It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything, in no small part because my Digital Rebel was in the shop getting the back-plane autofocus components replaced. It’s now back safe and sound, and seems to be fixed.

Not having a camera got me itching, and when combined with the fact that I’ve really wanted something more portable to stick in my pocket at all times, was enough motivation to go get a pocket camera.

I picked up a silver model of the Olympus Stylus Verve μ-mini. And boy is it mini.

Just to give a sense of how much more portable this is than my SLR camera bag, here’s a shot of the Verve next to my Canon 70-200/2.8L IS lens.

The camera is definitely targeted at consumers, and even has on-board effects. Here’s a shot, unaltered out of the camera, with a few copies made (in camera) with the on-board effects. Yoy can click on any of them to enlarge to the full camera original.

Raw Image

Sepia Tone

Fish Eye Effect

Black & White

Soft Focus

Overall, it’s a cute little camera so far. Fits my needs to be able to toss it around in my pocket so I have a camera at the ready all the time. The one weird thing to get used to is not having a viewfinder. The only way to frame your picture is with the LCD screen. I hope that this will actually help me be a better photographer by forcing me to think about the world through a 2-dimensional lens. We’ll see…

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 10th, 2005 at 7:48 pm and is filed under Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.