Of course, there probably isn’t any contest here at all as the Olympus lens is simply stunning but the lens adapter is no slouch either.
But I decided it might be fun to take some photos on a recent visit to the Portland Rose Garden with the 8mm lens and the fisheye adapter attached to the same camera (an Olympus e-520) with a 14-42mm lens.
Same camera settings, same location, different lenses. I’ll let you decide which is better.
Lens adapter (again, more detail in the full size shot):
Of course, one of the limitations of the lens adapter is the distortion that occurs when you use the zoom which is very similar to the results I get with my Lomography Fisheye (film) camera:
Which doesn’t occur on the fixed fisheye lens:
Lens adapter:
Both lenses capture an incredible amount of detail. Having a fisheye lens like the 8mm would be a great addition to any camera bag…in my opinion at least. I know a few people aren’t that keen on the distortion that any fisheye brings but for me, it makes things a lot more interesting when you can capture an incredibly wide angle.
8mm:
Sadly, I have to send all the Olympus gear back tomorrow so for now, I’ll have to settle with my lens adapter. I definitely want to add a fisheye to my gear soon…having the Olympus 8mm for this past month has only solidified this.
You can view the rest of the photos from the rose garden, as well, all the other shots I’ve taken with the Olympus gear in the past month.
Here’s an inexpensive way to add a macro mode to your iPhone.
By default, the iPhone’s camera isn’t that great…let alone for macro (closeup) shots. Simply holding a magnifying glass (or plastic) lens in front of the iPhone’s camera will let you get a lot closer (and in focus):
Normal:
Macro:
Normal:
Macro:
The lens I used was popped out of a magnifier I bought for $4…I’m sure you could find a cheaper one if you look around in just about any kind of store (toy, hardware, pharmacy, etc).
Of course this ‘hack’ should work on just about any cameraphone, not just the iPhone.
With 720p HD video support, this is going to make my next camera upgrade choice a difficult one. Of course it’s not a ‘pro’ camera but the hd video support changes a few things as far as I’m concerned.
Get all the details to see for yourself. Be sure to check out the HD demo video.
Here’s a slick video with Chase Jarvis (obviously a Nikon marketing vid) test driving the D90 ahead of the public:
After my post about an inexpensive way to add a Fisheye lens to your camera bag arsenal, I was contacted by some really nice folks at Olympus Canada who offered to let me try out a real fisheye lens which costs a little more than what I paid for my lens adapter (okay maybe a lot more). They also loaned me some other nicegear to go with the E-520 DSLR camera body they sent to use with the fisheye lens since it’s not compatible with my Nikon gear. Can you say Christmas in August?
I already don’t want to give it back…I’m loving this 8mm Fisheye lens!
Here’s a (not so) small taste of what I’ve done with it in the slightly more than 24 hours that I’ve had it:
You can check out the rest of the photos I’ve taken with the Olympus gear on Flickr. I’ve only barely touched the camera settings at this point (haven’t even cracked the manual)…been having too much fun with the fisheye. The fireworks weren’t a planned trip so I didn’t even have a tripod with me but the photos still turned out pretty cool…it’s all going to make going back to my Nikon gear very difficult!
As you may have noticed, I really like Crumpler’s products. I just found out that a store that sells nothing but Crumpler products just opened in downtown Vancouver (corner of Richards & Cordova).
Check them out in person or online if you’re looking for a cool new messenger bag or backpack - especially for your laptop or camera gear as they have shapes and colours to fit just about anything you’d want to carry. They also have cool, Crumpler branded shopping bags, purses, wallets and even camera straps.
I’ve wanted a fisheye lens forever…and really like my Lomo Fisheye camera. Super wide angles and fisheyes are fun to play around with…just not $800 kinds of fun (the cost of a real fisheye lens).
So when I stumbled across this lens adapter for a measely $37 + shipping (from this eBay store - just troll through the lens section for your camera type), I figured I’d try it out.
So far, I’m in love! You can also detach the main part of the lens and it leaves you with an awesome macro lens…slightly better than the macro lenses I also have…so it’s really two lenses in one…or three if you zoom the fisheye in a little for a super wide-angle lens.
Here’s a few shots I took with it attached to my Nikon 18-55mm lens:
Things have been pretty quiet around here because I’ve been on vacation with my wife in Hawaii. This was my third time to Hawaii and I have to say, it was probably my best trip here yet. I highly recommend it if you’ve never been. I’ve taken a ton of photos and even a couple of videos to play with Flickr’s new video feature.
Here’s a couple of videos and photos to give you a taste of what things are like on Oahu:
This video was playing on our hotel tv…they have three separate channels for different activities to do (shopping, dining and tours). We saw this before we went snorkling for the first time and we couldn’t help but think of the video while underwater.
We went for a drive to the famous North Shore and weren’t disappointed. The first beach we stopped at was the basking beach for the Hawaiian Green Turtles (known locally as Honu) and it was amazing to see these guys up close. Previously I had gone to the Big Island of Hawaii and was able to play with a number of turtles while swimming but that was about 15 years ago.
One of the turtles had a GPS device attached to his back. The volunteers at the beach would record the turtles movements for scientific purposes.
We were able to find a semi-secluded beach to spend some quality time at….the only downside was that it was particularly windy so the shorebreak was a little difficult to navigate…made for some fun in the surf though and a great workout.
It wasn’t quite as windy as it sounds on this video….just a point and shoot camera mic with no windscreen so it sounds worse than it was.
Let me know if you want more details as I can’t recommend this place enough. You can check out the rest of my Flickr set for more photos and videos.
I finally received my Moo cards that I had ordered at the beginning of February. This was my third batch and it was strangely the only one to take a really long time to arrive. I wonder if it had anything to do with an influx of orders from people getting them for SXSW which is also the place I was first exposed to them in the first place. What are they? I tend to call them my ‘personal cards’ as opposed to my somewhat boring ‘business card’ that I have for my corporate day job.
Moo cards are small (about half as tall as a business card) but are very personal. You order them in batches of 100 and are comprised of text on the back and photos on the front. You can customize the text that appears on the back and the cool part is that you also get to choose what appears on the front. Since they partner with a lot of photo sharing sites (I use Flickr), you can easily pull your own photos into Moo and create the card front with these photos. Unlike getting cards from a traditional printer, you can choose how many of your 100 cards has which photos on them. You can get 100 of the same or 100 different photos on the front of the cards or mix and match as much as you want. Pretty cool for only $19.99 plus shipping - just try to get card stock photo cards from a local printer for that little.
My third batch has turned out the best…I decided to order a lot of different photos this time around instead of just a couple of my favs. I also got a few geekier photos in there since I’ll probably be giving a lot out at SXSW soon enough. I expect to come back from Austin with a ton of other people’s cards and look forward to the Moo party down there as well. You can use an Altoids Chewing Gum tin as the perfect case for them too.
A few of us have been noticing that there hasn’t been as much chatter on the internet about Northern Voice during or immediately following the event. As well, the page views on Flickr seemed to be a lot lower than last year. Personally, I think it’s just that everyone hasn’t fully had a chance for it all to sink in yet. As I’m finding by new followers on Twitter, new contacts on Flickr and a bunch of new feeds I’ve been reading, it’s slowly gaining some momentum after the fact.
Let’s face it, a weekend of conferencing takes it’s toll on people and especially since most of the attendees have normal day jobs that they returned to almost immediately. It takes awhile to get your head around what you participated in and find a way to record or publish those thoughts. Not to mention taking care of all the things you didn’t tend to during the conference.
So in that vein, I thought I’d followup my somewhat brief recap with a few more cool things I’ve found since the weekend:
my pal, Duane Storey, pulled some awesome out of his hat with his amazing photo mosaic of all the tagged photos in Flickr he could hoover down. He called it 1600 reasons to love Northern Voice and I’m sure he’ll have to rename it as that photo number keeps growing as attendees get out their card readers and upload more shots to the Flickr stream. As Gene said in his post, if you can’t find yourself in those photos, you weren’t there.
I twittered about it a bit and mentioned it in my first recap but I keep coming across blog posts and photos of people that I wish I had a chance to either spend more time talking to or even just meeting at the conference. I guess one of the cons of going to a conference in your own town, with a lot of friends in attendance, is that you don’t get outside your circle as much as you would if you were somewhere you didn’t know many people. That and there is never enough time.
I wish I had an opportunity to chat with Stewart Mader whose presentation about Wiki’s I really enjoyed at last years NV and missed his this year. He’s been rounding up some great links and comments from other people as well as doing a great job liveblogging a lot of sessions
Another missed meet/chat was with Alan Levine who gave a great presentation on “50 Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story” in which he outlines some of the amazing web tools out there you can use to tell a story. Something he did with all 50 tools and the same story. Alan also managed to capture one of my favorite open mic sessions at the Opening Night party by Scott Leslie called Trackback Love.
