The problem with travel photography......and a solution from Olympus?

I bought my Olympus XZ1 primarily as a carry everywhere camera, one that is suitable for traveling, hiking, family snapshots and so on. I value its light weight, non-interchangeable but very fast aperture lens, its relatively quick focus and shutter release, superb image quality for what I use it for, and generally excellent handling characteristics (except for that darned lens cap that keeps falling off!). I've had it for over six months now and still feel happy with my choice. In short, it is an excellent camera and if your needs are similar to mine I recommend it highly.

But, no matter how good the camera is, or how good the photographer is, there is still a problem to overcome. Uninteresting light. Often when I am traveling around I see something interesting and deserving of a photograph except the light isn't very good. This often happens when you are not able to wait for the light to improve and you know there is no chance of returning when it improves. I am sure everyone experiences this. You can of course take the photograph anyway and later mess around with post-processing to try to make it more interesting but personally I like to see what I am doing sooner than that. Its not exactly pre-visualisation, more like simultaneous visualisation, seeing the intended outcome in the viewfinder at the time of taking the picture. And Olympus has provided some tools to help me do this in the form of the so-called Art Filters and the electronic viewfinder (VF2).

By the intended outcome I mean something that reflects the sensory and emotional response I have to the subject, the reason I noticed it in the first place and wanted to photograph it and make a record of it. This doesn't require that it is realistic in the sense that it must be a naturalistic image of the subject. Reality for me doesn't mean true to nature, there is no such thing in photography, and it is much more personal than that. All photographs distort the natural world in some way. You think Ansel Adams made pictures that are realistic? Only if you see the world with exaggerated black and white tonality. You could say he used a creative art filter called ‘black and white film’. So beyond these few words I don't think any apology is necessary for actually liking and wanting to use Olympus art filters. They are not a gimmick, they are legitimate creative tools.

I find I use two of them more than the others, namely 'dramatic tone' and 'pinhole'. I sometimes wish that could use them both at the same time! I am sure some people will prefer others but these two seem to suit many subjects. I personally don't like the effect of the 'grainy black and white' filter, it has too much contrast for me, and I prefer to use Aperture or Photoshop for b&w conversions, but I sometimes use this filter to preview what something will look like in b&w but then shoot it in colour.

I recently borrowed a friend’s beach house for a few days. Conditions were less than ideal for photography. I couldn't give it my full attention as I had other people (and two dogs!) to consider and the often the weather resulted in very flat lighting. The following pictures illustrate the difference between a 'straight' photograph and an 'art filter' one. I think you will agree that the filters at least result in more interesting pictures even if you don't like the effect. For me they are a lot of fun and sometimes I get something special from them.

The other potential lighting problem is when there is very little of it. I didn't expect full frame sensor SLR performance from the XZ1, but is it "good enough"? It has a fast f1.8 lens and stabilisation which compensates to some extent for its small sensor size, so how useable is it for nighttime pictures? The answer is very useable. Here is an example. I was walking around the Rocks area in Sydney one evening and came across this mysterious scene. I didn't have much time to respond so I just let the camera take over (ISO 1250, f2.5 1/80th sec). The blue patches are from coloured street lighting, not a camera defect.

Something that is easily overlooked with small sensor cameras is their sheer versatility. As well as their portability they enable photographs to be taken of a large variety of subjects in a very small package. I can shoot landscapes, low light scenes, close ups, portraits all with the one camera. The scenes below were taken on a recent walk. I carried a backpack with camping gear for fifty kilometers over very difficult terrain so a heavy camera was not an option!

To do the same with a system SLR would require as a minimum a standard zoom, a fast prime and a macro lens. Yes, I am very satisfied with the XZ1.

Iain

Part Three: Performance

In Part One I said “I bought this camera to replace my aging Canon G7. What I wanted was a compact, light weight camera capable of producing good quality A2 size prints (as I can with my Canon G7) and with useable low light performance. “ So how well does the XZ-1 meet my hopes and expectations? I have already dealt with its size and shape so now I’ll deal with its photographic performance.

As you might expect, there is little to choose between my old G7 and the XZ-1 at low ISOs as they have the same number of pixels.

Canberra* XZ1 ISO 100

Printing to A2 size (594mm x 420mm, or 23.4 x 16.5 inches) presents no problems. On the far side of the lake in the centre of the above picture there is a white van to the left of the flagpole. In an A2 print the wheels of that van are clearly visible and are about 0.5mm high! At normal viewing distance the image looks perfectly sharp

In the following crops the XZ-1 is ahead by a small margin (look at the trees) but it is so small as to not be very important in real life. The auto white balance of the two cameras clearly give very different results. Which do I prefer? I don’t know - it depends on the subject.

Olympus XZ-1 @ ISO 100




Canon G7 @ ISO 100

At high ISOs the results from the two cameras are very different! Here is the full frame at ISO 100 (XZ-1) followed by enlargements at various ISO's:

The G7 is not very useable at ISO 1600. The XZ-1 at ISO 6400 is as good (or as bad, depending on your point of view) as the G7 at 1600, and quite useable at ISO 1600. How times have changed! The XZ-1 lens is over a stop faster too, which adds to its usefulness in low light.

I have always found that digital cameras tend to overexpose highlights and the XZ-1 is no exception. Unless you study the histogram this is impossible to judge with the electronic viewfinder, which is always very bright and the colours are cold and washed out in appearance. Outdoors the rear monitor is no better because it is hard to see. It’s only when you download the pictures that problems become apparent, so most of the time I just leave the exposure compensation on -0.7.

Pictures of fast moving action (pets, children, sports, etc) are not the forte of compact cameras. The delay between pressing the shutter button and taking the picture is always just a little bit too long and many times the moment is missed. The XZ-1 is the best I have tried so far but the problem has not been solved. However, with a little practice and the ability to anticipate the moment you can sometimes get what you want. This picture has caught the moment when the boy in the blue cap has leapt into the air to try to pop a soap bubble and the other children have their arms fully outstretched.

“I used to be indecisive, but now I’m not so sure....” When I first started in photography life was relatively simple. Once you had selected and put a film** in the camera all you had to do was adjust the exposure with two controls, focus and shoot. Many photographers could only afford two or three prime lenses (zooms were rare and not very good optically), or they deliberately chose to limit the number to simplify the decision making process. I used to carry just a 35mm and a 100mm lens. It was always obvious which one was needed for a particular situation. If neither lens was suitable then it wasn’t worth photographing! Herein lies a problem with the modern digital camera. There are just too many choices. When, in addition to shutter speed and aperture, you can also change focal length, ISO, white balance, colour saturation, etc at any time, and get instant feedback on the monitor, life can get very complicated. You have to be very disciplined to set the camera to a particular configuration and stick with it. The temptation to fiddle with the settings is always present and the technology can really get in the way of concentrating on the subject matter.

Now we have ‘art filters’, another addition to the decision making process. They do add some extra versatility to the camera and the results can be really interesting. To complicate things further you can combine some of the art filters with the light balance settings! They can certainly transform what might otherwise be a relatively uninteresting picture. At first I was not convinced that they offer any advantage over post processing but now I realise that even if you don’t use them to take a photograph they can be used to help pre-visualize an effect for later execution in the computer. Sometimes though it can be hard to decide which filter gives the most satisfying result - they encourage ‘kid in a candy shop’ behavior! This site is called ‘Photography is Fun’; art filters help make it fun. Here are a few pictures to give you a taste of the possibilities.

Dramatic Tone Art Filter

No Art Filter applied to next image:-

Pop Art Filter Applied to next image:-

‘Floating Figure’ by Gaston Lachaise,1927

Pinhole Art filter applied to next image

Conclusion

It’s always much easier to make negative comments as there is always something that can be improved. Those that I have made generally apply to all compact digital cameras and are therefore not specific criticisms of the XZ-1. On the contrary, the XZ-1 is a formidable camera. It is compact, robust, and has an almost bewildering array of controls and options. It is capable of capturing extremely high quality photographs and is a worthy successor to my G7. It deserves to be very popular.

* All the photographs in my reports on the XZ-1 were taken in or near Canberra, Australia.
** A celluloid roll coated with gelatine containing light sensitive chemicals that used to be used for photography ;~)

Special word of thanks from the Webmaster:-

Iain I know how much care and detail go into a series of articles like this and I like to thank you for putting together such an interesting report on the new XZ1 camera. It is these types of reports which I believe has more value to potential users. Studying the images while preparing them for placement on the web I could not help thinking, the XZ1 surely seem to pack more detail into the image compared to the LX3 and the G11 I owned before.

Siegfried