The Winged Man. Olympus E-P3, ISO 200, f8, 1/320 sec
On the first day of Ramadan, the setting sun effused an unusually warm glow. Jalan Raja Alang was teeming with people and hawkers peddling all kinds of mouth-watering food. I filmed this bustling Ramadan bazaar entirely with the Olympus Pen E-P3. Except for a couple of shots where I used a tiny ‘kitchen-table’ tripod, the rangefinder-shaped camera was handheld most of the time.
The folks at Kampung Baru were friendly and chatty, making it a wonderful place to try out the new camera. Surprisingly, the on-board microphone performed very well. The AVCHD footage was edited on Edius with a little colour grading applied to tone down the very warm sunlight. Watch the embedded version here or download the Full HD 1980 x 1080 clip from vimeo.com/tvsmith. Watch it on your HDTV!
A Hokkien Opera: Olympus Pen E-P3, ISO 200, f4.5, 1/60 sec
I stumbled upon two interesting roadside events last night. Although both were held on the same street, they turned out to be distinctly different rituals. The first one is a Cantonese prayer session dedicated to the deity and dwellers from the netherworld, culminating with a bonfire.
The second one is part of a Hokkien religious festival celebrating the birthday of another Chinese deity. A brave opera troupe performed to a near empty house. Sadly, the Chinese opera is a dying tradition and art-form in Malaysia, making it all the more important to document.
But since this video is more of a real world test of the new Olympus Pen E-P3, the duration is kept brief. The E-P3 was paired with the new and fast 12mm (24mm in old money) f2.0 lens. The bonfire scene was actually quite dark but the camera still locked focus very quickly.
Down the street, the opera presented a different challenge. The stage lights induced visible flickering on the video. I had to roll the shutter speeds via the thumb-wheel until the ‘pulsing’ effect became minimised. Back stage, lighting was very dim but the E-P3/12mm f2 combo handled it with ease.
Sound was recorded with the on-board microphone and camera was handheld. Video footage captured in Full HD 1980 x 1080i resolution at 30 fps AVCHD.
Nocturnal Warriors: Olympus E-P3 & M.ZD 12mm f2.0 & VF-2 Finder on night duty
Full HD AVCHD is normally not easy to edit in real time, even with the very tolerant Edius Neo. However, with my new editing gig comprising an i7 CPU with 16g hyper ram and dual Corsair Force 3 SSDs, the AVCHD bully is finally beaten into a pulp.
All I need to do now is to drop all the AVCHD files from the camera directly onto the Edius timeline and it is good to go. No more conversions and messy intermediate files. The NLE will not blink, even with multiple tracks, complex 3D effects and transitions running together in real time 🙂
In this clip, only audio/video dissolves and titles were added. Output was rendered into 1920 x 1080 WMV format. Variable bit rate encoding was used for a manageable 140mb upload file size. For online screening, it is still about finding the right balance (or compromise) between size and quality…
Look out for more real-world tests, images and videos from the new Olympus Pen E-P3 and the recently introduced Digital Zuiko lenses here!
Google Sky Map as displayed on my Samsung Galaxy S
I was torn between watching the Lunar Eclipse and another eclipse unfolding on the ground. Hacktivists launched ‘Operation Malaysia’ at about the same time when the celestial bodies lined-up early this morning.
The pre-declared cyber war on Malaysian government websites started earlier at around 1:30 am. Only a couple of sites appeared defaced while some others probably pre-empted the hostilities by going off-line in advance. The sheer number of curious visitors could have also caused some of the servers to keel over.
The fun however was in observing the camaraderie among the many excited supporters who commented live on Twitter and blogs. Many Internet users see the blocking of file-sharing sites as protecting the interest of big business and maybe even Uncle Ho. The ‘Anonymous’ hacker group deemed it as unfair censorship while the government insists that copyright violations must be policed.
2:53 am Malaysian Time: Half Eclipse
Meanwhile, the real eclipse is considered (relatively) rare as the center of the earth’s shadow will move across the moon. Here in Malaysia, it was to be an almost total eclipse. Using Google Sky Map on Android and my trusty Garmin 60CSX GPS, I calculated the moonrise, trajectory and angle in advance.
And what do I know? The best place to observe or photograph the eclipse was not the planetarium but at my own little garden. I set up the Olympus E-PL2 with a 300mm Zuiko lens on a sturdy Manfrotto tripod and triggered the rig by a wired remote. Even had my laptop next to the garden chair, still running off the home wi-fi. Only thing I can’t predict nor control is the spoiler of many past eclipses; clouds.
2:53 am Malaysian Time: Three-Quarter Eclipse
3:20 am Malaysian Time: Near Total Eclipse
Clouds came in after that but I was still able to track the moon’s position although it was totally hidden. Google Sky Map uses the phone’s built-in accelerometer sensors and GPS to determine which part of the sky the phone is pointing to.
