OT: Stylus goes industrial

[Marc Jutras]

I recently bought a new Olympus Stylus Epic to replace my Pentax Espio Mini as my main P&S-carry-all-the-time-party camera. Since I got some pretty good results from it during two parties (day and night), I decided to push it to the limit and brought it to an industrial music concert loaded with Delta 3200.

As those of you who've attended such concerts might guess, it was pretty much pitch black. Sometimes, I couldn't see the stage 15 feet in front of me! It was a really tough gig to shoot as there was not much ambiant lighting. There were some occasional flood lights but most of time, there were only moving lights and stroboscopes and TONS of smoke.

I shot mostly without flash. I closed the camera a few times and each time, forgot to set it to no flash so I got a flash burst. I thought that those would be wasted because of the intense smoke. A friend with a digicam got absolute white outs because of this. Surprisingly, those flash shots came out superb. It's even hard to tell that there was a flash at all!.

Here's a few shots. The third one is with flash.

 

[iggers]

I just googled information about the Epic: It actually reads DX coding all the way up to 3200 asa!

 

[Marc Jutras]

Wonderful little creature indeed!

The AF did a superb job as well. And it doesn't have that ugly red light for AF assist as many cameras. In a dark place like that, the red light can ruin everything.

 

[Justin Low]

Nice! I'm thinking of getting a Stylus Epic too. How much did you pay for yours?

 

[Scarpia]

Do you have the one with a 35 f3.5 or the f 2.8? I picked one up with the f 3.5 at a garage sale last year for five bucks. The first roll I shot came out perfectly but the second roll was underexposed for some unknown reason (to me at least).
Kurt M.

 

[GeneW]

Marc, I agree completely. A great carry-everywhere cam and about as small as a 35mm camera can be!

Gene

 

[Marc Jutras]

It's the more recent version with the f/2.8 lens. I got it for 110$CAN at a local store.

 

[ray_g]

The Pentax Espio Mini (UC-1) was a wonderful little cam. How does the Stylus compare, Marc?

 

[Marc Jutras]

The Stylus has a 2.8 lens instead of 3.5 on the Espio. When you shoot in the dark like me, everything counts.

The AF seems faster on the Stylus. The Espio has passive AF while the Stylus has active AF. Maybe someone here will be know the difference? Anyway, to shoot in the dark (litterally), the Stylus works very well.

You must be very careful with your focusing with the Stylus. It is programmed to go for the widest aperture possible (I think the Espio was programmed for good DOF). When it's dark, it'll go for 2.8 and you're left with a very shallow DOF. Taking the extra second or two to make sure you locked the AF on the intended target makes the difference. The AF really goes where the crosshair points. If you're shooting two people separated by a few centimeters, the AF can go between them and measure for the background. This happens when you have to lend the camera to a friend to be in the picture (bummer!).

The Stylus operates quickly. Not too much lag considereing the type of camera. The Espio was pretty good too.

The Stylus is a bit lighter and it's shape makes it even more easy to carry.

The viewfinder of the Stylus is much bigger than the Espio's. When shooting in the dark, I often had a hard time finding the VF on the Espio. It's very rare with the Stylus.

The metering seems superb so far. I tried it in extreme situations and it got amazing results.

There's no B mode on teh Stylus but I don't care about it much. I used once or twice on the Espio...

The only thing that would go on my wishlist would be manual ISO setting but none of those cameras has it. That would be wonderful.

 

[Skinny McGee]

111A leica Summar uncoated prewar @4.5 1/60 12850

111A leica Summar uncoated prewar @4.5 1/60 12850

Tri-X pushed to 12850 in rodinal

 

[glenbarn]

Nice shots, Mark.

I've kept an Olympus Stylus f3.5 in my jacket pocket almost constantly since 1994. It's a great little camera. Almost every really good "shot of opportunity" has come from it. The autofocus is rarely fooled and the flash is ok if one doesn't have unrealistic expectations. I use it more for flash fill outside in bright sun.

 

[GeneW]

__________________
I surrender myself to the benign indifference of the universe.
Camus

How delightful to see Camus quoted! I'm currently re-studying existentialism ...

Gene