Toronto Photography Meetup Group

A short flight of stairs at the entrance and a short flight of stairs to the pool area, where we have met in the past. Each is about 5 or 6 steps, if I remember correctly.

The Bull & Firkin is on the east side of Yonge, just north of Merton. That's maybe 100 yards south of the Davisville subway station and on the edge of Mount Pleasant Cemetery.

Since my message with directions to the pub has been archived and is no longer available, here's a fresh copy:

For those who are coming by TTC and have never been to Davisville Station, once you exit the station you'll either be on Chaplin Cres., or on Yonge south of Chaplin. (Chaplin Cres. is the same street as Davisville, except on this side of Yonge it has a different name).

If you're already south of Chaplin you can jaywalk across Yonge (at your own risk of course), and continue walking south towards the green bridge that crosses Yonge St (actually there's another set of lights not too far south).

If you are at the Chaplin exit Yonge St. will be to your right, cross Yonge at the lights, turn right again, and again walk towards the green bridge that crosses Yonge.

The Bull & Firkin is BEFORE the bridge (if you're walking from Davisville), and of course it will be on your left.

It's about a 5 minute walk from the station.

Hope that's been helpful.

Original post edited to add sign-up.

The first time at this location I missed because of car troubles, the second time I was late because of issues at work. Hopefully the third time I will actually make it for the whole meet-up.

Hopefully third time is the charm. Your lunch is on me, if you make it. It's the least I can do after that BBQ

Space has been confirmed at the location. As previously, we have the area in the rear right, up next to the pool tables.

If I'm lucky, I could have a little surprise for Sunday. Working on it.

Any clues?

Usually Rob has 'big' surprises like a Bigma or 35-100 f/2. Maybe he has already given us a clue.

Yup. Got it. See y'all on Sunday.

Well, I'll bring my Lensbaby 2.0, semi-fisheye, and my 500mm catadioptric lens...and my E-330.

I've been working on a pinhole "lens" in a bodycap, but my experiments haven't been successful yet...it will be something I'll continue over the holidays.

My extremely busy days are over. It's time to get back to TPMG...

I will be flying to Japan soon. Please let me know if you need Olympus accessories that are hard to get locally. No expensive stuff please

I got the Lensbaby Muse with the plastic optic. Seems ok, but haven't tried it out in the light yet. I have the Lensbaby Composer with the double glass optic too, but its a Canon mount. I'll bring it as well just so others can try it out.

I'm sure everyone has tried out the other lenses that I have, if they don't have them already. I'll bring the less usual Sigma 105mm F/2.8 macro and maybe my OM 50mm F/1.4. Other than that, I don't have much Olympus stuff anymore.

Good to see everyone out. itsaphoto can even be forgiven for bringing his Canon gear, because a Lensbaby composer was attached

If no one minds, I could post the shots from the E-P2, that various people took, in my gallery.

Go for it ...



Sorry about the Canon gear, getting bored with the Olympus stuff ... till I got to try the 7-14mm (I really like that lens ... sigh), and your E-P2, a really cool piece of hardware.

Just joking, but you know that already. Like I said, I had considered picking up a Canon (or perhaps Nikon) body as a second system. Until I got the Micro Four-Thirds rig, that is.

Thank you for setting up the event. It is always nice to talk to 4/3 shooters.

I was actually expecting to see either E-P2 or 300mm F2.8 from Rob, and I was right. I am now so tempted to get one for myself. The lensbaby was also a nice ones to try. It surely adds one dimension to photo shooting.

I hope to see you guys next time. 7-14mm is always available for try

Regarding links that were discussed:

The Nova (weird) camera:
http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/28/nova-dslr-concept-reminds-us-that-cameras-need-not-be-boring/

Cameta:
http://www.cameta.com/

There were only 8 shots on the E-P2 when I checked, so I guess that people were deleting them as they went. I posted them anyway, at full size.

http://www.morallyambiguous.net/multime ... 1213_tpmg/

Here's a link to the type of ringflash I own...it also has a single head for those times I want light from one angle rather than 360 degrees:
http://thedigitaldentist-site.org.uk/images/dine_ring_point.jpg

It was great seeing everyone and playing with the E-P2. Thanks for the link Mike, I'll keep my eye out for the 7-14. There's one there now, I don't think it's used though, and way out of my price range right now.

Edit: Hadn't seen your message about the ring flash before posting. Thanks again

One more thing that was mentioned that I forgot to post...here's a camera (it's even an Olympus) with a macro bellows rail:
http://media.photobucket.com/image/lens%20bellows%20macro/James64/Olympus%20E510/macro2.jpg

The lens on it though is a manual lens and not a FourThirds lens.

And if anyone is wondering about focus rails, to get maximum magnification out of a macro lens, have a look here:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/buy/Macro ... 4294540380

Imagine that being mounted on top of a tripod.

I dug up some of my C-700 action photos I've posted online over the years since Rob brought up how slow the C-750 was...shutter lag was something I learned to compensate for.

For instance in the following shot I was on a high-speed train travelling between Kingston & Toronto, and to kill time I was trying to capture a crossing gate as we passed by at speed. The trick I learned was before coming to each crossing the engineer had to sound a series of horn blasts (two long, one short, and one long) before approaching the crossing, so that told me that a crossing was coming...then I prefocused, and looked ahead to where the road was, and clicked the shutter BEFORE the crossing, and this was one of my successes:


Another shot I tried is capturing the number of a passing train...that was harder since there was the speed of both trains added together...just thought this looked neat:


While I'm at it, one of the shots that brings a smile:

Mike and Alan,

You both have manual OM lenses, right? Is it the OM 50mm F1.8 that you both have? I'm considering the purchase of one that they have at the Henry's Outlet, for use on my E-P2.

Sara lent me her OM 50. I think it is a 1.8. I found MF hard with the OVF, better with Live View. It did not seem to focus properly when set to infinity. If I recall right it focused "past infinity" when set to infinity. And at wider apertures, say less than 2.8, it overexposed slightly.

I found it to be a fun hobbyist lens but I decided other areas of my photography needed improvement before I started experimenting with legacy lenses.

The E-P2 magnifies the image in the viewfinder when performing manual focus, then drops it back to normal when the shutter is depressed for proper framing. The OM 50mm might be a fair bit easier to use with it.

Hi Rob. I have the F/1.4 version. I know people say "its too soft wide open", but that's true if you pixel peep. Since you're shooting at 10mp or greater and not planning at cropping down, it works great.

If you want to wait to buy one, you can borrow mine for a few weeks.

Thanks Alan, I might just take you up on that. My adapter isn't likely to arrive until next week (hopefully in time for Christmas). Soft isn't necessarily a bad thing in portraits. Just look how many people ADD some blur to portraits, specifically of women.

To break the ice at the first nude shoot I shot I said I was using kit lenses so they weren't that sharp.