. Thus what we really care about is field of view (FOV). Likewise we choose an aperture to specify how much of the scene (front to back) is in focus. What we really care about is depth of field (DOF).

Both FOV and DOF depend on the sensor size, and that is the crux of the matter. When moving between different camera systems we must take into account the sensor size in order to determine the photographic equivalence between these systems. Equivalence simply refers to the parameters we need to get exactly the same resulting photograph of the same subject out of two different cameras.

It follows that if you are not planning on sharing lenses between different systems, you have no reason to care about equivalence! Simply learn the lens characteristics on your camera, and how these impact your shooting. The lens performance on some hypothetical "other system" is irrelevant. But let's continue, assuming that we will be sharing lenses across systems (as I am).

I propose that the measure usually used to perform equivalence is subtly wrong.

To consider why, examine the following table of sensors. In this chart the sensor diagonals have been calculated and normalised against full-frame -- the usual, though arbitrary, reference. The same has been done with sensor area and the square root of area (both are normalised). If you wish you may add in 6x7, 8x10 and other larger formats. Units are millimetre. APS-CC is the Canon APS-C format. 645 is the original film format; various digital variants are smaller.

FORMAT    SENSOR SIZE  DIAGONAL   AREA  ROOT AREA
   645  56.00 x 41.50      0.62   0.37       0.61
   H3D  48.00 x 36.00      0.72   0.50       0.71
  645D  44.00 x 33.00      0.79   0.60       0.77
  35mm  36.00 x 24.00      1.00   1.00       1.00
 APS-C  23.60 x 15.70      1.53   2.33       1.53
APS-CC  22.20 x 14.80      1.62   2.63       1.62
   MFT  17.30 x 13.00      2.00   3.84       1.96
  2/3"   8.80 x  6.60      3.93  14.88       3.86
1/1.63"  8.00 x  6.00      4.33  18.00       4.24
1/1.7"   7.60 x  5.70      4.55  19.94       4.47
1/2.3"   6.17 x  4.55      5.64  30.78       5.55
1/2.5"   5.76 x  4.29      6.02  34.97       5.91

When a writer states that a FF camera has a sensor twice as big as an MFT camera, they justify this by observing the sensor diagonal is twice the length. Equivalent focal length and aperture (f-number) are said to scale with this diagonal. To take but one example, you will find it commonly stated that the Panasonic 20mm f/1.7 lens on MFT acts like a 50mm f/3.4 on full-frame. To repeat for emphasis, this means the 20/1.7 produces the equivalent field of view and depth of field of some hypothetical 50/3.4 lens on FF.

But the use of the diagonal ignores differences in aspect ratio. A more accurate measure is to use the square root of the area, since this is independent of aspect. Look at the chart and notice how this value is quite similar to the diagonal. In fact the square root of area and the length of the diagonal are exactly equal when the sensor is a square. The further the aspect ratio deviates from the square, the more these two measures differ.

It may seem like a pedantic matter, but for panoramic shots the difference is significant. Besides the mathematical accuracy, the emphasis on sensor area helps focus our attention on this, the most important parameter determining overall IQ.

ISO Equivalence
In the discussion thus far I have not mentioned the third photographic parameter, sensitivity or ISO. It turns out that this varies directly with the area. Thus, shooting MFT at ISO200 is equivalent to shooting FF at ISO768, since the ratio of the areas of these sensors is 3.84.

I note that all of this is only an approximation, as it does not take into account number of pixels, noise characteristics, the fact that lens focal length measurements are only roughly as the manufacturer might state, and so on.

Finally, you will need to read documentation of a far more technical nature if you wish proof of the conjectures that FOV and DOF scale with the root of area and ISO with the area itself. I leave that as an exercise.

Summary
1. Lens Focal Length and Aperture are invariant no matter what sensor they are attached to.

2. A smaller sensor acts exactly like a cropped version of a larger sensor (all else being equal). The image quality decreases in proportion to the amount of the crop.

3. Equivalent ISO can be calculated using the same ratio of sensor area.

4. Equivalent Field Of View and Depth Of Field can be calculated using the ratio of the square root of sensor area.

Footnotes

¹ Thanks to Peter Harris and Tompsk who critiqued my previous article.
² See Joseph James for more information than you ever needed.

Updates
1/2.3" added to chart and two typos fixed

A Review of the Olympus E-P1 with FA 43 Limited

2011-06-05T13:00:00.202+01:00

In this post I'll give you some idea of what to expect with the Pentax FA 43 Limited lens when used on the Olympus E-P1 Micro Four Thirds (MFT) camera. As we saw in my last article, this requires the use of a simple adapter, easily available for twenty dollars, that takes the K-mount lens on one side and attaches to the MFT mount on the other, providing the correct registration distance.

Along the way I'll mention some specific camera settings and provide some tips you might find useful. This will not be a test-heavy critical review, but rather a walk-through from actual field usage.

The first few shots, starting with the one above, are taken wide open at f/1.9. This provides the smallest depth of field, something those who pursue bokeh always crave. Bokeh is the quality of the out-of-focus part of the image. It is a mistake to think that this is necessarily nicest when the aperture is wide open, since quite often a lens benefits from stopping down a little bit. But in most cases it is a fast lens that will be desirable for smooth bokeh.

Of course what some like in bokeh others hate. It is, by its nature, a subjective property.

But I don't think anyone could be disappointed by the photos on display here. The bokeh is smooth and distinct from the in-focus area, providing good subject definition. I should note that I have processed these photographs using my usual workflow, since my aim is to demonstrate what the lens will do in "real world" usage. These are not unprocessed test shots, but neither have I applied any "special effects". I've applied slight curve adjustments and sharpening, with a little colour compensation as needed.

The photos themselves were taken hand-held in natural light. These first three were taken at minimal focus distance, which should be 44cm but seemed to be more like 46cm on this body. To give you some idea of the depth of field, there is about 15cm between the cat's in-focus head and the background. The rose is projecting out of the bouquet by a bit more than that. Of course you know how big a typical lemon is, so you can take it from there!

You might also wish to take into account that the first two photos have been significantly cropped. I find this sensor produces images with great detail that handle even extreme cropping very well.

Oh, yes, the first two shots have a shutter speed of 1/60s. The built-in image stabilisation seems to work very well; I simply take it for granted. Even though it is pretty well impossible to hold a camera still while looking at the rear LCD (a disadvantage of not having a viewfinder), I don't get shake in the finished images. I don't believe the Olympus claims of 3-4 stops advantage, but bravo to them for making a working system no matter what the actual spec.

I shot in RAW and processed in Adobe Camera RAW. The camera's Picture Mode was set to "Natural" and I used the native settings of ISO 200 and 4:3 aspect ratio. The E-P1 will go to ISO 100, but this is being "pulled" in-camera and so will not result in ideal image quality. (From what have seen it is totally usable, but I avoided it here.) Similarly, several different aspects are available but the setting that uses the entire sensor optimally is 4:3.

I have a penchant for composing and cropping square images, and I do find the 4:3 handier for this than the Pentax 3:2. If you think about it mathematically, less of the sensor is cropped out in the case of 4:3. For my way of shooting, that is an advantage to MFT I had not considered.

I thought it would be fun to shoot a Leica lens using a combination of two other systems, a sort of photographic summit! Maybe in the future I'll try the Leica 60mm Macro-Elmarit-R on this camera.

It is easy to see from this image that the camera is by no means noise-free even at ISO 200. That is unfortunate but I am not strict about this, so long as the noise has a nice quality. After all, I enjoyed film grain; I don't see why digital should be any different. I will investigate image quality at higher ISO in a future article.

The E-P1 has a host of other customisation settings; another that might have a bearing here is Gradation. It took me a while to get my head around this, since the manual is not as forthcoming as it might be. Thankfully, Olympus provide a useful explanation on their own website. Essentially, by setting Gradation to "Auto" one extends the ability to capture dynamic range, since the camera compensates for both highlight areas and shadow areas. One is less likely to blow out the highlights or lose detail in the shadows. Sounds perfect to me! I haven't seen any disadvantage to using this setting, though I suppose, logically, additional noise in the shadows would be a risk.

Now for a series of shots taken at f/4. This allows a greater depth of field while optimising sharpness with the FA 43 Limited.

I should point out that the FA 43 Limited is sometimes criticised for its relative softness in the extreme edges, something which is a by-product of its optical design. But the lens is made to cover the full 35mm film frame. Even when used on a Pentax digital system, with the APS-C sensor, the extreme edges are never seen. When used on MFT, doubly so. These images demonstrate that there is no problem whatsoever with sharpness and clarity in the corners, though I suppose a series of formal tests would prove it. Someone else can do that if they wish, my actual usage has convinced me that at f/4 one gives up nothing with this lens. Even at f/1.9 the metal fruit bowl was sharp at the extreme edge of the frame.

A few more words now about how to set up the camera for easy use of manual lenses. First, be sure to have "Live View Boost" set to "Off". This means that the relative darkness or lightness of the image on the back LCD will reflect the resulting image exposure. This is easily tested by changing exposure compensation. I found that after only a bit of practice it was easy to get a ballpark exposure with a quick glance. I have "EV Step" set to "1/3EV" for fine-tuning, and generally keep exposure compensation at -1/3EV to safeguard highlights. My experience is that the E-P1 meters very accurately, even with third-party lenses.

On the other hand I have "ISO step" set to "1EV", so I can quickly change ISO by a stop at a time. I don't find I need fine control; it just slows me down.

In order to get the best of both world, I set "Metering" to pattern (indicated by a certain complex icon) and set "AELMetering" to spot. I also ensure that "AEL/AFL Memo" is "On". With this combination, the camera meters as intelligently as possible by default, but any time I want to take a spot reading I can press the AEL button and this is locked in until I press the button a second time to release it. This provides a fantastic degree of control.

This is maybe not so important, but I set "Rec View" to "Off". This means that I do not get an automatic view of the last photo I took popping up on the LCD. I find this gets in the way of taking the next shot. But there is one advantage to keeping this set "On"; the automatic image preview displays immediately, whereas you have to wait for the shot to be written to disk to get a manual preview. This advantage is somewhat negated by the fact that, in either case, one cannot delete the image until waiting for the access light to stop flashing. An SLR has spoiled me in terms of the speed of its operation. But I will say that the E-P1 is not terribly frustrating now that I am used to it. The overall responsiveness lies somewhere between a point and shoot and an SLR. Since I am not going to be shooting sports or going birding, I am cool with that.

For this final photo I've enhanced the noise in post-processing, since I like it this way. After an evening shooting at sunset this bird piped me home. That seems like a good place to close this article, though I'll be back with more again soon. I want to test ISO and say a bit more about camera operations.

Until then, colour me impressed. This lens/body combination is brilliant!

Comparing Camera Size: Pentax K20D Versus Olympus E-P1

2011-06-04T16:00:00.020+01:00

In my last article I mentioned the main reason to consider a move to the Micro Four Thirds format: smaller cameras. The photo above shows my usual Pentax K20D with FA 43 f/1.9 Limited lens, a superb optic that is perhaps the best Pentax offers. Behind it is the Olympus E-P1 with Panasonic Lumix 20mm f/1.7, again likely the best lens available for this system. Obviously there is a significant difference in form factor. If I had the newer K-7 or K-5 cameras they would be appreciably smaller, but a substantial difference would remain.

I have a second picture to show you, but first I need to explain an important feature of MFT, one that helps explain the compact size but which also provides a further significant advantage.

The MFT flange focal distance (AKA register), the distance from the lens mounting flange to the sensor plane, is practically the smallest of any photographic system. In other words, MFT lenses sit very close to the sensor. The upshot of this is that any lens from camera system with larger flange distance can be readily converted for use on an MFT body, using an adapter that does two things: a) provides a suitable coupling for the third-party lens and b) makes up the difference in register so the optics focuses light on the correct plane.

Here is a listing of some suitable lens systems. Note that though the C-mount distance is smaller than MFT, there is still enough clearance of the rear lens assembly in most cases.

C = 17.526mm
Sony E mount = 18mm
MFT = 20.00mm
Leica M = 27.95mm
Pen F = 28.95mm
Leica M39 = 28.80mm
43 = 38.58mm
K / M42 = 45.46mm
OM = 46.00mm
Nikon F = 46.50mm
Leica R = 47.00mm

This fact has led to a profusion of available adapters and a new demand for older lenses. Suddenly, orphaned lines that worked only with old film cameras now have a new life on digital. Even in cases where digital bodies do exist, Leica for instance, an MFT camera costs one-tenth as much and allows use of the same amazing optics. This, not the small size, is perhaps the biggest contribution of MFT to photography.

The most logical thing for me to do, since I already own a good number of Pentax lenses, was to get a K-mount to MFT adapter and see how the combination worked. You will be pleased to learn that is exactly what I have done, as the following photo makes clear.

The Pentax K20D is again compared with the Olympus E-P1, but this time both have the FA 43 f/1.9 Limited lens mounted. The rather large adapter is prominent. This is a cheap eBay job that cost twenty bucks. Obviously the size advantage of the MFT system is eroded due to the register requirement. But I look forward to checking out some sample photos, which seems like a good subject for my next article.

Oh, in case you were wondering, that's a double exposure. I only own one FA 43 Limited!

My Introduction To Micro Four Thirds Cameras

2011-06-04T02:00:00.057+01:00

I've recently been considering the best camera to take on a trip to India. While I love my Pentax setup it is big, heavy and ostentatious. I don't want to attract the kind of attention an SLR can garner. On the other hand, I am used to stellar image quality and don't want to make too big a sacrifice for the sake of portability. After weighing the options I purchased an Olympus PEN E-P1. In this article I'll provide a quick introduction to the system.

It's been three years since Olympus and Panasonic banded together to create Micro Four Thirds (MFT), their new digital camera system, being a mirrorless take on their Four Thirds sensor and mount. These cameras can be built smaller than conventional DSLRs, since they lack a mirror assembly and viewfinder. Thus image composition is done using a rear LCD panel instead of holding the camera up to your face. In this way they resemble point and shoots. But they have a good deal in common with DSLRs, in that they take interchangeable lenses. Essentially an MFT camera is a hybrid between the two older paradigms.

The first Olympus model was released in July of 2009. The PEN E-P1 was based physically on the Olympus PEN F half frame film camera, with the same cute looks and retro demeanour. The PEN F is exactly as old as I am, so it's kind of freaky saying hello to its cyborg descendent. (The Olympus timeline is worth a look.)

It's taken me two years to try out an MFT camera -- the reasons are simple. First, I am quite happy with my Pentax DSLR system. Pentax makes smaller cameras than Nikon, Canon etc. so I have never had a pressing need to compromise on something smaller still. Second, the initial pricing of the MFT models was rather off-putting: $800 for the body alone and $1200 for a system that includes the Panasonic 20mm ƒ/1.7, a pancake lens that approximates a normal field of view. The unfortunate truth is that dollars convert directly to Euro or Pounds Sterling for retail pricing. Paying over a thousand pounds for a camera inferior to a Pentax never made sense to me.

But things don't stand still for long. As buyers rush to consume the latest camera models, older ones lose their value. You can now get a refurbished E-P1 for $350. And in some ways the original PEN is still the best model, in build and controls if not in features. The fast Panasonic lens has remained in high demand however, as news of its sharpness and pleasant rendering spread. Its price has recently been shooting well above the original retail of $400. But eventually more units enter the retail chain and the price lowers again.

I managed to pick up both units for less than one-third the launch price, which seemed more than reasonable to me. Happily, they arrived on the same day, though they had been purchased from different private sellers. I wasted no time in shooting some objects around the house and neighbourhood (as you can see).

What is there to like about this system? The body and lens come in around 450g and 13×7×7cm in dimensions (length, height, width). That is not pocketable in the same way a point and shoot is, but compare it to a Pentax system. My K-x and FA43 Limited are 630g and 13×9×10cm, but the body I normally use is larger and the lens hood adds more still. In use, the E-P1 is smaller than these measurements show; I would guess it's about half the cubic volume but I'm not about to try a water displacement test!

The second advantage is the sensor size, which I explained in detail in my article Thinking Outside The Frame: Sensor Sizes Explained. In short, 35mm film has a 1.0 crop factor, Pentax APS-C has 1.5, MFT has 2.0 and most point and shoot cameras are way up at 6. A larger crop factor means less depth of field control, higher noise and lower quality in general. From this comparison we can see that Pentax and MFT are more similar than different.

At this point one might ask what I gave up by not getting a more recent model. There is no built-in flash on the E-P1, but since such beasts are always horrible I don't miss it. There is no EVF (Electronic View-Finder) option but as those are expensive and add bulk they did not fit into my plans anyway. The newer E-P2 supports manual shutter and aperture control in movie mode, which is certainly a good thing. And it has new Continuous Autofocus tracking for moving subjects. However, neither of these target my interests. The newest E-PL2 has only one control dial and makes other interface sacrifices.

What about the Panasonic G1 and like models? The main advantages of Olympus versus Panasonic are solid build, smaller size, LCD that is better in sunlight, two customisable control dials and manual focus assist mode. But the biggest win is the body-based image stabilisation, which I could hardly do without after being spoiled by Pentax. These features more than make up for the Panasonic advantages, which include faster auto-focus, higher-resolution LCD and improved responsiveness. The first doesn't matter when I'm using older lenses and the second is moot if the screen is washed out by ambient light.

Choosing between the two systems was difficult, but image stabilisation was the trump card.

In short the Olympus PEN E-P1 gives me slightly less image quality than what I am used to, in a significantly smaller form factor. I will consider other usability concerns in future articles. In my next instalment I'll discuss a major advantage of the MFT system I have not yet mentioned. Plus I'll try out one of my very best Pentax lenses on the G-F1.

And usual, click through the images to get larger versions in Flickr. If I have saved you time or money please donate using the PayPal button in the sidebar. Thank you!

Soy Pork AKA "I Am Stir Fry"

2011-05-25T22:00:00.084+01:00

I keep saying I'm going to write about food, but never find the time. Well, tonight I scrounged up a meal for the family with no advanced planning and figured I'd take some photos along the way. It's simple and healthy, depending on your definition of that contentious word. For me, a meal qualifies if it has minimal fat, sugar and dairy content with all the ingredients cooked to preserve their natural goodness. More or less. This dinner contains meat and gluten so warnings to all those who can eat neither.

My Soy Pork dinner consists of three components: the meat, the vegetables and the noodles. In reality I cook them simultaneously, though here I will simplify the timeline for you. Learning how to multitask and cross-time different dishes is certainly a primary talent of a cook. It's one I master usually the second or third time I make a given meal... the first time can be a bit of a mad jumble! In this case, you can certainly have the noodles and meat done a bit ahead of time, but serve the dinner hot the moment the vegetables are ready. I hope that helps you coordinate your activities!

A) The Meat

First up are the pork chops. I am not going to cook the pork in the usual Chinese stir fry manner, but rather be more inspired by how pork chops are served in Japanese or Vietnamese kitchens. So I start with a 200 degree (Celsius naturally) oven and cook them on a grill, turning once. This takes maybe 20 minutes. I put some water in the pan so they will not dry out (plus cleaning is easier). I prefer cooking this way because the fat drips away from the meat. And I know the pork is cooked through, something important for reasons of hygiene.

If I had a proper flame grill I would use that. But I don't. In fact, I have no special cooking tools at all, and have a bog-standard half-working hob and oven. Just like you! (Maybe.)

Once the chops are cooked I trim off the fat. The meat works out more tender doing it this way around, rather than trimming before cooking. Then I slice into strips and toss in a wok pre-heated with a little vegetable oil. Garlic, ginger and chilli flakes all make good spices at this point. Since we are stir-frying, the secret is to always keep tossing the food, pausing only briefly (maybe 20 seconds) for the food to brown.

Once the meat has browned, we we add a dash of dark soy sauce while tossing, just enough to give everything a nice coating. Don't use light soy sauce; you will need more of it to get that nice colour. As a result the flavour will be too strong and salty. Yep, it's somewhat confusing, but the dark soy sauce results in a milder flavour. Took me years to figure that out.

B) The Noodles

Everyone has their favourite noodles, but I like something that is neither too mushy nor too toothsome and these medium thickness flat noodles are the ticket. All you have to do is toss them in some boiling water for the prescribed time period, as given on the packet. If there's no English, just guess from the changing texture as they cook.

I almost never use a timer in the kitchen. Timers are for darkrooms!

Boil, boil, boil. I add a dash of vegetable oil to the water as it prevents sticking. It doesn't work miracles, but there's no harm.

When done, rinse in lots of cold water. Use your hands to ensure no clumps form. These particular noodles do get a bit sticky, which is part of the charm. But you obviously don't want a solid mass of gunk on your plate. Let them drip dry while you attend to something else. Like, say...

C) The Vegetables

Besides what I have here, mini corn and broccoli are popular stir-fry favourites, not to mention bean sprout, cauliflower, bok choi, mangetout (snow pea), water chestnut, etc. But since I am not going for a Chinese medley this time out, I stuck with just a few ingredients. In terms of quantity a little carrot goes a long way! By the way, this amount is designed to serve three, though with four pork chops I could easily have fed four by adding more in the way of vegetables.

I know it doesn't look like enough for three. But wait.

Here are the vegetables, all diced up. I've added some garlic since we used it in the pork stir fry, as mentioned earlier. So obviously I did this dicing before cooking the meat. Just saying, in case you think I live in a TARDIS.

Always think about the best way to slice a vegetable for the meal you are making Some of this is aesthetic but it can make a difference to how it will cook. Long slivers of onion maintain their form better. Long thin juliennes of carrot cook faster, since they have more surface area. Long slices of red pepper are more appealing and don't go to mush.

If you're not sure, just copy what you've seen in your favourite restaurant. There's probably a very good reason behind every decision.

Again, heat some vegetable oil in a wok and toss in the vegetables in order of cooking time. In this case the carrots need the most time, then the peppers; finally the onion can be added near the end. Onion should be almost raw in a stir fry, though not everyone likes it that way.

When making a larger Chinese stir fry I often steam vegetable ahead of time, so they can enter the wok together and cook adequately.

The vegetables won't take long to cook. Just before you figure they are ready, drizzle on some oyster sauce. It's the secret ingredient of many stir fry dishes. It's not really authentic to use it outside of Thai, Vietnamese or Chinese dishes, but what the heck! In my kitchen it shows up in the most unlikely places (essential in a chilli, for example). Go gently with the amount (as pictured above).

Here's the oyster sauce I used, side by side with the soy sauce. Every brand tastes different, so you will have to experiment to find those you like. I keep at least two types of each in my cupboard since they have different uses. One oyster sauce is sweeter than the other and one is muskier. That's musky in a good way!

Oh yeah, never judge an oyster sauce by eating it raw. It's rather horrible. After all it mostly consists of cornstarch, sugar, salt, caramel, MSG... with a tiny bit of oyster. Not exactly what you'd plan on eating on a desert island. But it does wonders to activate the flavours of other foods, and if used in moderation is not going to kill you.

OK, everything is done. Zap the noodles in the microwave briefly (or steam them if you are a purist) to bring them up to serving temperature. Put a serving in a medium-sized bowl. Add a portion of meat and veg. Provide sesame oil and chilli sauce so people can add them to taste.

And enjoy your meal!

If you'd like to show appreciation, leave a comment. Or you could consider a small donation using the PayPal button to the right.

Free Update To Reaktor 5.6 Released

2011-05-25T18:00:00.029+01:00

It's been a year since the last update to Reaktor, which included a generous package of interface enhancements and free instruments. Now Native Instruments have released version 5.6, this one also totally free. Now that's service! Read on for a discussion of the product and a full list of bug fixes.

In terms of general profile, Reaktor is way down the list of priorities for NI. It's not even that easy to find it on their website. Nonetheless, it is apparent that NI are aware of how important it is to their geek image. The users of such bit-head development tools push the bleeding edge and drive a good deal of the culture around their other products. It's good to see that such support is appreciated.

Reaktor is an incredible software tool for building software instruments out of individual components, and then assembling the perfect ensemble of instruments for performance. It has been an essential part of my tool-kit for many years. In the world in which I compose, most prefer Max/MSP, generally out of lack of familiarity with any alternative. But when I was first looking for such a tool, more than a decade ago, Reaktor was far superior in terms of its interface and usability, while Max had the edge in terms of programmability and hardware interfaces.

According to the release notes, Reaktor 5.6.0 contains:
* 64 Bit support for Windows and OSX
* Added breadcrumb navigation to structure
* Improved navigation concept
* Added searchbox (Win: CTRL-F, OSX: CMD-F) to add modules
* New module reference and 5.6 manual addendum
* Scrolling of structures with Alt+Drag over structure
* Added hide frame and transparency property to XY module
* Added drag copy to other structure view
* Recorder shows recorded time while recording
* Add abort function to file not found dialog on project recall
* Improved loading time for ensembles with many Send/Receive terminals
* PNG file support for picture modules
* Updated start templates
* Added shortcut info to tooltips
* Changed keyboard shortcuts

It's definitely the first of these that makes the download worthwhile. 64-bit support should increase performance and allow for larger ensembles. I'll test this soon and report back.

The new keyboard shortcuts are:
* Toggle Edit mode: F1
* Toggle horizontal split: F2
* Toggle vertical split: F3
* Toggle properties view: F4
* Back: Alt+B
* Delete selected modules and/or wires: Backspace or Delete
* Navigate to parent folder in browser tree view:Left arrow
* Show macro content in other pane: Alt+doubleclick on macro
* Duplicate: Win: Ctrl+drag module(s), OSX: Alt+drag module(s)

The download is a substantial .5GB and will over-write any changes you have made to core files. If you get a slow download, it is best to cancel and try again. My first attempt would have taken an hour but my second completed in about ten minutes. Obviously the NI servers will be sending out thousands of copies of this much-anticipated file over the next few days.

Macros With The Leica 60mm f/2.8 Macro-Elmarit-R

2011-05-21T17:00:00.012+01:00

Given that the Leica I've been using lately is a macro lens, I thought perhaps I'd do a quick and dirty test to see if it's useful in that realm. I should warn you that this test is likely even less rigorous than the others, since there are many things that can go wrong when magnifying a subject by this much. I used a simple method. I set the lens at full magnification, which is to say 1:2, mounted it on a tripod pointing straight down, and then adjusted the height of a Euro coin so that it was in focus. Without macro rails this was not as easy or accurate as it should have been.

Then I took shots using the same aperture settings as in previous tests: f/2.8, f/4, f/5.6, f/8, f/11. I used natural light and longer shutter times, in order to avoid extraordinary specular highlights. The image here is cropped square to eliminate background but is otherwise untouched. All the shots are available in 1200 pixel images on Flickr. This is only the f/11 example.

My summary of the quality of the Leica lens is exactly the same as at other distances. Wide open the lens is definitively soft but through f/8 it is consistent. Then f/11 shows a drop in sharpness. That is compensated for here by the fact that f/11 was needed to bring the whole coin into sharp focus. Obviously the lens was not exactly perpendicular to the coin. That's just one of the factors that is difficult to control without a more formal test setup.

As a comparison I made the same test with my Vivitar Series 1 105mm f/2.5, a lens I very much enjoy and which produces excellent real-world results. I set it also to 1:2 but of course the magnification is greater due to the greater focal length. Thus it is impossible to do a strict comparison. The exposure also came out quite different. Nonetheless this comparison is sufficient to realise that the quality of the lenses is quite similar.

In conclusion, I do wish the Elmarit maintained its sharpness past f/11, because otherwise three-dimension objects will have only a very small depth in focus. This is compensated for by the shorter focal length I suppose, but that has its own disadvantages, in that it is often better to have more working distance (doesn't scare bugs or cast a shadow as easily).

Nonetheless I have no complaints about the Elmarit's performance in the macro realm. It appears to be a solid performer, with identical characteristics at all focal distances. In fact it could be said to be a jack-of-all-trades, not sharp enough at small apertures to be a perfect macro lens and not sharp enough at large apertures to be the perfect portrait lens, but excellent in the middle realm of f/4 to f/8.

Further Tests Of The Leica 60mm f/2.8 Macro-Elmarit-R

2011-05-18T13:00:00.003+01:00

This article will wrap up the formal part of my lens testing, in order to establish lens properties at different focal lengths. Be sure to read the first set and also have a look at the real-world shots since I make certain observations there as well. In this instalment I will also test the metering with this lens on the Pentax K20D. Finally, I've also got some reference material from Leica that will allow me to validate my observations and compare the Elmarit to their other normal lenses.

First I'll show you the bookshelf test, which was shot in a similar way to those in my first article: on a tripod with timer release, using natural light supplemented with a bounced flash. The focal distance was exactly 200cm. Once again I varied aperture through five settings: f/2.8, f/4, f/5.6, f/8, f/11. Flash power was set to: 1/16, 1/8, 1/4, 1/2, 1. ISO was 200, shutter 1/30s. Files were processed with Adobe Camera RAW into Photoshop with default settings, sharpness off.

I'll post only the first two of the five images here: f/2.8 and f/4. In theory each shot should be lit exactly the same, but the admixture of natural and bounced light does result in subtly different lighting, since shadows will change. For the front surface of the books this will not matter.

There is quite a distinct improvement on stopping down the first time. After this there is no real difference to be seen at this reduced size. Here is an image comparing the focal area at 100%, to make things plainer. Now we can see what was evident in the first test: there is a drop in quality at f/11. (As always, click through these to get larger images in Flickr.)

I also tried a similar test series while focusing close to infinity; the results were identical. Based on this, I conclude its optimal to shoot this lens at f/4 to f/8, at least as far as contrast and resolution are concerned.

My final test was for flare. There's no point displaying it, because even with the sun in the frame I could not get the lens to show any sign. Of course contrast was abysmal, but no-one would shoot this way in any case. (And remember, it is dangerous!)

While I was thinking of light, I tested the accuracy of the stop-down metering and found a result that is not uncommon for the K20D. This test I conducted at infinity focus without flash. Stopping down I expected the following shutter speeds based on the exposure wide open: 1/1000, 1/500, 1/250, 1/125, 1/60. And these in fact produced nearly identical exposures. However the green button gave me this: 1/1000, 1/350, 1/125, 1/60, 1/30. Basically, the process is not accurate at all. The solution is to meter only wide open and then calculate the correct exposure to apply. (Apparently the K5 is more accurate in this regard, though one would have to test with the same lens.)

The care Leica take in producing their lenses is also reflected in the extensive documents they have available for download. I certainly wish that Pentax would provide such thoughtful literature, which combines art and science in the most useful ways. The docs for this particular lens are available here.

These document the complete lack of distortion in this lens, minimal vignetting and the absence of flare I discovered. We can see from the MTF graphs the difference between the rendering at f/2.8 and other apertures. Unfortunately f/4 is not provided, but I know from my tests that it would be very similar to f/5.6. Good resolution, very high contrast and excellent aberration correction characterise these working apertures.

Author Erwin Puts notes that wide open "medium fine detail will be outlined with faintly soft edges" which is just the kind of effect I have been seeing. Unfortunately this is not as appealing for portraiture as it could be, and in any case I am not one of those photographers you likes a soft lens for portraits. I would rather capture all possible detail and decide in the digital darkroom what to do with it.

We can compare with the two other available R-mount normal lenses and see which might serve us better. Certainly the Leica 50mm f/2 Summicron-R will give us that extra stop, but the MTF graph shows distinctly worse performance wide open than the Macro-Elmarit. I wouldn't want to make that sacrifice. At f/5.6 too the 60mm lens is far more consistent across the frame.

It's harder to compare with the Leica 50mm f/1.4 Summilux-R because they serve such totally different purposes. If you need f/1.4 you are hardly going to be satisfied with f/2.8! But as light increases by a factor of four, aberrations increase by a factor of nine. Unless some sort of miraculous engineering has occurred it's hard to imagine the Summilux could have the consistency of the Elmarit.

And indeed the graphs show that it does not. Distortion is at 2% and the difference between sagittal and tangential lines hints at bokeh that is busier and less smooth. This is not to say that you can't make many incredible images with the Summilux... simply open it up and put the subject in the centre for artistic effects. But it hardly seems worth mounting a Leica for this purpose when Pentax has many amazing inexpensive older lenses that would do as well (or better?).

Based on this analysis, I am confident I made the correct choice among the Leica normal lenses. It would now be nice to supplement it with a longer focal length for portraiture, a lens with a distinctly faster aperture. But given the prices (two to four thousand) such glass commands I doubt I will be doing so any time soon. This reality drives home the point that the Leica 60mm f/2.8 Macro-Elmarit-R is very good value indeed.

Sample Shots With Leica 60mm f/2.8 Macro-Elmarit-R

2011-05-17T00:15:00.029+01:00

In my initial review I promised some real-world photos with my first Leica lens; you'll be happy to see them in this post. All the shots have been processed to the fullest, which is only fair since that is what I would do with any lens. But this is generally a modest process: a touch of contrast and exposure correction, plus sharpening after downsizing.

However, I must admit to having my own techniques for bringing out detail and tend to apply one of these actions to my shots. Not always, but usually. And these make a significant difference to the look of the shot. Without my processing your shots might not look like these -- just saying!

Since there is no coupling, the body cannot record aperture information in the image EXIF. And my memory is notoriously poor. But I can tell you the chess pieces above were shot wide open, ISO 400, 1/90s, distance 30-40cm. Like all the others here, the photo is hand-held in available light.

This was ISO 200, 1/500s, even closer to the subject. This might have been f/5.6. Having the macro ability is very useful even if you don't plan on shooting macros; it means you simply don't have to worry about getting close. Conceptually it has the odd effect of making the lens act shorter than its 60cm focal, since you don't have to worry about keeping a certain working distance. I love this!

ISO 280, 1/8s, which was achieved by balancing the camera on a plate and using remote release. I'm guessing f/4. The subject was quite a bit further away in this shot; I've cropped the image as well.

ISO 560, 1/60s, f/2.8 methinks. I don't like pushing the K20D to ISO 800 if I don't have to, since the quality of the noise changes. So I had to stay wide open, even though I am gaining an appreciation for the fact the lens is significantly softer at its widest. Of course many lenses are softer wide open, but here "wide open" is a relatively slow f/2.8. At 60mm that doesn't give an exceedingly thin depth of field.

I can make a few other critical observations.

The colours are not as vibrant as I would like. I will here state that I dislike over-saturated unrealistic colours, but I am spoiled by the accurate and bold Pentax colour rendering. I think I can fairly say that this particular Leica lens does not have the same. Neither does it have any annoying tint, appearing only slightly warm. For me the rendering is fine, but I can imagine if you are picky in this area you might be a little underwhelmed.

Handling is much as I had gathered from my first-day tests. The focus ring is too stiff and the aperture ring too loose. Many times I accidentally turned the ring and lost my exposure. Without clicks or any tactile feedback I then have to take the camera from my eye and reset. This is terribly annoying for me but might not bother others as much. The Leitax K-mount adapter apparently allows click stops, so maybe I need to "upgrade" to that one.

On the other hand the bokeh is lovely. I simply keep wishing for one more stop, so I can blur out the background even more.

Best of all, at 60mm and 1:2 macro, this is a very versatile short telephoto. You can focus in on small objects and details while also having a lens capable of representing a person in an environment. More photos will follow in my Flickr stream, but the few here should demonstrate these uses.

Induction Circuit live today!

2011-05-14T09:30:00.000+01:00

Induction Circuit is a self-directed walk that explores the secret domains and hidden sounds of Catherine Street (Limerick, Ireland). Setting off from a designated starting point with a music player and headphones, the participant is encouraged to experience new sonic geographies. Familiar territory becomes new again.

All you need is some sort of a personal music player. Then go to the special website and grab the sound files. Download and print the map if you need it. Then allow yourself an hour and go on the walk -- I do hope you enjoy it!

This piece was created for the ongoing Catherine Street DIG, 13-15 May 2011. I will be "in residence" at French's cafe early this afternoon to chat with people and help them out if they need it. If you bring your player and a way of connecting to a laptop I can give you the sound files on the spot.

Initial Review Of The Leica 60mm f/2.8 Macro-Elmarit-R

2011-05-14T08:30:00.099+01:00

I am not much of a lens tester, but the first thing I do after getting some new glass is shoot off some homebrew test shots, just to be sure the item I have spent my money on is in good shape. In the case of my first Leica lens I was particularly interested in seeing how it rendered. Mounting the lens on my K20D I attached same to a sturdy tripod and found something interesting in the room to focus on. These dried wild-flowers don't test the colour response in any way, so that will have to wait for later. But otherwise they make an appealing subject.

This article will present some test shots along with 100% crops. These I will evaluate for sharpness, contrast and bokeh. I'll discuss the lens handling and note some quirks. If you want scientific test you'll have to look elsewhere. I have to admit I only spent one day shooting before writing this article, which is a measure of my enthusiasm if nothing else! But I did also test in the real-world scenario of some live events I was documenting. I'll present those images later.

With the camera in Manual mode I set ISO to 100 and exposure to 1/60s. I used the timer to further minimise camera shake (this also turns off the in-camera Shake Reduction). Then I varied aperture through five settings: f/2.8, f/4, f/5.6, f/8, f/11. At the same time I manually set flash power on the Metz 58-AF1 to: 1/16, 1/8, 1/4, 1/2, 1. This was being bounced off the ceiling in a room that was lit by low and constant ambient light from a window looking out on an overcast day... a perfect scenario for a test since I had full control over the light. In theory each shot should be lit exactly the same, but the aperture ring does not have clicks for each setting, so it is impossible to know when one has set it precisely.

Focus distance was 54cm. With this lens/body combination working distance is 12cm less than that, so 42cm. Being a macro lens, one can get very close indeed.

I then processed the PEF files through Adobe Camera RAW into Photoshop with default settings and sharpness turned all the way down (since it defaults to being on). I did no post-processing at all, except the resizing. This is not a very real-world scenario, but at least ensures a constant baseline. Here are the shots -- you can click through to slightly larger versions in Flickr.

Can anyone say "bokeh"? The out-of-focus region is beautiful! I had deliberately placed a printed page on the desktop so that there was a busy background to work with. I cannot imagine it looking more appealing. Bokeh is a matter of taste; there are those who love the busy look of certain Russian lenses, or the mad swirling effect, and so on. Not me... I want a nice smooth gradation from in-focus to out-of-focus, with a subtle bit of "pop" where the transition occurs. I dislike special effects being added by the lens.

The busy nature of the flowers is difficult for glass to render nicely. If you pay attention to the branch on the left, it is plain to see how it comes into focus as the lens is stopped down, taking until f/11 for all of it to be in focus.

Then next thing I did was take a 100% crop from the central in-focus portion of each image, and arrange them side by side for ease of comparison. In this case you will definitely want to look at the full-size version, since close inspection is the whole point.

The sharpness appears perfectly reasonable, even wide open. The lens gains significantly in resolution and contrast stopped down one to f/4 but otherwise is consistent. In fact the difference between apertures is really not that large. I can see some fall-off in quality by f/11, which is a bit disappointing since I would have hoped diffraction would not yet have been a factor. But this is not a lens I bought to be using at such apertures, so it matters little to me. So far this looks to be a lens that deserves its accolades!

Finally, I took the wide open shot and subject it to my usual minimal processing: default sharpening in ACR, contrast correction, exposure compensation and colour adjust (slight cooling). This gets rid of the grey cast that made the unprocessed image less than appealing. It turns out that all the shots were underexposed a little (though consistently) in my attempt not to blow the highlights. I would have had to increase the shutter speed to 1/30s to correct for this.

I have a few comments about handling. The focus ring is so heavily damped that I find it rather difficult to turn. Since I have no basis for comparison I do not know if this is something servicing would fix, or if it is the normal standard for Leica. I realise that this is a macro lens and so precision in focus is a priority; nonetheless the friction is rather over-done.

The macro nature of the lens also accounts for the long focus throw: 340 degrees. That is actually perfect in my opinion. Significantly less of a turn is required unless one gets into close focus territory; the amount that remains allows for precision. This would not be the first choice for street shooting or journalism where fast focus adjustments are required. But it's great for more contemplative shooting.

I mentioned the stopless aperture ring; this turns smoothly and rather too easily. I can certainly see this being a problem. It's very easy to accidentally turn the ring, which of course is a disaster in the middle of a shoot. I imagine this is a result of the mount conversion and is not a factor in the original R-mount lens.

The front lens element is so deeply recessed into the lens housing that it looks like an optical illusion! I have no idea why the lens was built this way, but it means a hood is completely superfluous.

In case it is not obvious, one has to use this lens completely manually. There is not even the M/A switch that makes other manual lenses easier to manage. The stop-down procedure is as follows. Put your camera into Manual mode, set the aperture on the lens, and then press the Green button on the camera to set the appropriate shutter speed. Then shoot at will. However, as you set a smaller aperture the viewfinder gets darker and so composition (especially focus) becomes difficult. Therefore it is preferable to focus and compose wide open before setting the aperture. This is where not having an accessible M/A switch and not having a stepped aperture ring becomes a real problem.

However, I will be using this lens close to wide open most of the time. In this scenario there enough light in the viewfinder, so the aperture does not need to be changed for the purpose of focusing.

What can I say about the build of this lens? It is perfect, a solid block of metal and glass. It weighs 400g, which is quite a lot compared with my FA Limited lenses. But it's not so heavy that usage is in any way compromised. The length of the lens is 65mm but since it does not need a hood that is OK, though again much larger than my prized FA77 Limited.

At the macro end the lens achieves 1:2 reproduction and close focuses to 27cm. The lens extends to 98mm so one would have to be careful of casting a shadow over the subject. Of course off-camera lighting is recommended in these scenarios in any case. I have no plans to obtain the optional adapter that allows for 1:1 macro. Being only focal length 60cm, I think of this as a mild telephoto that allows for arbitrary close focus, rather than considering it as a macro lens. I'll continue to use my Vivitar 105mm for that purpose.

In my next article we'll see some real-world images.

Leica Lenses on Pentax Cameras

2011-05-14T08:00:00.018+01:00

Eventually there comes the time in every photographers life where he succumbs to the lure of Leica. To find out for himself if they are simply over-priced. To discover if the cult has something to offer. Even if you are not interested in the limitations of the rangefinder system, and don't have multiple thousands of Euro for a digital Leica, there are still plenty of options for using the lenses themselves on other camera bodies. In this post I'll outline the options for Pentax, setting the stage for some test shots with my first Leica glass, the 60mm f/2.8 Macro-Elmarit-R.

I am by no means an expert, so please post corrections.

Leica has two incompatible mount systems, R-mount and M-mount. It is the former that can be modified for use on Pentax bodies. There are five mount variations that you only need to concern yourself with when matching a lens to a Leica camera: one-cam, two-cam, three-cam, R-only and ROM. None of these matter for Pentax cameras, since the mount is going to be replaced anyway. Thus, if you are looking for lenses to buy, you can safely focus on the cheapest (one of the first three).

Leitax makes mounts available, and have instructions for how you go about using these. They can also do the conversion for you, which is perhaps best if you don't feel comfortable opening up an expensive lens. There are also inexpensive Chinese mounts available on eBay that apparently work just as well. I simply purchased a lens that had already been converted, and as a result have no experience with the process.

There have been 50 or so Leica R-mount lenses, not counting those from third-parties. Here is a list of them that I have collated over the last couple of years (yes, I really do plan ahead!), starting with the info at this French site.

R-Mount Prime Lenses
15mm f/2.8 Super-Elmarit-R ASPH
15mm f/3.5 Super-Elmarit-R
16mm f/2.8 Fisheye-Elmarit-R
19mm f/2.8 Elmarit-R [2 versions]
21mm f/3.4 Super-Angulon
21mm f/4 Super-Angulon
24mm f/2.8 Elmarit-R
28mm f/2.8 Elmarit-R [2 versions]
28mm f/2.8 PC-Super-Angulon
35mm f/1.4 Summilux-R
35mm f/2 Summicron-R [2 versions]
35mm f/2.8 Elmarit-R
35mm f/4 PA-Curtagon-R [shift]
50mm f/1.4 Summilux-R [2 versions]
50mm f/2 Summicron-R [2 versions]
60mm f/2.8 Macro-Elmarit-R [2 versions]
75mm f/2 Elcan-R
80mm f/1.4 Summilux-R
90mm f/2 Summicron-R
90mm f/2 APO-Summicron-R ASPH
90mm f/2.8 Elmarit-R [2 versions]
100mm f/4 Macro-Elmarit-R
135mm f/2.8 Elmarit-R [2 versions]
180mm f/2 APO-Summicron-R
180mm f/2.8 Elmarit-R [2 versions]
180mm f/2.8 APO-Elmarit-R
180mm f/3.4 Elcan-R
180mm f/3.4 APO-Telyt-R
180mm f/4 Elmar-R
250mm f/4 Telyt-R [2 versions]
280mm f/2.8 APO-Telyt-R
280mm f/4 APO-Telyt-R
350mm f/4.8 Telyt-R
400mm f/2.8 APO-Telyt-R
400mm f/6.8 Telyt-R
400mm f/6.8 Telyt-R Novoflex
450mm f/5.6 Elcan-R
500mm f/8 MR-Telyt-R
560mm f/6.8 Telyt-R Novoflex
800mm f/6.3 Telyt-R

R-Mount Zoom Lenses
21-35mm f/3.5-4 Vario-Elmar-R
28-90mm f/2.8-4.5 Vario-Elmarit-R ASPH
28-70mm f/3.5-4.5 Vario-Elmar-R
35-70mm f/2.8 Vario-Elmarit-R ASPH
35-70mm f/3.5 Vario-Elmar-R [2 versions]
35-70mm f/4 Vario-Elmar-R
70-180mm f/2.8 Vario-APO-Elmarit-R
70-210mm f/4 Vario-Elmar-R
80-200mm f/4 Vario-Elmar-R
105-280mm f/4.2 Vario-Elmar-R

Realistically you will be obtaining Leica lenses because they have something to offer that you cannot get in your current camera system: quality of bokeh, workmanship of the build, image rendering quality, manual focus control. If we consider only primes outside the telephoto range and restrict ourselves to more available lenses we can thin the list quite a bit.

R-Mount Lenses To Consider
19mm f/2.8 Elmarit-R
28mm f/2.8 Elmarit-R
35mm f/1.4 Summilux-R
35mm f/2 Summicron-R
50mm f/1.4 Summilux-R
50mm f/2 Summicron-R
60mm f/2.8 Macro-Elmarit-R
80mm f/1.4 Summilux-R
90mm f/2 Summicron-R
90mm f/2 APO-Summicron-R ASPH
90mm f/2.8 Elmarit-R
100mm f/4 Macro-Elmarit-R
135mm f/2.8 Elmarit-R
180mm f/2 APO-Summicron-R
180mm f/2.8 APO-Elmarit-R

Leica has discontinued the R-mount in favour of the M-mount, so in theory these lenses will only get more valuable as people seek them out for conversion.

I will continue posting about this new world in future articles.

Live Performance At Just Listening

2011-04-27T21:00:00.005+01:00

The running order is set for Just Listening, this Saturday 30 April in Limerick. Please come down to the beautiful Limerick School of Art & Design Gallery on Clare Street where you will be treated to an ear-opening experience: 15 performances by the most innovative sonic artists in Ireland. I am proud to be in such a line-up, taking the stage at 3pm or thereabouts.

Coming right on the heels of my collaboration with Mick O'Shea and Danny Mc Carthy at Strange Attractor in Cork, this performance will display a line of inquiry I premiered at the Valentine's Day gig this year. In brief, I will be performing my No Input Software, a cybernetic circuit that puts me in the position of responding to the chaotic interactions of an emergent software system. To get an idea of what it might sound like, check out the first two tracks on my listen page. But it might just sound very different... chaos is like that!

Curators from USA, Switzerland, UK, and Slovenia have been invited by the organisers of the Just Listen festival, the National Sculpture Factory, Cork. I extend a warm greeting to our visitors and look forward to meeting everyone on Saturday!

For further details on my process, read the post from February.

Strange Attractor With Robin Parmar

2011-04-21T21:00:00.000+01:00

Yesterday Susannah took some photos of my performance with Danny Mc Carthy and Mick O'Shea, which I would like to share with you here. As mentioned previously, this improvisation was part of the Strange Attractor series, which is continuing for another week. So if you are free for some lunch-time music (1-2pm), get down to the Crawford Art Gallery in the heart of Cork, Ireland. Each day there is a different guest artist.

I found the space most conducive to a creative approach. The first floor gallery is beautifully open, non-rectilinear in shape and naturally lit. Not only that, it is quiet, so it is easy to hear not only the other performers but sounds from the audience and environs, all of which are important to me. The sculptural installations by Irene Murphy are endlessly fascinating, bringing to mind not only architectural plans and shapes but systems of classification, models of the natural world and attempts at codification and understanding. Her contribution to Strange Attractor 6 was vital. I love the first photo, above, where I am situated in relationship to some of these structures, almost as though I was embedded within them.

The two mini recorders and two sets of headphones were also available as possible instruments. Much of the sound came from use of an induction coil to pick up electromagnetic flux from the various gear.

The table surface itself became a sounding board I could play in various ways, the sound picked up by a contact mic. At times I changed the orientation of the speaker which also changed the generated sound, since different frequencies could become part of a feedback loop with the contact mic.

Here I am manipulating the instrument I have created in Reaktor, versions of which I have been evolving for over a year now. Besides an input compressor and output limiter I use various granular synthesis algorithms, but in fact try to stay close to the original sounds.

More photos are available on Flickr. Simply click through any image for a larger version and to visit the rest of the set.

RIP Tim Hetherington, Chris Hondros

2011-04-21T12:00:00.004+01:00

Last night every photo blog I subscribe to had exactly the same news, and here I quote the British Journal of Photography: "Photojournalist Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros have been killed in a mortar attack in Misurata, Libya, while two other photographers - Guy Martin and Michael Christopher Brown - were injured." This demonstrates the very real risk taken by such people in order to bring us information -- facts needed to make connections between events, formulate geopolitical policies and simply realise how we are all related.

Hetherington's photos had always stood out for me. He had an incredible eye for perspective, contrast, detail, colour... every technical aspect of a good photo. Not only that, he had obvious passion that went beyond the norm. His approach was a humane one that required a deep commitment and attempt at understanding apparently alien situations. And it was this insight his photos communicated to us.

This NY Times article has an excellent series of photos. But go to his own website for more, especially the series from the Indonesian tsunami.

I am less familiar with Chris Hondros, but this NY Times obit tells the story very well.

I remember with great respect these outstanding gentlemen, whose deaths will remind us keenly of all the other deaths that, without them, would have remained nameless and faceless.

Read more at the BJP.

Group Improvisation Wednesday in Cork

2011-04-19T01:00:00.014+01:00

I will be playing as part of the Strange Attractor project this Wednesday from 1-2pm in Cork. The location is the beautiful first floor of the Crawford Art Gallery. I will be improvising with Danny Mc Carthy, Irene Murphy and Mick O'Shea, who played as part of a larger configuration on 2 April. I was very taken by their work on that occasion and am thrilled that I get to create with them!

Admission is free, and while you are in Cork you can check out the installations that are in place as part of the Just Listen festival.

I plan on using the hidden sounds implicit in the gallery, creating structures in time that play with ideas of memory and forgetting. In preparation I have watched, once more and not for the last time, Last Year At Marienbad. (Appreciation here.)

Just Listen festival launch tonight

2011-04-15T12:00:00.005+01:00

The National Sculpture Factory in Cork is launching the Just Listen festival tonight, continuing through to 30 April. Two weeks of sound artist installations, performances, sound walks, etc. will spill out into the streets of Cork and Limerick. I will be in Cork for the opening tonight (Friday) and the day-long seminar on Saturday. I will also be performing twice in the festival, about which I will write more later.

Curators Danny McCarthy and Sean Taylor have programmed international artists including Anne Bean, David Toop, Michael Prime, Eric Leonardson, Stephen Vitiello, Pauline Oliveros and John Godfrey. Venues include Beamish and Crawford on South Main Street. David Toop is performing this evening at 7pm at CIT Cork School of Music.

I have made the full programme available for download here.

This will be a splendid time! I hope to meet some new faces -- and hear many new sounds -- in the next two weeks.

Free Ai Weiwei

2011-04-15T01:00:00.005+01:00

After visiting the Tate, I have been motivated to send the following email to press@chinese-embassy.org.uk. I urge you to do something similar, if you in any way believe in individual freedom.

Dear Ambassador Liu,

I am writing to urge you to do everything within your power to guarantee the immediate and unconditional release of Ai Weiwei, unless the Chinese authorities can show reasonable grounds for suspecting him of having committed an internationally recognisable criminal offence.

As an artist, Ai Weiwei has uplifted the spirits of people everywhere, as well as representing outside China the very best qualities of its people. By imprisoning him, in this time of international cooperation, China is sending the very worst message it can to the rest to the world. I believe it is in the best interest of China to release him from this unnecessary and politically-motivated imprisonment.

Furthermore, I am urging the Chinese authorities to take effective measures to guarantee freedom of expression, association and assembly in line with China’s Constitution and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which China has signed and declared an intention to ratify.

"Strange Attractor 6" in Cork

2011-04-04T13:00:00.004+01:00

Last Saturday, 2 April 2011, Crawford Art Gallery in Cork played host to another in a continuing series of performances that tie in with their group installation Strange Attractor. The gallery and curator Dawn Williams should be congratulated on this dynamic intermedia project, which has been running since November 2010 and now takes the form of a residency in the first floor gallery space. As you can see from my photos, this is a lovely environment of wood and light, decked out on the occasion with sound sculptures, wall installations, a reading and listening library and more.

The exhibition continues at the gallery and will be joined by events around the city for the Just Listen festival, about which more later. In addition I have been invited to take part in a series of impromptu performances at the gallery some time later in April.

Strange Attractor 6 included the participation of Steve Roden, Anthony Kelly, David Stalling, Danny McCarthy, Irene Murphy and Mick O'Shea. Photos of each artist follow. As always you can click through to get larger on Flickr.

Steve Roden:

David Stalling:

Anthony Kelly:

Irene Murphy:

Danny McCarthy:

Mick O'Shea:

Out of Silence CD Release

2011-04-01T17:00:00.033+01:00

I am pleased to announce the release of the Out Of Silence CD compilation, containing my track "Snowblind and Falling". This double disk set is the work of Wolfgang Peter Menzel, who compiled the fifteen sonic interpretations of Samuel Beckett's work. There is a great deal of variety on hand over the ninety-nine minutes. Head on over to Spanish net label modisti to read more and have a listen. If you like what you hear, please place an order to support the sonic arts!

My contribution dates back to the Beckett centenary in 2006, when I designed a soundscape for a dramatic reading of his poetry. This was staged at Impact Theatre by the Fourfront Poets as part of the Cuisle International Poetry Festival (more info). My contribution was suitably minimal, and involved designing signature wind sounds for each reader. Diffusing these live, I transformed one to the next as the readings proceeded around the circle.

Taking that experience as a starting point, "Snowblind and Falling" examines the textures of my own voice and verse in homage to Beckett. It forms part of a renewed engagement with voice that dates back to my earliest radiophonic works.

I anticipated that this piece might work particularly well in context. Now that I've had a chance to hear the finished assemblage I am happy to call the piece a success!

Exquisite Corpse [Five Senses] Exhibit in London

2011-03-29T00:30:00.011+01:00

I am proud to announce I am part of a group show running 13-30 April 2011 at SoundFjord Sonic Art Gallery in London, England. Exquisite Corpse [Five Senses] is the classic Surrealist game interpreted for sound. Always having been a big fan of the Surrealists I jumped at the chance to participate. Fifty international artists were divided into groupings according to the five senses. After a couple of months I received a recording and was asked to interpret it by way of a composition of my own, using "sight" as the dominant sense. Quite a challenge! I then passed my piece on to the next person in the chain and so it progressed.

I will be in London April 11-12, so drop me a line if you want to get in touch.

In particular, the evening of the 11th I will be at SoundFjord to present some work in progress as part of their SoundShare event. I am looking forward to meeting new people and inspiring dialogue! This will be my second appearance after a flying visit last summer to meet up with Helen Frosi, Creative Director of the unit, who certainly impressed me with her dedication. Since then she has been incredibly busy, as their website makes clear. You can read more about the gallery in a feature article in this month's Art Selector.

Final Daghdha Event

2011-03-25T19:00:00.009Z

Many of my readers will know by now that the Arts Council has cut the funding of Daghdha Dance Company by 100%. As a final goodbye event, the current resident artists and many others who have worked with Daghdha over the years are collaborating on one final blow-out. The Ponderous Counter-Spectacle Of Things Ceasing To Be starts at noon and goes to midnight, 26 March 2011. Everyone is welcome, it is entirely free and you can bring your own refreshments. Activities for the whole family. No excuses!

Throughout the evening I will be DJing a set of music that has flowed through the Daghdha Space in the last five years or so. Plus a special live performance!

Programme:
12.00 Open Yoga Class + Simultaneous Life Drawing
13.30 Walk-In Social Dreaming Matrix
15.00 Kids Performance: Hello [Age 2 Till 5 Booking essential at 061-467872] + Kids' Disco
16.30 Book Launch: Sediments Of An Ordinary Mind
17.00 Daghdha Lounge: Multiple Happenings And DJ Environment
19.00 4 Dance Performances
20.30 Daghdha Lounge: Multiple Happenings And DJ Environment
21.30 Play: 3some
22.30 After Party
24.00 We Shall See

Contributing Artists:
Ruairi O'Donovan • Helen Cerina • Asher O'Gorman • Claire Keating • Jesse Den Dulk • Jessica Kelly • Emmalena Fredriksson • Cathy Walsh • Giorgio Convertito • Ellen Kilsgaard • Maria Svensson • Kaspar Aus • Christopher Mahon • Isabella Oberlander • Riika Theresa Innanen • Laura Dannequin • Nick Bryson • Dan Canham • Michael Klien • Jeffrey Gormly • Breda Lynch • Robin Parmar • Alexis Clancy • Katalin Lengyel • And many more...

Myths of the New Forest

2011-03-19T12:00:00.023Z

I am working on a project for a dance installation, which may or may not come to pass, here in Ireland, in Estonia or somewhere else. It's early days yet. I am also developing my thoughts on sonic ecology, in a series of papers and hopefully a doctoral thesis -- time will tell there as well. As usual I find photography a useful way to interrogate some of these ideas. These images have not been staged in any overt way, being artificial "only" in the usual sense of being selected, framed, perspectively oriented, post-processed, and so on. Nothing, then, that the objects in question haven't already been subject to on their journey to and through being.

Fukushima Nuclear Power Station information (following earthquake)

2011-03-12T20:00:00.019Z

Introduction
All our wishes go out to friends and strangers alike in Japan, in light of the terrible events of the last two days. I am preparing this article to provide information on the status of the nuclear power facilities in the Sendai region. I am doing so to counter inflammatory and irresponsible misinformation I have encountered in various forums and social networks of which I am a part (e.g. statements that a "nuclear explosion" has occurred).

For the record I am resolutely anti-nuclear for three main reasons: a) it incontrovertibly leads to the proliferation of materials for nuclear weapons, b) it produces extremely hazardous waste that we will never be able to clean up, c) is not economically viable if one considers the true costs of the reactors, infrastructure, storage, clean-up and other costs. But in this article I am not here to preach but rather accumulate basic facts. I mention this only in case some more rabid elements assume I am pro-nuke.

Background
There are two power stations directly affected by this natural disaster, both located in Futaba District, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan. Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Station (aka Fukushima I) has six reactors (784 MW except Unit 1 at 460 MW), of which units 1-4 were running on 11 March 2011. (Units 5-6 were shut down for regular maintenance.) Fukushima Daini Nuclear Power Station (aka Fukushima II) has four reactors of 1100 MW each. Each are old-style reactor systems using a simple steam conduction principle. The nuclear reaction produces intense heat with converts water liquid to vapour (steam), which then drives turbines for electricity. Fukushima I Unit 1, the oldest, had been operational since 1971.

The earthquake ID usc0001xgp, magnitude 8.9, occurred at 14:46:23 local time, on 11 March 2011 centred about 130 km east of Sendai, Honshu. Nine minutes later a tsunami warning was sent out from the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center. Since the wave front was reported (where?) as travelling at a speed of 10 km per minute or greater, this would have meant the warning would have been received onshore at most four minutes before the wave impacted.

Despite this, it now appears that those on the coast of Sendai had advance warning by way of sirens and announcements through public address speakers. The Japanese are well trained for earthquakes and knew to move to higher ground, even without such announcements. However, no-one expected a wave of up to ten metres in height and reports now indicate that many simply could not evacuate fast enough. The largely low-lying ground meant that water travelled up to 10km inland, depending on the lie of the land.

Consequences
This earthquake broke the mains electricity connection and triggered automatic shut-down procedures at Fukishima I at 14:48. This involves full insertion of control rods into the material in the core. This prevents further nuclear reactions at which time the reactor is said to be "subcritical". The main steam isolation valves are closed, so that there is no longer a direct connection from the reactor core to the outside world. (In any case, I believe there is no direct connection in this design, since there is an intermediary circuit of water.)

It then takes some time for the reactor to cool down (on the order of days) during which time cool water must be pumped into the core. Due to flooding caused by the tsunami, the generators supplying power to these pumps failed (either for a period or entirely -- information is unclear). As a third system, batteries would be brought online, but these last only for a short period. What is required in the longer term is either: a continuing supply of charged batteries, working diesel generators, or restoration of the power grid. In this regard, news reports of the US Army flying in "coolant" was misinformation, unless there was some reason for them to fly in water when there was plenty at hand. It might instead be presumed they were arriving with more fuel for the generators or more batteries.

Issues with getting enough coolant into the cores meant that temperatures in the suppression chambers exceeded 100 degrees in the various units. It was thus deemed necessary to release pressurised air, in order to cool the buildings. This air would contain radiation in terms of Nitrogen 14. Before the venting occurred, residents were evacuated from an area 3km in radius. This would be to avoid them breathing in radiation that, though low in itself, might cause long-term health issues.

Following this, on-site radiation stations (at the perimeter of each plant) read high enough to trigger the report of an "incident" under Article 15, Clause 1 of the Act on Special Measures Concerning Nuclear Emergency Preparedness.

At Dai-ichi a further earthquake (140 such with magnitudes up to 6.2 occurred in the period after the main quake according to the U.S. Geological Survey) caused an explosion at Unit 1 at 15:36, as widely reported in the media. Four workers were injured. Furthermore, following an earlier accident (likely the initial earthquake) a tower crane operator working in the exhaust stack was confirmed dead at 17:17. The radiation "incident" was reported at 16:17. The evacuation zone was increased from 10km to 20km at 19:11.

At Daini the radiation "incident" was reported at 15:29. The government set the evacuation zone at 3km by 17:00 and 10km at 19:00. Unit 1 was first cooled by isolation condenser, followed by sea water at 20:20pm, and then boric acid subsequently. Units 2 and 3 are being cooled by water. This indicates a more serious problem with cooling in Unit 1. Three workers were injured on-site. An employee working in Unit 1 was irradiated at 106.3mSv, enough to require decontamination procedures.

Severity
What concerns everyone is how much radiation has been let loose into the general environment as a result of the drastic measures taken to cool the multiple reactors. The Kyodo news service reports that radiation is 8x normal outside the plant, 100x normal in the control room and 1000x normal in the containment area. Evacuees are now being scanned for radiation.

The System for Prediction of Environment Emergency Dose Information (SPEEDI) is not showing figures for those power plants nor two others in the north of Japan. Rather than read any conspiracy theory into this, I suggest it is simply due to lines being down.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has established the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES) in order to rate the severity of any nuclear mishap. Reuters has reported the current accident is rated a 4, Accident With Local Consequences. For reference, Three Mile Island was a 5, and Chernobyl was a 7. But these are only general categories and do not tell us much.

Sources
Besides those sources already linked, I have used the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) bulletins, which seem to me remarkably frank and timely. My general information comes from the BBC, Reuters, Sky News, etc. though I remain entirely sceptical of mainstream media.

I will update this article with missing information and developments only for a short while.

Update: The TEPCO site is off-line, likely swamped with requests.

Update: Nitrogen 14 is indeed a component of the vented steam, but as this is not radioactive I am not sure why the steam has been labelled as such.

Update: Coastal areas had some (not much) time to evacuate so I have added further info to my description.

Update: As of 13 March the automated cooling system at Dai-ichi Reactor 3 has failed. Pressure has been reduced by manually opening the safety valve, injecting sea water and boric acid as in Reactor 1 previously. It can be assumed that there is now a risk of the building exploding as did Reactor 1, due to accumulated Hydrogen.

Update: I mention in the body of the article that an earthquake caused the explosion of the Reactor 1 building shell, since this is what TEPCO reported. I wish to clarify this matter. What exploded was Hydrogen gas, created when the shells of the cooling rods melt. The presence of such is indicative of a serious problem with cooling. It could well be that an earthquake triggered the explosion, since the Hydrogen has to mix with something (Oxygen, say) to become flammable.

Update: The use of sea water indicates a serious problem since the corrosive effects of this liquid means the reactor can never be used again. TEPCO is writing off these expensive installations in an attempt to forestall further problems.

Update: According to the Nuclear Information and Resource Service website, TEPCO has reported that six to ten feet of the core of Reactor 3 has been exposed for some time. The bulletin was dated 18:30 13 March but the time of the announcement is not stated.

Aided, Inspired, Multiplied x500

2011-02-24T23:00:00.056Z

"The two of us wrote Anti-Oedipus together. Since each of us was several, there was already quite a crowd. Here we have made use of everything that came within range, what was closest as well as farthest away. We have assigned clever pseudonyms to prevent recognition. Why have we kept our own names? Out of habit, purely out of habit. To make ourselves unrecognisable in turn. To render imperceptible, not ourselves, but what makes us act, feel, and think. Also because it's nice to talk like everybody else, to say the sun rises, when everybody knows it's only a manner of speaking. To reach, not the point where one no longer says I, but the point where it is no longer of any importance whether one says I. We are no longer ourselves. Each will know his own. We have been aided, inspired, multiplied."
-- G. Deleuze and F. Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus

we are at some sort of a milestone
having accumulated 500 sorties on this project
(so, half a millestone, then)

if there was a larger scheme of things (there isn't)
then this would be nothing in comparison to it

but i am on the side of volcanoes
and ash clouds

of banks that collapse -- not from rising tides
but from their sedentary state of over-obviousness

of voids in place of regimes

if more had to live without (extensively)
we'd all be living more within (intensively)

i am still whispering on the way to becoming... something
in the larger scream of things

when i get near that target i will know enough to
disengage the inertial guidance system

spiral in
too close

subordinate myself to a trajectory i cannot control
but also cannot abandon myself
to

we must arise again
in the archipelago of becoming

more missives will soon be launched at friendly territory,
their spiral paths signalling the death
of control tower thought

i am sound of mind,
i am sound of body

we are sound

(Certain) Music and (A Limited Approach To) Modernity

2011-02-23T15:00:00.008Z

"Modernity in music is a multi-faceted and complex phenomenon. The much-used 'modernism' is also a catch-all definition which leaves questions still hanging in the air. It is, like socialism or spirituality, a word that can easily be hijacked by partisan voices that then claim ownership of it and thereafter imbue it with their own narrow, specific, pointed, sectarian and self-justifying aura."

There is little to disagree with in that opening paragraph from James Macmillan's article "Music and Modernity" (available at Standpoint Magazine). Modernism, especially as applied to music, has as many definitions as authors; in all cases the term needs to be further specified before use. What is surprising and deeply disappointing is that the author then proceeds to preach a prime example of exactly what he has criticised. His sermon is a vindictive rant based on personal slights, rampant nationalism and out-of-hand dismissal of any politics left of centre.

His two main points are that Pierre Boulez was a tyrannical monster and that religion should be recognised as a musical force. I will not argue with either of those, since his point of view is welcome and supported by argumentation. What is bizarre is the way the essay then goes off the rails into a strange series of over-the-top anti-Left Europhobic pronouncements. In doing so, the author is not brave enough to specify his targets, but rather refers vaguely to "the prophets of Marxist-inspired modernism" and "the new Young Turks" before slandering them by reference to the Khmer Rouge. OTT much?

Along the way Macmillan gives props to British composers at the expense of the rest of Europe. True enough, he manages to salvage some remnants from his carpet-bombing of the continent -- apparently so he can congratulate himself on this act. But Macmillan is far from consistent, on one hand accusing Europeans of rampant anti-Americanism and on the other admitting "Europeans have made a habit of turning enthusiastically towards America as an attractive alternative". Whichever way the wind blows, apparently.

What is telling, most of all, is the restriction of scope to those concert music composers who follow a carefully circumscribed institution-dominated path. There's no mention of Pauline Oliveros, Delia Derbyshire, Luc Ferrari, Ryoji Ikeda, Denis Smalley, Thomas Köner, Alvin Lucier, Alan Lamb, David Toop or thousands of others, since Macmillan's idea of what constitutes music is a good bit narrower than he would admit. If he only wanted to target Western "art music" in his definition of modernity, he should have said so.

Macmillan stretches only so far into the outer limits as to consider John Cage, this being for the express purpose of including him in the fold of religious composers. But his knowledge even this far out from central orbit is lacking, as we are treated to the old and tiresome mistake that "4'33" "is 4 minutes 33 seconds of silence". Good grief!

They missed the point. There's no such thing as silence. What they thought was silence, because they didn’t know how to listen, was full of accidental sounds. You could hear the wind stirring outside during the first movement. During the second, raindrops began pattering the roof, and during the third the people themselves made all kinds of interesting sounds as they talked or walked out. -- John Cage

While I share the author's disinterest in ideological circumferences around allowable musics, I cannot imagine a less inspiring model for this "open, non-dogmatic environment" than the very essay he puts forth.

This is the sound of me.

Walking out.

Valentine's Gig Wrap

2011-02-19T14:00:00.004Z

So the performance last week went well enough. The space is very cool, even if it's not really optimised for music, being more or less a white box. With a nice open glass expanse it looks great but is very reflective. However the best thing is the open feeling among the people; their ability to accept different things. Here are some photos Susannah took of the proceedings. Unfortunately my levels were very low compared with the headline act, so my live-from-air recording did not work out. Like most of my performances, it was a one-off and will never be repeated in quite the same way. You either heard it on the night or it's gone forever!

I will be performing No Input Software on 30 April 2011 as part of a showcase of Irish improvisation. More on this in due course, but keep that date open on your calendar!

In between two experiments in No Input Software was a piece for guitar and hand blender. The first thing I did when I bought a guitar was take off all the strings, for a performance in 2006 supporting KK Null. It's now back to having four wires strung and I used a fifth unattached string as a tactile device to activate the pickups directly.

Oh yeah, and a blender.

Thanks again to Damien Mullane, Campbell Kneale, Albert from Cork, and everyone else involved in the night! I hope there are many more like it. And a big thanks to Susannah for getting some nice photos in very low light.

Rare Live Performance This Sunday

2011-02-09T16:00:00.021Z

I'll be performing live on my experimental No Input Software system this Sunday, 13 February at a special Valentine's Day gig. Headlining will be Campbell Kneale from New Zealand, best known for his work as Birchville Cat Motel, but now producing sounds as Our Love Will Destroy The World -- appropriate enough given the occasion!

Damien Mullane has organised this "night of Music, Art, Partying and Apocalyptic Love" at Raggle Taggle Space (corner of Sarsfield + Henry) in Limerick, Ireland. Doors at 9pm. Admission 7 Euro (5 for students with ID). BYOB. More info at the Facebook page.

The "no input" mixing desk is a sound mixer with outputs wired to inputs, thus creating feedback loops of various permutations and sonic characteristics. Recently I have been recreating this type of cybernetic system in software, in order to challenge certain myths of digital representation. The pieces are improvised live with no overdubs.

The origins of these techniques can be traced back to 1948 and Louis Barron, who, directly inspired by Norbert Wiener's Cybernetics, built feedback circuits that literally burnt themselves up. By 1972 David Tudor was utilising acoustic feedback between transducers in "Untitled". I believe there's still a lot of sonic space to explore in this realm.

My use of Reaktor to reconfigure a modality most associated with electronics is somewhat ironic. Of course we all expect audio software to produce sounds, so it is hardly a trick to do so! However my instruments are built to model the analogue equivalents closely, with no use of synthesis as such, no samples and no audio inputs.

Two examples of what this might sound like are available on my Listen page through SoundCloud. Check out "Bone-Seeker" and "The Department Of Fallout". The results are chaotic and only partially predictable, so who knows what will happen on the night.

I invite you all to this rare live performance.

"La Radia"

2011-02-08T00:00:00.006Z

Here's a good example of what happens when I get carried away... my typographic layout for the classic Futurist manifesto "La Radia". I've been gathering important historical texts for the unit on radiophonics I am teaching and this one captured my imagination. Here are two examples of the rhapsodic prose:

"La radia must not be cinema because cinema is dying (a) from rancid sentimentalism of subject matter (b) from realism that involves even certain simultaneous syntheses (c) from infinite technical complications (d) from fatal banalizing collaborationism (e) from reflected brilliance inferior to the self-emitted brilliance of radio-television"

"La radia shall be the reception amplification and transfiguration of vibrations emitted by matter. Just as today we listen to the song of the forest and the sea so tomorrow shall we be seduced by the vibrations of a diamond or a flower"

Download the complete PDF here.

The Melody Of Thinking

2011-01-29T12:00:00.006Z

I've been absent from this blog so far this year, busy with numerous activities including a new teaching position, composition and photography. On this last matter I'd like to bring your attention to the Unfringed Festival that is currently underway here in Limerick. In particular, today (Saturday) and tomorrow (Sunday) at 5pm you can view the Limerick Dance Triple Bill at 36 Cecil Street.

This includes "The Melody Of Thinking", choreographed by Angie Smalis and performed by Katarina Mojzisová, with an original composition by Dorota Konczewska -- three of the most creative artists in Limerick working together! I was happy to be asked to shoot the event and here are a couple of the photos I caught in rehearsal last week.

Tickets are a tenner for each show in the festival. I hope to see you there! (And sorry for the late notice.)

Captain Beefheart's 10 Commandments of Guitar Playing

2010-12-18T22:00:00.011Z

I have taken this lock, stock and barrel from The Captain Beefheart Radar Station to commemorate the passing of Don Van Vliet, who showed us how roots music should be done... loud, crazy and out of control.

1. Listen to the birds

That's where all the music comes from. Birds know everything about how it should sound and where that sound should come from. And watch hummingbirds. They fly really fast, but a lot of times they aren't going anywhere.

2. Your guitar is not really a guitar

Your guitar is a divining rod. Use it to find spirits in the other world and bring them over. A guitar is also a fishing rod. If you're good, you'll land a big one.

3. Practice in front of a bush

Wait until the moon is out, then go outside, eat a multi-grained bread and play your guitar to a bush. If the bush doesn't shake, eat another piece of bread.

4. Walk with the devil

Old Delta blues players referred to guitar amplifiers as the "devil box." And they were right. You have to be an equal opportunity employer in terms of who you're brining over from the other side. Electricity attracts devils and demons. Other instruments attract other spirits. An acoustic guitar attracts Casper. A mandolin attracts Wendy. But an electric guitar attracts Beelzebub.

5. If you're guilty of thinking, you're out

If your brain is part of the process, you're missing it. You should play like a drowning man, struggling to reach shore. If you can trap that feeling, then you have something that is fur bearing.

6. Never point your guitar at anyone

Your instrument has more clout than lightning. Just hit a big chord then run outside to hear it. But make sure you are not standing in an open field.

7. Always carry a church key

That's your key-man clause. Like One String Sam. He's one. He was a Detroit street musician who played in the fifties on a homemade instrument. His song "I Need a Hundred Dollars" is warm pie. Another key to the church is Hubert Sumlin, Howlin' Wolf's guitar player. He just stands there like the Statue of Liberty — making you want to look up her dress the whole time to see how he's doing it.

8. Don't wipe the sweat off your instrument

You need that stink on there. Then you have to get that stink onto your music.

9. Keep your guitar in a dark place

When you're not playing your guitar, cover it and keep it in a dark place. If you don't play your guitar for more than a day, be sure you put a saucer of water in with it.

10. You gotta have a hood for your engine

Keep that hat on. A hat is a pressure cooker. If you have a roof on your house, the hot air can't escape. Even a Lima bean has to have a piece of wet paper around it to make it grow.

I must admit I have never carried a church key, but the rest of the commandments I attempt to uphold. I will add that the first thing I did when I bought an electric guitar was took off all the strings. I've played it that way ever since.

Choose My Best Photo

2010-12-15T18:00:00.014Z

1. Telecommunication

It's difficult enough being a photographer without also having to be an editor and figure out which of my shots are "the best". But at this time of the year various competitions and networking sites ask "What is your single best photo of the year?" In an attempt to answer that vexing question, I put together a bunch of candidates and asked my friends on Pentax Forums what they thought.

I've now narrowed it down to the top eight and want to get your opinion as well. Let me know in the comments which you prefer. You can click through each photo to get a larger version on Flickr. And if you find something totally different that you prefer from my Flickr stream, let me know that too.

2. Myths Of The New Forest: Detritus #01352

3. Cone Of Light

4. The Thames at Work (Red)

5. inspection

6. interference

7. Looking Out The Window

8. chimney replication

Sony PCM-M10 and Olympus LS-10 Sound Examples

2010-12-15T17:00:00.008Z

There are now over sixty comments to my original Sony PCM-M10 versus Olympus LS-10 / LS-11 article and the follow-up Revisiting the Sony PCM-M10 versus Olympus LS-10 / LS-11 Discussion. Lately they have been coming thick and fast, no doubt as people look to buy something nice for Christmas. In answer to the call for some sounds to listen to, it did some quick and dirty recordings this week, which you can download in a ZIP archive.

These are not precise comparisons of the recorders -- nor have I had an opportunity to record any live music with both. But maybe something is better than nothing. The first set of recordings are mono files of music playback. So the source has already been heavily processed and finally output from an RME FireFace and Behringer Truth monitors.

The second set are stereo recordings made about 50cm away from the source, me jangling a bundle of keys to get extreme transients. Both recorders were on low sensitivity, with inputs set to 5 (half way). (I note in passing that these recorders must have very different internal sound paths. One clue to this is that, when on high sensitivity, input zero registers a signal on the Olympus but not on the Sony.)

All recordings were made at 44.1KHz / 24 bit but have been normalised and reduced to 16 bits. I present the full PCM files since MP3 compression plays havoc with evaluating the true sound.

Since I normalised the files and didn't calibrate the inputs in any way, these recordings should not be used to evaluate the noise floor. But they might help get a feel for the frequency response and stereo sound stage. I can clearly hear the difference and prefer the boldness of the Olympus sound. It has more presence and a richer low end. On the other hand I am thinking the Sony has greater dynamic range and might hence better preserve transients.

I am not sure how long the file will be available on the hosting service, so grab it now if you would like to.

I will also remind you of the donation button in the sidebar. Buy me a coffee or help with the home heating fund. Any amount is appreciated!

Official Beer Protocol of Canada

2010-12-11T16:00:00.009Z

It's winter here in the Northern Hemisphere. But that doesn't stop Canadians from indulging in what they love best... beer. A hilarious photo on a photo forum inspired me to list the rules Canadian beer drinkers live by. This was off the top of my head so if you have any more, please contribute in the comments!

Here follows the Official Beer Protocol of Canada:

1. There is always time for one more beer.

2. In a crowd, lead with the beer. People will part in deference.

3. In a crisis, save the beer. It's the only thing that will get you through the next crisis.

4. In a heatwave, buy ice. Ice is only useful in respect to how much beer it can keep chilled. (Corollary: Never check into a motel that doesn't have a working ice machine.)

5. Real beer comes in bottles. Save them and return them for a refund. Do this once a year when you have three or four thousand. Buy more beer with the deposit.

6. A beer that is not open is a useless beer. Learn how to open a beer with a) a bottle opener, b) keys, c) a coin, d) any available flat surface, e) your teeth. The last is considered uncouth since it means you have not mastered the first four techniques.

7. The unit of beer is a "2-4". Every decent party requires one 2-4 per participant.

8. The plural of "beer" is "more beer". Or simply "beers".

9. The unit of distance is "beers". As in, "It's only six beers to Lake Huron." (Archaic usage.)

10. When lost for a conversational topic, try beer. Complain about the quality while drinking more. Dis the American crap. Tell the joke about making love in a canoe.

Andrew Huang's Cornucopia Of Musical Goodness

2010-12-10T19:00:00.021Z

It's not often I devote a post to another website; there are other blogs dedicated to the task of cycling and recycling. I must now make an exception for the most amazing -- nay genius -- Songs to Wear Pants To, home to musician Andrew Huang. Andrew takes ideas from his internet fans, fashions then into amazingly funny ditties in his home studio in Toronto and then posts them to his overly pink website... which encourages the next iteration. If you send him money he'll write a tune specially for you; otherwise you take your chances that your request will be the one in one hundred that catches his attention.

In all cases you can listen for free, while downloads are either gratis or a buck. He also has several CD compilations that come cheap for the amount of sheer work that went into them. Andrew is smart, generous and will hopefully never give up this process. Folks, this is what the Internet is all about!

But the work also says something about commodification and how the music business is quite happy -- still -- to sell us the same tunes over and over. Andrew has mastered the form of the pop-rock song and can fit anything that exists to this container. Or maybe not? Maybe there are still things that just don't fit?

In the meantime, laugh until you cry. Here follow some of my favourites, a veritable cornucopia of incredibleness. I stopped at ten because I hear the Top Ten is a common destination for musicians of this calibre.

Beware The Sea Anenemone
"so we all know that sea anenemones are the scourge of the seven seas, and that they kill pretty much everything with reckless abandon. mabye you could write a song about this ever-so-dangerous little tentacled fella’."

Car Noise Waltz of the Egg Slicer
"Could you do a disjointed waltz of any noises you can get out of a car? like, only use a car as your instrument. oh, and you can use an egg slicer too. the kind with all of the wires. no words please!

I Promise You From The Bottem Heart
"i promise you from the bottem heart. i will love you to death, till us part…. I prome you, as a lover and a freind, i will love you"

Reverse Escargot
"can you write a song about snails who eat people?"

Thinking About Thinking About Thinking About Thinking About Thinking About Thinking About Thinking About Thinking About Thinking About Thinking About Thinking About Thinking About Thinking About Thinking About Frogs
"write a song about thinking about thinking about thinking about thinking about thinking about thinking about thinking about thinking about thinking about thinking about thinking about thinking about thinking about thinking about frogs"

This Girl
"If you could help me out with something that would be great. I really like this girl, but I don’t know how to express it. If you could write a song about her with her beautiful light blue eyes, long brown hair, and great athletic body, that would be awesome."

I Am Bjork
"be bjork"

I Am Tuna
"Please write a very, very, very sad song about prime-time network television and how your favorite shows always get cancelled. It should be from the point of view of tuna."

I Am The First Fifty Digits Of Pi
"Please compose and record a song extolling the virtues of your Web site in which the lengths of the words can also be used as a mnemonic for at least the first 50 digits of pi. In other words, the first word has three letters, the second word one letter, the third word four letters, and so on."

My Lack Of Updates
"Write a song about your lack of updates."

Sample Shots From Pentacon 135mm Preset

2010-12-09T01:00:00.071Z

In my last article I recommended three different 135mm lenses based on their price (less than 100 significant units, whether they be dollars, pounds or euros), image quality and build. These were all M42 lenses that will require an adapter to use on your digital SLR. I have an official Pentax brand M42 to K-mount adapter to fit the Pentacon 2.8/135mm preset (made in DDR) to my K20D. Here I'll share some results and initial impressions.

These two photos of Schweppes I took earlier today as she sat staring out into our snowy back garden. Those who follow me on Flickr will know that she is my favourite subject! I have processed these shots minimally, bringing them through my automatic settings in Adobe RAW Converter and then just touching up the contrast a bit. Actually I cannot guarantee the colour balance hasn't shifted as well, since these are not rigorous tests (I don't do those often) but rather real-world use cases. I would likely have done a bit more post-processing but I wanted to keep them close enough to the original RAW file so that the image quality of the lens could be judged. So it's a compromise.

The colour is the first thing to notice. It is distinctly "old world", with a yellow-ish tinge and muted hues. I am used to the modern Pentax colour rendering, which is vibrant and true to life... maybe a tad punchier than real. I almost never need to enhance -- and am just as likely to tone down -- the colours.

The Pentacon is not up to those standards but has a look that I find appealing -- at least for this subject! In the following shot the colours have been hyped a bit so it is not a fair comparison, but I would say from recalling the RAW that it started out much the same.

As far as sharpness goes, I've been needing to adjust myself to the fact that it is difficult getting perfect focus, since the focus ring is stiff. Likely it needs a good service. As it is I don't mind the friction except if I turn it one way the lens starts to unscrew from the mount! This is terribly annoying as it means I need two hands. So fine focus is not easy to get.

A remark in passing: for "Shadowy '2'" above I did some extra sharpening and detail enhancement in PP. All the other shots have only a bit of final sharpening after size reduction. You should likely look at them in their native size on Flickr, as these have been resized further for the blog. I have not posted full-size images and see no real reason to do so. I don't generally gaze at 100% pixel photos and I hope neither do you!

Even considering those objects that lie in the focal plane, the lens is not up to the standards of the FA 43 Limited or FA 77 Limited, both of which I am very familiar with. But let's be reasonable, it costs a fraction of their price! And it's a few decades older. I should note here that these sample photos were taken at varying apertures between f/2.8 and f/8. Basically I kept the preset stop at f/8 and simply shot what seemed best. The EXIF cannot note the aperture used on a manual lens and I didn't stop to take notes.

The candle shot was hand-held in a dark place. I had to crank the ISO, so I have run it through some modest noise reduction (using Noise Ninja). It is sharp enough though, don't you think? This photo starts to show the nice out-of-focus rendering the Pentacon is known for. I don't have any super-amazing bokeh examples but wait until spring when the flowers are out!

Actually, while the rendering of blurred elements is very smooth, I somehow doubt the Pentacon does this any nicer than a similar focal length lens at a similar aperture. The multitude of aperture blades does not guarantee nice bokeh; it simply means that out of focus specular highlights will be circular in shape. And actually I quite like hexagonal highlights (call me weird) so this is not a big issue for me. But I am sure further shots will reveal all!

As far as handling goes, I love the stepless aperture and preset system. The lens does not feel too heavy to me, but I wouldn't want one more massive. And it's not too long considering the hood is included. Unlike the Carl Zeiss Jena, the length does not change much when you focus. However, I have been completely spoiled by the FA 77mm Limited which is a tiny thing. This makes me wish for a compact FA 135mm Limited, which will never happen I am sure!

My second big issue with the lens (after the focus ring) is the minimum focus distance of 1.5m, which is insanely long. In practical terms I am always too close to what I want to shoot. More so, I cannot shoot anything on the ground except at an oblique angle. (On Flickr I have a footprint in the snow as an example.) This annoys me.

In the previous article I remarked on the fact that the body contacts are exposed. if someone has a solution for this, please comment. I do not feel that good out in the snow with the camera half naked!

If you want to see my shots with this lens as they progress, click through one of the images here to get to Flickr. Then note the dedicated set I have created for the Pentacon.

If this series of articles is useful to you, please consider donating to our heating fund, using the PayPal link in the sidebar. I guarantee that all money raised will go to our natural gas supplier!

Three 135mm Lens Recommendations

2010-12-08T21:00:00.069Z

In my last article I looked at 135mm Lenses in general and the Pentax offerings in particular. That overview considered those made for the Pentax-specific K-mount, but also those for the M42 mount, which is easily adapted to Canon, Nikon and other systems. In this article I'll be looking at some of the third-party offerings, and again much will be applicable no matter what system you use.

With dozens of brand names and hundreds of models, where does one start? I went to the various forums and blogs where people chat about such things and gathered up as many recommendations as possible. Thirteen lenses were tested by Michel Pollet on a Canon, five of which I could strike off my list since they were zooms or incompatible with Pentax (your criteria may vary). Seven lenses were tested by Dave on Pentax Forums. A related discussion managed to list 40 possibilities.

My selection criteria includes image quality, portability, price and usability. Since I didn't have the opportunity to try any of these, I based the selection on common recommendations, examination of sample images on Flickr, and so on.

Along the way I discovered such rarities as the Vivitar Telephoto 135/1.5 Professional, which was produced in a tiny batch in 1968 and sold for the equivalent of $2,400! It is fair to say that this is a collector's piece and not something I'm going to stumble across on eBay for fifty quid -- the price point I am targeting.

Carl Zeiss Jena
First up is the "Carl Zeiss Jena DDR MC S 1:3.5 F=135mm", a simple optical design of 4 elements in 3 groups that has stood the test of time. Though it is in fact a Sonnar, for patent reasons it bears the abbreviation "S" instead. This M42 mount lens weighs 430g and is 89mm long, but extends to maybe twice this length. It is thin for a 135mm, taking a 49mm filter. It is an "auto aperture" with the A/M switch I described in SLR Aperture Control Mechanisms. The minimum focus is 90cm and minimum aperture f/22. The diaphragm has 6 blades.

This lens is black with a large ribbed focus ring. For convenience it has a built-in lens hood that retracts when not needed. I love this design since it makes the lens more portable. There is an earlier "zebra" styling, but it's not multi-coated. SLR Lens Review has test findings of the MC version, which are very positive. The Carl Zeiss Jena sells for £50 to £80.

Vivitar Series 1
The second option is the "Vivitar Series 1 135mm 1:2.3", from back when Vivitar were a first rate brand that had only the best Japanese companies manufacture their glass -- in this case Komine. I have their 28mm from that same series and it is excellent, especially when one considers it is an f/1.9! But back to the 135mm which uses 6 elements in 6 groups and is reputed to be quite sharp (but not the absolute pinnacle).

Available in a variety of mounts, including M42 and K-mount, this lens is a hefty solid metal 675g and 88mm long. For convenience it also has a built-in hood. The lens is an unusual shape, flaring out significantly to a 72mm filter. The minimum focus is 89cm which provides a maximum reproduction ratio of 1:4.5. Like the Jena, the minimum aperture is f/22, though it ups the blade count to nine.

The Vivitar Series 1 listed for $220 in 1977 but now goes for a reasonable sum (£80) in off-brand mounts but sometimes double or more for Pentax, since it has something of a reputation in those circles. The blog Making Not Taking has some lovely photos of this item. There is also an earlier version that lacks the coating and the neon blue VMC lettering that advertises this fact.

Pentacon Preset
The third choice is the "Pentacon 2.8/135" -- but it's important to specify the correct variant. VEB Feinoptisches Werk Görlitz manufactured many, starting in 1965. The first was branded Meyer-Optik Orestor and was a zebra model. Then followed a similar lens, also zebra, under the Pentacon name. Third was a black finish model, with a thinner focus ring. Following this was a version with red distance measures in feet and a wider knurled focus area ... and then four more variants as documented by Jörg Vetter. (Horst Neuhaus shows these in relationship to the Exacta lenses made by the same company... an incredible resource for those interested in lens history.)

All the variants so far mentioned have a preset aperture. It is stepless, meaning that rather than having detents at different aperture settings, you are free to choose anywhere in between. The 15-blade aperture produces perfect circular specular highlights in the out-of-focus areas of an image. For this reason the lens is nicknamed the "Bokeh Monster". (For those not familiar with this Japanese term, "bokeh" is used to describe the quality of the out-of-focus zones.)

The Pentacon 2.8/135 Preset weighs 470g and 112mm in length (including the hood), has a 55mm filter and minimum aperture of f/32. The minimum focus is only 150cm, which can hardly be called "close" focus! It comes with a dedicated screw-on hood and is commonly found with a hard case -- I believe this was included with the lens when initially sold. Though it is superficially similar to the Carl Zeiss Jena, this lens is an updated 5 element in 4 group design.

Following the many models already mentioned, the company released "Auto" and "Electric" versions. These have automatic apertures and only 6 blades. They are multi-coated but reportedly do not offer the same smooth out-of-focus area or gentle rendering. Avoid buying one of these lenses by mistake. A quick glance at even a poor photo will reveal if the preset ring is present.

At the top of this article you will find a picture of the fourth version of the Pentacon 2.8/135 Preset, on my Pentax K20D. To my eye this is one handsome lens! The build quality is excellent and it is neither too long nor too heavy. However, the mount is so narrow that the body contacts are exposed, so I'd think twice about taking this out in inclement weather. The following profile view highlights this problem.

Why did I buy the Pentacon over the other two recommendations? No reason really; it just happened to come up for a good price. I am sure I'd be equally happy with the others. But I must say I was intrigued by the idea of 15 blades, wanted an East German lens in my collection and thought it looked fab. Besides which, this is my first preset aperture lens and my first with stepless aperture control. So it's a great learning experience!

If you have a little more to spend, don't forget the Takumars and other Pentax lenses mentioned in the last article. Whichever lens you purchase you'll find working at 135mm on a cropped sensor to be a new photographic experience.

135mm Lenses

2010-12-03T03:00:00.033Z

At one time almost everyone had a 135mm lens. After your prime 50mm focal length it was one of the most popular choices in order to get more telephoto "reach" while maintaining a reasonably fast maximum aperture. As a bonus a 135mm lens does not have to be too large or heavy, so it's easy to handle. And the optics are generally excellent, so you don't need to fuss and fret over which brand to buy. Unless, of course, you like fussing and fretting over such decisions, which most of us do. It's part of the fun after all!

In this article I'll pique your interest in 135mm lenses and give an overview of the Pentax-specific offerings.

"Back in the day" there were a number of popular focal lengths, after the ubiquitous 50mm:
35mm for street photography
28mm for wide angle, a nice field of view (FOV) for landscapes
85mm in a fast optic for portraits
100mm or so for macro lenses -- close-ups of bugs, flowers and such-like

All of these focal lengths were easy enough to make at a reasonable price point. They have been popular through the history of SLR photography, but with the introduction of digital something odd happened.

The 135mm disappeared.

Whither the 135?
I am not sure why this happened. I think it was mostly to do with the rise of zoom lenses. After all, almost every contemporary photographer has a lens that will shoot at 135mm, it just isn't a prime. I think it was also partially to do with the popularity of the "cropped" APS-C sensor. The field of view of a 135mm lens on these sensors is that of a classic 200mm. Though that can't be the whole story, since 200mm was hardly a useless length, even back in classic 35mm film days.

Regardless of the reason, there are only three 135mm primes on the market today, the Canon EF 135mm f/2.0L USM, AF DC-Nikkor 135mm f/2D and Zeiss Sonnar T* 135mm f/1.8. On the other hand, a trawl through eBay will reveal literally hundreds of older models for any camera system you care to name. So that's one reason to consider this focal length: availability.

The second is affordability. While you can pick up an old lens for fifty bucks or so, those I listed above will run you $1000, $1400 and $1500 respectively. No doubt they are made to the highest standards, but are we really losing that much by getting a classic alternative? Not if it's been well looked after. If there's one thing I have learned it's that old optics might well be better than contemporary optics. Once upon a time people engineered and built things to last. On the other hand, it is true that the newest designs can be optimised for digital sensors and might have fractionally better coatings on the front and back elements. These factors are real but negligible for most purposes.

What are the main compromises in getting a classic lens? First of all, it will be manual focus. That's not a big deal to anyone who enjoys photography as an art. Secondly, you likely won't get automated apertures. Be sure to have read my last article, SLR Aperture Control Mechanisms, to familiarise yourself with the alternatives. Lastly, a piece of gear that's been banging about since the sixties might need servicing to bring it up to standard. Be careful of what you buy sight unseen; you are gambling on its condition. (But I do this all the time.)

Now I'll put on my Pentax hat and have a look at their past 135mm models, just to get a feel for the choices out there. Here I am replicating the process I went through before buying a 135mm lens, in order to help out anyone who might follow in my footsteps. Pentax is an interesting case, since they do not currently have a offering in this class. But if you shoot some other system, keep reading. A lot of the choices are for M42 screw mount and can be as easily adapted for Canon as Pentax.

The Pentax Offerings
The earliest Pentax lenses are M42 screw mount, but can be used with many contemporary cameras via a simple adapter. The M42 mount was first developed by Carl Zeiss at their Jena plant in 1938 and was associated with brands like Pentacon and Praktica. But Pentax did the most to introduce this mount to the USA and so it was often named after that company. Their M42 lenses were branded "Takumar" and still have a devoted following. The build quality is excellent and manual focus a delight to use. Aesthetically they are black and "industrial" in appearance, often with large chunky rings.

No fewer than six variations on the Takumar 135mm f/3.5 were released from 1957 to 1973. To this we can add three different Takumar 135mm f/2.5 lenses. Of these the lens in the highest regard is the "Super-Multi-Coated TAKUMAR 1:2.5/135" (to give it the official name) from 1972. While you can spend only $50 for a Tak, that particular model will be significantly more.

When Pentax changed from M42 to their K-mount they kept the Takumar brand for the first while. The "Takumar (BAYONET) 1:2.5 135mm" is a lens to avoid. But the next generation "smc PENTAX 1:2.5 135mm", made from 1975 to 1985, uses the same optical formula as the best Takumar and is considered to be an excellent "sleeper" lens. There is also a smaller and slower "smc PENTAX 1:3.5/135" which does not have the same following.

By the way, this first generation of lenses are called "K" after the mount, even though the designator appears nowhere in their names. They are still manual focus and manual aperture in operation. If you read my previous article you might wonder why such lenses are still completely manual even on the newest bodies. The answer is that Pentax has "crippled" the KAF (and subsequent) mounts. They do not have the mechanical stop-down coupler so they cannot be used automatically with older lenses. Instead one must manually "stop down" by pressing the Green button. I still hope some newer digital body will correct this oversight, which is the most glaring mistake Pentax has made with their cameras. (Though of course it only affects those of us looking to use old lenses.)

The next generation, "M", were very similar to the K's and in fact overlapped them in production. The "smc PENTAX-M 1:3.5 135mm" is supposed to be decent, but I haven't found anyone raving over it. Following this was the "smc PENTAX-A 1:2.8 135mm", which unfortunately repeated the optics of the Takumar Bayonet, despite offering automatic aperture for the first time. This is perhaps because it was a deliberate attempt at a cheap lens to contrast with the "smc PENTAX-A* 1:1.8 135mm", likely the pinnacle of all Pentax offerings. This comes up for sale only once a year and attracts as much money as any contemporary lens, despite being manual focus. The superb optic and wide aperture are the reasons, though it needs to be mentioned that it is more than twice as heavy as its junior version. Not everyone wants to carry close to a kilogram of prime lens.

The first auto-focus series was labelled "F"; today these are relatively obscure compared to the "FA" that followed. Both these series offer similar lenses with a more plastic feel, though still made of metal underneath. Personally I dislike their loose focus and cheap looks despite the fact that the "smc PENTAX-F 1:2.8 135mm IF" and the "SMC PENTAX-FA 1:2.8 135mm IF" are well-regarded. But with prices in the vicinity of $500 we are now out of bargain territory.

Conclusions
The obvious conclusion to reach is that if you want a manual Pentax-compatible 135mm lens then look for the K 135/2.5. But this overlooks two facts. First, its reputation has caused prices to increment to the $300 range. Second, there are many other brands of compatible lenses that might be better deals.

If you want a very good Pentax lens you are in competition with lots of other like-minded photographers, and so will pay a hefty (though fair) price. As an alternative, in my next article I will turn my eye to third party brands.

For specific information on each model mentioned, see:
* Bojidar Dimitrov's Pentax K-Mount Page
* Pentax Forums Lens Review Database