Digital Q&A: Reviews Lost in Space

Today’s Post by Joe Farace

“Danger, Danger Will Robinson”—robot from Lost in Space

We always enjoy hearing from our readers, even when they’re not so happy about us not following up on promises as Jerry, an Olympus shooter, asked me in a recent e-mail.

Q: In several recent posts you promised a review of the Olympus EM-1 Mark II. Where is it?

A: Let me first begin by sharing some unpleasant facts of life re: reviews. As far as I can tell by looking at early Web reviews, companies, such as Olympus first send review units to their employees, associates and sponsored photographers, none of which apply to me. For the three plus years that I have been working on this blog whenever I’ve asked for a review unit from a camera company, I’m politely told that I “was added to their list to receive a camera.” But since I never received anything from any company, I stopped asking. (That old ‘Lucy and the football’ thing, ya know.)

Not all companies are like this. Lens companies such as Lensbaby, Tamron and Sigma have always been friendly to this blog. And from time to time Panasonic has been helpful although they’ve always been more cooperative with Mark for obvious reasons.

So where does that leave us, Jerry? Like Blanche DuBois, I’ve always depended on the kindness of strangers or in this case a not-so-stranger and have usually been able to get cameras—even Leicas—from third parties. The friendly retailer who promised me a Olympus EM-1 Mark II tells me the “expected availability is the end of Jan 2017.” Since that’s just ten days away, I hope you will be patient.

UPDATE: Today January 24 at 10:00AM, the Olympus EM-1 Mark II arrived for testing. Battery is on charge as I type this. Look for an Early Impressions post real on Friday January 27 with a field test shortly thereafter.

In other news: Barry Staver will be shooting and editing a video podcast of the two of us sitting around his studio talking about our favorite lenses. I’m excited about getting this series of videos off the ground and if it turns out that you like it as well, it will be the beginning of a series of these podcasts.

And in other Barry and Joe news: Our book Better Available Light Digital Photography is now out-of-print but new copies are available at collector (high) prices or you can purchase used copies at giveaway prices—less than two bucks—from Amazon.