Shawn Blanc

Review: The Origami Workstation for iPad

The Origami Workstation from Incase is little more than a folding, rubberized board that wraps around an Apple Bluetooth keyboard.

It has two tabs with velcro that flip underneath and strap to the underside when not in use. Or they fold towards one another to form a triangle stand when you want to prop your iPad up to write. The Workstation uses a half-circle plastic clip that is the exact size for securing the round, battery-holding tube area of the Apple Bluetooth keyboard.

Therefore this case doesn’t work with any keyboard other than Apple’s.

Fortunately, Apple’s Bluetooth keyboard is excellent. It’s sturdy, well built, and capable of controlling the iPad’s volume, brightness, and media playback.

There are, however, other iPad-specific keyboards (such as Amazon’s Basics) that have additional iOS-specific buttons which can return you to the Home screen, or take you to the Spotlight page. While these iPad-specific keyboards have some cool features, I’ve yet to try one that felt better for typing on than Apple’s keyboard. Giving up quality and size for a couple neat buttons is not a fair tradeoff.

Keyboards aside, there are many other reasons I like the Origami Workstation.

The Workstation’s best feature is that it doesn’t permanently affix itself to my iPad. Most of my iPad usage is comprised of non-typing activities like reading iBooks, Instapaper, RSS feeds, surfing the Web, etc. For those activities, the plain iPad is plenty — there is no need for an external keyboard (especially not one that’s attached.)

Well, why not just use the iPad’s smart cover, and carry around the keyboard by itself? I’m glad you asked. For one the Workstation allows me to use the iPad with keyboard on my lap (for times I’m sitting in a conference room or an airport terminal). Secondly, the Workstation offers a sturdier support for the iPad than the Smart Cover. Thus allowing me to press the Home button and navigate the touch screen without using two hands to keep the iPad from tipping over. And if you prefer to type with the iPad in portrait mode, you can do that no problem.

Another great benefit of the Workstation is that it’s device agnostic and future proof. It works perfectly with an iPad 1, 2, 3, 4, iPad mini, or even an iPhone. And it will work with whatever else comes next so long as it isn’t any thicker than an inch.

My Origami Workstation has seen nearly 18 months of use on the road, in coffee shops, and at the kitchen table. It continues to be the ideal typing companion to my iPad.

The Following Previews

There is a swell new trailer for Man of Steel. Actually, it’s beyond swell; it’s epic. In fact, it’s so epic, if you removed a few of the fast cuts to give a bit more plot clarity, and then add in something about Superman conquering General Zod, then, well, you’d probably have the world’s most epic 3-minute film.

It reminds me of the 2002 Spider-man Trailer where just about the only part missing is Spider-man actually defeating the Green Goblin.

With trailers like these, who needs movies?

This isn’t wholly new. In the trailer for the classic 1940′s film, The Shop Around the Corner, even though the plot isn’t given away we do see the main two characters fighting and then later being lovey-dovey with one another. If you saw the trailer before watching the movie, you’ve got a pretty good guess at how it ends up. (Of course, come on. It’s an old-school, feel-good romantic comedy — you don’t need spoilers to know how it ends up.)

But then there’s the trailer for Citizen Kane. In it you get a sense for the feel of the movie without really knowing what the movie is about. We’re shown some of the acting and the characters, but without any deep revelation of what the plot is about or what awesome stunts this film is pulling off.

The trailer for Citizen Kane aims to entice you without giving away the plot. The same goal as in the trailer for The Shining.

What used to be a trailer is now called a teaser. Like the trailers for Citizen Kane, The Shining, Alien, and others, a teaser doesn’t try to squeeze the biggest visual moments and most powerful dialog into a 3-minute clip. For example: the teaser for Man of Steel was incredible and was all I needed to know that I’d be going to see the film when it came out.

Perhaps it’s because the summer movie market is so crowded. Movie studios want to show as much of their epic blockbuster as possible to prove it’s a film worth seeing in the theatre instead of waiting for it to come to iTunes.

I’ve always viewed trailers as film art in and of themselves. And while I certainly enjoy watching today’s epic trailers, I have more appreciation for the ones which maintain some self control, aiming to tell me just enough and no more.

Review: Writing Kit for iPad

When writing long form on the iPad, I write almost exclusively in Writing Kit. It’s an app full of great features and options without being overly complicated.

I first fell in love with Writing Kit while writing Diary of an iPad 3 Owner. I wrote that article exclusively on the iPad and exclusively in Writing Kit. And I’ve been writing in the app ever since.

Writing Kit is a Dropbox-syncing, markdown-supporting, iOS text editor for writers. You can find it on the App Store for just 5 bucks.

Unlike some apps, Writing Kit gives me visibility into my entire Dropbox folder hierarchy. But I keep it pointed at my “Writing” folder because this is the folder where I have any and all articles that are in progress. This folder differs from my Simplenote database in that these articles have moved past the “idea” phase and are actually in progress. Currently I have 3 files in this folder, one of them being this Writing Kit review. After publishing, I move the document to a “Written” folder.

My biggest complaint against Writing Kit used to be its poor Dropbox integration. Writing Kit used to store a copy of its documents locally on the iPad and then would upload a copy of them to Dropbox whenever the user manually initiated a sync. That wasn’t an ideal syncing setup and led to conflicted copies on occasion.

However, Dropbox integration was completely rewritten a few versions ago and has since become significantly more reliable. The new Dropbox sync gives us access to our entire Dropbox folder hierarchy, and files are saved directly to Dropbox. And you no longer have to save manually (though you still can if you want) — Writing Kit saves your work automatically in the background while you are typing. Also, when you exit the app, your article is uploaded and saved in the background as well. I haven’t lost a single word to sync since Writing Kit’s Dropbox support was rewritten.

Like the small handful of other Dropbox-enabled iOS text editors out there, Writing Kit also has its own Markdown-friendly custom keyboard row, and it integrates with TextExpander. But this app is not like all the others. There are a handful of things that set Writing Kit apart for me. Specifically: (a) the fine-grained control of fonts and type, (b) an in-app Web Browser, and (c) some clever gestures support. The more I use it, the more I enjoy using it.

Font Control

Spitting in the proverbial wind of iA Writer, Writing Kit gives extremely granular controls over the font you choose to type with. A list of 15 “popular fonts” sits just above another list that gives you access to every single typeface that ships with iOS. Against your better judgment, you could type in Marker Felt or Papyrus if you wanted to — just don’t get caught. I usually type in Inconsolata, but have recently switched to Avenir Book.

Additionally, you have control over font size, line height, and several pre-defined color schemes (including the light and dark Solarized schemes). I use the Default theme, which is just black text on a white background. And I keep the line height somewhat generous.

The In-App Browser

Tap the upper-right compass icon and up pops a full-fledged Web browser. In the browser’s “omni bar” you can type the URL of a page you want to visit or simply type a search term to conduct a search via DuckDuckGo.

While browsing and researching, you can add and tag bookmarks locally in Writing Kit’s browser by tapping the “plus” icon. Unfortunately these bookmarks do not sync with Writing Kit on the iPhone (nor to any app on the Mac).

For bookmarking I prefer to use Pinboard. Writing Kit does support Pinboard, but it’s somewhat difficult to find and it isn’t exactly the greatest integration of all time. Tap the Bookmark icon and then tap the “Local Bookmarks” title badge. You’ll see an option to log in to Pinboard and/or Zootool. From there you get a mobile Web view of your Pinboard account which is, unfortunately, read only. So, in short, you can access your Pinboard bookmarks, but you cannot add any from Writing Kit.

However, Writing Kit does have fantastic Instapaper integration. You can view a nicely formatted view of your Instapaper queue, open those links in the browser, and you can send any web page you’re viewing into your Instapaper queue. (Gosh, I’d love to see this same type of polished integration with Pinboard.) Moreover, on any Web page, tap the “Text Only” button at the bottom and you get the mobilized view of the site, courtesy of Instapaper’s Mobilizer.

Now, presumably, with at least some of the websites you’re loading up in the browser you will want to link to within the article you’re writing. And this is one thing that makes the in-app browser so great versus switching back and forth with Safari.

When you’re on a Web page, tap the “share” icon in the lower right hand corner (it won’t be there if you have the cursor active in the Address Bar). From there you can choose to insert the URL of the current page into your text document. Tapping that option sends you back into your document with a new menu bar at the bottom of your screen, which gives you the option to either ignore the link or insert the link at the cursor point. Tapping the latter will place a fully formatted Markdown link using the title of the Web page and the URL.

If, however, you prefer to link your text after you’ve written the words you want to be hyperlinks, you can still highlight the words and then have Writing Kit wrap them in a Markdown format via the popover menu.

This text-document-to-browser integration is one of my favorite things of Writing Kit. I hope to see continued iteration and refinement here.

Clever Gestures

It seems that it’s always the little things that grab you and get you hooked. And it was the margin tap targets that first hooked me with Writing Kit.

Tapping on the left or right margin moves the cursor one character in the respective direction. If you’re writing with an external keyboard this isn’t that big of a deal, but when working with the iPad’s on-screen keyboard, having tappable margins is like a dream. Long have I wished Apple would implement this functionality into Mail.

There are additional gestures as well. Tap in the margins with two fingers and the cursor moves one word (instead of just one character) in the respective direction. Also, a two-finger swipe from right to left works as Undo, and 2-finger swipe from left to right works as Redo.

There are more gestures, and you can learn them all under the “i” icon for help, and then tap the “Gestures” cheat sheet.

Additional Unordered List of Miscellany

• I’ll start with my biggest quibble: when creating a new document, Writing Kit gives you a seemingly nonsensical title. I don’t understand why not at least use the date/time stamp instead of some random string of numbers?

  Update: Turns out this is a feature. Now that I know the “why” behind this, I can’t help but think it’s devilishly clever.

• Terminology integration: tap a word, then tap “Replace” and you are sent to Terminology. You can then select a different word and Terminology will send it back to Writing Kit, replacing your original word.

• The Markdown formatting keyboard row: It is present even when the external keyboard is active, thus giving one-tap access to link insertion, formatting, and more. The default has one-tap buttons for headers, bold and italic formatting, inserting links, images, code, and block quotes, and unordered and ordered lists. Swipe to the right and you get parentheses, brackets, quotes, and more.

  When you tap on the bold formatting button, your text selection is wrapped in double asterisks for bold. If no text is selected, then Writing Kit generates the double asterisks with selected text in between ready for you type into. Tap the bold formatting button again and the double asterisks are removed. Clever.

• Format selected text: Highlight any bit of text, and then tap a Markdown formatting button and that selected text will have the formatting applied. Be it bold, italics, code, or even a list.

• TextExpander support: I already mentioned this above, but an app without TextExpander support is an app I’m not interested in.

• Export: You can export your document as Markdown or as HTML to any number of other apps, but you can also send it as an attachment in an email or as inline text in an email. For example, once I’m done writing this review, I’ll email it as an attachment to my editor right from within the app. Won’t he be delighted?

• Outline view: There is a dynamically-generated outline view that lists out the hierarchy of your document based on heading tags and links. I don’t use this often, but when I do need it I find it insanely helpful. Especially when writing multi-thousand-word articles on the iPad.

• Inline link conversion: If you write your links as inline links, Writing Kit can then convert them all to reference links. Tap the “share” icon in the upper-left corner, then tap “Convert Inline Links to Refs”.

• The icon: The icon, which was part of the 3.0 update, is both unique and gorgeous.

  

• Quick Search: The in-app browser is not the only way to search the web. Tapping the magnifying glass icon in the upper-right brings up the Quick Search tool. And it’s not just for searching the document you’re in. This little magic box can also do many site-specific searches, calculations and more. You have to use it a few times to begin to understand its usefulness and cleverness.

  Then, if you’ve drilled down into a site and you want to move over to the in-app browser, just tap the “full screen” icon and the page you’re on will open up in the browser.

  My only quibble with the Quick Search is that it does not do find and replace.

Wrapping Up

Writing Kit is obviously one of the more full-featured writing apps out there. And I find its rich feature set to be comforting and useful. The app offers a simple enough view to qualify as a “distraction-free” writing environment, but also has enough bells and whistles that it’s great for getting work done.

Compared to many of my favorite apps that do “one thing well,” Writing Kit seems to be on a different end of the spectrum. But, on second thought, maybe it isn’t. Maybe Writing Kit does do one thing well. And that one thing is being an awesome text editor for writers.

Smarter Email Signatures With Keyboard Maestro

There are 2 things I don’t like about using signatures in Mail on the Mac.

For one, if you don’t always write messages which are either bottom-posted replies or top-posted replies, then half the time Mail puts the signature in the wrong spot. In the Signature preference pane you can check a box telling Mail to place the signature above quoted text, but then it’s in the incorrect place when you want to do a bottom-posted email reply. And vice versa. If you don’t check that box then your email signature is at the very bottom of the email message whenever you want to do a top-posted reply. Ugh.

Secondly, email signatures which are generated by Mail are in rich text. If, like me, you compose your emails in plain text then your signature can stand out like a formatted sore thumb.

For a long time I’ve been using TextExpander to expand my email signature when I’m done typing my email.

Ideally, however, I’d love to even forgo TextExpander and have my email signatures there before I even begin typing. But, as stated above, using Mail’s built-in signatures doesn’t place the signature in the right spot. And I want the signature inserted in the proper place regardless of if I’m composing a new message, top-posting my reply, or bottom-posting my reply.

Using Keyboard Maestro I can do just that.

Since Keyboard Maestro sees keyboard shortcuts before OS X does, it’s easy to “replace” an app’s default keyboard shortcuts with a Keyboard Maestro macro that does what you actually want the app to do when you hit that hotkey.

I set up five macros to replace my five most common email actions:

• OPT+R: Bottom-posted, in-line reply (Since there is no default keyboard shortcut for bottom-posting a reply, I use Option+R. That way if I want to top-post my reply I use the default keyboard shortcut, or if I want to bottom post my reply then I use this alternate shortcut.)
• CMD+N: New message
• CMD+R: Top-posted Reply
• SHIFT+CMD+R: Reply all
• SHIFT+CMD+F: Forward

A few notes about these macros:

• These macros assume you use non-account-specific signatures. If you do use a different signature for different email accounts, you could work around that by duplicating each macro for each specific signature you use. Then, give those signature-specific macros the same hotkey and Keyboard Maestro will ask you which signature you want to use.

• The macro for bottom-posting a reply is based on this age-old AppleScript of John Gruber’s which I’ve been using for years. It essentially creates a better-formatted bottom-posted email reply by simulating some keystrokes and inserting the cursor in the proper place.

• For creating a New Message, an AppleScript is used because when composing a new email you want the cursor to be in the “To:” field while the new message’s body already contains your signature. Running a simple inline AppleScript does the trick just fine for this:

  
  tell application "Mail"
      set theMessage to make new outgoing message with properties {visible:true, content:"
  
  — Shawn"}
  end tell
  

• The macros for Top-Posted Reply, Forward, or Reply All, include two additional Return strokes underneath my name to give some breathing space below my signature and above the rest of the email message.

If you don’t use Keyboard Maestro that’s unfortunate. But you can still reap the rewards of this Mail hackery by whipping up some AppleScripts and using a hotkey launcher such as FastScripts or Alfred.

You can download the Keyboard Maestro macros here.

Camera Review: The Olympus E-PL5

It was the iPhone that convinced me to buy a better camera.

My son was born in February of 2012. Later in the year — some time after our summer vacation to the Colorado mountains — as I was looking through the photos we had of him, I realized I wasn’t giddy about hardly any of them.

There were many great snapshots of some very fond memories. But none of the images were of a quality where I wanted to print them out and frame them. They pretty much only looked good on the small screen of my iPhone.

That’s when I decided my iPhone shouldn’t bear the burden of being the best and only camera in the house.

I began researching mirrorless cameras looking for a rig I could easily take with me anywhere I went, and which cost under $1,000. I wanted the camera to have an Auto mode so I could just point and shoot if I wanted to, or so I could hand it to a family member to point and shoot with. But it also needed to have good manual modes so I could learn and grow into the manual controls as I learned more about the technical details of photography.

The rig I chose was the new Olympus E-PL5 and the world-famous Panasonic 20mm f/1.7 pancake lens.

After 6 months shooting with the E-PL5, I continue to be impressed and pleased by the quality of the images this small and sturdy rig is capable of.

(Note: Click the images to zoom them.)

Though my skill behind the lens still leaves much to be desired, my slow-growing collection of great images has long since proven to me that getting a nice camera was a good idea. The photographs I’ve taken with the E-PL5 juxtapose themselves against my iPhone pics because the images from the E-PL5 are ones which look better when on a big screen or printed out and framed.

This isn’t something exclusive to the E-PL5, of course. Any decent camera with good sensor and quality glass will take some great shots. At $900 — the price for the E-PL5 body and the Panasonic 20mm f/1.7 lens — I would be upset if this rig did’t produce some great images.

There are a few reasons I went with the E-PL5 instead of the many, many other options out there in the mirrorless category:

• I didn’t go with the RX-1 because its price tag is 3 times what my budget was.
• I didn’t go with any of the Sony NEX line because I wanted a better lens selection and smaller camera body.
• I didn’t go with the Panasonic GX-1 because I could afford a better camera if I could find one.

In short, the E-PL5 was the smallest camera I could find with the best possible sensor inside and most features.

As I’ll talk more about below, this camera is basically the guts of the E-M5 put inside a smaller body with a few less pro features on the outside. And that, my friends, is why I consider the E-PL5 to be one of the best-kept secrets in the Micro Four Thirds category.

Aside regarding the King of the M4/3 Hill, the OM-D E-M5

I didn’t want to write a review of the E-PL5 without at least a little bit of context and experience with some of the other offerings out there. So I rented the Olympus OM-D E-M5 along with the Olympus 45mm f/1.8 lens for a few weeks.

The E-M5 is widely regarded as the best Micro Four Thirds camera out there.

When I bought the E-PL5, it was so new to the market that I could hardly find any hands-on reviews. But what made it so special is the fact that its sensor and processor are the same as what is found in the E-M5. Because of all the great reviews I’d been reading about the E-M5, I felt confident buying the E-PL5 on blind faith, trusting that it would be able to perform admirably.

I rented the E-M5 to give myself some context for how the E-PL5 compares against the best M4/3 camera out there, and also to find out for sure if I had made the right choice in getting a smaller and cheaper camera with a few less features and controls.

The most significant differences between the E-M5 and the E-PL5 are the pro-level features the former has which the latter does not. The E-M5 has a built-in electronic viewfinder, two manual dial controls, and a slightly larger hand grip. The E-M5 is also weather proof (meaning you can take it out in the rain without fear of ruining it), while the E-PL5 is not.

On the inside, the E-M5 and E-PL5 are much more similar. They have the same 16MP sensor and image processor that made the E-M5 so famous. They both have in-body image stabilization (though the E-M5 has 5-axis IBIS, while the E-PL5 uses conventional 2-axis), and they both have a dust reduction system that silently vibrates the sensor each time you turn on the camera to help “fling” any dust which may be there.

In my usage and comparisons, the two cameras produced nearly identical images. In several situations I took images with both the E-M5 and E-PL5, even switching lenses so as to try and take the exact same image with both cameras. To my eye, the shots look like they’re from the same camera.

Below: taken with the E-M5 and 45mm lens, 1/100sec at f/1.8, ISO 500

Below: taken with the E-PL5 and 45mm, 1/80sec at f/1.8, ISO 400

Below: taken with the E-M5 and 20mm, 1/60sec at f/1.7, ISO 400

Below: taken with the E-PL5 and 20mm, 1/50sec at f/1.7, ISO 400

In my opinion, the advantages of the E-M5 over the E-PL5 are almost entirely in the bells and whistles and not in the end-product capabilities. For photographers who have used bigger DSLR rigs, or who really want a viewfinder, then the E-M5 will probably feel more comfortable. But for everyone else, the $400 you’ll save by buying the E-PL5 instead of the E-M5 is probably better spent on a nice lens.

E-PL5 Overview

With the Panasonic pancake lens attached, the E-PL5 is small enough to fit in my coat pocket, the glove box in my Jeep, or alongside my MacBook Air, iPad, and Moleskine inside my extra small Timbuk2 bag.

The build quality is excellent. The camera is sturdy but not heavy, weighing just 1 pound with the 20mm pancake lens and wrist strap attached (body only, the E-PL5 weighs a mere 12 ounces). And because of its smaller size and lack of a viewfinder, the E-PL5 doesn’t look too intimidating.

The humble appearance of the E-PL5 is one of its best features. With it I feel less like a “wannabe pro photographer” and more like a “casual photography enthusiast” when I have the camera out in public.

My goal with the E-PL5 wasn’t to get my toe in the waters of professional photography. I just wanted a high-quality camera nearby for when I would have otherwise reached for my iPhone.

Having a non-giant camera makes it far more likely that I will take it with me when I’m leaving the house and to actually use it while I’m out. Coat-pocketable means “it will get used” in this case. And isn’t that the whole point?

Sans Viewfinder

The E-PL5 does not have a built-in electronic viewfinder (EVF) — to frame your shots, you use the view screen.

For some people, this may be a deal breaker. What’s nice about having a viewfinder is that you can hide behind it, and also you can steady your camera a bit better by holding it up to your face. But in my few weeks with the E-M5 (which does have a viewfinder), I found myself using the E-M5′s view screen instead of its built-in EVF.

For me, sacrificing a viewfinder is worth the tradeoff because it means having a smaller camera body. However, since the E-PL5 supports add-ons via its hotshoe connection, you could buy the Olympus VF2 or VF3.

The View Screen

On the back of the camera is a 3-inch, tilting, LCD touch screen.

You can tap to focus, tap to adjust color settings, and more. There is a dial control “d-pad” placed just to the right of the screen which also evokes the menu and is used to navigate through all the levels of settings.

The screen isn’t stationary either — it flips out and can tilt.

I was worried about the fragility of the flip-out screen. But to my relief, the hinges are incredibly sturdy and well built. I am often taking shots with the camera held down near my waist, and it’s easy to just flip the screen up 90 degrees and look down into the view screen. In short, it moves easily, holds in place just fine, and is a considerably useful feature.

The quality of the display itself is excellent as well. Though Olympus does not say what the actual screen resolution is, they do say it’s a 3-inch diagonal screen with a 16:9 aspect of approximately 460,000 dots. If “dots” means “pixels,” then the view screen would have a resolution somewhere in the neighborhood of 904×507 pixels with a PPI density of 345. Now, the view screen is certainly nice, but it’s not that nice.

On Twitter, Milosz Bolechowski pointed out that the “dots” are likely referring to each of the 3 RBG dots in a single pixel. Which I agree is most likely the case. Meaning the 460,000 or so dots in the view screen equal approximately 153,333 pixels.

Thus, the view screen most likely has a resolution of 533×294 with a PPI density of 200.

To protect the screen, I bought one of these plastic screen covers. It’s sized for the NEX cameras, but it’s a near-perfect fit for the E-PL5 as well — I never even notice that it’s there. Highly recommended.

The Grip

The E-PL5 comes with a small, removable hand grip. Without the grip attached, the camera has a bit more of a classic look to it, akin to the thin and simple rangefinder bodies of old.

But I can’t imagine not wanting to attach the grip. It adds hardly any size and makes the E-PL5 significantly easier to hold with one hand. When attached, the grip stays quite secure, as if it were built in as part of the camera body from the start.

Manual Dials and Shooting in Manual Mode

As expected, the E-PL5 has several different shooting modes: Auto, Program, Aperture-Priority, Shutter-Priority, and Manual. As well as Movie, Scene, and Art modes.

I mostly shoot in Aperture-Priority mode and am happy to let the camera pick the shutter speed for me in order to get the right exposure.

The Movie and Art modes allow you to choose an artsy filter to apply to your movie or photograph — it’s like having Instagram built in to your camera. I’ve never used these in real life (I prefer to edit my images in Lightroom 4), but here are two sample shots I took for this review: one using the Pin Hole filter and one using the Grainy Film filter. Both of these shots are the out of camera JPGs, but the E-PL5′s in-camera filters are applied to the RAW image file as well, so I could take remove them in Lightroom if I wanted.

What I most wish the E-PL5 had was a few dedicated manual dial controls. When shooting in Aperture-Priority Mode, Manual, or the like, having a few dials that give you quick and instant access to adjust the aperture, shutter, and/or ISO are very nice. The E-M5 had these dials and I found myself using them all the time.

On the E-PL5, when I’m shooting in Aperture-Priority mode (which is the most common setting for me), adjusting the aperture number requires a tap “up” on the menu D-Pad to highlight the aperture setting, and then a tap left or right in order to increase or decrease the aperture. Moreover, the D-Pad is pretty small (smaller than a Dime) and therefore is not easy to navigate. This is not nearly as nice or fast as having a dial that you can click left or right without having to lean back and look at the camera for a few seconds.

Battery Life

Battery life is absolutely fantastic. On the very first charge, after 4 days of shooting and about 500 images, it was low on battery. After that first charge I didn’t need to charge the battery for over 2.5 weeks, and that was with near daily use.

The camera seems to go forever. The battery is one thing I’ve never once worried about, nor have I been out shooting and had the battery die on me. If I know I’ll be using the camera a lot over the weekend or something then I’ll charge it up ahead of time.

The only thing I don’t like about the battery is that it comes with its own charging station. This means when traveling there is one more cable and trinket to pack. I’d prefer to be able to charge the battery by plugging a USB cable into the camera itself.

Low-Light Performance

For what I know about low light performance, the E-PL5 performs wonderfully. Low-light images have very little noise, and can generally be doctored just fine in Lightroom.

With the default white balance settings, I’ve noticed that images straight out of the camera tend to have a bit of a warm tone to them, giving portraits a bit more orange-colored skin tone than is to my liking. This can be adjusted in the camera’s white balance settings to have a more “cool” tint to them, or the orange skin can be easily fixed in Lightroom.

The biggest downside of low light shooting is not the image quality, but the autofocus. The 20mm lens already has a tendency to hunt at times, and in low light situations you can sometimes wait 2 or 3 seconds for the autofocus to find a contrast point and snap the image.

There have only been a few low-light situations where the lighting was so dark that I was frustrated with the E-PL5′s ability to focus and snap a shot. One of those times was when we all went out to dinner for my dad’s 60th birthday. We were at a fancy steak restaurant where the lighting was extremely dim.

The E-PL5 comes with a flash that attaches via the hotshoe port on top, but I’ve never used it. In a setting like the steak restaurant, using the flash would have been rude; in most other settings the flash isn’t even necessary.

For most low-light settings (such as indoors in the evening), the camera does great with very little noise in the images.

Speed

• Startup speed: From the time I press the power button to when the camera is ready to snap a picture, it’s less than 2 seconds.

  The E-PL5 is usually up and ready to go before I even have the lens cap off. Which means if the Olympus is nearby, it’s actually faster for me to grab it, turn it on, and snap a shot than it is for me to pull my iPhone out of my pocket and launch the Camera app. Even when racing against the Lock Screen Camera app shortcut, the E-PL5 wins by about 1 second.

• Shot-to-shot speed: If you want to manually shoot several shots in succession, in decent indoor light or better, the the E-PL5 takes just 1.5 seconds to autofocus, snap a picture, write to the card, and then be ready to focus again.

• Autofocus speed: The Olympus is well known for its fast autofocus. As I mention below in the section on lenses, the autofocus on the Olympus 45mm lens is so fast it seems instantaneous; with the Panasonic 20mm the autofocus is a bit slower.

  You can hold the shutter button halfway down to have the camera autofocus on either an area within the viewfinder grid, or the camera can automatically find a face and focus on the nearest eyeball. Then, pressing the shutter button all the way down snaps the image. But, if you want the camera to snap a photo as soon as it’s grabbed focus, you can press the shutter button all the way down right away and it will snap as soon as it has focus. In decent light, this is almost instantaneously.

  Moreover, you can focus and shoot an image using the touchscreen. You can set the camera to tap to focus on any area of the screen, but you can also configure it to snap the shot as soon as it locks the focus.

  Using the E-PL5′s touchscreen reminds me a lot of using the camera on my iPhone. The camera’s software is responsive, clever, and useful. Well done, Olympus.

Camera Straps

The stock camera strap is lame. It’s not detachable, nor is it long enough to let the camera rest at a comfortable distance when over one shoulder and under my other arm.

DSPTCH makes some pretty awesome shoulder straps. I ordered one from them that I really like, but after a couple months of use I felt like I didn’t always want a shoulder strap attached. In fact, I often don’t — most of the time the camera is in my bag or in my jacket pocket and I’m not walking around with it around my shoulder. (Of course, now that summer is approaching, that may change.)

So I ordered yet another strap. This time a small leather wrist strap from Gordy’s. The wrist strap is small enough to not be in the way when just grabbing the camera, and I think it looks great.

I probably should have ordered one of DSPTCH’s wrist straps which use the same clip that their shoulder straps use. This would have made it easy for me to swap out the shoulder strap and the wrist strap depending on my need. But the leather straps at Gordy’s were too cool to pass by. Whatchagonnado?

Lenses

A Micro Four Thirds sensor has a crop ratio of 1/2. So, for example, a 20mm lens on a M4/3 rig is actually a 40mm equivalent when compared to a full-frame sensor. Which is why shooting with the 20mm as my daily glass is not as fishy as it sounds, because it’s just a bit bigger than shooting with a good ole 35mm lens.

I’ve used 3 of the most popular Micro Four Thirds lenses:

• Panasonic 20/1.7 lens: This is the lens attached to my rig. Though this lens is certainly no slouch, perhaps it’s greatest advantage compared to the lenses below is its size. The pancake lens looks great on the small body of the E-PL5 and affords the rig to easily fit in coat pockets, etc.

  The disadvantages of the 20mm is that because of its compact size it doesn’t grab quite as high-quality images as a “regular sized” lens. But, at least to my eyes, the difference is barely noticeable and the advantages in both size and cost far outweigh the very slight disadvantages in image quality.

  Unless you know that you want a different lens, this is the one I would start with.

• Panasonic 25/1.4 lens: Compared to the 20mm pancake, this 25mm produces higher quality images, has faster autofocus, and is capable of a better and creamier depth of field. But it’s also a larger piece of glass and it costs $150 more (so, obviously it had better take better images).

  Though this is my favorite lens of the 3 I’ve tried, the size turned me off to the 25mm as my daily glass — it is too big to allow the camera to easily fit in my coat pocket. And the focal length is too similar to the 20mm to justify owning both lenses (as much as I would love to own them both). So I returned the 25mm and kept the 20mm.

• Olympus 45/1.8 lens: This is the portrait lens of the Micro Four Thirds world. One thing Olympus lenses are known for is their lightning-fast auto focusing, and it’s true. This lens hunts far less than the 20mm, and its images are so clear and crisp.

  If and when I decide to buy a second lens, it will likely be the 45mm. Compared to the 20mm pancake, the 45mm is not nearly as compact or attractive (seriously, a silver lens on a black body?). If the 45mm were my only lens, I know I’d be using the E-PL5 less often.

Editing Workflow

So far my editing workflow is simple and straightforward. I plug my camera’s SD card into my MacBook Air, import the photos into Lightroom 4, and then make some minor edits using one of VSCO’s Film packs.

During one of our B&B shows, my pal Ben Brooks told me how he uses a 0-based rating system which I’ve also adopted. When going through the latest lot of imported photos, I flag all the blurry, crappy, or duplicate images for deletion. Then I go through and rate what I think are the best photos with a 3-, 4-, or 5-star rating.

I then upload my favorites to my Flickr account. We’ve had a few printed and framed so far, and I think it’s just great to have my own pictures of my own family up and around in my home. Printing through Shutterfly is cheap and easy enough that with a few easy-swap frames, we can change out our 8×10 prints pretty much as often as we like.

Perhaps a more-detailed writeup on this subject is in order because there are a few things about my editing workflow that I’m still not happy with. Primarily:

• Archiving old images — right now they’re all on my MacBook Air and quickly encroaching on my disk space.
• Posting my favorite images — while Flickr is nice, I’d like a spot that’s a little bit more my own. I’ve been considering setting up my own image portfolio website just so I can have a spot that encourages more regular posting of images.

Real-Life Usage

One of the most rewarding parts of photography is when, after a lot of shooting, I plug the card into my MacBook Air, import all the most-recent photos, and begin to look them over. If there are 1 or 2 (or even 3) shots that turned out awesome, then all the energy that went into capturing those few photographs was worth it.

When I find those few great images from the batch, I lean back in my chair. Looking at one of them, I take a deep breath and smile. Then I call my wife to come downstairs and check out the latest photos, and we talk about what it is that we like about it. Maybe it’s an image of our son, Noah, that captured one of his many funny faces. Maybe it’s a shot that’s framed just right, or has light that’s doing some incredible thing.

I’m still learning, and so right now maybe 1 in 500 shots turn out that good. But when they do, I love it that the quality can be there to match the times when the composition is just right. When I compare moments like that with the times I’ve gone through my iPhone’s photo library, though I have lots of pictures, they are all more like snapshots and not photographs (if that makes sense).

Shots like this are the rare ones which justify my camera purchase a hundred times over.

Images like these are, of course, not going to be exclusive to the E-PL5. There are many other amazing cameras out there. For me, going with a small rig instead of a large DSLR (or even a medium-sized NEX) means I’m much more likely to actually take the camera with me.

And that is the entire point: The E-PL5 is an extremely capable and delightfully portable camera.