Earlier this morning, Tools & Toys published my review of the Olympus 40-150mm f/2.8 PRO lens.

Looking back, it was one of the most difficult reviews I’ve ever written. Writing about a lens is easy enough, but I found difficulty in having to admit a partial mistake. Back in February, I became convinced Olympus’ PRO zooms were the simplest and highest quality foot forward for my Micro 4/3 lens collection. After using the lenses for a solid six months or so, I’ve realized a few of the shortcomings of those PRO zooms.

In and of themselves, the lenses are phenomenal. Their build quality, image quality, speed, and brilliant manual focus clutch all combine to make some of the best lenses in the system. Period.

However, as is majorly the case with the 40-150mm f/2.8 PRO lens, size got in my way. The 40-150mm f/2.8 PRO isn’t a small lens at all and I don’t see it as part of my smaller lens collection going forward.

With that said though, the 40-150mm f/2.8 PRO is an amazing lens. I feel stupid looking at it with the ambivalence I have — the lens truly is a work of art. As far as telephoto zooms go for Micro 4/3 cameras, the 40-150mm f/2.8 PRO is the best you can get right now.

Head over to Tools & Toys to get a better idea of the lens. This thing is a beast. A beautiful, high quality, impeccable beast. But a beast none the less.

One of the best purchases I’ve made recently is a second camera. Not only does it provide new opportunities to take photographs of the camera, it gives my better half an opportunity to fire away with more than her phone.

Up until now, all our travels and family life have been documented from my point of view only. I think our annual photo books will both grow in size and grow in depth now that Jaclyn’s point of view will be captured more often.

Here’s another great list of reads for another week.

Happy Sunday.

Great Reads

America Has Spoken: MLB Steroid Users Should Lose A Third Of Their Stats — It’s very difficult to sit here and say tarnished MLB players should have their stats cut by a third or by a fifth to provide more comparability. Having said that, it wouldn’t seem right for juiced players to not be noted in the record books.

I believe an asterisk is enough. Place an asterisk beside the players who were found guilty of juicing and let society make its own judgments. I think the asterisk would be enough of an insult and an enough of a signifier for people to judge the cheaters appropriately.

Toronto at Night — Beautiful timelapse of Canada’s biggest city, but the cooler part is the behind-the-scenes article.

Storage for Photographers (Part 2) — Like all of Paul’s work, this is an instant bookmark. This tutorial is huge, with thousands of words, hundreds of ideas, dozens of nifty workarounds, and lots of gear advice to store your growing collection of photographs.

The shear volume of photographs in your collection will determine how you use Paul’s storage guide. Paul shoots in RAW and captures lots of video when he explores the world, so the file size of his library will balloon very quickly. I shoot JPEGs only, have yet to capture a minute of video, and use two 16MP cameras. All these things help keep my file size down and minimize the amount of storage I need. I’ll be picking and choosing tips and tricks from Paul’s guide, but there’s no doubt his entire setup would be overkill for the casual photographer.

Photography

Every Stare Directed at a Street Photographer in a Single Image — These are borderline frightening.

takubeats — I recently discovered Taku’s work on Instagram and I’ve drooled over his groups-of-three sharing process. Better yet, Taku uses an OM-D E-M5 Mark II and Panasonic Leica Nocticron. If I have the same camera and lens combination, my photos will look the same right? Right?

Travel

The Kushti Wrestlers — Prayer, traditional workout weights, and artistic wrestling, all wrapped up in a documentary styled photo essay, make this a good example of why we should stay away from tourist heavy areas when visiting a far off land.

Seoul - MM Travel Guide - 15 — Lots of great photos in Andrew Kim’s latest travel guide. Like the previous travel guides, this one is loaded with restaurants and food. I’d love for someone to write a guide like this which included more activities and slightly less food.

Berlin — Last week, I pointed out Sam Burton’s look at Lisbon. His Leica M6 and Nokton 50mm helped to create one of my favourite travel photo essays to date. Sam’s first travel piece highlighted Berlin, so it only makes sense to head there and take in some more incredible travel photography.

Other Fun Reads and a Beautiful Timepiece

World’s strangest-looking airplane? A closer look at the Airbus ‘Beluga’ — My dad is a pilot, so I grew up with airplane magazines on the table and the opportunity to head down to the local airstrip and watch him land and takeoff. As a result, I have a small soft spot for the latest and greatest aircraft.

The ‘Beluga’ is truly out of this world. The fact these airborne boats can fly through the air is something that still boggles my mind.

Significant Digits — Every Friday, FiveThirtyEight sends out a few weekly newsletters and roundups. The Significant Digits post rounds out some of the coolest stats of the week and includes a link to the originating article.

I admire two kinds of journalism: journalism which is based entirely on fact, statistic, and in-depth analysis, and intelligent journalism which is free of direct statistics and focuses on feelings, thoughts, and opinions. FiveThirtyEight more than makes up for my statistical journalism each day.

Uniform Wares 302 Series — Analog timepieces are slowly becoming my latest obsession. Uniform Wares has long been on my most-wanted list, but this 302 Series has especially stood out in the last while.