New iPad

My new iPad is now not quite so new as it was when I got it two weeks ago. I have had the original iPad for about 1½ years and was very satisfied with it. The iPad 2 didn't lure me, and only one feature on the new iPad sounded really interesting: the new retina display!
I use my iPad almost exclusively for two things: I browse (this and that) and I read magazines and the like (but I read novels on my Kindle). Browsing was OK on the original iPad, but for magazines I have always found that the screen was both a little to small and with too low a resolution. When reading magazines not specifically edited for the iPad, that meant I had to constantly zoom in and out.
Well, the new iPad for sure fixed the problem with the resolution, and it actually did it so well that I don't feel anymore that the iPad is to small! That is great!

I dropped CD's and other physical more than 3 years ago when I got my Sonos. I dropped physical books - well, novels anyway - when I got my first Kindle more than 3 years ago. And I (almost) dropped physical magazine more than 1 year ago when I got my first iPad. Going digital is of course great because of the convenience, but living in Denmark it has the added benefit that media in English is a lot less expensive in digital form than in physical form. I do not read that many magazines, and still my savings on going digital with the magazines can pay for almost half of a new iPad every 2. year.

This is the magazines i currently read on my iPad:

• British Journal of Photography. I had never read that before it came in an iPad edition. This is a really great magazine if you are interested in photography. It covers both new trends and important well known photographers and both the art photography and the more commercial photography. It is edited really well, and of the magazines I have seen, it is clearly the one that has the far best iPad edition. The only bad thing is that it is only a quarterly.
• Amature Photographer (AP). I read the Journal to learn about photography and photographers, but I read AP to learn about taking photographs my self. It is well edited and with a lot of news and inspiration. And it is a weekly! AP does not have an iPad edition, so I have my subscription through Zinio. The Zinio reader works really well on the new iPad.
• Wired. Compared to its previous glory Wired is a little tired. But it still has the occasional article that enlightens on a new important trend. The iPad edition reads quite well.
• Popular Photography (popphoto). I probably bought my first edition more than 25 years ago, so it is with a little nostalgia I still read it. But even if the iPad edition is definitely lightweight then it is also very cheap.
• Outdoor Photographer. This is not a very interesting magazine but Zinio had an offer for a two-year subscription for almost nothing. I does have a lot of stunning landscape photographs and a different twist on its gear coverage.

Beside of the above I occasionally by a single edition of some other magazine i Zinio. Zinio really is you virtual newsstand for magazines.

My new Olympus and me

I got my new camera yesterday evening - an Olympus OM-D E-M5. Here is my old Camera, a Canon 40D, together with my new Oly. Cute, ain't it?

Probably the main reason I felt the need for a new camera is just that I simply love a new gadget. But also I really felt ready to start taking some more pictures again, and that surely is something to encourage.
I still like my old camera and its lenses a lot, but it has two problems: it is simply to large to lug around; and it is quite noise already at 400 ISO. My new camera is therefor - as you can see - a lot smaller; and it is supposed to be quite good at higher ISO.
It is quite different to use a camera that much smaller than my old Canon. But I have quite small hands and even though I have only used it for an hour or so it already starts to feel good; the in-body image stabilizer is however surely needed as it is a lot harder to hold such a small and light camera steady. The buttons and dials are very SLR-like and I use it like a small SLR which is very different compared to use it as a large compact camera. This is fun!
Adobe Lightroom does not yet handle OM-D raw files, so I have only looked at some JPEG's. That is probably not fair to look to hard at those, but they do seem quite nice. It is however quite clear that the larger sensor of my old 40D in some ways holds up quite nicely with this new-generation 4/3 sensor. My Oly perhaps has a little less detail at low ISO but also a lot less noise at higher ISO.

Here is photo of me and my house taken with my new Oly in düsseldorfer style.

And here is one of the unused greenhouse in the garden.