Vegas, baby, Vegas…

This past weekend, I left the city of Chicago to head to the City of Sin to celebrate the birthdays of some college friends. We crashed in a suite at the Cosmopolitan, which had a wonderful view of the strip as well as the water show at the Bellagio.

This time ’round, with it being such a quick weekend trip, there was no time to head out to Red Rock Canyon, there was only time to party.

Welcome to the Dirty Thirties…

I only brought along a smaller camera with me, the E-P3 with the kit lens, and an Olympus FL-50R flash (a hold over, from my pre-nikon days, when I was shooting with the Olympus system). I managed to snag a few portraits of the birthday girls (or are they ladies now?), as twilight was setting in. Unfortunately, the ladies took a bit longer to get ready than I would have liked, so the background isn’t quite as dynamic.

And here are a couple from the Hyde in the Bellagio.

Since this was my first time with the E-P3 (or a mirrorless interchangeable lens compact), I struggled with getting the focus right with these photos. As the autofocus system is different than the one in DSLRs, low light focusing was a pain. If only the lens had distance markers, I could have gotten away with some rangefinder style focusing, but alas, it was just the lowly kit lens, so it really struggled, even with the af-illumination light on. But with the deeper depth-of-field, I was able to get away with some slightly out of focus photos more than I can with a full-frame DSLR like the Nikon D700/D800 cameras.

Anyway, just wanted to post something quick, before my weekend will be all tied up at Lollapalooza! Look forward to some concert photos relatively soon!