Beautiful Olympus E-P1 Micro Four Thirds camera leaks onto net

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Word was that the Olympus EP-1 was to launch tomorrow but the internet has had other ideas about that one and images of the gorgeous little snapper have leaked onto our screens this afternoon. Whoops. Still, I’m sure they can impress us with the specs in the morning.

For now, what we have is rather stunning Micro Four Thirds camera designed in homage to the old Rangefinder film cameras. Of course, instead of 35mm stock, there’s a full size DSLR image sensor in that little body and a choice of one or two lenses. The standard is a 17mm wide angle chap with a 14-42mm 3x zoom by its side.

Doubtless it’ll cost a bomb but we have one night to dream. Sleep well, my friends.

(via Engadget)

Will the camera phone kill the camera?

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Cameras in our phones are becoming serious pieces of kit. It didn’t take long for mobile manufacturers to work out that megapixels make sales and, just one year on from 5-megapixels seeming like a huge amount, we’ve had 8s and now 12s are just around the corner. With camera phones packing the same kind of resolution as high end DSLRs, are the days of the dedicated photography hardware well and truly numbered? Is the digital camera dead?

There’s probably one thing to get out the way fast before anyone blows their top – megapixels do not equal quality. We know this. So, the short answer is that the camera is not dead and indeed will not die for at least the foreseeable future – at least, not the DSLR, but life isn’t looking so rosy for the compact.

You see, camera phones are more than just megapixels these days. Just look at the likes of the LG Renoir. You can control white balance and exposure, you can manually focus, there’s a world of compact features like face detection, blink detection, smile and beauty shots, anti-blur, image stabilisation, vibration reduction and they’ve got ISO ranges just as impressive as anything you’d pick up from Nikon, Canon et al.

In fact, with the likes of the Samsung Pixon on the horizon, there’s not really a lot that all but top end compact cameras can offer that a mobile phone can’t. Before long, they’ll be after the big boys but until then, here’s five things that the camera phone must do to mount a serious challenge:

1) Glassware

If photography is about anything, it’s lens quality and one look at the tiny little shooter on the back of any mobile phone should give you an idea that it’s going to be little match for a chunky old hunk of crafted glass on a dedicated digi-cam.

Nokia and LG have got the right idea by getting world famous manufacturers like Carl-Zeiss and the impronouncable Schneider-Kreuznach involved but it’s still little match for NIKKOR and Leica and co. They’re going to have to work out how to condense that quality into that tiny peas of a lens if camera phones are really going to do the biz.

2) Shutter Response

For me, this is the main reason why camera phones are just as good/bad as compacts. It’s that killer aeon of time that passes between you pressing the shutter release and the photo actually being taken. Much of the lag is about waiting for the auto focus to catch but then there’s all the flash, double flash nonsense and general bleeping and chirping that gets in the way too. And by the time all that’s done, you’ve generally missed the shot.

Only DSLRs give you that instant shutter release and, when the camera phone has mastered that, they’ll be on the warpath. Something beyond two frames per second shooting would do nicely too.

3) PSAM (or a degree of autonomy)

I don’t often shoot in fully manual mode and rarely in either aperture of shutter priority for that matter but, damn it, I want the choice. Maybe I want to take a long exposure shot. It’s the kind of playground that real photography’s made of. Options people, give me options!

4) Zoom

Weirdly, this is one area where compact cameras excel. People love to zoom. We must be a race of voyeurs.

I’ve lost count of the huge telescopic lengths to which compacts can take optical zoom but suffice to say it’s miles further than what you can get out of a mobile. Anyone mentions digital zoom to me and I’m crackin’ skulls.

5) Image Sensors

No one likes a CCD sensor. It’s all CMOS these days but just because it’s got the letters, it doesn’t mean this modern day version of camera film is as faithful in a mobile phone as it is in a DSLR. There’s love and care goes into the production of these things for dedicated cameras and although I’ve seen some interesting news about image sensors for mobiles, I’m yet to be convinced. Get this one right, and the glassware in order, and that’s most of the battle won.

Now just because the mobile phone’s playing catch up with the camera, it doesn’t mean that Nikon, Canon and co. have nothing to lean from telephony. There’s gadgetry within our pocket handsets which should be commonplace in compacts and DSLRs if they want to hang onto their edge too. So here’s five areas where they could borrow some tech:

1) GPS

A minuscule handful of cameras have GPS functionality built in but all too many require extra modules you need to strap on for all your geo-tagging needs. Two words for you there – annoying and expensive, whereas the humble mobile has had GPS for years.

GPS is also a hell of a power drain, so while we’re at it, how about the kind of battery life that wont make us fear turning it on like a dad fears people tampering with the thermostat.

2) Added Functionality

Both mobile phones and cameras have woken up to video capture at roughly the same speed. There’s plenty of DSLRs that shoot HD as there are phones now too, but how many cameras do you know that play music or play a variety of video codecs or feature Dolby sound?

Gadgets are converging and, although I’m not particularly interested in having a toaster on my camera, I appreciate that some people are.

3) LCD Displays

Camera displays are stuck at 2.7 to 3.0 inches. Phones are off to infinity and beyond and, with live view shooting becoming the favourite of future generations, dedicated cameras are going to have to up their game in terms of both screen size and touch interaction as well.

4) Connectivity

So, you’ve taken taken your stills, or video for that matter, and now it’s time to upload them to the web. Easy peasy on a mobile phone but where’s the Wi-Fi and 3G on a camera? The Eye-Fi is all very well and good but it’s not available in the UK as yet.

Now, I appreciate that there’s a whole world of SIM card-ery if this dream is to come true but they’ve made it work for laptops and, besides, it’s not me who’s making the rules here.

5) On board storage

It was all a bit trivial in days gone by but look at something like the N97 – 32GB of built-in storage, and that’s before you’ve bothered with an SD card. A few cameras have addressed the issue but most have a hard disk that’s filled up in seconds by more than a handful of snaps. Plus, when we’re talking HD video footage too, we can really do with all the help we can get. More storage please.

Conclusions

I wouldn’t chuck away your compact just yet but, the minute you see serious quality camera lenses telescoping out beyond a mobile’s body before packing neatly back away again, it’s probably time to start thinking about it.

As for DSLRs, well, I think there’s enough purists out there who’d never hand theirs in for the sake of a phone. They’re untouchable for both image quality and functionality and I doubt we’ll see them replaced for quite some time.

I like to think there’s something else in it too, something slightly more intangeable. I enjoy using camera phones but it just feels right taking pictures with a half a kilogram, specially crafted piece of kit in my hands. Snaps on my mobile phone I’ll take and forget. Photos on my camera are for life.

Sony &alpha 230, &alpha 330 & &alpha 380: DSLRs to step you up from compacts

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Sony has launched three entry level DSLR cameras today in the their alpha range. This gives me the opportunity to geek out over some tech I love and find out what the html for &alpha is.

The baby of the bunch is the &alpha280 which comes with a 10.2-megapixel CCD sensor, 2.7-inch fixed LCD and weighs 450g. The &alpha330 is a touch heftier at 490g, it has the same sensor but the bonus here is that you get a tilt LCD. Last up is the &aplha380 which is identical to the &alpha330 except it’s got 14.2 megapixels of resolution power and it’s possibly not worth spending the extra on.

Those specs aside, you’re essentially looking at the same beast whichever you splash out on. They all use the BIONZ processor for all the CPU power, they each offer ISOs up to 3200 and they’ll let you fire off at 2.5fps.

The Minolta and Konica Minolta lens compatibility ensures you’re getting some quality at the business end of the camera but I feel a little cheated they haven’t stepped up to the plate with CMOS sensors. Feels like they’ve kept the best bit from consumers despite the step up you may have made.

There’s some decent tech in the shape of the in-body image stabilisation and the improved quick AF in live view mode, and there’s probably just the right amount of options to play with in terms of white balance, exposure and light metering.

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Prices and dates when we get them but rest assured that Sony isn’t going to freeze you out with their weirdo proprietary memory sticks. You can use them if you want but all three cameras come with SD/SDHC compatibility too. And, once you’ve had it with the kit lens and you want a little more for your burgeoning shutter addiction, Sony is also releasing a bunch of lenses.

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The DT-50 (F1.8) is a fixed 50mm piece of glass for portraits; if you want to get nice and wide there’s the DT18-55mm (F3.5-5.6); you can go long with the DT 55-200mm (F4-5.6) and there’s also a 1:1 macro lens, the DT 30mm F2.8, for extreme close-up photography. Enjoy yourself.

Sony

GADGET SHOW LIVE TALKS: How to take better photos and get the most from your digital camera

You don’t have to have an expensive camera to take fantastic pictures. I’m not going to say that it doesn’t help but the fact is that a lot people haven’t fully explored the one they’ve already got whether it’s a compact camera, a cameraphone or indeed a digital SLR. So, this is a guide for those people with a fledgling interest in photography of how to take better photos and get the most out of your camera.

Before we get into the all the switches, modes and buttons, it’s important to have an understanding of what it is the camera does when you take a photo. Once you’ve got an idea about how they work, then you can start manipulating them to get the kinds of shots you see in your mind’s eye before they come out totally different on your camera’s LCD.

Simple Basics

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At its most simple, a camera is a box with a hole at the front which you use to control the amount of light coming in. The pattern of light is then recorded at the back of the box either on light sensitive film or, these days, on an image sensor which is the part you’ll hear measured in megapixels. The more the sensor is exposed to light, the brighter the image will be.

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You can make the hole at the front bigger and you can make it smaller and you can also decide how long the hole is open for. So, the idea is that you’ve got two ways that you can control the amount of light coming into the box.

Aperture

The size of the hole is called the aperture and in cameras that’s denoted by the letter f followed by a number usually somewhere between 2 and 22. The higher the number the smaller the hole. So, if your camera’s set to an f-stop of 22, then the aperture’s very small and you’ve hardly got any light coming in. If it’s at 2 then it’s masssive and you’ve got light from the outside world pouring in – very useful if you’re shooting in low light.

Shutter Speed

Now, obviously you don’t want the aperture open all the time as you wouldn’t be able to ever stop light coming into the camera. So there’s a shutter in front of it which moves out of they way when you press the shutter release button – the main shooting button on the camera. We can choose how long the shutter is out of the way for. It’s usually measured in fractions of a second and, of course, the longer you set it for, the more light comes in and the more exposed the image becomes That’s the shutter speed.

Now, the other tricky thing about shutter speed is that the longer the shutter is open for, the more movement plays a factor and if the subject of your photo is not standing still then your photo will come out blurred. So, long shutter speeds are fine to use in dark conditions but only if the subject of your photo is static.

ISO

Once you’d controlled how the light comes into the camera, the only other difference you could make with old film cameras was to choose how sensitive to light your film was going to be. It was called the speed of the film because it was about how quickly the film reacted light. Typically you used to go and buy your Kodak film with a speed of somewhere between 100 and 400 and it was quoted in ASA.

These days, of course, not many people use film but the image sensor works in much the same way and you can set it to whatever light sensitivity you like. The only difference is that it’s now quoted in ISO just to confuse you but the scale is essentially the same.

A low ISO means that the film isn’t particularly sensitive to light, so it’s good for bright sunny days. If it’s pretty dark where you’re taking photos you’d want your camera set to a high ISO so that it’ll be very sensitive to the small amount of light available and so still be able to take a decent picture.

So, having a camera with a good ISO range, 100-6400 for example, is important so that you can take good pictures at low light levels and that’s important so that you can follow the first tip of beginners photography:

TIP 1: DON’T USE THE FLASH

Don’t get me wrong here. The flash is a fantastic invention. It’s a brilliant way of providing light when there isn’t enough naturally to take a photo. The only trouble is that it’s very hard to use well.

It’s a whacking great, blue, artificial light source that creates a whole shadow and perspective that isn’t there and, nine times out of ten, you’ll end up with a photo that doesn’t look much like the scene you’re trying to capture.

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Worse still, and probably the greatest flash crime of all, is when people use the flash to take photos of objects far away. All the happens is that the flash goes off and reflects all the light back off objects in the foreground leaving the background virtually black. The classic example is a sun set. You’ve got low light conditions, so your camera will flash which will bring the trees in the foreground up lovely and bright and make the all the beautiful colours in the distance look like night.

Most cameras will try to pop up the flash at the first sniff of low light because it’s the manufacturers job to make sure that your camera will offer a properly exposed image whether it’s the one you’re trying to take or not. Compact cameras are paricularly bad for this and it’s often a good idea to turn the flash off except for when it’s really just too dark to get anything at all.

TIP 2: SCENE MODES

Manufacturers have realised in the last few years that sometimes you’ll need to tell the camera what it is that you’re trying to take a picture of so that it can make sure it doesn’t accidentally ruin your shots with the flash and instead it can adjust the aperture and shutter settings to something more suitable.

So, now you’ll see 10 or 20 scene modes on your camera with little pictures next to them for just about any occasion you could want to take a snap. There’s ones for night scenes, candlight, snow scenes, sports scenes, baby mode, sunsets and all sorts of others. Each one represents a different selection of shutter speed, aperture, ISO and focus settings which will be most appropirate for capturing your shot. Most of them are really well designed, so do use them because they will give you better pictures.

Thankfully cameras are getting even better at working out what it is you’re trying to take pictures of and a lot of them these days have an intelligent scene mode, or intelligent auto it might be called, which will guess what you’re doing. So, if you’re not sure what the scene is, just set it to intelligent auto and it’ll do the work for you. It won’t always get it right but some makes are better than others at doing it.

TIP 3: MACRO

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One mode you’ll find very useful is macro mode. Macro photography is all about taking images in extreme close up. You won’t find it on most DSLRs because you’ll need special macro lenses but all good compacts will have a macro mode, some of which will allow you to take images at distances of just 1cm and it’s defintely worth using if you are trying to capture very fine detail.

TIP 3: ZOOM

All compacts and most DSLRs will come with some sort of lens that allows you to zoom in and out of your subject. Bear in mind that digital zoom is not the same as optical zoom. Optical zoom is true zoom and maintains quality at all times whereas digital zoom will bring the image closer to you but will pixelate the image at the same time.

When zooming right up close on a subject, it’s very hard to keep the camera still. In bright light it’s not so much of a problem because you can still use fast shutter speeds to prevent blur, but in low light with a slower speed, it’s almost impossible to get a sharp shot.

There’s two major ways to avoid it. One is to use a tripod but that’s a pain to carry around and even more annoying to set up. So, the next best thing is to switch on your camera’s image stabiliser funtion. If it’s DSLR it might have one in the shape of vibration reduction, if it’s a compact it’ll probably have two with another called something along the lines of image stabilisation. Switch them on and you’ll get a steadier picture. If you really want to pull out all the stops, you could try putting the camera in sports mode too which will force it to shoot at the fastest shutter speeds it can.

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At the other end of the scale, it’s worth noting that when you shoot in wide angle, it will, of course, distort everything in the foreground. Now that’s fun and interesing for an album cover but if you’re taking snaps of your other half it will probably make them look very ugly and they will probably throw the camera at your head when you show them the photo of their face that looks like its reflected in the back of a spoon. A lens set at 50mm zoom is where you want to be at for portraits.

TIP 4: FOCUS

Out of the box, most cameras will automatically focus on whatever is in the middle of the frame. A lot of the time that’s ok but often you’ll want the subject of your shot to be off-centre, in which case, there’s few bits and pieces you can do.

One good trick is to put your subject in the middle of the frame, half press the shutter release so that your camera auto-focuses and then, keeping that button half pressed, you can move the frame to where you want it and push down the rest of the button to take the shot without it refocusing.

The trouble is that a lot of cameras won’t let you do that. Cameraphones are particularly bad for this. But help is at hand in all sorts of different ways. Scene modes are useful here again. You can tell the camera that you’re taking a landscape shot and it will make sure it’s focused in the distance no matter what you put in the foreground. Better still are modes such as face detection which will automatically identify any faces in frame an focus in on them wherever they are.

On DSLRs there are lots of different focus settings to play with. You can chose the size and sector of the frame that you’d like to use for the focal reference or quite a good one is to use the AF lock button that most have. It works on the same principle as holding the shutter release button half way down only this time, it’s a button all to itself which you’ve got to keep your thumb on.

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Lastly, if you still can’t get the focus as you want it, you can always just switch to manual mode which you’ll usually find as a switch on the side of the lens.

TIP 5: WHITE BALANCE

Sometimes you’ll find that your the colours in your photographs don’t look as they should and usually that’s because the white balance is off. White balance is done automatically most of the time but sometimes you’ll need to tell your camera what white actually looks like so that it can accurately reproduce all the other colours. You’re essentially giving it a point a reference to work from.

You’ll often see the effects of bad white balancing when you take photos under strip lighting, which is a lot bluer than natural light, or bulb light which is a lot more yellow. Most cameras will have a number of different presets for white balance with pictures next to the them for bulbs, shadows, cloudy weather and all sorts of other light conditions. Pick the right one and you’ll notice all the colours start to look a hell of a lot better.

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Higher end cameras allow you to manually set the white balance by focusing the lens on a uniform white surface – usually a wall or a piece of paper. It’ll give a more accurate representation of your particular light conditions than a preset value and you’ll get better shots. Worth using if you have the time.

TIP 6: EXPOSURE CONTROL

Sometimes you can set your camera to the right mode, you can have what you think are the perfect aperture and shutter speed settings but still you’re not getting the photo you want.

Most of the time, it’ll be because the camera is taking its light reading from the wrong place. If you look at the pictures below of my untidy desk and monitor, I’ve metered the light on screen in the one on the left and you can’t see anything else but if, like on the right, you meter on a darker part of the frame then it’ll make sure that all those parts are bright enough at the expense of the screen which comes across unusually bright.

You can do that before you take the shot by using the AE-Lock button on a DSLR much as the same we did with the AF-lock but a simpler way you can do it is with exposure control which the +/- button you’ll find on all cameras

It’s basically a brightness setting. It won’t change the brightness of certain objects in your photos relative to others but it will lighten or darken the whole image so that you can at least see what it is you’re trying to capture.

TIP 7: BRACKETING

This function is generally only available on DSLRs but this is where exposure control really comes into its own. If you’re not quite sure how over or underexposed you want your image to be, some cameras will let you take a bunch of photos of the same image in rapid fire and with a different exposure setting each time.

You can set how many shots you want to take and at what brightness intervals you want to choose. You end up going through a lot of shots but you’re guaranteed to capture the mood you’re after and, since it’s digital photography, you can just delete all the ones you don’t like; which brings me onto my next tip…

TIP 8: TAKE LOTS OF PHOTOS

It sounds obvious but memory cards are cheap as chips these days. You can pick up 4GB SDs for a fiver on Amazon which can store hundreds of hi-res images.

You’re not going to run out of space, you’re not wasting any resources and you can always delete anything you don’t like later. Just let rip, paricularly when you’re happy with how you’ve set your camera up for your environment, and when you’ve found a subject you’re interested in.

Work it from all angles, from differing distances and sometimes don’t even look. I’ve taken some excellent photos shooting from the hip. It’s fun, you can catch people of guard and you’ll be surprised how interesting the shots look. It works particularly well with good DSLRs because they’re much better at taking instant shots and much better at coping with with any bizarre focusing issues and light conditions you might be randomly throwing at it.

TIP 9: FRAMING & COMPOSITION

Before the invention of Photoshop and other picture editing software, if photography wasn’t all about exposure, it was about framing. Getting a shot framed right is probably the most artistic part of photography but if you’re not naturally good at it, don’t worry you will get better. You can always crop your shots anyway.

One of the joys of photography is discovering your own style and it’s not really the place of a tech blog to start telling you all about the finer points of art but there are a couple of basic ideas that are worth bearing in mind.

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The first is to make sure you’ve got a some foreground in your shots as well as background. You’ll often see very dull landscape shots that never really capture the beauty of a scene. Landscapes are some of the hardest pictures to take well but if you add some foreground like a dead tree or some cattle and suddenly your picture has life and context. Photos with an excellent composition will lead the eye through from foreground to background.

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Probably my favourite framing tip is the rule of thirds which simply put says not to place your subject directly in the middle of the frame. It’s not very interesting and it’s not particularly imaginative.

Instead, place the subject one third of the way over from either the top, bottom, left or right of the frame and you instantly have something that looks better. When a shot is uneven, it adds an imbalance and a conflict to the eye and that creates drama in your photography. Most cameras come with a grid overlay to help you find the thirds of the frame but you’ll probably find you can do it just as well by eye.

There’s plenty of other bits and bobs you can pick up on framing and composition if your read around or through your own trials, but these are a good place to start. My only other advice would be to try to think away from the obvious shot. Experiment at being too close or at an angle see what you come up with instead.

TIP 10: COLOUR CONTROL

Mess around with the colour settings on your camera. Some compacts and all DSLRs come with colour control presets which are defintely worth exploring and the two I would heartily recommend are Vivid colour mode and Black & White. The Vivid mode is fantastic if you’re on holiday somewhere bright and exotic. It makes all the colours look beautiful and gives you some really stunning shots. If I shoot in colour, I usually have the setting to Vivid.

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My personal favourite at the moment is probably black and white photography for a number of reasons. One is that it’s very forgiving. It makes every shot look like an instant classic from a photo of a mountainside to a quick snap of some bloke on the train. It brings out textured sufaces beautifully which might ordinarily be missed in colour.

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The other great area for black an white is in portraits. It flattens most skin tones, removes most blemishes and you’ll generally find that even the most camera shy will be quite happy with how you capture them in black and white.

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DSLRs will let you set your own colour modes by adjusting the contrast, colour and brightness and save them for later use. Well worth doing if you own a DSLR and, for my money, well worth buying one for.

TIP 11: LIGHTING

I’m not going to suggest you go out and biy a set of lights but I would tell to keep an eye on from where it is your shot’s illuninated. Side lighthing is nice and dramatic, front lighting is great if you want to capture a bright, blue sky and although backlighting is trickier to get the hang of in terms of getting the exposure levels right, it’s well worth experimenting with.

TIP 12: MESS AROUND WITH SHUTTER SPEED

You’ll probably end up with a lot of badly exposed and blurred shots 90% of the time but you can get some fantastic results with longer exposures. It works particularly well if only one element of your composition is moving while the others stay still. The classic examples are photos of waterfalls where the water blurs and it can looks like sugar or mist for magical, if slightly cheesy, effects but probably the most fun is night scenes such as the blur of car lights around a city scene at night.

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You’ll generally need to use tripods for these shots and with the night exposures you’ll need to use bulb or B mode on your camera which allows you to hold down the shutter release for as long as you want. In general, if you’re shooting handheld, you probably don’t want to go any lower than 1/60th of a second to be guaranteed sharp shots.

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There’s all sorts of other tips and tricks of photography but that’s certainly enough to work with as far as a beginners guide goes. If you’ve got to grips with all of that lot and you still want more, it’s probably time to start forking out for some more equipment, and perhaps a good place to start would be working out how to actually use the flash.