Another photo taken last month in Waterton Lakes National Park, in the south of Alberta, Canada.

Waterton Lakes gravel road

Waterton Lakes National Park, Alberta, Canada
Canon EOS 50D, 10-22mm @10mm, 1/200 sec, f/8, ISO100

I took three lenses with me to Canada - the 10-22mm, 24-70mm f/2.8L, and 70-200mm f/4L. I think the 10-22mm lens got the most use (including the photo above), and I kept a CPL filter on the 10-22mm lens most of the time too.

I thought this video was a great piece of marketing for the Olympus Pen E-P1 camera:

(If you're viewing this post through an RSS reader, you may not see the embedded video, but will probably need to click the post header to view the article in a browser.)

The Olympus Pen E-P1 camera is generating quite a bit of interest, and I'm very interested in it due to its compact size.

Tourists' footprints show up in the snow on the boardwalk along the north-east end of Lake Louise.

footprints on the boardwalk

Lake Louise, Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada
Canon EOS 50D, 10-22mm @10mm, 1/160 sec, f/8, ISO400

The lake was still iced over when I was there last month, with approximately a metre or two of clear water around the lake edge.

Olympus Australia is giving twenty people the opportunity test drive the new Olympus Pen E-P1 camera for 4 weeks. Three of those twenty people will have a chance to win a brand-new Olympus Pen E-P1 camera and two lenses.
Read on for more details.

Olympus Pen E-P1 camera

with 17mm lens mounted on body, and 14-42mm lens on left

photo provided by Olympus, used with permission

The recently-announced Olympus Pen E-P1 camera has generated a lot of interest recently, with various photography-related blogs I subscribe to mentioning it recently, including Chase Jarvis, norbs (and again), Alex Wise, engadget and DPS.

It's an interesting camera, and uses the micro four thirds lens system. This allows Olympus to pack an interchangeable lens system into a camera that is much smaller than a regular DSLR.
For existing Olympus DSLR shooters, there's an MF-1 Four Thirds System Lens Adaptor available, which allows the body to accept many of the other Four Thirds format lenses.

While visiting Lake Minnewanka in Banff National Park, a group of bighorn mountain sheep wandered across the road on top of the dam wall, and didn't seem to mind the few tourists who followed them with cameras at the ready.

bighorn mountain sheep

Lake Minnewanka, Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada
Canon EOS 50D, 70-200mm f/4L @126mm, 1/2000 sec, f/4, ISO200

The Phottix Plato is another wireless shutter release for digital SLR cameras, and was released in October 2008 at Photokina. The Plato has some interesting new features, including bi-directional 2.4GHz communication, and uses commonly-available AAA batteries.

If you're not interested in reading the details of this review, you can jump straight to my conclusions.

Thanks to HK Supplies for providing a Plato C8 for review purposes.



As with other wireless shutter releases, the Plato has two primary components, namely the receiver and the transmitter. As with the other Phottix accessories I've reviewed, the actual model name (ie, "Plato") does not appear on either the transmitter or receiver, but only the company name "Phottix" appears on the front of both, and the model number "WXD-188" appears on the back of both.

The receiver needs to be connected to the camera's remote shutter release connector via a cable supplied with the Plato. Rather than having a cable hard-wired into the receiver, the receiver has a 3.5mm stereo socket, and different Plato models come with cables to suit different cameras.

Plato receiver

The base of the receiver has a plastic shoe, which allows the receiver to be mounted on the hot-shoe of a camera body. Note that this is purely for convenience - there are no electrical contacts in the plastic shoe on the receiver.

The Plato transmitter is a little larger than the Cleon and Cleon II transmitters, and is much more rectangular. The larger size is primarily due to the fact that the Plato transmitter uses two AAA batteries rather than the small 23A battery used in the Cleon and Cleon II transmitters. However, it's still a compact unit, and fits easily into my camera bag.

The Plato receiver is marginally larger than the Cleon and Cleon II receivers, and this is again due to the use of larger batteries, ie, 2 AAA batteries rather than the much smaller 23A battery.

Another photo from my recent visit to Canada. This was taken at Cascade Ponds, in the Banff National Park, and shows a herd of elk grazing on the grass.

grazing elk

Cascade Ponds, Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada
Canon EOS 50D, 70-200mm f/4L @84mm, 1/800 sec, f/4, ISO200