My son and me...


	A day out with my Son.... Last Updated: 2nd September 2008 Written By:- Siegfried Seierlein

Today I do not have any specific subject I like to write about. Its not that there is not something to write about its just so much has happened in the last few weeks that one does not really know where to start. I had a few special days out with my camera, I have rebuild my PC, several new products were announced and so much has been written on the forum.

Is the E520 from Olympus the right camera? Nikon has launched the D90, Canon launched the 50D, we all waiting for the new PowerShot G10 and Olympus announced a new micro 4/3 standards. Coming back from a lovely day with my son I downloaded the E520 pictures onto the PC and there it is, that silly looking ill defined pictures, the type and quality I absolutely do not like. In a moment all the bad reviews play in full color in front of my eyes, filter in front the sensor, soft images...until I say STOP, wait a moment....

The pictures on this page are all taken with the E520 and they were edited in Photoshop Elements 6. I did not necessary processed them for best quality, they edited to a style I wanted and to a look I thought they best describe the scene I saw at that moment.

Rebuilding my desktop PC I did a number of things to get the old lady running at her best again. Did not spend a cent, only good maintenance, cleaning and a good choice of components.

I have a few older PC’s I can select parts from and in the process of rebuilding I tried two or three different graphic cards. The screen I use is a good quality Philips screen optimized for sRGB and for a number of years I already used a special color profiling unit to tune the color profiles on my PC.

Two things happened, first I installed Studio from Olympus and I experimented with the RAW version of the pictures I took and secondly I adjusted the quality of the screen display. An interesting thing happened, I adjusted the screen resolution to 1280 by 960 pixels.

Doing that the resolution of the screen are very high and the resulting letters and buttons are then really small. Well my eyes do not appreciate that anymore and I thought, how can I keep that resolution without having the small letters?

Well by accident I found a way. Its very simple, all you need to do is to select a different DPI setting for your screen. The letters are not as “clean” as on the resolution setting up from what I selected but I managed to combine two worlds seems to me.

Going back to Studio I did a few “secret” settings on the E520 RAW files, I then displayed them on the new screen setting plus I printed A4 copies of selected pictures and crops. Those pictures are beautiful and they do not have to make one step space for the D300 of my son. Don’t get me wrong, the E520 is by no means a D300 killer, its more the other way round..... But from a picture quality point of view in good daylight at low ISO and the E520 surprises. Good enough for me.

I continued working on my PC and right now I am very satisfied with its performance. I currently have 2GB RAM installed and decided at the current low prices I will replace that with 4GB. That will help a lot when working on pictures, there is nothing more frustrating than Photoshop slowing down when working on a few pictures at the same time. especially when one use layers as well.

What is going to happen to the G9, will it stay on the market or will it be replaced with a totally new product?

How will the new PowerShot G10 compare with the excellent LX3 from Panasonic. Somebody replied on a forum answer I gave and said, he has used the Panasonic compacts for years and he does not like the high noise level they have, will the LX3 be the same?

Should one rather wait and see what will happen with the new micro 4/3 standard. Could be a excellent idea I think. One should not discard the excellent E400, 410 or 420. Fitted with the 25mm pancake and you have a class leading compact type camera.

Personally I think the best business to be in is writing software. I was happy, stunned and shocked when I saw that Adobe released another version of the excellent Elements series. Personally I use the software, this site has a lot of info available on Elements and most readers use it.

Why shocked? Well look at the upgrades made to the software and the price we need to pay for a hopefully better performing software. Elements 6 can be really slow at times, the organizer frustrating to say the least and the exclusion of important editing tools like curves is sometimes getting on ones nerves. All in all a excellent offer because no other offer has so much training available than Elements.

It could be that I am growing to the point that I will require something else in the future. I have been looking at CS3, the basic version, and wow it will take a lot spending the high price asked for the “best” editing tool in the business.








	Did you notice the picture of the week is back. It is now possible for Pius to update the picture of the week without sending it to me first. That will make it appear more regular again. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. During the last weeks we also started talking about a commercial area on the site and I also created a view really simple pages to show what we thinking about. In the next few weeks I will work on a few projects we can start and at the same time we can get the first products up. Please do not hesitate to contact me should you like to suggest an idea or if you have a “product” ready for the commercial area. I suggested that there will be rules. I like to ask that we keep the commercial area free from any art exposing the human body. As we develop the commercial area more “rules” will be discussed. Folks the summer in Europe is nearly history, we have a few weeks of autumn ahead of us and I am excited with taking advantage of every opportunity I will get to take photographs of the lovely autumn colors. I started talking to a group in the UK actively organizing outings and activities using their Olympus cameras. I was motivated by their enthusiasm for the hobby, their positive reports and the excellent service they doing for the photographic community in the UK. I like to think about how we can use this site to grow and to partake in that kind if activities. I was thinking of starting a group in Switzerland and to also make available space to folks who like to start a similar action in their Countries. For now I like to say good buy, enjoy your camera until next time.... Best Siegfried