Naturally the shop keeper came right over and said “I see you know what that is.” I had to wipe the drool off my face to respond. He tried hard to sell it to me, and it really was priced exactly in line with what I would pay at home, and he even tried to lure me with saying that I’d get an 800 euro tax refund and if I didn’t declare it at customs in the US I’d get away without paying tax on it at all.

Yeah right. Aside from the ethical issue, who is going to throw away the box of a Leica camera that costs $7,000? You keep that crap as it is required if you ever sell the body.

Anyway, for about an hour, I had an unrealistic fantasy of owning that camera body and it was very nice. I even had a Voightlander Nokton f1.2 35mm in my carry on that I could have used with it right then and there.

Love this shot!

I’ve tried to ask the people who call, usually with screaming children in the background, to tell me where they got the phone number so I can go there and ask them to fix it. The almost universal answer is “the computer.” Can’t get anything else out of them and most want ME to then provide the correct number.

The number is routed through Twilio so I added some text before the call gets routed that says “COMPANY Emergency support line. If you are calling about an apartment you have the wrong number. Please hang up and report the error to the web site you got the phone number from. Otherwise please hold.”

Sadly, this cut back on only 60% of the calls. 30% STILL WAIT AND CONNECT and 10% leave a voicemail. What is wrong with these people. Naturally I have started answering “Tiger’s Luxury Condos, how can I help you.”

/me fidgets nervously by the mailbox

Anyway, Aperture 3 is great news because I have all this location and face information in my iPhoto library that I was trying to figure out how to get into Lightroom and now I don’t have to — until Apple pisses me off again.

Update: Aperture 3 Trial is buggy as hell. OH. MY. GOD. The thing crashes so often and can’t import my library. Useless. Given how close lipped they are about their development, not to mention slow, I’m not hopeful I’ll even get to try this program. It desperately needs patching. Disappointing. Adobe Lightroom 3 BETA has only crashed once in weeks of using. Amazing! I could just go download the Beta and try it out. Give feedback. Amazing concept. Apple, if you are going to be all tight lipped about your software until it is dumped onto the world you better deliver the goods. This is a fail. I will say that it is screamingly fast until it crashes.

Everyone has been very nice on the phone but the last and worst one was 40 mins on hold, transferred 4 times and the last one was to the wrong person. I actually hung up and had to take deep breaths because I was not in the USA and phone was expensive.

Maybe they will improve delta.com up to the level of functionality they just tossed on nwa.com. Progress? We will see.

The Lumix GF-1 is a solid feeling camera, constructed so that front and back half are joined with a vertical seam on the sides. It feels solid like a brick, there is no “give” when you hold it tightly, no creaking, no anything. Very nice construction. It looks a little boring compared to the E-P2 but feels wonderful. The E-P2 is constructed differently. There is a thin metal sheet that wraps around the camera horizontally and if you hold it in your hand with your fingers on the sides you can squish it. I don’t like the way that feels compared to the GF-1. It is a much more handsome camera IMO, the retro style is quite attractive. Both feel good in the hand. I’m right handed and they work well for me, not sure if they would be as comfortable for a left handed person.

I prefer the power switch on the GF-1. It is a slide on and off type of switch where the E-P2 has a pushbutton toggle. I much prefer the unambiguous nature of the slider, especially when you are operating the camera out of view (like down at your side as you prepare a stealth shot.) The E-P2 also has a fairly bright green ring around the power button which is too bright in low low light shooting. Not sure if that can be disabled or not, I’ve not found a way.

The bottom door for the battery and memory cards is better on the GF-1. It forms the right side of the bottom of the camera with a solid slider that clicks to lock and unlock. When you unlock it the door spring-loads open without help. The E-P2 door is embedded in the bottom right and opens front to back after clicking a recessed switch. The door is not spring loaded and needs to be pulled open, sometimes with a fingernail.

The GF-1 has a dedicated movie button on the top right which is really nice. No mode changing, just push it to start and stop recording a movie instantly. A really nice feature. The E-P2 uses a mode on the main dial for movie shooting. The E-P2′s dial is on the left and recessed under a protective cover accessible only from the back. The GF-1 has the main dial raised up on the right side. I slightly prefer the GF-1 because I can change it one handed.

I didn’t want these cameras for fully automatic point and shoot photography, but it is a nice feature to have if you are in a hurry or feeling lazy. The GF-1 kicks the E-P2′s ass in intelligent automatic mode. It is a bit embarrassing for the EP-2. The EP-2 constantly fails to select the “interesting” subject and is quite a bit slower than the GF-1 in all aspects of operation. In more challenging lighting it will just fail not only to pick a good program, it fails to focus lock and won’t fire the shutter. You can set it to fire the shutter anyway in the preferences, if you want.

I have been using the EVF (electronic viewfinder) on both cameras and while quite a bit larger than the GF-1s, the E-P2 is better. The extra size is spent wisely and gives a better experience overall. Both have diopter adjustments and both will swivel up so you can look down into them instead of “through” like and SLR. Invaluable when sneaking shots without being noticed. I find that people tend to be less aware of being photographed if I’m looking down.

The E-P2 famously doesn’t have a built in flash but I personally don’t care about that because I don’t use it. I guess GF-1 would win on that point if I cared.

I’ve shot hundreds of images now with each body and the battery life on the GF-1 is quite a bit better than the E-P2 using the batteries that came with the kits.

I became interested in these two camera bodies because I wanted to use them with Leica M lenses. Particularly ultra shallow depth of field monsters like the Voightlander Nokton 50mm f1.1 and 35mm f1.2. I would really like to use them with the Leica Noctilux f0.95 but I don’t have $11,000 laying around for lenses.

This is where the rubber meets the road for me on these two bodies. The E-P2 has in-body image stabilization that works with any lens you put on it. The GF-1 uses in-lens stabilization so only lenses with that feature get stabilized. This feature trumps everything else for me. I want this body for hand held, low light, ultra thin depth of field photos. The in-body stabilization gives me at least an extra stop of hand-held goodness and it also gives you rudimentary leveling on-screen or in the EVF.

Using either of these bodies is frustrating with these lenses. It is nearly impossible to tell if you got the shot until it is on the computer. I end up having to use the focus assist mechanism (the EVF or screen zooms in 7x and lets you focus on the patch). The GF-1 is easier to use manual focus assist with because you engage it and focus then tap the shutter release half way to turn it off and frame. The E-P2 you engage the focus assist and then have to disengage it before framing and shooting. I find it annoying, I would much prefer having the shutter button disengage the focus assist like the GF-1.

Custom settings are essential to using manual non-system lenses on these bodies and the GF-1′s custom settings system is much better than the E-P2. There are two custom settings on the main mode dial labeled C1 and C2. You can program these to be whatever combination of settings you want. There are actually sub-sets for each position, but I only ever used 2, setup for my preferences for the lenses I was using at the time. Really nice.

Custom settings on the E-P2 requires a trip to the menu to do a custom “reset.” Kind of clunky compared to selecting C1 or C2 on the main mode dial.

I use a mac and neither raw format RW2 or OVF are supported by the native applications, happily Adobe Camera Raw handles both with ease (wtf Apple … geesh).

The f1.7 20mm kit lens on the GF-1 is beautiful. My favorite lens when I’m not torturing myself with the Noktons. The Olympus 14-42mm kit zoom lens is cool in that it retracts into itself for more compact form factor when not in use, but I don’t notice any particular quality difference over the kit zoom from Panasonic.

As far as HD movies, the E-P2 stores the movies in an AVI format container and the GF-1 uses some sort of MPEG stream format that I have to convert. Both are fine quality, don’t really see a difference in the two bodies however but just like most of the auto focus features on the E-P2 it is so easy to get out of focus movies on the Olympus because IT SUCKS AT AUTO FOCUS and you need to be sure and check that it is recording in focus. So annoying.

So bottom line. If you use the system lenses and don’t torture yourself with ultra low depth of field focus manual lenses, my personal opinion is that the GF-1 kicks the E-P2′s ass around the block. Because of the in-body stabilization, I am choosing the E-P2 because I’m primarily using it for adapted Leica M lenses and the extra wiggle room (hahaahah) the stabilization gives me is worth it.

I’m not a professional photographer, hell I’m not even that great a photographer. I just keep practicing and trying and having fun. These are just my opinions about the two cameras after using them side by side for 3 weeks both at home and on vacation in the Bahamas. Got any questions, comments? Just leave them below or contact me!

OMG I actually made an HDR I didn’t hate. Not great, but I’m not throwing up in my mouth. YAY.

At any rate, this was a completely different experience — later at night and even more beautiful than I remembered. The pictures just don’t do this place justice.

Check out the rest of the pictures I uploaded from that dinner.

Six Shillings Tour

Originally uploaded by Party Monster

Here is the house we are renting… same one we were at a few years ago when Brenda Becker rented it. Little video tour by yours truly.