Week 5:Let’s get physical, physical

Last week I was looking around my motley collection of point and shoot’s scanning for something different to try this week and remembered there was an Olympus Infinity Epic Stylus Zoom 80 sitting at the bottom of the trash bin in my man cave. Since I don’t often empty that unless the apple cores, banana peels, yogurt cartons and other detritus start fermenting and creating unwanted science experiments, it was still there as it had landed.

I decided it was worth one more go so I fished it out and inserted a battery and slid open the protective cover. Nothing. Display came on but no lens extension or flash pop up. Remembering a trick that Han Solo used while being hotly pursued by Imperial Star Cruisers, I gave it a good thwack against the palm of my hand. Voila – Like the Millennium Falcon jumping into hyperdrive – there was a whir and the lens came to life and flash jumped up.

This has actually worked on three different cameras now. Maybe after sitting all those years something gets gunky and sticky and things don’t want to move. I don’t think I’d try it on your $2000 DSLR though unless you can’t afford to have it repaired. If that’s the case you don’t need to own a $2000 camera but that’s just my personal opinion. So it’s pay the repair guy or ‘Thwak!’.

So on a nice Sunday afternoon I took the Olympus, a Nikon One Touch and an Olympus Infinity Mini DLX and headed for the park next to our public Library. There are always interesting things to photograph just about anywhere you go but my wife and I like the little park and it’s a nice walk anyway.

The following pics are from the Olympus Infinity Epic Stylus Zoom 80. The ‘Mini DLX’ was a bust – consistently underexposed everything. The One Touch made ok pictures but compared with the Olympus it was like driving a dump truck vs a 65 Mustang. No class and clunky. It’s something I won’t use again even though it’s supposed to have a better lens. Don’t like carrying bricks around in my pocket anyway.

It was a good day shooting using Ilford HP5 400 ISO.