New Camera - Olympus PEN E-PL2

As most of you have seen in the last pile of posts, most of the pictures were taken by my HTC Desire cell phone cam.  The reason for that is my Nikon P100 died on me after about a year of use.

A majority of the controls on the panel right of the display screen began to fail and eventually stopped working all together.  Anyway, the camera had a two-year warrantee on it so I brought it in to the local Nikon Service Centre in Richmond, and got some brutal customer service from someone who obviously had no experience in customer service.  The original esimates for repairs were a few weeks......a few weeks passed and I heard nothing.  I called in and they told me that they were waiting for parts and it may be another week or so.  I called a week later, and nobody answered, nobody returned my message.  I called another week later and called again, and again, nobody replied my messages.  Finally, I called Nikon Canada in Ontario and they got back to me.  I was told that my camera was not to be repaired, and that my camera sufferend moisture damage.  Snce the camera was no longer in production, parts were no longer available and the best they could do for me was sell me a Nikon P500 for $230.  Personally, I don't think this was really fair, but what else could I do?  I could take my broken P100 back and let it collect dust as a paperweight, or I could pay $230 (Retail at London Drugs - $299 CAD) and get a new camera.  I think I paid $329 for the P100. 

Anyway, this was a less-than-stellar result that I expected from Nikon, but what else could I do?  I took it, hook, line and sinker and brought home a Nikon P500 that's still sitting in the box it came in, barely touched.  I guess I'll pull it out one of these days and play with it, but for now, I got this awesome Olympus E-PL2!  Sorry Nikon!

Actually, I can't take any credit for going out to buy this awesome camera myself, since I know absolutely nothing about cameras, let alone good ones, but after using this Olympus for a while, I really, really like it, and I have my friend Eric, AKA Fatman to thank for it.  A few months ago, just around the time my P100 died, Eric's buddy and fellow foodie Mark was visiting Canada from the Philippines.  Eric told me that he wanted me to meet up with his friend and show him some of the local eateries.  Also, Mark was carrying an early birthday present for me from Eric.  Holy crap.  Anyway, here are some shots of my new camera....I took these pictures with my P500, but for the next few posts, the pictures were mostly shot with my new Olympus E-PL2 :)

This is a Japanese commercial for this camera.  I really liked the case seen in this promotional video, however, this exact case is not sold by Olympus.  This was a custom one-off made for the commercials.  I contacted Olypus Japan about it and they referred me to the company that made this case, and it turns out they can reproduce it for me for a mere 60,000 yen for the case, and another 20,000 yen for the strap....total of about 80,000, which works out to about $1,047 and change.  Er.....I'll pass.

Anyway, the camera is a Micro Four Thirds, whatever that means, and it's possible to swap out the lenses, but I am not into that realm of expertise when it comes to photography.....at least not yet.  I'll wait till I see my pal Eric and maybe he can show me how to take better pictures with my camera.  He's got one too and swears by it.  And so far, so do I.  Thanks again Eric for the incredible birthday present!!