The PenFan's PhotoBlog

We went to California, USA for holiday in mid Nov 1992.  Looking back that was exactly 25 years ago. We spent the last few days of our trip at my wife's classmate home in Los Angeles. In their house  They had a huge beautiful pet, a green Parrot called Ziggy that lived in their study. If my memories serve well I think parrot Ziggy was easily over 3 feet tall. Portrait of parrot Ziggy.  The mostly green plumage resembles a military parade uniform and earn this species of parrot the name military macaw.  This photo was taken in 1992 using Olympus OM-3 with  Olympus OM-Zuiko 35-105mm F3.5-F4.5 zoom lens on Fuji Velvia 35 mm slidefilm.        Parrot Ziggy belonged to the military macaw ( Ara militaris)  species of large beautiful Parrot.   Initially Ziggy was not comfortable with our presence but after two days it got accustomed to these two visitors from afar. I took some photos of this handsome big bird with my Olympus OM-...

After taking some photos around noon in the open I decided to take shelter from the blazing sun. Sitting at a shaded corner taking a break and drinking some water to cool myself down,  I started checking out the images taken on the Olympus Pen E-P1.  It was then that I remembered the OM Zuiko 135mm F/2.8 lens was in my camera bag. The OM Zuiko 135mm F/2.8 lens was one of the lens in my collection that I rarely used during my OM 35mm film days. I tended to reach for the Tamron SP 90MM F/2.5 for portrait or the OM 200mm F/4 for telephoto usage. The OM 135mm F/2.8 lens happened to be somewhere in between the other two lenses. After reading some positive on-line user experience on the OM 135mm lens I decided to try it out on my Pen E-P1 camera. A 135mm focal length lens on a Micro Four Thirds camera is equivalent to a 270mm lens on the OM camera or 35mm format camera. 270mm EFL (Equivalent Focal Length) is not an easy focal length to handhold or to manual ...

I have some photos of Nikko Tosho-gu Shrine  a UNESCO world heritage site located in Nikko, Japan. This is the shrine with the three Mizaru, Kikazaru, Iwazaru -- the orignal Sanzaru wood carving on the top of the stable building. That is the wood carving of the  "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" monkeys -- the famous Three Wise Monkeys. There are around eight panels with wood carving of monkeys in various pose around the stable building but these three monkeys are the most talked about and everybody knows them. The photo of the three wise monkeys or sanzaru was taken almost 20 years ago during a one day tour to Nikko on a Saturday. The weather was really bad on that day. All traffic and tour buses going to the Nikko Toshogu Shrine were stopped by the traffic police for almost 2 hours due to heavy fogs and low visibility. When we arrived at the Nikko Toshogu shrine our tour leader was in...

We are Olympus OM system SLR cameras user for over 3 decades, When Olympus launched the Four Thirds E-1 DSLR in 2003 we were there to witness the launching. Despite being a believer of the Four Thirds concept suffice to said we left the E-1 launching disappointed with that camera. Australia's Sydney Harbour Bridge taken from Sydney Opera House just before a late evening rainstorm.  --   camera;  Olympus OM4Ti 35mm SLR with Olympus OM Zuiko 24mm F2.8 lens. At launch the Olympus E-1 camera was overpriced, a little under spec, and under performed comparing to other DSLR in the market at launch time. However the quality of the Four Thirds optics live up to the claim of the Four Thirds concepts. The Four Thirds concept  of "digital camera from the ground up" of lens and sensor relationship also deliver the deep color of the now often called "Oly color". Nevertheless Olympus had sold a lot of E-1 to many happy users who still lo...