Less than a week ago I brought myself a new camera. The rational was that I wanted something that I could keep in my pocket and would have low ethnographic impact. The new Panasonic GF1 with 20mm lens does the trick.

The camera has some of the advantages of an SLR, quick shutter (no lag), quick auto focus and interchangeable lenses, but is relatively small. Its not that great in low light and the digital viewfinder is a bit small (but functional).

Unemployed and Shopping

This is a sample photo, taken a night. I could have spent hours trying to get the composition right, its a plaque to unemployed protestors in front of billboards, the one on the left for a shopping mall, the one on the right, out of frame, for Moet champaign.

The most annoying thing so far is that the RAW format is not supported by Apple Aperture (my photo catalogue and editor of choice). The upside this that it forced me to play with Adobe Lightroom (free beta test of version three), which has some editing features that Aperture misses.

Manchester City Centre

This photo was converted to black and white, given a blue tint, a graduated filter and some vignetting.