Category Archives: Photo Gear

You might be a photo geek if…

So last night Kelli and I watched “The Right Stuff”. I hadn’t seen it for several years and after the recent moon landing 40th anniversary I’d been in a mood to watch it, even though it is a pointed reminder of how badly we’ve slipped in our extra-planetary ambitions (yay, we can, um…put people in low-earth orbit, and sometimes the toilets work too).

Anyway, during the press conference scenes I caught myself totally geeking out over all the Speed Graphic 4×5’s, old school 35mm rangefinders and medium format TLRs the press photographers were using.

I guess that makes me some sort of photo gear geek. Then again I’ve always had a soft spot for mechanical things which feel like they’re hewn out of solid metal and make satisfying clunking, whirring noises as they operate.

Undocumented Camera Features

After a mere 7 years of shooting with the same Olympus C4000Z, I accidentally discovered a feature that I don’t recall seeing mentioned anywhere in the manual.

In auto focus mode, half-press on the shutter button to focus, then with the half-press held, press the OK button with your right thumb. The camera is now in manual focus mode, with the focus set to wherever it was put by the auto-focus. Only works with the LCD switched on.

I’m a focus-recompose kind of person, so this is great to have. Just a shame I didn’t discover it in late 2002…!