TTC Token Holder

Concept: 3 out of 5
Execution: 2 out of 5
Yeah, but: I'm going to take a pill.

The Long Version: For the past eighteen months, I've been using a keychain pill container to carry my TTC tokens. In a comment to that review, someone told me where to go to find the purpose-built token holder. It's a flat piece of slightly flexible plastic with grooves to hold tokens along both sides of it. It uses a friction fit, and can hold five on each side, for a total of ten tokens at its maximum capacity. Bought for $1.50 from the Gateway News at Bloor station, it's possibly the cheapest thing I've ever reviewed.

I've been using the token holder for two weeks, and while I like some aspects of it, I'm going back to my pill container now that this review's been written. On the positive side, I've really liked being able to slide a token out with one hand, and not having to take it out of my jacket pocket to do it. It's faster than the threaded pill container, and is less likely to devolve into a comedy routine if it gets dropped. It's a slim design that's easy to carry, and it isn't going to break anyone's budget.

I really only have two quibbles with the design. One is that it only holds ten tokens, and the two that are in the fifth position are barely gripped by the plastic edges. While they're surprisingly hard to dislodge, it is possible and has happened to me during my trial period. An easy design change - lengthening the gripper edges - would solve the problem, but the economics of needing new tooling means it will probably never happen. As it is, I wouldn't use the handy little loop on the end of it to attach it to my keychain. It can fit in my wallet, which keeps it secure, but it adds a lot of bulk and defeats the convenience of having it accessible. That leaves carrying it loose in a pocket or in my bag du jour, but I have enough challenges keeping track of things already.

My second quibble is that it only holds ten tokens, and they're sold in either batches of ten at the collector booths, or in eights at the vending machines. That puts a crimp in how often and when I can buy tokens; I prefer to stock up rather than waiting until I'm desperate. Since I only take the TTC when I've run out of other options - seven or eight times a week - that hasn't made my commute any easier. My repurposed pill container can carry nineteen tokens comfortably, and will take a twentieth in a pinch, which makes it simple to buy more whenever I have enough cash on hand.

The purpose-designed holder is cheaper than the pill container, and I can see how some people might prefer it, but I don't. Maybe I'll keep mine stashed with a small emergency token supply, or maybe I'll give it away as a prize in a contest. Life is full of options, which is always a good thing.

Bio-Life Automatic Dishwasher Detergent

Concept: 1 out of 5
Execution: 1 out of 5
Yeah, but: I'm a hard case.

The Long Version: Life Brand is the store line for Shopper's Drug Mart / Pharmaprix, and they have a huge range of products. (One of which I've reviewed before.) Most of them are quite good, offering cheaper alternatives to The Leading National Brands, even if they don't have Dave Nichol shaking in his boots. They've recently branched out with a line called 'Bio-Life', selling more 'eco-friendly' products. They're competing with brands like Method, which is also sold by Shopper's, as well as specialty lines from other stores.

My dishwasher is old, and not particularly great. Things need to be rinsed fairly well before they go in, and the myriad plastic lunch containers never dry properly. That might be relevant to my experience with the Bio-Life detergent - I have a hard time imagining that it would have ever made into circulation if the test labs results were as bad as mine. Every piece of hard-to-dry plastic comes out coated with a mottled white film. It smudges with handing; for these photos I've carefully polished half of it off with a paper towel. It doesn't seem to be left behind on things like plates and glasses, but it's hard for me to have much confidence in the detergent, and I resorted to re-rinsing everything by hand.

The detergent itself comes in little pre-measured doses, wrapped in a water-soluble packet. There is a cautionary note on the container that the bag needs to be kept closed and handled with dry hands. I can attest to both of those in my brief time using the product. The little bundles glom together when exposed to even modest humidity, which makes them easier to stack but harder to use. And the one time I picked up a pack with damp fingers - I hadn't seen the warning yet - I discovered that the wrap does indeed dissolve instantly on contact with water. Not the most user-friendly product I've ever seen, to say the least.

I suppose I don't seem that smart when I say that I actually tried four loads of dishes before I gave up on this stuff. For the last attempt I waited until the dishwasher was finished before running the rinse cycle again, just to make sure. No luck. The good news is that other brands of lower-impact detergent have worked in my machine without any issues, so it's not a problem with the idea, just this one particular product. But no matter who makes it, I won't be buying this style of water-soluble packaging again. Not a big deal, as big deals go, but I'm just a little bit older and wiser now.

Comparison of the 7-14 Ultrawides: Olympus v Panasonic

Olympus: 4 out of 5
Pansonic: 3 out of 5
Yeah, but: They're both excellent.

The Long Version: I've been using the Olympus 7-14mm f/4.0 for ages; I reviewed it over a year ago, and gave it pretty good marks. I've only gained the Panasonic 7-14mm f/4.0 quite recently - my full review of it is now online here - and for just a few moments I had the chance to compare both of these awesome lenses. I was looking at four different things: sharpness, distortion, flare, and build quality. The Olympus lens was mounted to the E-3, and the Panasonic was attached to a GH1 shooting in the 4:3 ratio. And no, before anyone says that I should test something else or do something differently, I can't do a re-shoot. I don't own both lenses any more.

Build:
The first difference between the two lenses is huge: the Olympus is a hefty, imposing lens; the Panasonic puts the micro into Micro Four Thirds. The Olympus is something that really needs to be experienced - it's an awe-inspiring sight. In the hand the lens is absolutely solid and quite heavy, and the build is as good as anything I've ever tried. Even the metal lens cap demands respect: the lens seems destined to produce greatness. The Panasonic is petite by comparison, almost verging on 'cute', with a mostly-plastic construction and smaller lens elements that puts it a full pound lighter than the Olympus. It's an amazing difference, and it's even more incredible to consider that they're both constant f/4.0 zooms feeding the same sensor size.

Even beyond the difference in camera mounts, there's such a massive difference in the physical size and build that they're going to appeal to different audiences. If you want the smallest possible kit for the best wide-angle photography, there's no question that the GH1 (reviewed) and Panasonic 7-14 is the best choice. If you need something that will survive harsh conditions then get an Olympus 7-14 and E-1 or E-3. In fact, this might be the single biggest difference between them, so if size or weatherproofing is most important factor in your choice, skip the rest of this review and just buy the appropriate one.

Flare:
Both lenses share an essential characteristic - big heads and little arms. Getting that huge field of view takes large, protruding front elements, and there's not much that the built-in hoods can do to shade them. This makes both lenses inherently vulnerable to flare, but the Olympus lens does a better job of suppressing it, and it's less prominent when it happens. It's still hard to miss, but not as bad as it easily could be. The Panasonic lens isn't as good, with its flare being brighter and more prominent in the frame.The Panasonic is on the left, and the Olympus is on the right: flare control is a clear win for the bigger lens.

What surprised me the most in the comparison was a problem with the Panasonic: the front element attracts dust like spam to a gmail account. With both lenses sitting upright, caps off and side-by-side, and the Panny would have specks of dust on the lens while the Oly element remained clean. It's possible that the majestic dome of the Olympus just sheds dirt through the force of its sheer awesomeness, like an ultrawide Henry Winkler, but I've also noticed that my cleaning cloths don't slide very smoothly across the Panasonic. Its coating is 'grabby', with problematic results.

Every little speck of dust, when caught in the wrong light, becomes a source of flare. In all of my time shooting with the Olympus, I'd never noticed this as a problem; with just a week with the Panasonic, it was obvious. With the flare test samples I never wondered which camera I was looking at, while for most other issues I'd have to check the metadata to be sure. Even in these tiny sample photos, dust spots are visible at the edges of the frame.

Distortion:
Optical distortion control has also been a traditional strong point for Olympus, and is one way that it's clearly superior to the newer Nikon 14-24/2.8. With the Micro Four Thirds format distortion is corrected on-the-fly within the camera, and Adobe Camera Raw adjusts the raw files automatically. But while the new m4/3 format has finally made it practical, it's not a new idea. Compact cameras have been doing it for some time now, and it was also part of the original 4/3 standards. With the Olympus E-1 the processing power needed for in-camera 'shading correction' made the camera unusably slow, and the distortion correction needed Olympus's own raw converter, which simply wasn't worth the effort.

As a result of the combined optical and electronic approach, the Panasonic is almost perfect for almost all of its zoom range. The Olympus needs a maximum '3' value in photoshop's Lens Correction filter, although the actual amount will change depending on the focusing distance and focal length. That's still an excellent result, but the Panasonic has the undeniable advantage of youth.

Sharpness:
With the Olympus 7-14 review, the only strong optical issue that stood out was a certain amount of corner smearing on the ground when I'd shoot photos from a very low perspective. It's not quite corner softness: imagine a lens traveling through perspective distortion at warp speed, and that's about right. Whatever the actual source of the aberration - I'm absolutely nothing like an optics expert - the Panasonic seems to have less of it. Usually. When it comes to corner softness at more traditional distances, the Panasonic has a slight but slightly more definite edge. (Below, GH1 on the left, E-3 on the right.) That suggests that the amount of software tweaking that's being done to correct lens distortion isn't causing problems elsewhere. When looking at central sharpness, once again the Panasonic wins, but this time it's definitive.

There is a huge caveat with the sharpness comparison, though. The Panasonic camera has a slight resolution advantage, which was fairly easy to equalize for comparison, but the true test for sharpness would have had both lenses on a GH1. All that this comparison really shows is that the Olympus camera and lens wasn't showing as much detail as the Panasonic combination once the images had been processed in Lightroom 2. Panasonic bodies have a reputation for delivering more detail than Olympus cameras, and while this test is far from proving that true, it's also far from being a true test of the optics. If someone ever does this test with an adapter to put the lenses on the same body, believe those results instead of mine. I'm always happy to be wrong.

Finally:
I'm going to do something that's very unusual for me: pick a winner in a direct comparison. The Panasonic 7-14 is the better lens, or to be more accurate, the GH1+P7-14 mostly beats the E-3+O7-14. Yes, the Panasonic 7-14 gives up the weather sealing and the 'I am a god' feeling that comes with picking up the Olympus lens. Yes, the Olympus E-1 and E-3 are better cameras than the GH1, even if the newer Panasonic produces better photos. The m4/3 kit comes across as a bit of a toy, a hobbyist's amusement, when they're set side-by-side. But the Panny still wins.

It's taken me four days to write this conclusion, and it's not the one I expected to reach. My reasoning behind it is that the Olympus 7-14 is mostly better at things that should be avoided anyway. Weather sealing doesn't include windshield wipers, and worse flare isn't that much worse than regular flare. So while the need to carry a Swiffer for the Panasonic is an annoyance, it's weaker in a situation that all wide-angle photographers already need to be wary of. In exchange, the Panasonic 7-14 is a full pound lighter, possibly sharper, and has zero distortion for everything except the ends of its range. It's also cheaper enough that it'll buy half of a GF1 or Olympus Pen. Naturally, if you're happy and/or heavily invested with Olympus cameras and lenses, their 7-14 remains an exceptional choice.

But there is another nagging little issue: competition. Nikon has the 14-24/2.8 for its full-frame cameras, which snags the high end of the market away from the Olympus. There's also the inconceivably awesome Canon 17mm TS-E., which takes the very high end away from Nikon. Coming up soon will be the Sigma 8-16mm lens, which will give a 12/13mm equivalent lens to the great unwashed hordes of APS-C cameras. Unless it's a real lemon, people who really need 114 degree ultrawide coverage won't have any special reason to buy either Panasonic or Olympus cameras - unless they want the small size that's still only possible with Micro Four Thirds.

Just three years ago there was absolutely nothing that could match the Olympus 7-14mm for any digital camera system. We live in interesting times.

You may also be interested in the thewsreviews' illustrated collection of observations on a wide assortment of lenses: "Quick Thoughts on Lenses for Micro Four Thirds Cameras".