I realize that anyone interested in the GF1 vs. EP1 debate has long since either made up their minds or are rabidly awaiting Fuji’s X100, but as I’ve had a chance to use both cameras extensively, I thought I’d provide my thoughts on the subject.

When Olympus came out with the EP1 last summer, I was intrigued and planned to get one when I could rustle up enough cash. I was attracted to the idea of a larger sensor in a small body, small enough to be my “always with me” camera that I keep in my backpack for everyday shooting. Previously, this spot had been filled by a series of Canon Powershots, Sigma’s DP1 and most recently the Panasonic LX3. I never really warmed to the LX3, however; something about the images just put me off it. The colors never seemed quite right, and with the protruding lens it wasn’t pocketable either. Granted, I was coming from the DP1, which produced excellent images when it got around to focusing on something and actually taking a shot, but I was frustrated at the slow operation and the fixed 28mm-equivalent lens. 35mm I could see as a single lens, but not 28; it’s just too wide. In any case, neither camera really hit the spot.

Panasonic’s first micro-four-thirds cameras, the G series, were almost DSLR-sized, and I simply couldn’t see the point of such devices, particularly as the DP1 was smaller and produced similar image quality with its larger foveon sensor.

Although I was interested in the EP1, the reported focusing problems made me hesitate. It just took too long, DP1-long, and it often missed. That fall, Panasonic introduced its own small m43 camera, the GF1. On paper, it addressed all the problems of the EP1, and it came with a snappy 40mm-equivalent f1.7 lens. On a trip to Tokyo last November I was able to handle both cameras in the stores, and the quick autofocus and higher-resolution LCD of the GF1 won me over. The feel of the EP1 was nicer, the brushed metal skin a joy to hold and the “clunk” of the shutter more akin to closing the door on a big Mercedes than the harsh plastic “clack” of the GF1’s shutter.

But I had to be practical. I’m pretty good at holding cameras steady in low light, so I figured I didn’t need the in-body image stabilization that the Olympus offers.

So I got the GF1, a silver version, and wrapped it in some leatherette skin I ordered from Japan. It looked great and was easy to hold. I used it every day, with the 40mm as well as the Olympus’s wide zoom. People often asked me if it was a film camera.

In daylight it was a great performer. At night, however, the ISO would jump and the shutter speeds plummeted, and I got some blurry, grainy shots. Not nearly as many as the LX3 or DP1, but enough to make me pause. This sensor is almost there, I thought. If it were just a little more sensitive, it would be useful as a night shooter.

I shoot a lot at night. Taipei comes alive at night, visually, with all the signs, stalls and activity, life spilling out the doors onto the verandas, patios, streets and alleys. Night photography is important to me, but it’s hard to have the 5DII with me all the time. The Invincible Rabbit, albeit invincible, is just too big and heavy for that.

Recently, my friend and fellow photographer Brian Q. Webb, aka Photojazz, upgraded his EP1 to an EP2, and so he let me borrow his old EP1, which he had dropped, dinged and dented up pretty good. With the most recent firmware, the focus speed has improved to within shouting distance of the GF1, though shot-to-shot time is still frustratingly slow and the low-resolution screen makes focusing something that can only be left to the camera. Also, the EP1 lacks controls on top for shooting modes like black/white or multiple exposures, requiring a trip to the back of the camera.

Still, the camera felt as nice as I recalled, and I enjoyed the shutter feel and sound more than the GF1. All in all, for daytime shooting, the two cameras were more or less the same. Both are less than instantaneous when shooting, with the shutter lag and focusing issues. The GF1 has the useful ability to sleep and wake up at a moment’s notice, something I haven’t figured out how to do with the EP1, which has to stretch and yawn before bothering to take a shot. The battery life is also less impressive than the GF1, though the batteries are smaller as well.

Shooting at night, however, brought the EP1’s true strengths into play. On the pitiful LCD I couldn’t see much, but once I zoomed in, I was astounded: The combination of the IBIS, the f1.7 aperture, and Olympus’ noise reduction algorithm let me get a surprising amount of sharp shots all the way down to a quarter of a second. The subjects’ motion is blurred, but the environment is tack-sharp. The stabilization works on all lenses, including the wide zoom as well as my Leica summicrons, and though manual focusing on the terrible LCD is a hit-and-miss affair, the EP1 produces more usable shots with the legacy lenses at night than I got using the GF1; even at f2, they just weren’t bright enough to get decent shutter speeds without IBIS.

Is it too late in the game for such contemplation? I’m not sure; as beautiful as it may be, Fuji’s upcoming X100 will not have optical image stabilization that I know of. It will also be restricted to a fixed focal length, and I like my wide-angle shots, especially in as dense and crowded city as Taipei. So far, only the m43 cameras provide a large-sensor compact with useful interchangeable lenses. Sony’s NEX series is an operational nightmare with no useful pancake lenses available yet, and Samsung’s sensor hasn’t proven to be a strong performer. Things might change as other brands move into the market, but for now, that’s the way it is.

In the end, I bought Brian’s old EP1. I couldn’t justify buying a new one or the even costlier EP2 so late in the product cycle, but the battered little camera, with its nocturnal superpowers and chunky shutter, has earned its place in my backpack.

I’m just finishing up the last edit of the English-language version of my book detailing my time in the army, so I thought it would be appropriate to go down to the place where I spent the majority of my military career, Da Ping Ding in Miaoli, to take a look around. Chenbl and I set out on a 9 a.m. train; the once-mighty Ziqiang Express seemed old-fashioned and lackadaisical in comparison with the ultra-modern bullet train system, but the bullet train does not stop in Miaoli. A typhoon was on its way, but I was banking that Saturday would be tolerable, weather-wise.

We got off at the station, which seems to be at the edge of town, far off from the little downtown area. Miaoli is comprised basically of two parallel streets. Back in the day, the Miaoli buses heading up the mountain towards Sanyi left frequently, but now only the Hsinchu buses seem to leave with any regularity. We got on one and creaked across town; it was just the two of us until we stopped at the bus station in the real downtown to pick up passengers.

Up the mountain, to Shangnanshi. The base, though long abandoned, was still standing and covered with dense foliage. The last time I was up there civilian guards had been posted at the gates, with motion sensors set up inside, so after getting off the bus we headed for the East Base’s back gate, where I knew of a few places one could sneak in. The holes in the perimeter were still there, but the areas just inside were so overgrown that we had to hack our way through some pretty thick trees and vines to get to the main base road.

Once inside, I was momentarily disoriented at the sight of the shell of a building, all the windows gone and the ceiling tiles hanging down. Then I realized that it was the old Guard Company mess hall, and that I’d even had my picture taken standing in front of it. Just behind it was the cliff from which I’d enjoyed the view over the valley below when I got a break from washing dishes after meals.

I was wary of guards and stray dogs, often stopping to shush Chenbl’s usual incessant commentary; he was convinced nobody was around, but I wasn’t so sure. We walked past familiar buildings and signs to the Guard Company barracks, the quads in between buildings covered in dense, jungle-like overgrowth, the windows gone and the rooms empty. I found the place I’d lived in so long ago and sat on the spot where my old bunk was, remembering what it was like to sleep there, with only ceiling fans to keep cool in the summer heat. We’d spent the onslaught of Typhoon Herb there, and back then I wondered what the base would look like after it had been abandoned. Now I know.

The Guard Company faced the East Base’s parade grounds, which is now waist-high in weeds. We walked over to the Division HQ building that spooked me out on several occasions when I had to stand guard there at night and listen to the ghosts. Chenbl, ever sensitive to such things, said he felt dizzy and insisted on apologizing to any spirits who might be offended at our presence.

After making a round of the entire East Base, I began to suspect that there was actually nobody around. We passed female officers’ quarters, something that I’d never encountered when I was there. Back at the Guard Company, I kept noticing places where various things had happened; I felt like I was in a time travel novel, visiting ancient ruins where I once lived.

We snuck out a hold near the side gate where I’d waited in line so many time to get in and out of the base, and then across the road to the West Base, where we fought through another mass of brambles and thorns to the main armory. Some dogs noticed us and began barking, and though nobody appeared, I walked quickly ahead to the rear part of the base where the Regiment HQ was located. A seemingly flightless white pigeon strutted up and down the leaf-covered road as black clouds began to cover the sky. The silence and emptiness were eerie. Vines and bushes had invaded some of the buildings. Even the motion sensors were gone, though the plastic shells of some could still be seen here and there.

I showed Chenbl the RHQ barracks and the base karaoke that I’d managed. The floor I’d spent so much time mopping was covered with dirt, as is the spider-infested bar where I’d picked laserdiscs of songs for various officers to sing. Rain began to pelt down, and we took refuge in the RHQ rec room while we got our umbrellas out, and then followed the base ring road to the main gate, which felt a little strange in that we usually ran around it going the other way. When I turned around, it seemed much more familiar. There used to be an old guy manning the main gate, but I figured it wouldn’t matter by that time if we got thrown out.

Nobody was there. Chenbl took my picture in front of the rapid response unit barracks as well as at the main gate guard post where I’d stood guard. The old Chiang Kai-shek statue is still there, with the old green man waving his hat and smiling at the empty, unmanned gate in front of the overgrown parade grounds. After I got my fill of pictures and just standing around lost in various reveries, we walked out the gate and down the road to catch the bus to Tongluo, where we had some unimpressive Hakka noodles for lunch. Chenbl asked an old woman if there was anything interesting around, but after I took her picture, she yelled, “I give you directions and then you take unflattering pictures of me? How dare you?” But we were already walking away, past thick green rice fields waving in the wind like a big bedspread. We stopped to walk with a woman hurriedly harvesting a small garden before the storm hit, and then visited an old hospital from the Japanese area, a two-story wooden building with blue trimming. The original doctor’s son lives there now, by himself, and he came out to tell us a bit around the place.

We took the electric train back to Miaoli Station. By that time it was around 5:30 p.m. which was normally about the time I would get there when I had leave and wanted to go up to Taipei, so I experienced a little willing cognitive dissonance, imagining that it was still 1996 and I’d just come down from the base, ready for a weekend on the town. Then I pulled out my iPhone and ruined the atmosphere.

We got back to Taipei around 8 p.m. and proceeded to the Taipei Artists Village, where Thumper was holding his 20th arriversary, i.e. 20 years since he came to Taiwan. We were the first to show up; Jason was setting up the barbeque, and I fashioned a string for the washtub bass from one of the bar decorations. Other people began showing up, and as usual, the more people inhabit a room, the less I feel like talking. I walked between people, taking pictures and munching on the excellent food (except for the undercooked potatoes), until my upstairs neighbor Brent started the evening’s musical entertainment. The bass lasted about two songs before the string broke, but I wasn’t in much of a mood for the bass anyway and declined David’s offer of fiber-optic wire as a replacement (it was too slippery and cut my hand when I tried to tie it). The pocket trumpet called to me, however, although not many of the songs really suited it, though Conor rope me into a 12-bar blues set.

By around 2 or 3 a.m. many people had already gone; only a few of us were left. I shuffled around the edges of the room, playing freestyle licks here and there. Rodney was doing something on the drums, and Lany was playing around with some guitar stuff. Somehow, we all just synced up and Lo! a pretty cool jam ensued. But I was tired, and when Brent said he was leaving, I took him up on his offer of a ride back through the growing storm. It would save me a trip across the galloping Bitan bridge, anyway.

About a week ago, I was invited to give a talk at a symposium on the theme of “Future Classics” by an local arts group. I thought about the subject a bit and came up with a Powerpoint presentation, which I presented at the symposium this morning at the Huashan Arts Village, along with three other participants. The seats were full and I was a little nervous, a situation that wasn’t helped by the fact that I had to keep turning back and forth between the audience and the big projected screen to try and stay on track. I’m afraid I repeated myself a bit too often as I stuttered and mumbled my way through the thing, but hopefully I got at least some of my observations across. After the presentations audience members asked some questions. Someone asked me what subjects are best in black and white and which are suitable for color. I answered that it’s not the subjects that are black and white or color, it’s your mood and thoughts that dictate such things.There were some people from Treasure Hill there, and it was interesting to hear their views on the whole thing, especially as it’s going to open once again to the public on October 2. After the event was over, some of us, including Andrew, with whom I played on stage at Hohaiyan a few years ago, and the organizers and other artists in several field went to Alleycats for pizza and caprese. It was good to meet so many people involved in the arts scene here; it feels more vibrant than before, more inclusive, but that could just be the pizza talking. After lunch I walked around the various design showcases, some of which were quite ingenious, and noted all of the vintage camera/character hat combos that my friend Persimmonous likes to point out. Micro 4/3 and NEX cameras were out in force as well.

What Taipei do you see? What city will we remember? What will we regret losing? What is worth preserving, and how should this be done? We cannot dictate such things; we can only do what we think is worth preserving; the actual preservation will be up to subsequent generations. People have to want it; the government lacks the capacity to decide, it only has the authority to enforce the people’s decisions.

The city is huge and dense in scale and the number of connections flashing through the infinite mix of ingredients. The subtleties were hard to capture with the big, expensive, slow cameras of the past, but today there is no such excuse. Why is it that people who live here are so blind to the world around them that, even though they have a marvelous camera with them 24 hours a day, they cannot find a single interesting thing to photograph? I can’t speak for them, only myself; I preserve small things that are large in my thoughts. Small, solid things that have large abstract significance. Taipei is a dense, complicated maze where personal lives spill out from private spaces through the “veranda culture” and onto the streets for all to ignore. But it’s still there for those who choose to look. Photography isn’t just what you see, it’s how you see. In a way, it’s you.

So why are cameras so popular these days? Not just because they allow the sharing of visions, the creation of multiple, exponential versions of our world to explore; they also allow us to see the world through the eyes of others. You can’t see everything, but you can see a lot of things, more than you ever would have before, no matter how encompassing your vision may be. No matter how empathic you may be, you cannot see everything the way someone else does.

Do you only notice buildings when they are being torn down, or only after they’re gone? We have evolved to notice new things, different things, to give them a level of appreciation we do not give things with which we are familiar. The familiar is the safe, things that have proven themselves not dangerous through the fact of not having been dangerous in the past. The new and the shiny get the attention of our animal brains in order to assess whether they are a threat and what changes their appearance may have in store for us and our lives. Even the old, when resurfacing from forgetfulness, becomes new and interesting again.

And yet some old things persist in grabbing our attention each time we see them, often more and more as the years go by. Perhaps we see them with the same comfortable feeling the familiar caves of our ancestors imparted. But it is also possible that these things, these “classics” arouse inside of us some feeling of a higher purpose, reflecting the way we see ourselves. They flatter us into thinking we are more than we seem, in the way that they resist time and forgetfulness, as we ourselves aspire to do.

So what about a particular photograph calls to us through the years? It may just be a simple vanished scene, or it may also be the capture of a vanished moment or emotion from another world, something small and meaningful then, but exponentially more so now. How it will fare the test of time is difficult to judge. But one thing photography tells is how others see the world. People see different things. Some people see the future, some the past. Some see emotions, some see patterns. Only through photography can we obtain a view deeper than our own, perhaps realizing not only what we are missing, but what we have missed in the past, and what we will miss in the future. Photography encompasses all of these, and lets us see beyond the superficial, to see what we truly value, to see ourselves not only as we are, but as we aspire to be.

These things aren’t created by photography; it does show us, however, that they exist. Much of photography is about drawing attention to things that are ordinarily invisible, moments that go unnoticed, details that escape us. Photography, one of the few time machines available to us, is also a useful tool in allowing us to gauge the changing context of such things, fixing moments in time that call attention to massive changes, be they in architecture or social trends or just the way people deal with each other, that escaped our notice because they happened too gradually. Larger trends, the big picture, so to speak, appears through the details. The city itself becomes knowable, even familiar, in the space of a moment in a small corner.

All of this requires a lens through which to see. And in seeing this, you not only see the city, you see its value, or at least the photographer’s evaluation of its value, in the context he or she provides. In that way, you also see the photographer.