Tweet About It

For the last several weeks, I’ve been tweeting about a wide range of topics including Marquette Madness, the city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin Badgers, the World Series and much more. I’ve had a Twitter account for over 4 years but after high school, I wasn’t as active on the site. However, this assignment gave me the opportunity to reignite my love for Twitter. I love that everything on Twitter is in live time which is especially useful for keeping up with sports or an unfolding crisis situation. Overall, I had a positive Twitter experience. While I didn’t get a ton of response on my tweets, I was happy enough being able to share my thoughts and tweets with my followers.

Happy Homecoming @MarquetteU #PurelyPR #MarquetteMadness

For the initial part of the assignment, I focused a lot of my tweets on the Cleveland Indians, my favorite baseball team, and post-season coverage, as well as Marquette Homecoming and Marquette Madness. One picture in particular that I tweeted at the official Marquette account was retweeted and received 9 retweets and almost 50 likes – a personal best for me. I also found myself responding to several posts put out by the university in regards to the new residence hall going up as well as tweets posted by Mashable responding to the Samsung crisis over a defect in one of its flagship smartphones.

Towards the end of the assignment, I wanted to focus my attention a little more on casual tweets. Rather than tweet about Marquette related topics or respond to tweets put out by other users, I wanted to have a little more fun with it and add some form of comic relief to my profile. Whether it was a GIF describing my state of exhaustion from midterms, my extreme dislike for the fact that daylight savings is gone once again, or the squirrel that made a guest appearance at Lambeau, I thought it was important to discuss “less serious” topics through my tweets to lighten the mood.

As a Twitter user for the past couple of years, there a few things that I have learned. For starters, there is always the temptation to tweet something that you might regret later on. While the thoughts may be genuine and in the moment, you might see an aggressive tweet as a simple form of expression, it could come back to haunt you later on. Twitter can say a lot about a person’s character and if one of your followers has never met you in-person, their opinions of you will be based solely off of what you tweet. If done in a tasteful, Twitter can be a fantastic platform for discussing issues and engaging your audience. So what are you waiting for? It’s time to start tweeting!

Capture Long-Exposure. No Tripod Required

Imagine being able to take sharp, long-exposure shots without the burden of carrying around a tripod – that dream is now a reality with Olympus’ newest addition to its expanding mirrorless lineup, the OM-D E-M1 Mark II. With its new 6.5-stop stabilization, exposures as long as five or six seconds long can be captured with ease. The camera comes equipped with 4K video capture, built-in Wi-Fi as well as a mechanical shooting speed of 15 fps and 60 fps in electronic mode – making it the fastest burst shutter rate on the market today. However, the real star of the show is the camera’s advanced 5-Axis Image Stabilization system – giving photographers the ability to capture sharp images at slow speeds.

Before getting to the main feature of this camera, first thing I’d like to point out is the design and build-quality of the camera. The E-M1 Mark II’s mirrorless design allows for the photographer to take advantage of its capabilities without the burden of lugging around heavy equipment. At a price point of $2,000, this is camera is also built for professionals and high enthusiasts who demand a durable piece of equipment. The design is similar to that of other Olympus cameras with top of the camera body being littered with buttons and dials for basic functions such as shooting mode, a headphone jack, function dials, ISO ranging from 64 to 25,600 and white balance adjustments. The LCD screen on the back of the camera tilts and swivels and the Electronic Viewfinder (EVF) behind the lens allows for more accurate framing while taking pictures. From personal experiences of owning an Olympus OM-D point-and-shoot, I can say that Olympus has done a fantastic job with its electronic viewfinders as well as the design and build-quality of its OM-D lineup and the E-M1 Mark II is no exception has remained consistently on par with the competition.

However, for those who enjoy night photography, having to carry around a tripod to get crisp-looking night shots can be a real challenge. As an amateur photographer myself, I enjoy taking night cityscape shots but without a tripod, I struggle to keep my hands still enough to get a decent shot – even at high ISOs. With that being said, the stabilization system on this camera is good…really good. The sample shots taken from Petapixel highlight just how unbelievably good this image stabilization really is. At ISO 64 and an aperture at f/9, to get a properly exposed night shot like this would require a shutter speed of at least 8-10 seconds and a tripod to prevent blurriness. This photograph, taken without the use of a tripod, has a recorded shutter speed of 5 seconds and zoomed in at 100x magnification, corners are still very sharp. Simply put, I’m blown away by this system. 

Despite the camera’s phenomenal stabilization system, the E-M1 Mark II does have its downfalls. For starters, the camera’s price is pretty steep when you take into account the camera’s lack of a full-frame sensor (compare the Canon 6D which costs $700 less and has a full-frame sensor of equal resolution) and most devices still aren’t capable of supporting 4K video which means this is (currently) not the best camera for video-capture and playback. All things aside, I think this is a fantastic camera and a great value. Yes it is pretty pricey for a mirrorless camera but it performs well. Its lightning fast shutter speed and versatility as a tool for photographers easily make it a candidate for being one of the year’s best cameras.