Not that kind of “street shooter”, I mean with a camera. For some folks, it’s “what they do” as a photographer. The most famous, and often considered to be the “father” of “street photography” or what he called “real life reportage”, was French Photographer Henri Cartier Bresson. He specialized in candid photography shot as he walked around in various places. Now, this isn’t really my specialty per se, since the vast majority of my day-to-day photography is simple family candids chronicling the comings and goings of our little family on a daily basis. I strongly suspect that it’s what most folks do with their photography and videography as well.
However, I recently got a taste of candid street photography on our trip to Taiwan and Hong Kong. These are places so different than what we Americans experience as our norm that I was fascinated by everything I saw around me. I’ll admit, that a lot of it probably has to do with the fact that I’m Chinese and was born in Hong Kong, but having left at an early age; it was really rather interesting to me. So, what does this have to do with budget techno-geekism?
OK; Taiwan and Hong Kong could be considered the epicenter of the modern technology world for everything from design, manufacturing and the consumer products on sale there. But, as crazy as this sounds; I didn’t spend a lot of time in those aspects in either of those places. There was the trip to the “Digital Plaza” in Taipei to find a new MP3 player for my son, but I’ll have to commend myself on a remarkable amount of restraint in looking while at the famous Nathan Street, electronics shopping area of Hong Kong.
What I did spend a lot of time, and effort doing was shooting pictures with my newly acquired Nikon D300 DSLR. To say that, it is an outstanding camera would be an understatement. However, I will have to say that it’s going to take me a long time to learn it would be an understatement as well. I did find out one thing though….and this isn’t a complaint about the D300, as it’s commentary on virtually all cameras of its type. They aren’t for candid street photography. They are large, heavy, professional devices, or at least equipped like mine is with the vertical battery grip; it’s roughly the equivalent of a D3, then add a relatively large “do-everything” lens like the 18-200 Nikkor, you have a pretty intimidating piece of artillery! It’s certainly not something that you could call “unobtrusive”. I’ve now learned why this type of photographer has generally preferred small, light and simple cameras. In Bresson’s day, the camera of choice was the Contax with Zeiss lenses. As a poorly paid photojournalist, all he could afford was the lesser brand of Leica and one lens (a 50mm). Ultimately, he shot with this camera and lens for the rest of this life. This probably had something to do with why he got so good with it!
Once upon a time, I owned a Canon 7S rangefinder which was a nicely made copy of the Leica M2/3. That was many moons ago and it didn’t fit my photographic style or inclination at the time, but I did learn that these cameras were extraordinarily fast and quiet in use. In retrospect though, I can certainly see why a camera like that would be just the thing for what I was trying to do in Hong Kong and Taiwan! Does that mean I’m going to run out and sell my D300!?! HECK NO!!! That camera is “all that and a bag of chips”! It’s the do everything heavy duty SUV of cameras.
So, now you’ve figure out the point of this whole discussion…..I’ve found an excuse to get another camera…… So how does that fit into the Frugal Propellerhead philosophy? Well, I guess I’ll have to find a camera that’s a better fit for quick, unobtrusive candids without spending much money. I guess that pretty much leaves a digital Leica out of the discussion then; which finally brings me to the real subject of this post…..the Olympus E-330 DSLR…..of 2005/6.
I know; that’s really random, right? So, let me explain how all that Frenchman Photojournalist stuff led me to a rather odd, market failure for Olympus. Saying Olympus and odd in the same sentence is almost redundant. They’ve always been a company that’s pushed the envelope and we all know, that’s sometimes begat failures in the marketplace. In this case, the E-330 was a brilliant piece of engineering which gave excellent results for the time (2005/6). It was the follow on of the E-300 as well as the end of that particular design line, and as you can see from the picture below, there’s a reason why.
It isn’t so much ugly, but when you consider that it’s a DSLR, the shape is odd, and I suspect that had a lot to do with why it didn’t sell well. It certainly wasn’t the mechanicals or the capabilities! It was first to market with a number of technologies that none of the “big boys” had at the time. Some of them include: Live View, a CMOS 7.5Mp sensor when everybody else was still using CCD, articulated 2.5” LCD display, and ultra-sonic dust removal for the imager. And despite that shape it was in fact a DSLR but deployed a side-swing mirror system and 2 sensors so that it could have both mirror-up Live View and mirror-down Live View. These are pretty nice specs NOW, much less 6/7 years ago! Unfortunately though, consumers found it too odd and expensive for their taste and Olympus shot itself in the foot with the less expensive and more conventional looking E-4xx/5xx series which live on today.
So, this little bit of oddity is the crux of my essay on Street Shooting? We’ll, no; there is something else. The reason for even having thoughts on a non-Nikon (since that’s what all my lenses are mounted for) is that about 3 years ago, Olympus came out with a 25mm/f2.8 “pancake” lens. I’ve always been a little bit obsessed with these little oddities and think that paired up with a small(ish) digital camera would make the perfect Street Shooter as well as carry anywhere lightweight camera. Then “why not get a Nikkor” you ask, since they are the originators of this concept with the 45mm GN of 1969. The issue is that, this lens is so old that it won’t even meter on the small lightweight Nikon DSLRs like the D40 or D50 and of course they are manual focus, plus it would have to be modified before mounting since its pre-AI/AIS. There is a later 45mm”P” lens that Nikon released which even has the contacts and chip to talk to modern DSLRs, but it’s out of production and astronomical in price (over $400) since the collectors got ahold of it.
Since Nikon was eliminated, I started looking around at other companies that had small/lightweight DSLRs AND a “pancake” or similar lens. This came down to Pentax, Panasonic/Leica, and the various Micro Four-Thirds/Mirrorless DSLRs like the Sony Nex, Samsung, etc. I’d love to be able to buy a Panasonic (Lumix) GF-1 with the Leica 17mm/f1.7 “pancake”, but if I could afford that, I wouldn’t be writing this blog, would I? So, virtually, all of these were eliminated due to the lack of compact normal/mildly wide lens or lack of appropriate camera body to fit it.
It came down to either the Olympus or Pentax. They are both iconic companies who have kind of gone their own way in the industry. Of the two though, I’d say the Olympus has been the more innovative….and that’s coming from someone who used Pentaxes for year! But mostly, Olympus has the product (E-330) that is a pricing anomaly for its capabilities. The bottom line is that for whatever reason, I’ve seen them sell for less than $150 with a kit lens (14-45mm DZ zoom). Combine that with the 25mm/f2.8 pancake lens that can be sometimes be had for less than $200, you get a sub-$350 compact/lightweight DSLR that’s very compact and unobtrusive.
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