Category: Photography

Olympus E-P1

Couple of days ago, Olympus launched one of the most innovative cameras in recent years – E-P1 … a compact camera with a size of DC, but with quality and features of a DSLR. What strikes me most in the past few days is not the excellent feature set of the camera, but how people evaluate this new camera – even before they get one.

Some said they hate the body color – they want it in all black, instead of the current two offerings – White and Silver. Some said they want an EVF (Electronic View Finder) on top of the Liveview LCD, even though all the DC in the market except one has an EVF. Some said a built-in flash is a must, but according to the sample pics in DPreview, E-P1 can handle in-door shooting environment comfortably with ISO 3,200 and 6,400. And some said they will not buy it because the LCD is not high resolution enough, or because it is not water-proofed. Of course, some said it is too expensive, or too big, or too small etc., etc…

Seriously, are they real photographers, or just professional whiners ?

Olympus E-P1

So, is E-P1 a good camera ? I don’t know yet, but as Imaging-Resource.com put it:

Just when we thought it was all going to go SLR, Olympus … makes an introduction that changes everything.

你真正努力過嗎？

喺銅鑼灣鬧市中無所事事，傳嚟動聽嘅音樂，於是向崇光方向走去。只見到一個青年自彈自唱，都唔錯。隔離仲有另一個青年跳著近期大熱 – “娃娃看天下”嘅舞姿。但係完全無人欣賞，因為所有人都圍喺另一邊，另一個”表現者”。

於是好奇心作怪，又走去睇睇。幾經辛苦，從人群中望過去，見到地上有一張張長長嘅白紙，上面寫滿一個個鐵劃銀勾嘅大字。字字工整，有勁，仲有隸書，草書等等。可用台式一個字，”讚”。

從啲個中年書法家嘅背影中可以睇到，他正在努力完成另一張墨寶，圍觀嘅幾十人亦都全神貫注欣賞。突然書法家一個轉身，我都睇到啦。。。原來書法家係沒有一對手嘅。

只見他心思地放好剛完成的作品，再用他已經痿縮嘅雙臂純熟地準備另一張白紙，用紙鎮壓好位置，”夾”起支毛筆，點墨，又一次像奇蹟般寫字。

只覺得突然眼濕濕，因為眼前嘅書法家係幾咁努力，真係殘而不廢。而我地正常人又殘，又廢，又懶，又眼角高，又自私，又唔識用毛筆，又唔識”寫”自己嘅文字（淨係識”打”）。。。下刪一百字。

書法家再完成一張作品，要停低啦。圍觀嘅人冇拍手，但係都靜靜地喺銀包中挪出小小心意放喺書法家前面。有眼濕濕嘅我，有眼濕濕嘅少女，亦有眼濕濕正在教仔嘅媽咪。

人群散去，鬧市中再走過跳”娃娃看天下”嘅青年，可能有點不公平，但睇住佢喺心裡有個疑惑 –

“你真正努力過嗎？”

 

Facebook photo album image size

Are the pictures in your Facebook album all look blurry, or out-of-focus ?

The reason is simple, your pictures are not optimized to be displayed in Facebook. Even though nowadays’ digital cameras can capture very high resolution pictures but you shall not upload your full-size pictures to Facebook album straightaway. That requires Facebook to resize the pictures to fit their page layout, and makes your pictures look blurry.

In fact, the optimal size for pictures in Facebook album is 604 pixels high (or wide). Therefore, before you upload the pictures to your newly created album in Facebook, try first resizing the picture to 604 pixels wide or high. Then, use the sharpening tool or unsharp mask within your image editing tool to sharpen the pictures. Lastly, upload those processed pictures to the album.

Update 1 : From January 20th 2010, Facebook has upgraded their photo album feature to support 720 pixels high (or wide). So if you have fast Internet connection, then why not resize the photos to 720 pixels and share those with your friends ?

Update 2 : From 2nd October 2010, Facebook upgraded their photo album to support upload of photos with 2,048 pixels. In addition, the site rolled out new uploader, friend-tagging feature and lightbox based viewer.

Update 3 : From end August, 2011 – now Facebook can display the photos up to 900 pixels (you can upload photos with bigger size, but it will downsize it to 900 pixels to display).

Update 4 : Just in case you are searching for this … the new Timeline Cover image / photo size is 850 x 315 pixels.

Update 5 : From March, 2012 – Facebook  upgraded the photo viewer application to support a full-screen view up to 2048 by 2048 pixels, the maximum upload size for users. However, the upgraded view will only work in recent versions of Firefox and Chrome. Users can open up the full-screen view by clicking “Fullscreen” in the options menu beneath the photo or clicking the arrow icon at the top right hand corner of the picture to expand the size.

Update 6 : So …. Google+ also changed the profile layout, and if you want to make a cover photo just for Google+, don’t forget to resize it to 940 by 180 pixels.

Update 7 : I just prepared some Facebook Timeline cover images for you all to download and use for free. Enjoy !!

Here you go, one sample album from my Kyoto trip with my beloved Olympus camera (link to E-P3, but the photos were taken with E-510). Enjoy !!