A Few Thoughts on the New Olympus E-PL7 Camera and the Olympus Micro Four Thirds Landscape in General

About a week ago, Olympus announced the E-PL7 camera. It’s available for pre-order now at $600 for the body only and will ship around the end of the month.

Reading the press releases and several of the pre-release reviews, ’tis clear that the E-PL7 is a significant step up from the E-PL5. The latter is a camera which I have long considered to be one of the best-kept secrets of the Micro Four Thirds lineup — it was cheap, small, and packed a lot of punch.

However, after shooting with my E-PL5 for over a year, I upgraded to the E-M10. My upgrade choice was driven primarily by my want for a manual control dial. The rest of the features of the E-M10 (view finder, better image stabilization, wi-fi, et al.) were just icing on the cake at the time, but they have proven to be invaluable.

The improvements in the new E-PL7 are almost exactly in answer to the very same reasons I upgraded to the E-M10 six months ago. In fact, the E-PL7 is such a step up from the E-PL5 that it’s now comparable to the O-MD lineup in terms of image capabilities and in terms of and what features it offers to the user.

The hallmark features of the E-PL7 include:

  • Wi-Fi
  • 3-Axis in-body image stabilization
  • TruPic 7 image processor that debut in the flagship E-M1 camera
  • A manual control dial
  • Improved auto-focus
  • New camera body design with more retro and more metal
  • Selfie-friendly viewfinder (no, seriously)
  • And there is also what looks to be an improvement to the 4-direction control nob on the back of the camera. The spin-dial on the E-PL5 turned out to be a joke over time and actually has become sometimes unusable on my camera body. Getting rid of the spinning part and just doing buttons is a good move.

Aside from Selfie Mode, the E-M10 has all these same hallmark features. And, as I mentioned above, the E-M10 was an extremely worthwhile upgrade from the E-PL5. But that’s where I wonder about the the value of the E-PL7. It’s just $100 cheaper than the E-M10, but for that $100 you get the built-in electronic view finder, twice as many custom dials and function buttons, and an arguably more handsome camera with a better grip and better build quality.

My point being, as awesome as the E-PL7 looks when compared to its younger sibling, I don’t know that it’s a no-brainer of a purchase. It’s terribly close in price to the E-M10, and the slight savings of $100 means you’re not getting things I think are easily worth that $100 (especially once you’re up in that price range already).

The Olympus Micro Four Thirds Landscape in General

There are three lines of camera bodies that Olympus is actively producing right now: The O-MD, the PEN, and the PEN Lite. And from these we have the E-Mn, the E-Pn, and the E-PLn respectively.

The OM-D line is the flagship / pro line. It currently consists of the E-M1, E-M5, and E-M10. These cameras get the latest and greatest technical improvements first, and then those advancements trickle down into the other lines.

Unlike the OM-D line, the PEN and PEN Lite lines have just one “main” or “active” camera body at a time. Right now those ar the E-P5 and E-PL7 respectively. It seems the PEN Lite cameras get the O-MD’s features first, and then they are put into the PEN family afterwards.

It’s getting to the point where all of the Olympus cameras are on a level playing field with one another in terms of their core capabilities to take great images.

All of their latest cameras have (nearly) identical sensors and processors. Which means, at the end of the day, they are all equally capable of capturing the same images.

And so, it’s what’s outside the camera that counts. Which features are important to you? What’s your budget? Which camera looks the coolest to you?

  • The E-PL5: If you want the cheapest you can possibly get, then I’d still recommend go with an E-PL5 still. There were some major advancements to sensors and processors in the E-PL5, and it’s not worth the money you’d save to get anything that preceded it.

  • The E-PL7: If you want the smallest you can get and aren’t super concerned about price, get the E-PL7 It’s just barely bigger than the E-PL5, but its improvements are significant and will be worth it.

  • The E-M10: If you want the most compact pro-level, the E-M10 is great. It is just a bit bigger than the E-PL7 and is only $100 more expensive. Yet it comes with some excellent professional-grade features that you’ll be glad you have if you plan on being even remotely serious with your photography habit.

  • The E-M1: If you want the most bells and whistles, the E-M1 is the flagship model.

For me, I’m extremely happy with the E-M10. It’s the right balance of being a small size while offering the additional pro-level features. But more on that once I wrap up my E-M10 review.

A Few Thoughts on the New Olympus E-PL7 Camera and the Olympus Micro Four Thirds Landscape in General

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* * *

My thanks to Droplr for sponsoring the site this week. Long-time readers of this site will know I’m a huge fan of Droplr and that it is one of my most-used Mac utility apps. Highly recommended.

Sponsor: Droplr – 50% off simple file sharing for creative teams

“Infinity in My Pocket Was Too Much”  →

Speaking of intentional iPhone Home screens, Jake Knapp made his iPhone as “dumb” as possible last year and it’s going quite well:

I wanted to get control, but I didn’t want to give up my iPhone altogether. I loved having Google Maps and Uber and Find Friends and an amazing camera.

So I decided to try an experiment. I disabled Safari. I deleted my mail account. I uninstalled every app I couldn’t handle. I thought I’d try it for a week.

“Infinity in My Pocket Was Too Much”

Eivind Hjertnes’ iPhone Setup  →

This week’s interview is with Norwegian student, Eivind Hjertnes:

My home screen is organised a little bit differently than what I see most other people do. The only apps I have are the apps I use all the time or need to access very fast.

I like to think that my iPhone’s first Home screen is organized much like Eivind’s — that the apps on my Home screen are the ones I actually use regularly. But part of me wonders if I’m just so used to my Home screen apps that these are actually only the apps I think I use every day.

For fun, I’ve been taking a screenshot of my iPhone’s Home screen on the first of every month. I started doing this back in March 2013. Below is my iPhone’s first Home screen as of March 1, 2013, and next to it is my Home screen as of yesterday. As you can see, only three apps are swapped out and most apps are still in the same place. The biggest changes are to the aesthetics of the iOS Springboard and icons.

iPhone Home screens

Eivind Hjertnes’ iPhone Setup

The Hit List  →

For this week’s episode of The Weekly Briefly, I’m just coming back from 2 weeks away in Colorado and Louisiana. And so, before getting back into the daily swing of things I wanted to have a more fun, geeky episode talking about a few things that are awesome and are related to what I’m working on now.

Sponsored By:

The Hit List

Last Year in Football (Part III): This Summer’s World Cup

Hello, again. This is Shawn’s cousin, Nate, continuing to guest post while Shawn is away. Some of you may remember me from the last time I wrote some guest posts. This time around I’m doing a mini-series on recent events in soccer. Or as 2 billion people call it, football.

Welcome to “Last Year in Football”. Below is part III. You can catch up here: Part I and Part II.

If you have any feedback or comments about these football articles, you can email me here.

* * *

Expectations for an exciting World Cup this summer were running high in the months prior. Cups in South America have traditionally been more infused with the free-flowing spirit of the football of that continent, if not also the gamesmanship thereof.

Going into the tournament, I was thinking along the following lines:

Looking Likely

The title holders and, dare I say, heavy favorites, were Spain. Having won the last three major tournaments that they entered (European Champions of 2008 and 2012, and World Cup Champions of 2010), it seemed foolhardy to pick against the title holders. With the controversial late addition of the deadly Diego Costa (Brazilian-born but Spanish nationalized) to the Spanish roster, the Spanish side only looked stronger. The warning signs were there, however. Prior to 2008, the Spaniards had never lacked for talent, only for sharp goalscoring and confidence. What they finally added in 2008 was a pair of red-hot strikers in David Villa and Fernando Torres, and a big dose of swagger. When their strikers started to age and/or cool off, and teams started to learn how to deal with their possession-heavy style of play, Spain stopped running up the scores but held onto their confidence and won a lot of games by close margins. Could Diego Costa be the injection of liveliness that Spain’s game had been missing in the goal-scoring third of the field?

Brazil had had a great warm-up tournament in 2013, the Confederations Cup: not particularly prestigious but still fun. Brazil stormed through the opposition in style, and it was a coming-out party of sorts for a young star named Neymar. However, Brazil’s performances in friendly matches in 2014 had been suspect, with Neymar looking increasingly alone in a dull offense. Betting against a host nation is always an easy way to look foolish, though.

Argentina is home to the little maestro Lionel Messi. No one ever wants to come out and say that Lionel Messi won’t win, because there’s the possibility that he’ll score 4 and make you eat a big slice of humble pie. The inner child of every football fan is always alive to the possibility of Messi dribbling six players and scoring, and with the World Cup taking place on South American soil, every team native to the continent gets the home team treatment when they aren’t playing Brazil. Although Messi hasn’t performed as insanely well for Argentina as he does for Barcelona, he’s still world-class for them. The question was whether Argentina could provide enough quality elsewhere to complement his mighty left foot.

Perennials

England, Italy, and France weren’t making any toes tingle before the tournament, but they’ve shown they can always be a threat. France were particularly impressive, if only by contrast with their previous World Cup squad which had failed so dismally in South Africa. 2010 runners-up Holland were also again putting a lot of quality on the pitch, and to our delight had been placed in a group with the previous winner Spain, meaning that a replay of the previous final was going to take place in the opening days of the tournament.

Germany, of course, always has technical ability in spades and usually goes deep into tournaments.

The South American factor

The aforementioned South American boost put a nice shine on already quality teams like Uruguay and Chile, and even added some gloss to other nearby teams like Colombia and Mexico.

The pot was bubbling over, and everyone was ready to eat! So what happened?

Brazil exploded out of the gate looking . . . mediocre. With a questionable penalty call necessary for their first win, at least we got a statement of intent from Neymar, with a brilliant goal from nothing.

The tournament felt like it really got started on the next day, with the replay of the 2010 Championship game between Spain and Holland. Spain scored first, again on a dubious penalty, and were bossing possession as usual. Then, just before half-time . . . magic from the Flying Dutchman Van Persie. It was a real shocker and it felt afterward like the blow that kicked open the door to one of the most memorable group stages in World Cup history. In the second half Holland scored four more goals as chins all over the world sagged to the floor in collective disbelief.

“Ok,” we thought, “Spain lost their first game at the last World Cup. They can pick up the pieces.” Apparently Chile didn’t get the memo and unceremoniously dumped the holders out of the Cup in their next game. The weirdest part was that it felt kind of like a relief. Diego Costa had played like a man with a ball and chain strapped to one ankle; he was obviously not fully recovered from the injuries that had kept him from playing in the Champions League final. With David Villa relegated to a substitute role for reasons I’m not sure anyone could articulate, and Spain’s other strikers proving ineffective, I didn’t want to see another tournament of 89 minutes of sideways passing with the odd half-chance mixed in. Out with the old, in with the new.

What else did we get to see in the Group Stage besides goals galore? A young Colombian firebrand named James Rodriguez making his presence known. The United States playing legimately good soccer in spurts, and finally overcoming their bogeyman Ghana. Mexico getting systematically robbed and still making it through. Cristiano Ronaldo looking mostly average (hehe). Germany looking terrifying and then bleh and then dominant. Luis Suarez continuing his sterling run of form. Messi finally scoring in bunches in a World Cup, and Argentina actually looking a complete team (their defense has been suspect in recent, uh, decades). Crowd darlings Costa Rica overachieving their way out of their group. The young studs of France winning with style, including what would have been one of the goals of the tournament scored while the referee was blowing his whistle to end the match.

And the goals. Did I mention the goals? So many goals. It was a joy to see attacking football prevail over the defensive style that had perhaps characterized the last couple major tournaments.

Once the smoke had cleared, we saw the following shocking list of teams going home after just three games: England, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Russia. Wow!

Once we got into the knockout rounds, we had more 1-0 scorelines and penalty shootouts than I would have liked, but don’t look a gift horse in the mouth and all that, yeah? Again we had great sporting moments: Tim Howard’s incredible performance against Belgium, this ridiculous Messi pass that I could watch all day, a volley from Rodriguez that I could watch all year, heartbreak for Mexico against Holland after a wonderful Cup-long display of heart and talent.

And not-so-great moments as well: the biting from Luis Suarez. The terrible foul on Neymar that cracked his vertebrae and ruled him out of the remaining games, and the infamous subsequent 7-1 mauling of Brazil by Germany (who could probably have scored more). For that matter, the ugly spirit that Brazil themselves showed against Chile and Colombia.

Finally we get down to two teams: Germany and Argentina. After the group stage it looked like Argentina were sound but not yet great, but surprisingly, their defense was the backbone of the team. Mascherano had shown that a concussion is actually a performance enhancing drug against Holland. Angel Di Maria, while not even at his personal best, probably outperformed Messi in the knockout games by sheer volume of output. Germany, of course, looked like the favorite after demolishing the hosts. I was a little afraid that they would repeat the performance, having seen Argentina out of the previous two World Cups.

What I didn’t expect was for Argentina’s attacking talent to carve out three clear chances and miss them all! One for Higuain, one for Messi, and one for . . . the other guy. Germany dominated the second half but couldn’t find a way through. Then finally, deep in extra time, just as we’re all resigning ourselves to penalty kicks, comes a wonderful goal worthy of winning the World Cup.

The pundits on TV talked about Germany through the tournament in colorless terms, like “clinical”, “precise”, “ruthless”, which I thought was uncharitable and a bit biased, albeit technically accurate. If England had played like Germany they would have been “open” and “free-flowing”; Brazil would have been “creative”; Spain would have gotten “it’s a joy to see their renewed energy”, etc. Germany were all of those things and fully deserved their eventual win.

I thought this World Cup was probably the best of my lifetime, certainly the best of the ones I’ve watched. It probably won’t go down as being “great”, because Germany were the only team that looked like a great team, and a great final needs two great teams to bring the best out of each other. But as a spectacle it was absolutely riveting, and it had so many great dramatic elements: villains, new heroes, overachieving underdogs, epic collapses from dynastic teams, and don’t forget about the buckets and buckets of goals.

Here’s my wishlist of 5 things I’d like have to have seen at the World Cup:

  1. Brazil knocked out by Chile. Then we’d get to see Chile vs Colombia, and the winner of that game vs Germany. I thought Brazil were too negative and Neymar was the only bright spot.
  2. A fully fit Diego Costa. I think Spain will be a force to be reckoned with again very soon with a fit Costa and a coach willing to cut Torres. That said, I thought it was insulting to Spain’s other strikers that Costa kept getting starts when he wasn’t up to par.
  3. Radamel Falcao fit and playing for Colombia. Colombia played out of their minds with just Rodriguez, how good could they have been with Falcao on the field?
  4. Suarez keeping his teeth in his mouth where they belong. He robbed us of his presence against Colombia and I like watching the guy play.
  5. The US holding on for the win against Portugal. If the US can top their group by drawing against Germany, that game looks a lot different, and we might get to play Algeria (whom we beat at the last World Cup) instead of Belgium. Why did the US play so well for so long and then turn off for thirty seconds at the end?
  6. (I cheated) One more attacking player in great form for Argentina, preferably an attacking midfielder to feed Messi.

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What were your favorite moments or wishlist items from the 2014 World Cup? Let me know and I’ll drop them into the last column of the series, coming soon!

Last Year in Football (Part III): This Summer’s World Cup

Being Obsessive About Detail Is Being Normal  →

Erik Spiekermann:

Every craft requires attention to detail. Whether you’re build­ing a bicy­cle, an engine, a table, a song, a type­face or a page: the details are not the details, they make the design. Con­cepts don’t have to be pixel-perfect, and even the fussi­est project starts with a rough sketch. But build­ing some­thing that will be used by other peo­ple, be they dri­vers, rid­ers, read­ers, lis­ten­ers – users every­where, it needs to be built as well as can be. Unless you are obsessed by what you’re doing, you will not be doing it well enough. Typog­ra­phy appears to require a lot of detail, but so does music, cook­ing, car­pen­try, not to men­tion brain surgery. Some­times only the experts know the dif­fer­ence, but if you want to be an expert at what you’re mak­ing, you will only be happy with the result when you’ve given it every­thing you have.

Being Obsessive About Detail Is Being Normal

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My thanks to Tapes for sponsoring the RSS feed this week. It’s a very well-done implementation on a very simple idea: that sometimes we want to share a screencast and not just a screenshot. Tapes is one of those apps that does one thing and does it very well. Just $10 in the Mac App Store.

Sponsor: Tapes: Share Screencasts Fast

Last Year in Football (Part II)

Hello! This is Shawn’s cousin, Nate, continuing to guest post while Shawn is on vacation at an undisclosed location. Some of you may remember me from the last time I wrote some guest posts. This time around I’m doing a mini-series on recent events in soccer. Or as 2 billion people call it, football.

Welcome to “Last Year in Football”. Below is part II. If you missed Part I, it’s right here.

If you have any feedback or comments about these football articles, you can email me here.

* * *

I’m going to cheat a little bit here because in the last article I said I was going to talk about the Spanish Premier League. What I’d really like to talk about is the story of Atletico Madrid.

Quite a few of the big cities in Europe have more than one professional football club competing at the top level. I’m probably going to embarrass myself by trying to list some (and leaving others out) but here goes:

  • Manchester, England has Manchester City and Manchester United.
  • Milan, Italy has Inter Milan and AC Milan.
  • Munich, Germany has Bayern Munchen and 1860 Munchen.
  • Madrid, Spain has Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid.
  • London has somewhere between 4 and 13 clubs playing in or near the top flight at any given time!

Typically in these pairings, there is a dominant force and a lesser one (although there are exceptions). Think the Yankees and the Mets and you’ll get the picture. In Milan the balance swings back and forth over the years, but in Madrid there is always one big club: Real Madrid.

In my prior piece on the EPL, I mentioned that Liverpool are one of the clubs that seems to have to sell their players once they become superstars, rather than attracting superstars. If that is the case, Atletico Madrid have been a breeding ground for superstars and potential superstars in recent years. I’ll define a superstar in practical terms: a player that most big clubs in the world would sign if they had the money (Messi, James Rodriguez, Ronaldo, and Zlatan); a potential superstar would be someone who has shown that they can perform at that level, but maybe the big clubs are waiting on some consistency, or to see if the player can avoid injuries for a season or two, or the player seems to need to mature as a human being to achieve their full footballing potential (Balotelli, and, err, no one else springs to mind right now).

I don’t know what the scouts at Atletico Madrid have been eating, but in the last ten years or so they have been identifying players even before they get to that potential superstar level. Whatever they are doing, they’re doing it right, because they have been finding exceptional players on the cheap, developing them into world-class players, and then selling them as the offering prices become too high to resist. Sergio Aguero, Fernando Torres, Radamel Falcao, and Diego Costa are the most notable players who have come up through Atletico recently, which they’ve eventually had to sell. Atletico have also had other world-class players that were perhaps not superstars anymore, or maybe they never were quite at that level, but whom Atletico made good use of nonetheless — such as Diego Forlan, Maxi Rodriguez, and Jose Antonio Reyes.

The point is that Atletico have been doing more with less for quite a while now. When you’re constantly taking risks on new talent, the best you can usually hope for is to be a perennial also-ran (see: Arsenal). But every once in a while the stars align and you get a team with two or three genuinely world-class players on the come-up and a solid team around them, and the right coach for the job.

That’s what happened at Atletico last season. With Diego Costa as the main man, and Diego Godin, Juanfran, Turan, Miranda, and Courtois all playing solid or spectacular football on a weekly basis, Atletico shot out of the starting gate with menace and then, to everyone’s astonishment, kept up pace with the two giant Spanish teams Barcelona and Real Madrid all season. The toughest part of the season for smaller clubs is the end, because they don’t have the depth on the bench that the big clubs do, and Atletico had everything in place to give them an easy excuse should that prove the case. On top of competing for the Spanish title, they were also deep into the Champions League tournament, playing against the best teams on the European continent.

To every football lover’s delight, Atletico just flourished under this pressure, first knocking Barcelona out of the Champions League, and then the English Club Chelsea. This was particularly sweet, because Chelsea had previously nipped one of Atletico’s greatest players, Fernando Torres, for a fee 20 million pounds more than the cost of Atletico’s ENTIRE starting 11 for that game!

Then a weird thing happened. Just like in England, none of the teams in contention seemed to want to win out at the end of the season. Atletico itself was in a seemingly unassailable position with three games to go, whereupon they lost and drew the first two.

This set up one of the most nailbiting ends to any campaign in history: their last game, which determined the winner of the Spanish League, would be played against Barcelona AT BARCELONA. All they need is a tie in the game to win the league. And then a week later, the Champions League final to be played against their cross town rival, Real Madrid. Oh, the drama!

Then the worst happens. Early in the game against Barcelona, their star man Diego Costa limps off the field. Then Barcelona takes the lead. Barcelona is notorious for being impossible to get the ball from once they have the lead.

But DRAMA! Atletico Madrid scores to tie the game, and holds on to finish at 1-1. Atletico wins the league! I have to admit that even as a Barcelona fan, I was pulling for Atletico.

Now every Atletico fan, and every neutral fan who wants to see a great game, begins to sweat Costa’s fitness going into the Champions League final. Weird reports of horse placenta treatments surface. Then finally the news: Costa is going to start the game. NNNNNGGGGHHH YEAH.

Then: tragedy. It was all for naught and Costa limps off again early in the game. Doomed, everyone thinks. Barcelona wasn’t particularly consistent this year, but Real Madrid had been tearing up the Champions League, annihilating the former champions and making it look easy. But Atletico wasn’t done yet — they draw first blood! The tension rises to a fever pitch as Real look for a way back into the game, but as the time rolls into stoppage it looks like Atletico will have pulled off the most incredible double of all time. OF ALL TIME.

Then: tragedy strikes again. Freaking tragedy, you suck! Sergio Ramos delivers a beautiful header to tie the game in the last minute of stoppage time, and Atletico’s heroic resolve finally collapses. Real Madrid scores 3 in overtime to win the game.

Alas and alack. It was still a heroic effort and season from a wonderful team, and everyone saluted them. All good things must come to an end, unfortunately, and Chelsea (who else) bought the agent of their torment, Diego Costa, this summer.

Another tragedy to come from this story is that we didn’t get to see a fully (or even minimally fit) Diego Costa at the World Cup this summer, his injuries at the end of the season coming too hard on the start of the World Cup. Tune in soon for the next installment in . . . Last Year in Football (and by last year I mean last season and summer), to hear about this year’s World Cup.

Last Year in Football (Part II)