Back in February, I preordered one of the new Olympus OM System OM-1 camera bodies, and after a few weeks of waiting, it arrived at my local camera store. There are plenty of full reviews of the camera available for your perusal online, so I won’t attempt to compete with / duplicate them.
Just the same, I’ve spent a few weeks traveling with the OM-1 (using it daily), and I’ve got some thoughts:
The Olympus OM-D E-M5III can be the basis of a fantastic small photography system. You get good performance and good features (including weathersealing) in a lightweight, compact package.
But for those of us with larger hands, an E-M5III can be a little too compact.
And then, of course, people have been reporting problems with the durability of the camera’s mounting plate. So, both usability and camera protection could drive you to adding some sort of grip to an E-M5III. But preferably not something large and/or heavy enough to make the camera as big as its larger brothers in the E-M1 series. Continue reading
If you’re like a lot of people, you’re spending most of your time at home these days, thanks to the Coronavirus. It’s pretty easy in those circumstances to start feeling cooped up.
Luckily, photography gives us some treatments (if not a cure) for cabin fever while waiting for the worst of the pandemic to burn out. If you’re on Facebook, I’d recommend joining Joe Edelman’s Tog Chat group — while this group normally focuses on fashion / portrait photography, Joe’s opened up the admission criteria for the duration, in order to support what he’s calling the “Stuck at Home Photography Challenge.”
The best part is, you really don’t need any new or particularly expensive gear to participate — just your camera, and things you likely have around the house. I’ll show you some of my contributions to date as examples.
Edited 3/28/2020 to add measured power data for both battery charging and tethered shooting.
Olympus, to their credit, has finally been replacing their old proprietary USB camera cable interfaces with USB-C on more-recent OM-D camera bodies. But until the E-M1X was released in early 2019, this just provided a data interface — for things like firmware updates, and file transfers.
With the E-M1X, Olympus began to use USB-C as a power interface as well — for battery recharging, and for tethered power supply to the camera. Olympus took a middle ground with the E-M5III, using USB for data and battery charging (but not tethered power, and even then using an old-school micro-USB connector). More-recently, the E-M1III followed the E-M1X‘s example in using USB-C for data, battery charging, and tethered power supply.
I’ve recently seen confused exchanges online about the uses and limitations of USB-C with the E-M1III — so as a card-carrying geek, I thought I should attempt to clear things up a bit. But first, you’ll need some background — so find yourself a comfortable seat and a warm beverage, this won’t be a fast read. Continue reading
Lost in all the hustle over Olympus‘ latest camera body offering (the intriguing yet rather pricey E-M1X), some less-glamorous items were far more interesting to me. Namely, Olympus’ new line of weather-resistant flash gear. The hub of this lineup is the FL-700WR, so I thought it’d be a good thing for me to quickly review (I’ll circle back to the subject in a few months after I’ve had time to put some serious miles on it).
For starters, let’s look at broadly how the new flash fits in the current Olympus line-up:
| FL-600R | FL-700WR | FL-900R | |
| Dimensions (W x H x D), cm | 6.2 x 10.4 x 9.8 | 7 x 10.6 x 10 | 8.1 x 12.1 x 12.5 |
| Weight (gm) | 255 | 303 | 382 |
| Zoom range (mm) | 12 – 42 | 12 – 75 | 12 – 100 |
| Guide # (meters) @ 100 ISO | 36 @ 42 mm | 42 @ 75 mm | 58 @ 100 mm |
| Recycle time (sec) | 2 – 2.5 | 1.5 – 2.5 | 2.5 – 4.5 |
| Current retail price in US | $299 | $399 | $579 |
So the high point (physically) of day 3 on the Inca Trail is Runkurakay Pass — with views just as good as Dead Woman Pass had, but not nearly as painful to get to. Just before the pass, the trail winds between two small hanging lakes (I haven’t been able to find any reliable names for them). First, we’re looking uphill / west across the lower / larger of the two (you can see some of my hiking buddies on the trail above it to the right).
In this next shot, we’re at the pass and looking to the east. Continue reading
As I mentioned previously, day 3 of a 4-day Inca Trail trek is a scenery day. Leading off, not so far from the night 2 campsite, are the ruins of Runkurakay (about halfway up day 3’s climb to the next pass).
Day 2 on the Inca Trail was (as you’ve likely gathered) quite a workout. Folks on this trek got a longer-than-usual break at the end of day 2, so we can take a break here as well — don’t you think? Continue reading
As I mentioned previously, day 2 of a 4-day Inca Trail trek is a brute. As one online source put it, it’s like climbing stairs without any landing for 5 hours straight. At altitude.
At least you’ve got great scenery to distract you (a little). Continue reading
One lesser-known bit of trivia about the Inca Trail — some current-day communities on it still rely on the trail for transportation of cargo. How to do this while keeping the trail in its largely-historical state? Why, by burro, naturally:
