It seems that Panasonic and Olympus have hit something big with Micro Four-Thirds, as more and more companies that have a stake in the consumer photography are rumored to be putting out mirrorless DSLR-sized sensor cameras with interchangeable lens mounts soon.

Samsung's NX series has been long awaited, and is rumored to be released by the end of this year.

Ricoh, a producer of some more niche market cameras is also rumored to be releasing a mirrorless design soon.

FujiFilm has also been rumored to be putting out a Micro Four-Thirds model sometime for next year's PMA.

There is also some light speculation that Sony might be readying something. Well it doesn't say "mirrorless" specifically, it's supposed to target the Panasonic GH1 directly.

There are some rumored hints that Nikon may be following suit, given some recent patent applications.

Myself being an early adopter of the Micro Four-Thirds system can only hope that the head start that Panasonic and Olympus have created for themselves by being the first-to-market by over a year will be enough to avoid them being sidelined by new proprietary offerings from other companies.

Nikon's offerings will likely be something to be reckoned with given their market recognition from their DSLR offerings.

If Canon jumps into the game, they will also of course, just like Nikon, have a large existing consumer base because of their heritage and brand name.

Competition is good for the consumer - only if the consumer picks the format that wins the standards battle.

Obviously lens selection is a huge factor in launching a new system. And this was one of the key criticisms against Micro Four-Thirds in its early days. Almost every review of the G1 praised it for its capabilities, but cautioned buyers about the limited lens selection. Over a year later, Micro Four-Thirds has already amassed itself a good handful of native lenses. Panasonic currently has six lenses available, while Olympus has two. And within the next year, both companies are expected to further increase their lens offerings (Olympus has at least two coming next year, and Panasonic probably similar). That will probably mean over 10 lenses in the Micro Four-Thirds system by the end of next year.

In addition, Panasonic currently has three Micro Four-Third bodies, Olympus has two, and FujiFilm is rumored to be putting out one next year. That will be at least six Micro Four-Third bodies by the end of next year.

The current closest known competitor is Samsung, with their NX body, which has usually been shown with two or three other lenses.

But will this head start be enough to keep Olympus and Panasonic afloat?

This mirrorless market has created a whole new consumer product segment. They don't appear to be trying to take on the DSLR market, but yet, they are far superior than any point and shoot camera, super zoom, or even "bridge" camera.

You know, in all my life, I've never owned an Apple product. I've never had an iPod, I've never had an Apple computer, etc.

My mom once had an Apple computer a long time ago from her office, and my sister owns a first generation iPod Nano.

And I still don't own any Apple goods. But for the first time ever, I've contributed to their revenue.

In looking for new music, I had started looking at what types of online music stores exist, and of course, Apple probably owns the largest market share of online music sales.

A lot of other online stores either provide less variety, lower bitrates, or still use DRM. At first I was under the impression that Apple still DRM'd the tracks you purchased from them, but as I found out, their AAC files are now completely DRM free in North America. Plus at 256 kbps, their AAC files are at higher bitrates than I would normally rip Audio CDs I've purchased physically.

Ideally, I would have liked it if Apple offered some kind of lossless format such as FLAC, as paying for something that's less than half the quality you'd get on CD seems a bit tough to do in some ways.

But humanly speaking, I suppose that AAC files at 256 kbps are "good enough" for listening too with my non-audiophile hardware (on-board sound chips in both my laptop and desktop, 2.0 speakers or Bluetooth A2DP headphones).

So over the weekend I loaded up iTunes on my computer to see exactly what all the fuss was about.

And low and behold a small portion of my hard-earned cash left my pocket and deposited itself into the ever growing fruit that is Apple.

As of today, I've spent a total of $4.56 CAD on a total of four songs: Evacuate the Dance Floor by Cascada, G-Get Up and Dance by Faber Drive, Down by Jay Sean and Live Your Life by T.I.

And I'm the verge of dropping another $9.99 on a Jason Mraz album...

It's just too easy. I load up iTunes, search for a song and click buy. And before you can say Microsoft Zune, my credit card has been hit and the song has been downloaded onto my hard disk. It's so easy that you almost don't think as much about buying the media as you maybe would when buying a CD. I don't have to walk to HMV and search through racks of CDs.

Oh no Apple, why are you starting to take all my money? And I've never even thought of buying an iPod. Yet somehow with your now DRM-free AACs that play without conversion on my mobile phone, you've suckered me in.

You know electronics are playing a bigger and bigger role in photography when manufacturers provide firmware upgrades for lenses.

Perhaps yet another strong sign of this is the fact that software correction is becoming more prevalent and debated about with respect to higher-end consumer cameras.

Some purists are quite peeved at the whole aspect of software-corrected images coming out of some of Panasonic's recent cameras such as the LX3, G1, GH1. (Perhaps other manufacturers too, but I haven't followed)

Having no history in photography but a background in engineering (well to be truthful, I'm still working on my degree), I find myself not terribly concerned.

Sure software correction of image issues may be a bit of a pain once it hits the consumer's end in The Gimp or Photoshop, but I would believe that it's not as big of a problem for the first-party engineers.

My reasoning being that the engineers who design the lens know about the optical characteristics of the lens to probably a decent extent mathematically (I would hope?). With accurate knowledge of the distortion that the lens is suffering from (as in mathematically, not just "oh there's a visible barrel distortion and some chromatic aberration"), the engineers are better equipped to solve for the inverse transformation of the distortion with that much more accuracy.

In a way, it's signal theory 101. After converting your system to the frequency domain, if you have your Y(s) = H(s)X(s), where Y is your output and X is your input with transfer function H, you can then recover your input by simply dividing Y(s) by your transfer function, H(s). Then just take the inverse Laplace transform to get you back to the time domain. As long as no signal aliasing has occurred, you should be back to your original input.

So over-simplifying the engineering design process, all you theoretically need to do is to determine the H(s) that is being applied due to the lens, and you can then apply an inverse transformation to the resultant output to recover your input.

Of course, the actual solutions for such a distortion correction problem may not be as straight-forward as I have described, but the idea behind it should be sound.

Having worked in a company whose bread-and-butter business is now digital image projection, I know that digital image correction is used in industry and produces very pleasing results.

The fact of the matter is that you can save a lot of engineering design effort by leveraging the computing power of today's software and hardware. (And in certain industries, even huge savings in manufacturing costs can be realized with the lightened accuracy and precision requirements).

So it's really not all bad, in my opinion. The key thing to note is that the algorithms to digitally correct for distortion is not done by a graphics artist sitting in front of Photoshop tweaking image settings until a favourable result is achieved, and then his work-flow automated into your digital camera body. Rather, the correction is most probably done by an engineer who knows to some extent the mathematical distortion that is occurring such that he or she can solve for the inverse system and apply that mathematically to the resultant image.

And mathematically, it doesn't take much effort or space to store transformation information. In simple cases, all you need is a matrix.

The encouraging thing about this is that math is usually not as subjective as a human being tweaking settings in Photoshop or Lightroom. For all practical engineering purposes, 1.0 + 1.0 always equals 2.0, sin(pi) always equals 0, and sqrt(-1) always equals j (hello, we're engineers, i is current).

When I got my first modern digital camera, a friend of mine told me that one of the best things I should try to learn about photography was composition.

I didn't think much of it at the time, as I was still a bit overwhelmed by the technical aspects of being able to balance film speed (ISO), shutter speed, aperture and flash settings. Just getting a good exposure with little motion blur was a challenge in itself.

But what I failed to see, and now understand a little bit is that, while perhaps a bit difficult to learn at first, the technical aspects of photography are just that. Technical. You can learn the technical aspects pretty easily if you just spend a little bit of time reading up on it.

But composition, the other half of photography, on the other hand is a bit of a different beast. It requires you to actually be creative and in a way, be an artist. Which, as an engineer in training, isn't something I've typically been trained to do. Creativity in solving an engineering problem is a bit different from creativity in terms of visual arts.

So as I now am sitting on the fence carefully watching the DSLR market, almost ready to jump on either an Olympus E-620 or a Panasonic Lumix G1, I'm still a bit hesitant from the point of view that while I have a somewhat competent grasp on some of the technical aspects of photography, I still lack the visual arts component, which is still leaving my photographs a bit wanting.

I've been trying to think about composition more while taking photos with my point-and-shoot Lumix FX520, but in all truth, it's difficult to get something that I really feel proud about.

Perusing through dpreview.com's challenge galleries, flickr albums, or newspaper galleries, I really get a sense that I have a huge way to go in terms of photographic composition.

The rule-of-thirds just doesn't seem to cut it anymore...?

The last thing I've tried was "framing." Not sure how well it turned out:

In the above photo I tried to box the subject in by the two pillars on the left and right. It didn't look too bad on when reviewing the photo in the field, but when I viewed the result on my computer, it still doesn't have that "punch" or sense of being drawn into the photograph.

Sometimes, different aspect ratios also gives a different feel to a scene. So I tried shooting in 16:9 as opposed to the usual 3:2. Again, trying to frame a little bit by using the tree on the left and the pillars on the right:

I don't think the above photo looks terrible, but it still seems somewhat lacking. I think one aspect of the scene that helps is that my cousins are gazing off in the same direction, off to the right of the scene looking at something not seen in the photo. It helps to create a bit of interest in the photo, causing me at least, to wonder what it is they are looking at so intently. So it serves to draw my eyes to that direction to the right, and since they are situated in the left of the photo, it allows me to move across the photo for a bit before finally exiting.

But then in another case, I took this photo in Hong Kong:

Here I clearly violate the rule-of-thirds, in that the scene is bisected nearly 50-50 with the pole smack in the middle of the photo. What's more, my friend is looking off to the edge of the photo, away from the centre. If you follow is gaze, you completely miss half of the photo.

So I'm not sure if this is a good photo or not. A couple articles I've read online bring up the point that composition rules exist to be guidelines, but never hard and fast rules. For if you always follow the typical composition rules, your photos will become boring and predictable. Rather, it is useful to know when to use the rules, and when to break them. Breaking the rules upsets the natural order of things and if done correctly, can create a bit of interest.

For the above photo, I somewhat like the motion blur seen through some of the crowd moving in the right of the image. This blur all around creates a sense of motion to the image, showcasing how busy and bustling Hong Kong night-life is. And to seemingly counter that, you have my friend leaning against a pole casually glancing off to the side, relaxed.

What do you do for photographic composition?

I think that between now and stepping up to a DSLR or Micro 4/3 camera, I should really make an effort to be more deliberate about photographic composition. Because all the equipment in the world won't make a photographer. Rather, it almost all lays in the composition, and the visual arts aspect - after all, photography is an art form.

At the start of my HY2254 lecture yesterday, I pulled out my Fujitsu Lifebook T4010D to take notes, as has been my daily routine for pretty much any class since I started university in 2005.

An acquaintance from my hall next to me noticed and after a brief pause, the conversation went something like this:

Friend: "Whoa, how old is your computer?"

Me: "About four or five years old."

Friend: "Wow! Pentium M!" (points at the slightly worn Pentium M sticker on the palm rest)

In all the four years of my owning this computer, that's probably the first time someone noticed it was powered by a Pentium M. It's also the first time anyone had commented on how old it was, and I myself actually hadn't realized until yesterday that it has been a good four years of me using this machine. This summer will mark its fourth birthday, and this year will mark its fifth year since being released to market back in 2004.

The notebook is definitely showing some signs of wear - the keyboard is fairly polished, the cover has a weathered look, and the screen protector has its fair share of scuffs and scratches. Thankfully, the palm-rest is actually still in relatively pristine condition with no signs of colour fade (I guess Fujitsu picked some super resilient paint for this model).

I think this notebook has truly been one of my best gadget purchases to date. No serious hardware or software issues have befallen the machine, and it has physically stood up to a lot of mileage (it follows me almost everywhere in either backpack or messenger bag, and has been crushed beneath heavy textbooks and the like). It has sustained a few hits while inside my messenger bag either due to me tripping or sitting down too quickly.

And after all that, I still runs like clockwork.

And for me to not seriously consider replacing an electronic device after one or two years of use, that speaks a lot to my satisfaction with the machine.

I don't know when I will replace this machine, but if/when that day comes, I will be strongly biased towards Fujitsu.