This is a piece from NPR’s StoryCorps about a daughter’s love for her unique mother. You should listen to the audio instead of skimming through the text.
This is a guest post by Nate Spears, who has taken over the site this week while Shawn is on vacation at an undisclosed location.
What causes this bizarre (to the film industry outsider) phenomenon?
I think it’s that studios keep a close eye on what their competition is doing, and the weird “hotness” factor comes into play when someone thinks his studio is going to miss an opportunity.
What seems so strange to me about that logic is the following: let’s say you’ve heard that your competition is going to make a talking pig movie and you think, “Man, I’m going to miss an opportunity to cash in on this talking pig thing that everyone is itching to see!”
One, it’s strange that you would jump to the conclusion that everyone is going to love this other talking pig movie before it’s been released. What if it’s a huge flop? Now you’re barreling ahead on a path that leads to a cliff’s edge.
Two, what makes you think that if the first one is a big success, anyone is going to want to see two talking pig movies in the same summer? If it’s a big success, that means by definition a lot of people saw it. That’s a lot of people who are probably not going to care that much about your johnny-come-lately pig movie that comes out two months later. Wouldn’t it be better to release yours a year or two afterward to let the people’s hunger for talking pigs revive a bit?
It seems like a lose-lose situation to me. Maybe the market research shows differently.
This is a guest post by Nate Spears, who has taken over the site this week while Shawn is on vacation at an undisclosed location.
Yes, that is a one-liner. I doubt I will have time for anything substantial today so please accept this gem of a headline as my apology.
And for dessert, here’s my favorite silly classified ad.
Thanks for all the nice feedback on the footy piece. I learned something about football etiquette that I didn’t know before from a couple readers: Man U is an offensive way to refer to Manchester United, because of its use in offensive chants by terrible people. I edited the article to remove uses of the phrase.
Finally, I learned that Shawn doesn’t like double spaces after sentences. Like, REALLY doesn’t like double spaces. :)
This is a guest post by Nate Spears, who has taken over the site this week while Shawn is on vacation at an undisclosed location.
This is a guest post by Nate Spears, who has taken over the site this week while Shawn is on vacation at an undisclosed location.
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I’m going to take this unique opportunity to introduce you guys to something that’s going on across the pond. If you have zero interest in sports, then just move on to the next item in your RSS feed now! If you are interested, this is going to be a long read. Fair warning.
The world of European football (soccer) is a fascinating place, endlessly rich for the sports fan, whether she be casual or fanatic. I could spend several posts detailing the scene from different angles. I could talk about the different flavors of the major leagues – the English, Spanish, German, and Italian leagues (in no particular order) being the richest and generally producing the best soccer, but with different playstyles prevailing in each league. There’s the amazing Champions League, which is a super-league where the best clubs from the whole continent compete in a tournament similar to the format of the World Cup (every year!). There’s the drama of great coaches coming and going, rising and falling, with the best ones changing the style of the game for years. There’s the character of the clubs themselves and their traditions, chants, stadiums, and histories. Along with all that are the intricate, evolving strategies that work their way around Europe like the DNA of successful offspring. Who can find the next step in tactics and formations that will produce the most from a team of talented stars? These are the questions that try men’s souls.
But a lot of that would be a bit, er, inside football to the uninitiated. So I’ve decided to focus on something that’s happening on a more individual level. Right now two men playing in the Spanish League (La Liga) are playing to a sustained level of individual brilliance and one-up-manship that is unparalleled in the history of football, perhaps in the history of sport.
These men are an Argentinian named Lionel Messi and a Portuguese named Cristiano Ronaldo (not to be confused with the Brazilians Ronaldo or Ronaldinho). Leo Messi plays for Barcelona and Ronaldo plays for Real Madrid. These clubs are the richest Spanish clubs and vie for the title each year, and each time they meet the contest is (perhaps unfairly to the rest of their teams) billed as a clash of the two greatest players in the game – Messi vs Ronaldo.
Their individual stories are an interesting study in contrast. Ronaldo has a fairly typical superstar striker story. He started at small clubs in his home country Portugal, and worked his way up to the highest level there. Then he caught the attention of a big club, Manchester United, in one of the four big soccer countries, England, while still young, and developed into a true superstar at Man United. Ronaldo is tall and handsome, some might say pretty, and he fostered a reputation as a bit of a whiny diver early on in his career. He has mostly overcome that reputation now, and his work ethic is tremendous. He’s still a bit infamous among fans of the English national team for winking at his team bench after getting a beloved, hotheaded English player sent off in a World Cup. After making his value at Man United obvious, he joined the only club in the world richer than Man United, Real Madrid, and moved to Spain. Ronaldo has the healthy ego typical of a tall, handsome, talented superstar.
“Some fans keep booing and whistling at me because I’m handsome, rich and a great player. They envy me.”
But he’s not an unsympathetic character either:
“There is no harm in dreaming of becoming the world’s best player. It’s all about trying to be the best. I will keep working hard to achieve it, but it is within my capabilities.”
Lionel Messi, in comparison, is a bit of an oddity in the superstar market. He came up through Barcelona’s youth system and has stayed with the club through his whole career to date. He has stated repeatedly his desire to retire at Barcelona (he probably has at least another 7 years to play). This doesn’t mean he’s any more loyal than Ronaldo – it’s just good luck for him and Barcelona that he started out at one of the biggest teams on the planet (Barcelona is the 3rd richest club in the world, behind both Man United and Real Madrid). Many teams have youth systems and try to promote “from within”, but statistically it’s just unlikely that you will be able to identify all the talent you need from a young age. For every Ronaldo that Man United brings over at 17 or 18 who makes it big, there are ten strikers they bring in who look promising at that age but never quite develop into a striker of “big club caliber” and eventually move on to play their football at smaller clubs. And I don’t even know how many very young kids go through a club’s youth system without ever getting a chance at “first team football,” that is, practicing with the real players and perhaps getting a chance to play towards the end of a real game.
Before Messi played in Spain for Barca, he was a young boy in Argentina whose potential was obvious to anyone who saw him play. He had the ball glued to his left foot from an early age, reminiscent of the greatest Argentinian and perhaps greatest footballer of all time, Diego Maradona. The problem was that Lionel Messi had a growth hormone deficiency, and the payments for the treatments were beyond his parents’ means. When Barcelona’s scout saw the boy in action, he was so convinced of Messi’s talent that Barcelona offered to bring the whole family to Spain and help find his father work, and to take care of Messi’s medical treatment. There was a now-mythical contract on a paper napkin to seal the deal.
Messi was so small when he came over to Spain that his coaches asked the other players not to hurt him. Says his teammate Pique:
“He was really good, but he was really small and thin. His legs were like fingers. One coach said, ‘Don’t try to tackle him strong, because maybe you will break him.’ And we said, ‘O.K., but don’t worry because we cannot catch him.’ ”
In 2006, the dominant superstar at Barcelona was an electric Brazilian named Ronaldinho, whose infectious smile and otherworldly skills charmed the world. Upon receiving the Ballon d’Or (the Golden Ball, an award voted on by players, coaches, and press to give to the best player in the world), Ronaldinho said of the young Messi:
“This award says I’m the best player in the world, but I’m not even the best player at Barcelona.”
Despite the growth treatments that he eventually got, Messi is still a short man (5’7″), and although his legs are no longer skinny, he still comes across as a bit slight. He looks like an average Joe, and his personality is the antithesis of the headline-generating superego. He constantly deflects praise to his teammates and speaks of the team’s achievements, downplaying his own importance. In short, if he wasn’t the greatest player of his generation, he might be a bit forgettable.
So why bring up these two players together? Well, it seems to be one of the boons to fans of football that these two players, both of whom would normally dominate a decade of football with ease, are playing at the same time. They also seem to be, despite the mild protestations of both players to the contrary, pushing each other to greater heights. Ronaldo secured a move to Barcelona’s great rival, Real Madrid, at the height of both of their powers. If that isn’t a declaration of war, I don’t know what is.
So what have these two been doing that makes them so special? They are scoring at an unprecedented, inhuman rate, and they are keeping it up over a period of years.
In 2007-2008, Ronaldo scored 42 goals in 49 appearances in all competitions for Man United, meaning the main English league, the Champions League, and other English tournaments that Man United participated in. This is an astonishing achievement in and of itself, and would be a great achievement even if he had never scored again. The position of striker/forward in football usually plays as close to the opponent’s goal as possible and receives the ball far up the pitch (field) in good position to attempt scoring goals. A striker who scores a goal every two games is considered proficient and deadly, and will command a high salary at a top club. Ronaldo scored his 42 goals playing from a winger position – meaning he played on the side of the pitch and would often have to run past two or three people to score his goals. On top of that, he was scoring free kicks on a regular basis – kicking the ball from a dead stop after a foul of some kind. He was kicking the ball so hard that it swerved back and forth like a knuckleball pitch in baseball, making many a goalkeeper flap at the ball like a large ungainly bird. Sometimes the ball would change direction so rapidly that it looked like it had bounced off an invisible wall in midair. At the time I thought this scoring achievement was so incredible that I remarked to a friend, “He’ll never score that many goals again in his life.” And indeed, the next season he scored a merely excellent 24 goals for Man United. But he would make me eat my words later.
By contrast, in 2007-2008 Messi was not yet the most important player at Barcelona. A glittering array of scoring talent like Thierry Henry, Samuel Eto’o, and Ronaldinho still played there. While establishing himself as an important player in that squad, he scored 16 goals in 40 appearances. and started to let the world know the amazing things he was capable of.
But Ronaldo was just getting started as well. The year following his “slump,” he was traded to Real Madrid; although Man United didn’t want to see him go, they didn’t want to hold him back if he was ready to leave. After that, both their careers started to accelerate. Football isn’t just a numbers game, but take a look at these numbers anyway.
| Start-End Year | Messi Appearances/Goals | Ronaldo Appearances/Goals |
| 2007-2008 | 40/16 | 49/42 |
| 2008-2009 | 51/38 | 53/26 |
| 2009-2010 | 53/47 | 35/33 |
| 2010-2011 | 55/53 | 54/53 |
| 2011-2012 | 60/73 | 55/60 |
| 2012-2013 (not over yet) | 50/60 | 55/55 |
You can see that in 2010-2011 both players approached the absurd “1 goal per game” mark and in 2011-2012 they achieved it. That year, in the 38 Spanish league games, Messi scored 50 of his 60 goals. This was 10 more than the previous record, set the year before by Ronaldo, and 12 more than the record previous to that, set in 1989 by the legend Hugo Sanchez. Consider the ramifications of surpassing the previous high scoring mark by 20%, and what that would look like in other sports. Also consider the number of games played and the consistency required to keep up that output over 50 games, sometimes 2 a week, almost always 90 min per game. By way of comparison, Dan Marino’s astonishing record of 48 touchdowns in a season surpassed the previous holder at 36, a mark which had stood for 20 years, and Marino’s record lasted another 20 years (before being eclipsed by 1 and 2 touchdowns). I think this is the type of once-in-a-lifetime athletic performances by geniuses that we are seeing with Messi and Ronaldo.
Consider that in La Liga, a league that has hosted many of the finest strikers in history, Messi and Ronaldo now collectively occupy 6 of the top 9 spots on the “Most goals in one season” table. Consider that Messi reached 200 goals in La Liga when he was 4 years younger than the previous youngest. Consider that Ronaldo has scored 199 goals in 201 games for Real Madrid. Finally, consider that they have done it all in an age when improved sport science (diets, training, etc) and the immense amounts of money involved have produced faster players, more coordinated teams, and better preparation (analyzing video of your opponent, for example), all without increasing the size of the pitch. Theoretically, there should be less space to operate in and less opportunities to score as athletes and tactics improve. Thankfully, the players are rising to the occasion and thriving in circumstances that would have seemed stifling to players of an earlier time. Even at the highest level, if you’re not careful, Messi will score five on you.
I’ve painted this article a bit more favorably to Messi than Ronaldo, because I like him more, but don’t be misled – both players have rabid legions of fans, often divided by no more than club loyalty. In another world, Messi plays for Real Madrid and Ronaldo plays for Barcelona, and people change their opinions as easily as their shirts.
There’s so much more I could tell you. The exciting head-to-head encounters, the back and forth fortunes of their clubs, the weird tension that is there because Messi keeps winning the Ballon d’Or (4 times running!) despite Ronaldo’s brilliance. The drama of this season’s Champions League, when the clubs were set up oh so perfectly to play each other in the Champions League final, only to bow out in the semifinals to German teams that have been modeled to a large extent on the play styles that Madrid and Barcelona have embodied recently. The epic tale of Madrid’s coach, Jose Mourinho, once spurned by Barcelona as a coach, who made his reputation elsewhere, finally returned to Spain to lead Madrid to prominence over Barcelona, but is now departing with a black cloud over his head after a disappointing third season in which Barca reclaimed the crown. The strange fate of the player Asier Del Horno, whose desperate foul on Messi was so blatant that it basically ended Horno’s career at Chelsea. So many stories, so little time.
Instead I will leave you with two videos. Both of them show off the respective player’s strengths, although of course Messi’s is my favorite. Messi is a player to whom taking a dive is an unknown desire, which leads to one of my favorite videos of his exploits: Lionel Messi Never Dives. When your livelihood depends on your legs, especially for a goalscorer who requires the most finesse from his feet, many players take a seat as soon as things get dicey, because it’s just not worth it to them to risk their careers for the chance to score one more goal. That thought never crosses Messi’s mind and that’s one reason so many people adore him.
Ronaldo is a striker of incredible power and precision, and many of my favorite plays of his involve his breathtaking free kicks. Here’s one in particular that I can watch over and over. See how fast the ball gets up over the wall and then dips back down; that’s not just gravity, it’s magic. Note the force with which it hits the back of the net: it looks like it might rip through the netting.
If you’d like to see more of either player, youtube is chock full of highlights of both. Keep an eye out at next year’s World Cup! I hope you’ve enjoyed this not-so-brief foray into a world you might not be that familiar with.
Shoutout to reader Matthew S. for encouraging me to write a footy post. I hope this satisfies you! Matthew wants me to let you know that the Welsh sensation Gareth Bale, plying his trade in England, deserves to be mentioned in an article about the greats of the game this season. Bale had 26 goals in 44 games for Tottenham, also from a winger position, and has the talent to become worthy of mention in the same breath as Ronaldo and Messi. Here’s hoping he keeps getting better!
Since Shawn does Youtube Fridays on occasion, I thought I’d switch it up and do a Youtube Monday.
Post title stolen from a comment on the video itself. Here’s the setup: capuchin monkeys like cucumbers, but they like grapes more. Some experimenters use this info to investigate the effects of unequal pay for equal work.
Reminder to those who skimmed my first post: spearofsolomon is my google id, please feel free to email me.
This is a guest post by Nate Spears, who has taken over the site this week while Shawn is on vacation at an undisclosed location.
Good morning. I’m Nate Spears, and I’m going to be posting a bit while Shawn takes some well-deserved time off. Shawn gave me a very kind intro, and I thought I’d expand on that a bit so you have some idea what to expect this week.
I studied computer science at the University of Kansas (Rock Chalk!), and I’ve been working in the software industry since 2004. I tell people that I’m a software consultant; my business card said “Senior Solutions Architect” for a long time, which basically means “I’ll do anything you ask me to.” I worked in the Novell software sphere for about 7 years, alternating between Identity Management and custom software development. Now I’m working in the GIS world, which takes me to San Francisco during the week. My point is, I’m an “in the trenches” developer, so hopefully I can bring something interesting from that to any discourse we have. Also, I’ll try not to use so many quotation marks in the future.
I’ve been reading Shawn’s writing since he started his own website, so I have some idea what usually goes on here. I hope you won’t hold me to Shawn’s standards or his insights, since he’s a pro at this and I’m a fill-in. If I make any obvious blunders please let me know.
Since the site often covers technology, I’ll give you a quick rundown of the usual suspects. I use a Galaxy Nexus as my phone, and a 2nd generation iPad with the Logitech ultra-thin keyboard as my tablet and primary personal computer when traveling. My personal home computer (which I built, in time-honored nerd tradition) runs Windows 7; I mostly use it for web browsing, playing Starcraft 2 and League of Legends, and video editing. My work laptop is company-issue, also runs Windows 7, and has the standard Microsoft Office installs. I have never owned an Apple desktop computer, although I have seriously considered getting a 27″ iMac with a case for use as a portable computer. I have a vision condition that makes using a regular laptop an exercise in hunching, but carrying my personal computer/monitor setup everywhere is not really an option.
My other nerdery involves movies and TV series, books (a lot of the requisite science fiction and fantasy), soccer (playing and watching, mostly the EPL and La Liga), and playing a few board games.
As for my time on shawnblanc.net, I’m hoping that I can spark some interesting discussions and entertain you a little bit along the way. My gmail id is spearofsolomon; feel free to email or IM me with topic suggestions, questions you think I might have a unique perspective on, etc. However! I’m not going to run the show in Shawn’s inimitable style, so expect a much lighter tone this week. When the cat’s away, the mice will play.
Enough about me. Here’s my first question for you guys: what do you think of Yahoo’s acquisition of Tumblr? In a big picture sense, is it possible for a once-dominant Internet giant to work its way back to those heights? It seems to me that Marissa Mayer may feel that Yahoo can’t be what it was (a dominant search engine, for one), so she’s trying to make them into something different in order to stay relevant, but I’m not sure what the vision is.
I’m looking forward to hearing from you.
This is a guest post by Nate Spears, who has taken over the site this week while Shawn is on vacation at an undisclosed location.
By the time you read this, my laptop lid will be closed and my iPhone’s push notifications turned off for the week.
I don’t know if it’s like this for others, but for me, taking time off is one of the biggest challenges I face as a self-employed person. In the past, when I’ve gone on vacations or spent holidays with the family, I still try to spend at least a little bit of time every day working to keep the site updated.
But for this year’s vacation, I am unplugging from all my inboxes and publishing responsibilities and leaving the writing to someone else.
Friends, I’m pleased to introduce you to my cousin, Nate Spears, who has agreed to step in as the first-ever guest writer for the week.
Nate is 29 days younger than I and was the best man in my wedding. When he and I were 14 we tried to start a comic book company — our drawing skills were pathetic, and my dad was our first and only customer. Now, Nate is a software developer living in Colorado while currently commuting to San Francisco every week bless his soul.
When I was considering who I wanted to hand the reins over to for this week, I knew Nate would be perfect. For one, Nate emails me links to random, interesting, and/or hilarious stuff all the time. This week, instead of sending links and commentary to me through email, I’ve given Nate the keys to the site so he can post things here for you instead. Also, Nate is a great thinker and storyteller, so who knows what he’s got in store for the site.
Gus Mueller outlines some excellent benchmarks for when we’ll know Apple has taken the next serious step with iCloud:
WWDC 2013 is fast approaching, and chances are good that we’ll get some sort of preview and song and dance about how iCloud sync is even better than ever for developers. Honestly, would you expect Apple to say anything else?
But how are we going to know Apple has finally fixed iCloud syncing for developers and is really serious this time?
I still believe that many of Apple’s most exciting and ambitious plans for the future are centered around iCloud and Siri.
No doubt we’ll get a preview and song and dance about new functionality in Siri as well. But how will we know Apple has moved Siri beyond a way for hands-free texting and event creation and into something iPhone owners have just got to have?
I think of three significant benchmarks that will signal a more serious move for Apple regarding the future of Siri:
Second, tying in the credit card we have associated with our Apple ID and using that to purchase things like movie tickets, plane tickets, and more. Looking up movie times is neat, but then being sent to the Fandango app to actually purchase them is less than magical.
Lastly, bring Siri to the Mac. Show that it’s not just for hands-free text messaging anymore.
As Kyle Baxter wrote last year:
If you want to know whether Apple’s going to continue its remarkable growth in the next five or more years, there’s two things you need to look at: Siri and iCloud.
iCloud is the glue that ties all our devices together. Siri is Apple’s 4th interface. But so far, these massively significant services are still mostly hanging out quietly in the background.
Igloo has some funny new Sandwich videos to lighten your day (and maybe convince your boss and/or IT to upgrade your intranet to something more human). Check them out:
(You can also get a free 30-day trial and bring back Cake Fridays here.)
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My thanks to Igloo Software for again sponsoring the site this week. Sponsorship by The Syndicate.
Andrew Sullivan on the current state of The Dish fundraising:
I’ve even decided not to take a salary this year at all in order to invest in the Dish itself and keep it afloat. We’re still chugging along steadily in revenue, and we are brainstorming about new sources of income (stay tuned), but it remains unlikely that we will reach our target of $900,000 by the end of the year, even though we have already brought in gross revenue of around $680,000 – three-quarters of the way there.
Sullivan taking The Dish to a completely reader-supported business model created a huge wave of attention from other media outlets, as well as hope from other publishers (both indies and bigger media sites). In many of the shows I’ve listened to and articles I’ve read over the past few months that discuss the future of publishing, Sullivan’s leap with The Dish has been one of the central examples. If he can’t make it then that stinks.
We’re still in the beginning of this era where content creators and artists have a genuine fighting chance to be wholly fan-supported. And while it’s easier than ever, it’s still not easy.
When Ben Brooks eschewed all his ads and went wholly reader-supported, he ended up taking a hit in his site’s overall revenue — dropping from $2,100/month in ad revenue to $1,000/month in member support.
When I took this site full time two years ago, my business model was (and still is) to have the membership exist alongside the advertising revenue — I need both streams to make it work.
And it looks like The Dish also needs to find other revenue streams in addition to their subscription paywall in order to meet their goal of $900,000/year.
Coming back to the aforelilnked On The Media podcast: “There is no silver bullet. There is only experimentation, determination, and a whole lot of blind hope.”
I’m almost as nerdy and fussy about grilling and smoking as I am about making coffee. I’m just not as vocal about it. Well, until now…
This Tools & Toys guide was written by yours truly, and it’s a doozy. As I say in the article, one of my great joys of summer is getting up early while the air is still crisp, brewing a cup of coffee, walking into the backyard, and starting up a chimney full of charcoal for a day of slow-cooking some smoked BBQ.
I especially enjoyed this week’s episode of On The Media if only because it hit very close to home. The show was dedicated to “the incredible volume of media available to consumers, and the incredible difficulty of making money for creators.”
The six different segments cover streaming services, subscription business models, ads and ad blockers, and direct support from readers. The business examples were all with big-name media networks and websites, but the struggles they’re facing are no different than what guys like you and me are facing: how do we keep the lights on so we can keep making awesome stuff for our best fans?
For me, it’s a conglomerate of all sorts of things. The largest and most-significant slice being the monthly membership to this site, but the rest of the pie is a combination of advertising and affiliate links.
At the end of the show, Bob Garfield concludes with this line:
There is no silver bullet. […] All there is is experimentation, determination, and a whole lot of blind hope.
Which parallels something Merlin Mann said in his interview on CMD+SPACE a while back: “As long as you keep putting out interesting stuff, you’ll keep discovering interesting stuff to put out. It’s an iterative and ugly process.
As an indie writer, I’ve always put a lot of emphasis on the determination aspect — show up every day — but very little emphasis on the experimentation aspect. For me, my daily podcast ended up being an excellent members-only perk for when I took the site full time, and as I look at the shows I’ve done over the past 2 years and the feedback I’ve received from listeners, I mean it when I say the show has become one of my favorite things where I see a lot of my best work manifesting.
I can think of two other excellent examples of experimentation that made a way for revenue: John Gruber’s wild idea of an RSS ad sponsorship, and Marco’s wild idea of a very simple, very classy digital magazine.
At the end of the day we all just want to pay our bills, feed our families, put our kids through college, and keep the office lights on so we can keep on making things.
Though I wasn’t there when Marco decided to make The Magazine, nor when Gruber decided to start selling RSS sponsorships instead of a membership, nor when so many other folks took a leap to try something new. But I imagine the internal dialog was something along the lines of: “Maybe this will work, maybe it won’t. I guess we’ll find out…”
Mad Mimi is a design-oriented email newsletter service founded in 2008. Developed to provide a mobile-app-like feel, and with a drag-and-drop email composer, Mad Mimi offers a simple, elegant user experience that helps customers create, send, and track beautiful html email campaigns.
Mad Mimi also offers robust APIs, integrations, and add-on features. This makes it a perfect fit for today’s visionaries, artists, and entrepreneurs, including great digital brands like Fancy and StumbleUpon, who use Mad Mimi to communicate with their customers.
Best yet, Mad Mimi is free for up to 2,500 contacts. We hope you’ll give us a try or email us with questions.
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My thanks to Mad Mimi for sponsoring the RSS feed this week. Sponsorship by The Syndicate.
Olympus just announced their new camera today, the E-P5, and Ming Thein has a nice hands-on preview post about it with some sample shots from the camera.
I love Thein’s concluding sentence:
I’m personally very glad that I’m not entering the mirrorless market now, or upgrading from one of the 12MP bodies — all I can say is good luck choosing!
My sentiments exactly. The mirrorless market is just exploding right now.
The E-P5 is the big brother to the camera I own, the E-PL5, and it rivals Olympus’ flagship, the E-M5. In a nut, what’s great about the E-P5 is that: (a) it has the same incredible image sensor as the E-M5 and E-PL5; (b) it has the same 5-axis in-body image stabilization as the E-M5; and (c) it looks absolutely stunning. What it’s missing when compared to the E-M5 is a built-in viewfinder and weather sealing.
Also, Olympus released a few new/updated lenses: the 17mm f/1.8 (which just so happens to be the E-P5’s kit lens), and then the well-known 45mm f/1.8 and 75mm f/1.8 now come in black.
The black lenses won’t ship until later this year — the 17mm this fall, and the 45mm and 75mm on June 14. Personally, I’m more excited about the new lenses than I am about the new camera. My next lens will probably be the 45/1.8 (or possibly the 75/1.8), and I’m glad that it now comes in black.
