As an Olympus Visionary photographer, I’m lucky enough to be among the first to try out the company’s different cameras and accessories. When I first received the Olympus EVOLT E-330, however, I wasn’t quite sure about the design function of this unique camera. As well as being the first digital SLR camera to augment its optical viewfinder with a “live view” monitor (allowing photographers to shoot by looking at the monitor as an option to the viewfinder, the way point-and-shoot users can), the camera’s 2.5” monitor can flip back from the body and tilt, allowing for more flexibility in difficult shooting situations.

In the past, I’ve always been a great proponent of using the camera’s viewfinder to compose an image. The photographer is trying to create a narrative out of the visual chaos in front of the camera, and holding the equipment at arms’ length to compose an image often results in a very haphazard shot. In the digital photography classes I teach at my Firstlight Workshops, I’ve always stressed very strongly that students should use the viewfinder to compose an image when they’re shooting.

Now I was faced with a camera that was trying to make me shoot by looking at the monitor. I reckoned I’d give it a shot, but I was skeptical as I packed the camera into my bag. Heading out on several back-to-back assignments, I figured I had my regular contingent of Olympus E-Series cameras to cover my back.

On my first day out, shooting in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, one component of my shoot was the Cape Lookout lighthouse, an historic and beautiful structure. After getting to the top, I started taking pictures in the early morning light. Shooting with a Zuiko 7-14mm lens (14-28mm equivalent in 35mm) I was able to capture the lighthouse’s huge, imposing Fresnel Lens and the dramatic landscape of the island. A structure like this can provide a great ‘point of view’ photo, but I was looking for an image that included part of the lighthouse itself.

Suddenly, I looked over the edge and saw a window immediately below. I wanted to include it in the frame, and felt it needed a human subject for scale and visual interest. I asked the lighthouse keeper if he’d go downstairs and look out of the window. I started trying to position the camera: I could reach it out far enough to see the window, but getting a feel for the building and background proved difficult. I lay down on the deck, wrapped my legs around a steel pole, and pushed myself as far as I could out into space. . .still not far enough. At that point, I remembered the articulated monitor on the E-330, so I grabbed that camera, flipped up the screen and pushed it the extra distance provided by my arms’ full extension. It was just right. Perhaps not the best photo of my career, but I was able to include all the elements I was looking for and frame the photo with the aid of the monitor.



I shot this with the camera on a 7mm setting, at 1/350th of a second, f/7.1, and 100 ISO. Being able to see the horizon was imperative; a crooked horizon would have been very distracting. Also, it was important to me to line up the house in the mid-right area of the frame so the sidewalk formed part of the composition.

A couple of weeks later, I was in Namibia, Africa, on assignment for my old friend and publisher, Steve Connatser, for his new travel magazine, Traveler Overseas. The story included coverage of the Sossusvlei region, including the ancient Namib Desert and its sand dunes, which are the tallest on earth.

In the Sossusvlei area is an amazing “Pan,” a lake that dried up long ago, leaving a perfectly flat, very white bed. This was February, which is Namibia’s summer, so the Pan’s surface was extremely hot. I wanted to put the camera on the ground, shooting again with the 7-14 mm lens, and capturing the arid surface receding toward a surrealistic forest of dead trees. I didn’t want to lie on this frying pan–like ground, so I placed the E-330 on the ground with its monitor enabled and articulated for vertical viewing. That way, I could look down into the monitor and frame my image perfectly.



This was shot at 1/60th of a second at f/22. I really wanted to create a depth of field that would provide sharpness of the foreground to the background for the viewer.

Several hours north of Sossusvlei, and as part of the same assignment, I was photographing Dr. Laurie Marker and the Cheetah Conservation Fund compound in mid-Northern Nambibia, about 25 miles to the east of the small town of Otjiwarongo. This is a wonderful organization that researches cheetahs, whose population density is higher here than anywhere else in the world. After arriving, I was directed out to where Laurie was taking her cheetah charge, Chewbaaka. Laurie had adopted Chewbaaka as a cub, after his mother had been killed. That morning, she had taken Chewie out to his ‘Play Tree,’ located several kilometers into the bush.

I arrived just as Chewie had jumped out of the truck and was sitting by Laurie and a group of volunteers. Thinking it would make a cool “Cheetah’s eye-view” of the world if I got right in his face, I knelt down with my camera. Immediately, two sets of hands grabbed me from behind and lifted me upright. “You don’t want to do that, you just assumed the Cheetah mating position,” it was explained. So, again, I flipped up the screen on the E-330, composed my photo on the monitor as I held the camera at waist, or “cheetah” level, then made my photos.


For this shot, the 7-14mm lens was set at 7mm, with an exposure of 1/50th of a second at f/5, 100 ISO The light was growing dim quickly which necessitated the slow speed. I like the quality of the files when shot at a very low ISO.

The above examples show that, despite my initial resistance, there are plenty of times when shooting by looking through a monitor, and using a tilt feature, can make all the difference to a final image. As photographers, we should carry all the tools we need to get the job done. In difficult shooting situations, the E-330’s articulated monitor is a tool that can add significant flexibility and reach to a shot.

Olympus Visionary Jay Dickman is a Pulitzer prize-winning photographer who has done over 20 assignments for National Geographic magazine. He has shot for Time, Conde Nast Traveler, and FORTUNE magazines, as well as for most of the books in the Day in the Life series.