I’m not gonna get into any kind of big review on the Olympus PEN E-P1, that’s just not my thing. But suffice it to say, I love this camera. The 17mm (35mm equivalent) f/2.8 pancake lens is sharp and has a nice shallow depth of field when I want it. I’ve never been happy with any point-and-shoot camera before, and I’ve gone through a few trying to find “the one”. With the iPhone 3GS camera being so damn good, and all the awesome apps for it making it even more fun to use, any standard point-and-shoot has a lot to compete with. So this camera is the camera I carry when I don’t want to take my dSLR, but the iPhone isn’t enough. It doesn’t fit in my pocket, so I found a cool leather Leica-like strap on eBay and carry the camera messenger-bag style along with my murse (yeah, I said it) and that’s just fine. It’s light-weight, great quality, and it just looks cool. While it shoots RAW (although to-date Aperture doesn’t support the .ORF files), it takes twice as long to write the RAW files so I end up shooting JPEG. And besides, part of the point for me of carrying a camera like this is that I don’t want to spend time fiddling with the images in post. I just want to shoot and share as quickly as possible. So part of that means I shoot with the fun “art” modes quite a bit. I never thought I’d use modes like that, but I really like them. The “Grainy Film”, “Soft Focus” and “Pin Hole” modes are the ones I use the most. Using these also means it takes the camera longer (several seconds) to apply the effect and write the file, but in a way that slows things down and makes you think about the shot more—knowing that it may be the only one you get (especially if you’re asking your four-year old to pose). Here’s two recent shots from it, again really just snaps, but I love the look of them. And that’s what photography is all about anyway, isn’t it?

Alenka, downtown LAYours truly. I don’t know why I like this photo, I just do. Kinda “Hollywood” I guess.