I picked up my new camera today which I am super excited about! I would much rather take the day off work tomorrow to play with it but I’m not sure that’s a legitimate excuse… Ah well, this weekend can be spent taking lots of arty photos 🙂

I’ve been umming and ah-ing about buying a new camera for a while, and starting this blog has really clinched it for me. I started playing with Mark’s DSLR in order to post some better quality photos of my baking creations in my blog posts, and I loved the output so much that I was disappointed to go back to my own camera afterwards!

After a lot of research and trying different ones out in store I have bought the Olympus E-PM1. For camera geeks this is a compact system camera with a micro four-thirds sensor (some more info here…), a standard which allows interchangeable lenses between different manufacturers.

What drew me to this particular camera was a) the size- it’s tiny and with a smaller lens than the kit lens it comes with (14-42mm) it would be even smaller! Perfect for fitting in my handbag and carrying around with me everywhere, b) the price- cheaper than a lot of regular sized DSLRs (£295) for the features it offers and size, c) a brilliant step up from a point-and-shot compact camera that enables manual changes to settings and the chance to learn more about real photography. I won’t pretend I’m an expert by any means, but I’m excited to play around and find out how it all works 🙂

Here are just a few trial shots that I took this evening:

For some more awesome photos to illustrate just what is possible with this camera with other lenses check out this thread. The smaller sensor does make low-light photography more of an issue, but the PM1 comes with a small external flash which I will try out at some point.

I will post more pictures and info about my journey learning to use my new camera over the coming weeks. This evening I was just too excited to unpack it and take some snapshots to fully read the manual and learn all the settings!

Beki x