Hawk

Top 10 Ways to Get Attention on Flickr, All New, Fresh and Updated for 2010 —

“What is more pleasant than the benevolent notice other people take of us, what is more agreeable than their compassionate empathy? What inspires us more than addressing ears flushed with excitement, what captivates us more than exercising our own power of fascination? What is more thrilling than an entire hall of expectant eyes, what more overwhelming than applause surging up to us? What, lastly, equals the enchantment sparked off by the delighted attention we receive from those who profoundly delight ourselves? – Attention by other people is the most irresistible of drugs. To receive it outshines receiving any other kind of income. This is why glory surpasses power and why wealth is overshadowed by prominence.”

Caterina Fake, Co-founder of Flickr, 2005.

Over the course of the past 4 years, about every 2 years or so I’ve written a blog post that has been one of my most popular entitled “Top 10 Ways to Get Attention on Flickr.” It’s been a few years, Flickr’s changed a bit, and so I thought I’d take a bit of time today to outline some of the techniques that active power users use on Flickr to get more attention for themselves and their photos.

Fundamentally it comes down to a pretty simple equation:

quality photos + reciprocation² = attention.

But there are lots of other little tricks and tips, so let’s get right into them.

1. The order that you publish your photos in matters — alot. A lot of people will take 50 snapshots of that killer sunset on their vacation and then upload them at random to flickr. Some are better, some are worse. At Flickr, those that call you contact predominantly only see your last photo uploaded or your last 5 photos uploaded (depending on their settings) from the popular “your contact’s most recent uploads” page. The other 45 are effectively buried. Always upload what you feel are your best, strongest, etc. photographs as the last five and save the very last spot for the photo you want to pimp the most.

2. Explore, you whore. Explore is a section of Flickr where Flickr highlights what they feel are 500 interesting photos every day.

I used to have photos show up in Explore pretty much every week. Then Flickr staff blacklisted me from Explore (and their help forum) about 7 months or so ago after I wrote a blog post criticizing Flickr staff for nuking a popular group on Flickr that I administered. Payback’s a bitch, right?

After having photos regularly appear in Explore every week since it started, they capped my ass in there at 666 photos (cute, because I’m the devil, get it?). That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t consider Explore though. It’s probably the fastest way to get a lot of views on any of your photos. Whilst everyone bitches about how full of crappy photos Explore is, secretly you know you all love it when your photos show up there.

Flickr claims to have a “magic donkey” formula which picks the photos for Explore. This “magic donkey” is really just an excuse though to avoid transparency/accountability about Explore. In general, the more activity a photo has (activity = faves, comments, notes, blogged, etc.) the more likely it is to show up in Explore. By putting your best foot forward (see item 1) and by focusing on promoting a popular photo of yours on a given day, (see below) it just might get there.

3. Promote your photos outside of Flickr. What are you doing to promote your photos outside of Flickr? Some things are super, super easy and involve no active participation on your part other than setting something up. Popular content aggregators on the web allow you to publish your Flickr photos out of Flickr, with valuable links back to your photos on Flickr.

Have you configured Flickr Tab on your Facebookery page yet? Why not? It’s free and easy.

Have you signed up for Google Buzz yet? Google Buzz does a great job presenting your Flickr uploads and has a killer lightbox feature that allows people to see your photo BIG (if you allow it) on Google Buzz. I’m faving more Flickr photos that I’m finding on Google Buzz these days than from any other source. I fave more photos from Google Buzz than even Flickr itself.

Have you linked your stream to a FriendFeed account yet?

How about a photoblog? Anyone can set one of these up. They are so easy. And they have cool widgets that can do a lot of automated things for you. Check out the widget I’m using for my Flickr photos (to the right over there). It’s called Fidgetr. It automatically pulls in the six most recent photos from my “10 faves or more set” on Flickr, making sure fresh new photos are constantly being published to thomashawk.com. Don’t those large thumbnails rock!

4. Avoid watermarking, small-sized low-res photos, frames and other gimmicky crap. People don’t want to see this stuff. It’s a turn off. It pushes them away. Yes, yes, I know, you cry, but the thieves, the photo thieves, they all want to steal from me. GASP!

Get over it. You know what happens when people steal your stuff? Recently a friend of mine had an image of hers taken by a commercial entity. Do you know what we did? We contacted them, and after a little arm-twisting they paid her $700 for her photo. You know why? Because they had to. Because she could have sued them if not and probably gotten a lot more than $700 if she was inclined to put the time in it. Courts award statutory damages (not actual damages) for copyright theft. Trust me. If you like getting paid $700 for your photos, you WANT people to steal them. Put a big sign on the photo. “Steal Me, I Dare You.”

With tools like Tineye, it’s getting easier and easier and easier for you to find unauthorized commercial use of your photos on the web.

Sure, some dude is going to print up your big bouquet of sunflowers shot and hang it in his living room to impress his friends while they drink beer and watch football and you’ll never find out about that use. Trust me, that dude wouldn’t have paid for your photograph in the first place anyways.

As a byproduct, uploading full, glorious, high res, original photos to Flickr gives you one more backup of your precious photos in the cloud.

5. Moooooooooooo. Do you know about moo cards? Get some. They’re cheap — well, at least the little ones are cheap. Give them to everyone you can. When you are out and about and people talk to you about your photography say (in your best Jesse Pinkman from Breaking Bad voice possible) “Hey Yo, I’m slinging this camera, check me out here Yo,” and hand them a moo card. Trust me, it works.

6. Groups. Most groups on Flickr are a waste of time. Dead groups where photo whores dump billions of photos in pools that nobody sees. Your photos are quickly buried deep, deep, in the pool, never to be seen or heard from again. Avoid these groups. They typically have names like “Baskets! Show us all your photos of baskets!” or “You Say Tomato, I Say Tomato, show us all your photos of tomatoes!” Don’t just dump your photo into 30 random groups.

Instead pick a few meaningful groups and actually hang out there and interact with people. You might consider a local group for where you live. Or a photo critique group. Or whatever. But find a few active groups (meaning several new threads are engaged in a day) and participate. I belong to a number of groups on Flickr, but 95% of my Flickr group time is spent in the critique group DMU. (Note, DMU is uncensored and not for everyone. Remember above where I told you that Flickr nuked one of our groups? yep.)

7. Fave it Forward! Have you heard of Billy Wilson? Because if you haven’t, you will soon. Not to be confused with his second cousin and other Flickr legend Billy Warhol, Billy Wilson is the original Flickr fave machine! Billy has favorited more photos than anyone else on Flickr and he’s showing no signs of slowing down. Want to know what happens when you fave almost 200,000 photos on Flickr? Just check out Billy’s stream. How’s that for getting some attention?

Now, you don’t actually have to copy the Billy Wilson favoriting machine. He’s an original and that’s his gig. But. Don’t be stingy with your faves either. If you like something fave the hell out of it. You can start here at my “10 faves or more set” if you’d like. You have an unlimited amount of faves to give out on Flickr. People love getting faves. People reciprocate.

Be like Billy, fave it forward.

Same goes for comments too. If you like something say so. Maybe you can be the next “nice photo” guy. Or maybe you can be known as that super hot chick who writes deep, meaty, insightful, witty, quirky comments on people’s photos — especially then, you’ll be loved.

8. Tag for discovery. You know how people find many of your photos? Search. Don’t be “that guy” who tags the 300 most commonly used keywords to your photos no matter what they are. I don’t want to see that photo of your bikini clad girlfriend when I’m searching for puppy. Good boy.

But. Be descriptive. Be sure to tag the place the photo was taken. The subject matter. Anything relevant that people might use to search for your photo. Consider geotagging as well. The more discoverable your photos are, the more likely they’ll be seen on Flickr.

Oh, also keyword at the file level, not on Flickr itself. It’s much faster to keyword and geotag that way and also when Flickr ends up nuking your account (KABOOM!) you won’t lose all of those tags and geotags that you worked so hard on adding to your photos. When you tag/geotag at the file level, these tags/geotags are automatically populated at Flickr when you upload your photos. Read about my workflow here for more on that.

9. Are you allowing the search engines to index your photos? If you aren’t, you should be. You can check your settings on that here. I’d estimate that about 20% of the traffic to my own Flickr photos comes from search engines.

10. Certain subjects just get garner more attention. In general I’ve found that certain subjects tend to do better on Flickr than others. Your (and my) Egglestonian masterpiece of the sidewalk curb? Not so much.

But. Subjects that seem to garner a lot of attention. Attractive women (number one attention getter on Flickr, especially self portraits), motion or blur, silhouettes, images with stories in the description, some HDR, bokeh, abstract architectural photography, bridges, cityscapes, artwork by famed graffiti artist Banksy, you get the idea.

Also sometimes an interesting looking thumbnail will pull people in as well.

Well there you have it. 10 tips to get you more attention on Flickr. Use them in good health and with good company.

Disclaimer: remember my equation above? “quality photos + reciprocation² = attention” It doesn’t matter how much work you do optimizing the promotion of your photos if they suck. Find your voice. Make your style. Create your art. But put time, energy and pride in the work that you share. Make the world a more beautiful place with the amazing work that you are capable of creating. The best photos in the world have yet to be taken.

Oh, and one final way to get a lot of attention on Flickr? Write long blog posts about getting attention on Flickr. It works every time.

You can find me on Flickr here.

Five years ago, the Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter got a digital cockpit and fly-by-wire controls. Starting in 2011, the US Army would like it to perform missions without a pilot at the helm. In a 140-page "Unmanned Aircraft Systems Roadmap" released earlier this month, the Armed Forces reveal that the UH-60, AH-64, CH-47 and OH-58D whirlybirds will all be part of a new aircraft category called Optionally Piloted Vehicles (OPV) -- meaning in future, the flick of a switch will turn them into giant UAVs. If an unmanned Apache gunship makes your boots quake, you're not alone, but you won't truly have reason to fear until 2025. That's when the government estimates half of all Army aircraft will be OPV, and those bots will learn the more deadly behaviors, like swarming. Sikorsky says the unmanned UH-60M will fly later this year; read the full roadmap PDF at our more coverage link.

The future of US Army helicopters: pilots optional originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 28 Apr 2010 07:13:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  ArmyTimes, DefenseNews  | Email this | Comments

Camera review: Olympus PEN E-P2 DSLR —

The nice folks at Olympus sent me a PEN E-P2 DSLR for me to review, and I got to use it for about a month. As I usually do with the cameras I review, the E-P2 became my primary camera. I took it everywhere with me, and I shot both photos and video with it. A succinct description of my thoughts on the camera goes as follows: superb design, diminutive, well-made, clearly thought out, reliable and a joy to use.

Details

This camera made me think seriously about switching to it permanently, and using it as my primary camera all the time. I loved it so much I didn’t want to give it back (I did give it back in the end). I loved everything about it. Even its few flaws pale in comparison with the advantages it gives you. I’m not the only one who raves about it. My wife loved it too. Other photographers loved it. People on the street would stop me to ask about it. And it’s no surprise, because it looks really good.

All that wonderful design and the overall good looks wouldn’t mean much without actual performance, and boy, this camera really delivers! The photos are superb, wonderfully well exposed, details are great at 1:1 (100%), low light performance is beautiful, even with the fairly slow (f/3.5-5.6) kit lens, and auto white balance is right on the money (not too cool in low light, which was the case with earlier Olympus cameras, and not too warm, either).

The PEN E-P2 isn’t perfect. There are a few sticking points. The two you’re likely to notice are battery life and autofocus failure in low light.

I’m used to battery life that hovers around 500-700 shots per charge. Perhaps that’s why I usually take that many photos when I visit a place. Or perhaps it’s just a coincidence, I don’t know. I do carry a spare battery when I shoot with my usual camera, so that means I can usually take 1200-1500 shots before I’m out of juice. The E-P2’s battery runs out around 250-350 shots, and it may run out faster if you take a lot of photos in rapid succession. That was a bit of a surprise to me, and since I didn’t have an extra battery, it did limit the amount of shots I could take. So, my advice to you is to get an extra battery (or two) depending on your shooting habits.

In low light (and I mean fairly low light, with little contrast between lighter and darker colors) the E-P2 will keep searching, trying to focus, and it will finally give up after a few seconds. You can overcome this if you use a faster lens, or if you switch to AF+MF or MF. That way you can choose to focus manually after the camera says it can’t do it, or you can start focusing manually right away.

Expecting the E-P2 to shine all around is a mistake. No camera is going to be perfect. In every camera ever made, some features were taken out, or couldn’t be put in at all. I look at the E-P2 as I look at my MINI Cooper S. It’s diminutive, the design is gorgeous, and the performance is great for my needs. I didn’t buy my MINI expecting it to perform like a Hummer, and by the same token, you don’t buy a PEN E-P2 expecting it to work like a Nikon D3X or a Canon EOS 1D Mark IV. They’re different cameras, designed for different purposes. When you buy an E-P2, you expect it to be light, versatile, stay out of the way, take good photographs (great photographs, actually), and to shoot HD video. It does all those things beautifully, and more.

I thought I’d place some weight on the DxOMark ratings for the E-P2 after I saw them, but in the end, it wasn’t a concern. It’s like the iPad, you see. You don’t get it until you hold it in your hands. Then it clicks. It’s the same with the E-P2. After you begin using it, you get it, and you don’t want to let go of it, because you know you can get great pictures with it, and you love the way it works, and the way it feels.

Even my wife, who doesn’t like taking photos with my Canon 5D, because she thinks it’s too much work to get the camera set up and adjusted, and doesn’t like it even when it’s on full auto, loved the PEN E-P2 and was able to take great photos with it. That showed me that Olympus was able to strike a great balance between a DSLR that will cater to the needs of a pro through its many buttons and manual settings, and will also please the amateur by assisting them unobtrusively as they use it.

We’d do well to remember a few things about Olympus here:

• First company to come out with a self-cleaning sensor for a DSLR
• First company to come out with Live View for a DSLR
• First company to come out with magnified view for TTL MF on a DSLR
• First company to come out with the idea of capturing video and photos with same DSLR sensor. I call it the “idea”, because what they did was to capture Live View video shown on the camera’s display via the main sensor, and the leap from that to recording video from the sensor is a fairly small one.
• First company to come out with the smallest DSLR on the market. The E-420 was the first one, and now the PEN picks up Olympus’ famed lineage of analog cameras and takes it digital.

Even though larger companies like Canon and Nikon are reaping the benefits of implementing things like self-cleaning sensors and live view and magnified focus assist, and HD video, it’s really Olympus who did the hard work to bring these features to the market. Their implementation of these features may not be the flashiest or the loudest, but they were first.

I’m going to repeat a few things I wrote in August 2008, in an article entitled “DSLRs and video to converge“, after the Nikon D90, the first DSLR that could also shoot video, had been launched:

As good as the [Nikon] D90 is though, it will soon be eclipsed. Why? Market forces. How long do you think it will be before we’ll have a DSLR that can record 1080p HD video? Or how about an even smaller and thinner DSLR than currently possible? How about a DSLR that looks and weighs about the same as a point-and-shoot, but gives you photo quality that’s equivalent to (or exceeds) today’s DSLRs? It’s all coming.

Keep in mind the time when I wrote those things, and what came afterward. Just a few short months later, the Canon 5D Mark II came on the market, and it could record 1080p video. The floodgates had opened. And now we have a smaller and thinner DSLR than ever thought possible (Olympus PEN), one that looks and weighs about the same as a point-and-shoot camera (Olympus PEN), but gives you photo quality that exceeds that of other DSLRs. And there’s a huge difference in sensor size between that of a typical digicam and that of a PEN camera, as you can see below. (The sensor of the PEN camera is on the right.)

Here’s what else I said back then…

You know where else I’ll be proven wrong? Back when I attended the Olympus E-3 launch party, I talked about the camera’s (somewhat) limited 10 megapixel resolution, and I thought they had reached the limitations of the Four Thirds 2x cropped sensor. I thought the sensor’s surface area was too small to get more resolution out of it. But now that Canon has proven you can get 16 megapixels out of a 1.6x cropped sensor, I don’t see why you can’t get 12 megapixels or more out of a 2x cropped sensor.

I had my doubts about whether or not the Olympus engineers would be able to squeeze proper low light performance out of the four thirds sensor while increasing resolution, given the sensor’s size when compared to a full 35mm sensor, but they’ve done it! The PEN E-P2 goes up to 6400 ISO if you want it to, and the photos taken at 1600 ISO are definitely usable. Even the ones taken at 3200 ISO look pretty good to me. I’d reserve 6400 ISO for daylight use, such as when you want to take a high-speed photograph. Nighttime photos taken at 6400 ISO were fairly grainy, but then again, I was using the slower kit lens, whose aperture stops at f/3.5.

One last quote:

Wait, it gets even better. The current aspect ratio of Four Thirds cameras is 4:3. The aspect ratio of Micro Four Thirds cameras will be 16:9. That’s the same aspect ratio used in movies. Where do you think that’s going? It means your photos and your videos will have the same aspect ratio, and the line between photography and videography will get even more blurred, and it’s quite possible that in the near future, we’ll have 1920×1080p HD video recorded by a tiny little DSLR with a tiny little lens on it.

Okay, I was wrong about that one. Things are even better now. The PEN E-P2 will let you shoot at the following aspect ratios: 4:3, 3:2, 16:9 and 6:6. It shoots 720p HD video at 16:9, and it’s only a (short) matter of time before the PEN will be able to shoot 1080p HD video, as predicted. Keep in mind it will still be the tiniest little DSLR on the market, with a tiny little interchangeable lens on it, and that will make all the difference.

While I’m on the subject of video, do you want to know what else sets the PEN apart from other DSLRs that can shoot HD video? The fact that you can choose between several auto-focus modes, or image stabilization modes, or adjust both aperture and shutter speed, and apply live art filters to the videos, in-camera. I don’t know of another DSLR that lets you do this. As a matter of fact, you can shoot video in P, A, S or M modes, and you can adjust the aperture live, as you’re shooting. You can adjust the zoom, and if you have AF tracking enabled, your subject will continue to stay in focus. And you can see or preview all of the adjustments you’re making, on the screen or in the viewfinder, instantly.

Hands-on Video Review

I’m editing the video review today, and should have it done and uploaded shortly. Stay tuned for it. I’ll update the article when it’s ready to be viewed.

Updated: The video is up now, but give it a couple of hours to encode and display properly.

Olympus PEN E-P2 Hands-on Review

Specifications

While you can find all the specs you’d want and more on the Olympus PEN website, I’ll point out the more important ones here:

• 12.3 megapixels resolution (4032 x 3024 pixels)
• SSWF (Super Sonic Wave Filter) dust reduction system
• Micro four thirds mount (of course)
• 17.3 mm x 13 mm LCD screen, 3 inches across, 230,000 dots, 100% FOV
• 11-area AF System: Imager Contrast AF (S-AF, C-AF, S-AF+MF, MF, C-AF+TR)
• Shutter, 60 – 1/4000 sec or up to 30 min in bulb mode
• 3 fps drive, up to 10 sequential RAW images or 12 sequential JPG images
• TTL Image Sensor Metering: 324-area multi-pattern metering, center-weighted or spot-metering, EV 0-18
• Flash synchronization: 1/30 – 1/180
• Photo ISO: Auto 200-6400 or Manual 100-6400 in 1/3 or 1 EV Steps
• Movie ISO: Auto or Manual 160-1600
• Color Space: sRGB, AdobeRGB
• RAW, JPEG, RAW+JPEG for photos
• AVI for videos, 30 fps, limited to 2 GB per file, 720p HD (1280 x 720 pixels), 480p SD (640 x 480 pixels), max recording time 7 min for HD, 14 min for SD video
• Wave Format Base Stereo PCM/16-bit, 44.1 kHz for sound
• SDHC memory card recommended (can use older SD cards, but they’re not recommended for HD video)
• Live View, 100% FOV, 7x or 10x magnification assist for MF
• Image Stabilizer for photos: 3 modes (2D, Vertical and Horizontal), up to 4EV steps compensation
• Image Stabilizer for videos: shifting electronic image (aka Digital IS)
• Aspect ratio: 4:3, 3:2, 16:9, 6:6
• Battery life: up to 300 shots
• Dimensions: 4.74in (W) x 2.75in. (H) x 1.37 in (D) / 120.5 mm (W) x 70mm (H) x 35mm (D) (excluding protrusions)
• Weight: 11.1oz/335g (body only), 13.6/385g (body, battery and media)

Sample Photos and Videos

I took the camera with me to the Flagler Museum and The Breakers in Palm Beach, to the Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens in Delray Beach, to the Boardwalk on Hollywood Beach, where I met with Thomas Hawk, and to the Vizcaya Museum in Miami. If I had gotten it sooner, I’d have taken it with me to Las Vegas as well. Of course, I used it heavily inside and outside the house. I shot photos and video with it in all sorts of light conditions. After an initial winnowing process, I have 954 photos taken with it in my photo library, and 2½ (149 minutes) of HD video recorded with it.

I didn’t get the chance to edit and publish all of the photos and video clips taken with the camera yet, but I will get to all of them in the near future, and will post them here on my blog, so stay tuned for that. Until then, here’s a good selection of what I’ve already edited.

This first photo shows what you can get right out of the camera. I set the E-P2 on i-Auto, and as you can see, the light is a mix between strong daylight and shadows. With other cameras, you’d get more contrast between the light and dark areas, and you wouldn’t see so much detail on the tree bark, for example. But the E-P2 was able to keep the sky blue and still give me vibrant, light greens and browns in the shadowy areas, which is great.

Notice again how it was able to render great detail in the shadowy areas, even when shooting directly into the sun.

Notice the fine detail and soft bokeh in this macro photograph of a palm frond. This was taken with the 14-42mm kit lens. Even though the lens is said to focus properly only from 0.25 m/0.82 ft to infinity, when the camera was set to Macro mode, it could focus much closer, up to only a couple of inches away from the subject. Keep in mind this is not a point-and-shoot digicam, but a DSLR, and this is not your run-of-the-mill zoom lens, but a DSLR zoom lens.

These are colors obtained right out of the camera. If you’d like to see the specifics of a photo, feel free to download it and view the EXIF data, it’s included in each sample photograph.

This next photo is unedited once more. It’s what the camera gave me at 14mm (28mm effective) and 1600 ISO. It was a fairly dark room, and I shot this against a bright window with early afternoon daylight (2 pm) coming right at the camera. Notice the detail and lack of noise in the darker areas.

This was a particularly dark room. It appears well lit only because I shot this at 1/20th of a second, and 1600 ISO. Notice once more how vibrant the colors are, and how good the auto white balance is.

This next photo shows that you can get some neat bokeh effects if you play with the manual focus. The photo is unprocessed, as the camera made it.

Another reason to like the PEN E-P2 is that I can take great portraits with it. Yes, you’ve got to love the bokeh you can get with really fast lenses like the Canon EF 50mm f/1.4, but you’ve also got to love the clarity of an Olympus camera. The whole face is in focus, and every minute detail can be seen if you zoom in. It feels like you can almost touch the skin of the person whose portrait you’ve taken. It’s a great characteristic, and I noticed this way back when I was shooting with the Olympus C-3000Z, as you can see in this photo from 2005. The photo you see below is of my wife, Ligia, and once again, it’s right out of the camera. It’s incredible how brilliant the colors are.

Here are a few more portraits I took of her with the PEN E-P2. I love this camera.

Here are a few more sample photos taken at Vizcaya, in Miami.

A few sample videos (shot in 720p HD) are embedded below. There are more on the way, as mentioned above. I should mention I used software motion stabilization on a fair number of the clips, as I shot them handheld, without a tripod or any other sort of external stabilization device, and I foolishly forgot to activate the in-camera stabilization.

Tea Ceremony – Morikami Museum

On the Beach at The Breakers

A Tour of the Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens

Accessories

I recommend you definitely get the following accessories:

• Li-Ion battery (PS-BLS1) – get 1 or even 2 of these, depending on how many shots you need to take per session
• MMF-2 Four Thirds to Micro Four Thirds Adapter — this is a must-have accessory, as it lets you mount any four thirds lens onto any PEN camera
• 16 GB SDHC Card – get whatever brand you like, but make sure it’s SDHC
• VF-2 Electronic Viewfinder — if you didn’t get this in a kit with your PEN camera, it’s really worth getting, as it will pivot up and act as a WLF (Waist Level Finder); you can see me using the PEN E-P2 with the VF-2 mounted onto it and pivoted upward in the second photo from the top of the article.

These next accessories come down to personal preference. Get these if you like them:

• SEMA-1 Mic Adapter Set — it’s an inexpensive way to get better audio tracks for your video clips
• Zuiko Micro Four Thirds 17mm f/2.8 ED Lens
• FL-14 External Flash, or a more capable speedlite, like the FL-36R or the FL-50R, depending on your needs
• Panasonic 45-200mm f/4.0-5.6 Lumix G Vario MEGA OIS Zoom Micro Four Thirds Lens — even though it’s a slower lens, the effective range is 90-400 mm, which makes it a tantalizingly affordable zoom
• Cable Remote USB RM-UC1 — if you do a lot of night photography, with long exposures on tripods, you’ll need this cable release, particularly as it will allow you to lock the shutter in bulb mode

The current selection of micro four thirds lenses is somewhat slim, but it’s growing. And the beauty of having adapters like the MMF-2 I listed above is that you can use any regular four thirds lenses with PEN cameras, so you don’t have to buy extra micro four thirds lenses if you don’t want to. But what if you’re heavily invested in Canon gear, and would love to get a PEN camera? That’s okay too, because there’s a Canon lens to Micro Four Thirds mount adapter. It’s the same if you’re a Nikon shooter. There is an adapter that will let you use Nikon lenses with a PEN camera.

Two companies out there make these kinds of adapters: Novoflex, a German company, and Fotodiox, an American company. Since I’m heavily invested in Canon EF lenses, I asked Novoflex whether they have a Canon EF to Micro Four Thirds adapter, and they don’t. They do have a Canon FD adapter, which if I’m not mistaken will let you mount EF lenses, but you’ll be shooting wide open, without the ability control aperture.

I also called Fotodiox and asked them the same question. They do have a specific Canon EF lens to Micro Four Thirds mount adapter, but it also does not let you control aperture. They did tell me they’re working on a specific adapter for Canon EF lenses that will let you mount them to PEN cameras and control aperture and auto-focus, just like you would with a normal lens. They said the price for it would be around $300 when it comes out later this year. That would be a very cool adapter, if it indeed delivers on its promises!

I also found out that Canon makes a simple EF lens to Micro Four Thirds mount adapter, and it’s only $40! So if you don’t mind shooting wide open and using manual focus, then definitely get this adapter, because it’s made of metal, so it should hold up nicely over time.

Summary

It’s time to wrap things up. What can I say, other than what I’ve already said? I’m in love with this camera!

A number of design and engineering ideas from Olympus came together beautifully in the digital PEN: diminutive size, great sensor, beautiful design, IS, SSWF, Micro Four Thirds, HD video, light and capable lenses, a whole host of features design to make things easier for the photographer, and beyond the hardware, a tangible sense of soul, a certain something that binds you to the camera as you begin to use it.

Just like the analog PEN revolutionized the way people thought of cameras and of how they took photos, the digital PEN is a wonderful continuation of the PEN legacy, a beautiful leap through time, from film to the digital world of today.

Images of PEN E-P2 used courtesy of Olympus. The PEN E-P2 can be purchased from Amazon or B&H Photo.

Filed under: Reviews Tagged: brands, cameras, companies, dslr, innovation, olympus, pen e-p2, photos, products, videos

There is a natural cycle in Social Media applications, where there’s an initial excitement (the romantic phase), a leveling of activity (the wedding phase) and hopefully the “till death do us part” phase, where the application becomes part of our lives.

But most often than not, there’s a divorce phase. The application just doesn’t measure up to our needs. Or the community on it changes.

The latter is what’s happened with FriendFeed. Even though the service is up and running (albeit with some ongoing server hiccups), this brilliant post from Akiva Moskovitz says it all: the FriendFeed community has stagnated.

I was one of the users who fled the community as soon as I heard that Facebook had acquired FriendFeed and tried, in vain, to move my “social furniture” to a new home. I tried Facebook, I tried Twitter, I tried Pip.io.

I was even very bullish about Google Buzz. But after really trying it for a number of weeks, the truth is Google Buzz doesn’t work as an aggregator, but it’s rather a commenting platform for original content. The problem is that its algorithm seems to favor people with lots of followers, but for users with a few hundreds of friends like me, it’s sort of a dead town. I get more value reading my feeds in Google Reader than going to Buzz and reading about the same things, or read what DeWitt Clinton, Louis Gray or Thomas Hawk are talking about.

The truth is that none of these places felt like home. We really got spoiled during the golden time of FriendFeed, when you posted anything, and you immediately got feedback, amazing comments and different points of view.

Today, FriendFeed activity is still strong with a few users. But, going back to Akiva, it’s the same small group of people commenting and regurgitating their points of view. I am close with a lot of them and care about them. But the truth is that FriendFeed is not that active place anymore. Even Louis Gray, one of FriendFeed’s last faithful defenders, talks about the very apparent decrease of traffic coming from the site.

At the end of the day, I still think it’s Facebook’s game for the taking. I am sure the FriendFeed team is working hard in turning Facebook into the FriendFeed for the masses. Facebook already surpassed Google in U.S. traffic, and there is a community there (including a lot of my FriendFeed peeps). The main obstacle is that Facebook’s present UI plainly sucks to do effective sharing of content.

Either that, or a completely unknown startup sweeps everyone’s feet. It’s happened before and it’s going to happen again.

Until then, I will be sitting here in the middle of the huge social crater called FriendFeed. It’s still the place I call my social home.

Photo from NASA – Jet Propulsion Labs

I can't ever remember a year where 'sparring product and /or acquisition announcements' have come so frequently as they have from tech competitors Google, Microsoft, Apple and Facebook over the past 6 months.

Earlier today Google announced the acquisition of Picnik, an online photo editing service, perhaps  best-known for their inline implementation on Yahoo!-owned (and HUGE) photo sharing service, Flickr.

I have always felt that Google's growth strategy appears to be (1) keeping the search index the most relevent first and then (2) taking as many 'shots' as possible, some measured, and some not so measured, at the broader tech space ... to see what sticks.

In recent months, many of Google's products started 'talking to each other' creating an ecosystem, that, for all intents and purposes, one could 'live in' without leaving.

Many of the company's products such as Google's still somewhat fledgling (Flickr competitor) Picasaweb (which holds this blogs images by default because it's on Blogger ... a Google property .... get it??) are social networks within themselves.

Since the announcement, many have tried to dissect what's next or lend commentary. 

This is what TechMeMe looked like as I write this ...

(and, yes, for the record, it's where I found out above the deal. Gabe Rivera's product is still very much an indispensable tool for those of us that want to keep up with the landscape each day. There, I said it .... and why not?? It's a FACT .... and maybe overdue Kudos).


I found Thomas Hawk's piece particularly interesting as a well-known web photographer.  Thomas has also been an avid Google Buzz user since the start.

So what are we actually looking at here?

It's interesting that a day or two ago, Louis Gray described his 'life in the cloud' since acquiring a new laptop and turning only to his older box when he needed to use Photoshop?  Hmmm.

Is this a shot at Adobe?  You bet.  It's a stategic shot at Adobe and Apple in a measured move in an important piece in the upcoming Chrome OS and the continuation of tying Google services together.

Think about this.

If Google decides to make access to Picnik FREE, the landscape changes overnight. 

I'm guessing not only will this haappen, but the spaces in the Google ecosystem where Picnik is deployed will simply be monetized by DoubleClick and Google Adwords.

Does this make them evil?

No.  It makes them smart ..... and in this environment .... very smart.

Google very simply just bought a piece of the future.

What's next?  Look for Google Chat to be integrated with Google Voice as a competitor of sorts to Skype as that space broadens with more broadband rolling out each day.

Whatever IS next, there's nobody that an say this hasn't been an exciting and game-changing year in tech.  I'm thinkin' it's just the beginning.

Why Buzz Beats Twitter, Facebook, and Friendfeed —

Buzz is a breath of fresh air in an increasingly noisy social media world. Why do I think it’s superior to Twitter, Facebook, and Friendfeed?

Let’s take the easiest comparison first:

Buzz vs. Friendfeed

Right now, Buzz basically is Friendfeed but with immediately greater penetration. Real conversations with more people.

[BTW I know I have Buzz on the brain because I just tried to create italics in this blog post _this way_]

(Crazed Hulk Scobleizer) by Thomas Hawk

One interesting difference though, is that people seemed to like the 3.0 aggregator aspect of Friendfeed but:

1. Buzz users hate noise, and
2. They unfollow people who add Twitter and Friendfeed streams to their Buzz streams.

Buzz beats Friendfeed because Buzz is bigger.

Buzz vs. Twitter

As much as I loved Twitter in 2008, I loved it less in 2009 when celebrities took over, and I can take it or leave it now that it’s all botted-out.

(Twitter peeps) by Thomas Hawk

I still tweet people and @reply them. What I find so dissatisfying is how short and superficial the conversations are. It’s a great place for a quick joke or comment, but 140 characters is limiting, and a lot of conversations end more quickly than Buzz conversations.

This blog post’s many cool quotes (below) are substantial because they came from a Buzz conversation. If they were tweets, they wouldn’t stick to your ribs so much.

Another advantage Buzz has is that you can see how many people are likely to hear you if you comment, and the gmail integration ensures people will return to reply.

Buzz beats Twitter because Buzz has:

1. Longer, more substantial conversations, with
2. More replies and
3. More attention from participants.
   

Buzz vs Facebook

As I’ve said, people seem less tolerant of noise on Buzz. No pokes, Zombie kisses, or farming games on Buzz. There’s less downside for ADD folks (and some research suggests that computer multitasking makes our brains temporarily ADD even if we’re not genetically that way).

Less distraction means more focused interaction, and more likelihood of substantial conversation.

Portrait of Buzz by Thomas Hawk

As my fellow Buzzer Thomas Lucas says:

Facebook is very social and “everyone is on it” but it is becoming MySpace really fast. I think the future of real social interactivity and news will be buzz. You can have conversations that are real-time and in order-you don’t have to keep scrolling/clicking to find out what tweet people are answering. And the “no frills” of Google will HOPEFULLY keep the farms, mafias and daily horoscopes out of buzz. Tweet your “thoughts”, plant some crops and talk to that “hot girl” from high school on Facebook and keep buzz for news and conversations.

More comparisons from Myrna Weinreich:

Love Buzz, not sure exactly why but ‘deeper’, richer than FF and definitely more than FB which is usually (not always) a superficial ‘hey there, whatcha doin’.

And down the road, if ads come to Buzz they’ll likely be AdWords text ads, which are much less distracting that the image/banner ads we see on other social platforms. AdWords text ads are semantically relevant, and tend to be more of a service to the user than other ad types. Relevant ads won’t diminish conversation as much as other ad types on other social sites do.

Buzz beats Facebook because Buzz protects conversations from noise and spam.

 

Change, Social Platform Identity, and Survival

It does seem that MySpace-ification is a danger for all social networks. As soon as you try to make the social platform a place where people can live their entire lives, you junk it up, and the noise obstructs real interaction.

No Dumping by Observe The Banana

Twitter has stayed focused, but their API lets in a lot of noise. Hopefully Buzz will remain focused and add the connected sources filter Buzzers are asking for (so they can follow you but filter out your tweets, if they like).

Here are a few a the things Robert Scoble wants from Buzz, many of them related to noise:

#1. I need noise filters.
#2. I need noise filters.
#3. I need noise filters.
#4. I need noise filters.
#5. I need noise filters.

Oh, sorry, my Twitter import just barfed.

Let’s start again.

#1. I need a way to remove Tweets. All Tweets. I haven’t seen a single Tweet that is not noise here.
#2. I need a way to remove whenever Jesse Stay talks about FriendFeed. That’s noise.
#3. I need a way to remove all the reposts of Mashable or Techcrunch items. That’s noise.
#4. I need a way to only display items that get engagement. That would remove noise.

Here’s another post about noise and Smart Filtering.

Louis Gray just wrote a post about defriending most of his Facebook friends, because he’s shifting FB use from blog promotion back to its original friend/personal usage. Andy Beard is experimenting with leaving Twitter (he’s not the first and won’t be the last). Do these two movements mean anything larger?

Most assuredly they underscore that everything changes. In the midst of this change, the social platform that enables conversation and protects us from noise and spam will enjoy the greatest success.

Different Strokes for Different Folks

Ultimately, as cool as the versus metaphor is, it’s not about one platform winning, but each one having strengths, and each attracting an audience that prefers that communication style:

Something I think alot of people forget is that the very nature of each of these apps/sites is different, and attracts a different audience. Of course, there is always some crossover, but my own audience is quite different in each of the properties.. Just because of the variability of the features/formats, etc.

A lot of people make the mistake of just dumping anything and everything to every social media outlet (Scoble, Pirillo, etc). The real key for businesses is to have content keyed/tweaked to each of the sites.

Engaging in conversation appropriate to each of the mediums as it were.

- Scott Medlock

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Why Buzz Beats Twitter, Facebook, and Friendfeed

Justin Halpern’s immensely popular Twitter account “Sh*t My Dad Says” is in the process of being turned into a sitcom, and there’s a powerhouse of industry veterans attached to the project. Today we can add William Shatner to the list, as he’s primed to star as the dad-that-speaks-his-mind in the pilot episode.

With Shatner set to bring the words of Halpen’s 73-year-old father to life, the script — co-written by Halpern and Patrick Schumacker — has been greenlit for production as a pilot.

The Hollywood Reporter also reports that the title of the project will likely change (presumably to something more TV-friendly) should the pilot become a full-fledged television series.

Given William Shatner’s comedic timing and edgier persona of late — especially when you factor in the poetic readings of Sarah Palin’s tweets — we think there’s a definite match between the actor and the character that Halpern brings to life on a daily basis via Twitter. In fact, with the producers of Will & Grace behind the project, one would presume that the end result will not disappoint.

There’s no word on the production schedule or when the pilot will air, but we’ll keep a lookout and keep you posted when we know more. Until then, let us know what you think of Shatner reprising the role of Halpern senior in the comments.

[img credit: Thomas Hawk]

Tags: justin halpern, shit my dad says, tv, William Shatner

Description:  Taken during a lunch photowalk with Thomas Hawk awhile back.  Not much to add to this one.

Location: San Francisco, California
Date Taken: September 4, 2008
Camera: Canon 20D
Exposure: 1/30 second
Aperture: f/6.3
Focal Length: 55 mm
ISO: 100