How I started off with Olympus

After I ditched off the Powershot A410, occasionally bringing it out of the closet for those rare moments that I have to shoot something, I gradually regained my interest in photography, in no small part thanks to the growing community of shooters back here in Malaysia (BTW, I work in a little known island called Penang). At that time, I had decided to go for something a little more advanced.

Back in those days, pulling out your wallet and plonking down > RM2,000 for a camera that you have only the faintest idea of using, was frankly a frightening thought. Many of you probably know that at that time, Canon and Nikon had already kick-started a photographic revolution by releasing really affordable entry-level DSLRs, respectively the Canon EOS 350D and Nikon D40/x. Now just about anyone can experience high level photography for little more than the price of a premium compact! Well, even so, it was still a heck of a lot of money for someone who just started working. So I decided to play safe, and against the coaxing of my other more seasoned photographer friends, I went to search for a prosumer camera.Frankly speaking, the thought of starting off with a DSLR as a total beginner itself was kind of unfathomable for me.

At that moment, I was having my eyes on the Powershot S5. I tried it several times before in some local camera shops. It was terrific in many ways. A really long zoom, a truly appreciable vari-angle LCD for those awkward posture moments, and not to mention I had gotten used to the output of budget Canon compacts. However, at the same time, my friend came across an advert in The Star featuring the all-new Olympus SP570 UZ. Touting the world's most powerful zoom (at a massive 20X!) that goes from 26mm to 520mm, a built in EVF and 10MP, it was supposed to be quite attractive to me save for one reason: it's an Olympus. Why should I care? Practically no one I ever knew back then had one, much less used one. So that means they make sucky cameras, correct?

Well, wrong. For the most part. When I 1st tried the 570, all my misconceptions and prejudices about Olympus went straight out the window. It was largely thanks to the innovative but not so fluid zoom ring (I can't think of any other prosumer that has this feature) that allow you to zoom via fly-by-wire by twisting the ring. A very nice touch indeed, though I don't understand why it was removed from it's successors. It used AA batteries and had ample lifespan with 4 Sony rechargables, which was very helpful in case the batteries died on me unexpectedly. But most importantly: THE IMAGE QUALITY. I never understood what the fuss was with Oly until I saw the color reproduction from the 570. Punchy, clean and accurate at the same time. I still remember how much in awe I was with it since I got it. Granted, it could never match even the cheapest DSLR in any case (except the color), but it was the safest bet a noob can make.

I had that thing for only 4 months before selling it off only to get another Olympus, the E-520. In summary, we didn't spend much time together, but I will forever remember it as the very camera that changed my opinion of Olympus. I wouldn't be where I am today without that quirky camera that offered so much for so little (a BIG shame it didn't offer an SD card slot at least). Oh, the addition of a hotshoe was also a very nice touch. I never would have imagined how useful an external flash was until I tried one on the 570. Man......... 

Some pics from the early days when we were together:

 

For the entire album, kindly click on: Fashionably Queensbay 2008

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.......

.........and welcome to the Half Frame Mind blog site. My name is Rob Chan, and I am a self-proclaimed Four Thirds system practitioner from Malaysia (some of you may have taken a cue from the name of the site itself, which is a pseudo-nickname for the Olympus Four Thirds sensor, but that's not entirely the case).

A short background about myself. I have been seriously practicing photography since 2008 with many an Olympus camera, but I technically started off by using a Canon Powershot A410 way back in 2005. I bought in just for the sake of having a camera to use during vacations. Quite a strange little camera that was (it ate through2 AA batteries like no tomorrow, and was noisier than the insides of a pepper mill even at ISO100), but what would you want from something that sat way at the bottom of the Canon compact range? A couple of years after I graduated from university and started working, I was caught in a dilemma of continuing my journey with either the established Canon Powershot S5, or a quirky looking prosumer camera from a company that I never really cared about back then: the Olympus SP570 UZ. I took the plunge with the latter, and needless to say, the rest is a rather odd history.

I kick started my interest in photography with the frankly amazing SP570 UZ (well, it would have been far better if it didn't force us to use that atrocious abomination that is the XD card!!!), and 4 months later, graduated to the newly launched Olympus E-520 DSLR that was released in middle of 2008. I had to, sadly, sell off the 570 to make funds for it, but it was something that I had to do to realize my love for photography. Along the way, I picked up a legend off eBay: the very 1st DSLR made by Olympus, the E-1. It may  be hard for some to imagine going from 10MP and then to half of that (a 5MP Kodak CCD) and at the same time, omitting creature comforts like Image Stabilization, Live View and a large and bright screen. But what I lost in terms of features, I gained in unmatched ergonomics and image quality. I'll get onto more of that later.

In the minds of some of you reading this, I can probably hear this: why on God's green Earth, did I forgo more mainstream (cue: safer) options like Canon and Nikon, for a rather bizarre an often ostracized manufacturer that did so many things that defied convention? Well, I shall explain more in detail in my next post. But for now, thank you for visiting my blog. I hope that it will somehow serve as a proper avenue of conveying and sharing my thoughts of photography, and at the same time, offer some form of knowledge through the less-than-amateurish material I post here within the coming days.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is Rob Chan and it's been a great pleasure. Thank you and goodnight!