A day out with Olympus

One of the things I have enjoyed the most about having a blog, is learning how to use a camera properly. Of course I’ve had cameras before, but previously I’d never used any setting other than “Automatic” – I basically thought “ISO” was a soft drink.

Although my photography skills still have “room for improvement”, I am always looking to get that bit better. So, when fellow blogger Julia from Stylonylon invited me to attend a photography day hosted by Olympus to try out their new Lite E-PL7 from their PEN range of cameras, I decided it was worth extending a trip to London for – if you’ve seen Julia’s work with the PEN you’ll know why!

Hosted at Olympus’ exhibition space near Liverpool Street Station, myself and five other bloggers gathered for a tutorial day about how to use their recently launched PEN camera. Normally it’s hard to pitch-in events like these to bloggers – namely because most of us are rather attached to our existing cameras, but I left the event an Olympus convert – and trust me I’m stubborn.

Here’s why:

The E-PL7 PEN is small – it’s basically the same size as my Samsung Note mobile phone (which granted is on the large size). It’s also incredibly light. Now, if you’ve spent  holidays lugging around massive SLR cameras and even bigger lenses, you’ll know that trying to protect your camera from the weather, avoid it getting too much attention and just lugging around its weight for a full day of playing tourist can be tiring to say the least. Despite it’s compact size, the quality of the photographs the E-PL7 PEN produces are as good as any I’ve ever created with a larger device.

It’s also designed for our generation. That’s to say the screen is touch screen and it has wifi so you can take a photograph and transfer it straight to your phone for immediate uploading. Yep. You can take an AMAZING photo and have it on instagram before your dinner gets cold.

Olympus have also designed the camera with the instagram user in mind. The “ART” setting allows you to apply filters and boarders to pictures as you take them, so no need to mess around in Photoshop afterwards – you can do it all straight away.

A fan of the selfie? You can twist the screen around to take a photo of yourself. You can also set up the camera with a timer, but control when the picture is taken with an app on your phone – no more enlisting the boyfriend to photograph me on the weekends when he’d rather be down at the pub!

This all sound a bit gimmicky for your liking?

It’s not.

And I mean that.

It has all the snazzy effects yes, but it also has all the functionalities that an avid photographer will require. It’s a great little device and I can’t wait to show you so here!

Yep – told you, a convert.

I also have to give a shout out to the catering provided by China (contact: seabasto@gmail.com), which looked and tasted incredible and to The Flower Appreciation Society who came equipped with beautiful carnations and roses for us to construct crowns out of – if I ever host a massive party these two are hired for the day!