Our semi-weekly tri-pack takes in a camera, a gallery, and an interesting news post.
Brand New from Olympus
Photography sites are abuzz today with Olympus’s new offering: a 16.1 MP Four-Thirds. That’s the OM-D E-M1. The big selling point is super-fast AF, named ‘Dual Fast AF.’ In addition, as long as you have a ‘Regular’ or Micro Four-Thirds lens mounted, the camera can focus on any one of 37 phase-detection focus points or focus by 81 contrast-detection target areas.
The camera has a few other upgrades from the previous model; these include an improved grip and improved EVF. Philip Ryan has a comprehensive overview in Popular Photography which covers such improvements while Chris Cheesman’s summary in Amateur Photographer touches on the high points, coupled with an insight and a conjecture.
The OM-D E-M1 has a wonderful mix of necessary and customary pro functions plus enthusiast features, such as ‘Art Filters.’
World Photographic Cup
FIFA and ICC, watch out: football and cricket ain’t the only sports in town boasting a World Cup. Another ‘Federation’ has announced another ‘World Cup’, this one for photogs! Zoltan Arva-Toth has the scoop on Photography Blog.
The sports model extends to the fact that competition will be by way of national teams! (Coloured jerseys mandatory? Arva-Toth omits this key information.) The call for entries has already been met by nineteen countries. Oz is going to send a team. (Our insider reports say that Shane Warne is arguing with the AIPP that he should be captain.)
We’ll know whether or not this is a real World Cup on finals day simply by observing the winning team’s behaviour: will they take victory laps and squirt champagne all over the place?
Most Photogenic Religion
Some religious denominations are just more photogenic than others and the drama of Pentecostalism makes it a strong contender for ‘Most Photogenic Religion.’ Damaso Reyes’s photo-story on Pentecostalism on the Leica Blog is proof of this assertion. Trances, shakes and wailing are in evidence.
This gallery is brilliant photojournalism that brings a good few ‘decisive moments.’ Don’t neglect to notice some astute use of light (there’s a photo of a woman and a boy, each in religious fervour, but light is treated or employed very differently in these photographs such that each ‘light’ somehow suits the singular fervour of the subject).
There’s a funny parallel at work in this photo-story: Reyes explains, “Pentecostals believe in the primacy of the direct relationship between god and the believer.” Well, his photos get the viewer ‘inside the skin’ of his subjects, thus he creates something of a “primacy of the direct relationship” between his subjects and the viewer.