To the beach

Yesterday my wife and I spent some lovely time at the beach of Scheveningen near the city of The Hague. We went to a musical and enjoyed lunch at one of the many beach clubs. Because of the photographic opportunities I took a camera with me. I opted for the the DP1, because of the simplicity and gorgeous image quality.

The diversity of the people is just wonderful. People from all over the world. And another photographer with a Leica M8, zone focusing his camera, was patiently waiting for some street shots, including of us, until I kindly showed him the camera I had with me. He laughed and I told him he was an even more lucky guy than I was.

It stayed dry, but we had somes dramatic skies over the sea.

A cool scene with a seagull on top of the life gaurd post.

These type of beach resorts all seem to be stuffed with shops to buy food or candy, and of course don’t forget the souvenirs. Mr. Candy is no exception.

And since restaurants and food places are all over here at the boulevard, you can find seagulls too. Sea pigeons I like to call them.

I thought this photograph of my wife at beach club Zeezicht came out pretty well with the back lightning.

The “Scheveningse Pier” is the most recognizable landmark here. An incredibly ugly building of concrete and steal at the beach, but great for photography when the sun sets down.

At ebb some seagulls search along a pier for food.

I had to photograph this purse for a my friend Helen from NY.

All photographs by Wouter Brandsma

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Weekend thoughts

The first buzz of Olympus E-P1 has settled after nearly a week and it seems that quite a lot of my contacts are considering this camera. But would I consider it too? I have followed the on-going rumors and excitement the last few weeks with great interest and I think it is great that a manufacturer finally has the balls to develop such a camera. And I can only hope more will follow.

I think the E-P1 is an interesting concept and I personally like the form factor. I do however think that the camera looks a bit like a gimmick. Either shiny silver or white (?). I don’t get it. Why develop a small unobtrusive camera with interchangeable lenses when the coloring can easily be noticed? Why not use the same finish as with the dSLR’s from Olympus, black and ruggid.

Olympus admitted they use in-camera distortion correction to develop small lenses. And yes, the 17mm f/2.8 prime does look small. But after seeing some first photographs from this lens I am not really excited. I have seen photographs with strange looking square formatted patterns in the blurred backgrounds. Quite unnatural and very unpleasent. I have tried some RAW photographs from the E-P1 too and I was able to open them in Lightzone. They all opened way too dark and increasing the exposure in post processing resulted in more noise. Strange and I wonder what Olympus will apply in their RAW processor (or demand from other software developers) to handle their RAW photographs.

But in the between all the topics of gearheads and the bashing and trashing of cameras I have come to the conclusion that I haven’t been able to photograph this week. Thankfully the weekend started and tomorrow I will go to the North Sea beach. The beach is always a great place for photographic opportunities in my opinion. And since I decided to take the Sigma DP1 with me I thought it was appropriate to post some recent photographs taken with my, not forgotten, Ricoh GX200.

In the end however the gear doesn’t matter to me, photographs do.

All photographs by Wouter Brandsma

Update June 20, 2009
Also RAW Therapee is able to open the RAW photographs from the E-P1 and seems to do a much better job in my opinion.

Olympus E-P1

Although the official announcement of the new Olympus E-P1 will be tomorrow afternoon, June 16th in Tokyo, images and specs have appeared all over the net. The camera will come with a 12.3 mp livemos sensor and a 3″ LCD screen with 230,000 pixels. In auto mode the ISO range will be from 200 to 3200 and in manual mode from 100 to 6400. The first sample images can be seen here.

The camera will have the following file formats: 12 bit RAW, jpeg, RAW + jpeg, and AVI motion jpeg. Both sRGB and AdobeRGB are available as color spaces. The camera will be able to capture a maximum of 10 RAW photographs in a burst. It can capture images in the image ratios 4:3, 3:2, 16:9, and 6:6. And when you shoot in RAW the image ratio will recorded in the EXIF data. The first lenses to be released will be a 14-42mm f/3.5-f/5.6 zoom lens and a 17mm f/2.8 prime lens.

The camera will also have a 30 fps 720p HD movie mode. Recording will be on SD and SDHC cards with a maximum duration of 7 minutes in HD mode and 14 minutes in SD mode.

Update June 16, 2009:
The camera is now officially announced. For more news about the E-P1 see the Olympus PEN site and the hands-on preview at dpreview.com.

Under the blue sky

Feeling ought and missing my son this weekend. For the first time he stays in a holiday park with other kids with autism. A moment where we could find some rest and he could have fun with the other kids. But the first time is difficult and you hope everything is fine with him.

All photographs by Wouter Brandsma

Before the battery drained

A couple of days ago I posted some photographs from a cell phone after the battery of the Sigma DP1 drained suddenly. And here is the last photograph from that particular day from the DP1 before the camera shut off. The RAW photograph was processed in Lightroom and further edited in Nik Silver Efex Pro.

Photograph by Wouter Brandsma