In my casual browsing of the local used camera listings, I found a used Olympus PEN E-PM1 (launched 2011) for the price of only a few cups of coffee! How could I say no to such cute, little thing, which can still perform really well today and deliver fantastic results? I thought this would be a good chance to satisfy my curiosity about the Olympus PEN Mini concept, which I did not have the chance to. I made a video to share my thoughts on the E-PM1 (video here). In summary, the camera is super small and light, the AF is superbly fast and reliable and the image quality is still great today, easily beating any flagship smartphone camera today, which I have proven in video. Here in this truncated blog entry, I just want to share some of my latest shots taken from the streets of Kuala Lumpur, all shot on the E-PM1. 

I found a low priced, great condition Panasonic 15mm F1.7 and I immediately nabbed it. I have been eyeing one for a while, but I could not bring myself to pay for the full price. I am possibly one of the most frugal photographers out there, but hey, it is not like I am swimming in cash right now with so little jobs I get no thanks to the current on-going pandemic situation. I want to talk about the reasons why I added the Panasonic 15mm F1.7 into my camera bag, and of course, share some quick thoughts about using that lens for both my street photography and doing some simple video work. I have made a video as well on this same topic, you can find it here (click). 

Loving the incredibly small size of the lens, yet it delivers great results. 

In case you are not aware, I have owned a Fuji XF10 since early this year, read my review here (click). The reason I bought that XF10 was to force myself to shoot with wide angle in street photography. It did just that, and I thoroughly enjoyed the wider perspective, allowing me to see things differently and compose my shots outside of my usual tighter framing. However that XF10 was unacceptably slow in AF, and it has caused me to miss some critical moments when I needed the camera to react quickly. I cannot understand how a modern camera can have such slow focus (stop talking about snap focus, that is a lousy trick and a poor excuse for the underperforming AF). Therefore, the Panasonic 15mm F1.7 is the perfect lens for me to use for wide angle street shooting on my own Olympus cameras. The equivalent focal length is not exactly 28nm, but it is close enough, and I don't have to sacrifice AF speed. Quite frankly, I don't see anything special about the XF10's image output too. I am perfectly happy with what I am getting from my current Micro Four Thirds setup. 
Back in May just before the total lockdown started, I found a cheap portable printer online while doom scrolling on Lazada (online shopping platform here) and I bought it. The Paperang P2 was a thermal printer, same type of printer for receipts you get after you purchase items at the store with your credit or debit cards. It does not require ink for printing, and the papers are cheap, hence I decided to get one, just for the fun of it. You do need to connect to the smartphone via the official app to print your images. The pairing of printer to smartphone was easy and printing process was relatively fast, just a few seconds. Of course, the print is only in black and white. 

I like how small and portable the printer is