i like this ... there's an overall impression of sharpness that oddly isn't borne out by close inspection, but I'm guessing it's as a result of plenty of contrast ... at what shutter and aperture was this taken?
EXIF is saying Wide open f/0.9 at 200th sec. ISO 500. I was chopping and changing settings all the time to find out the best way to get around the darkness in there. Since it's a fish market there are no bright lights and in fact the picture looks brighter than it really is in there. I did sharpen and got rid of a lot of noise in PS.
There's a lot going on in the scene and with the super thin DOF it's very hard to tell exactly what the camera focused on so as a result everything looks a bit soft. A lens with that large an aperture would be much more effective for isolating a single subject from the background rather than a scene like this one. I'm sure I'm not telling you anything you don't already know -- just thinking out loud more than anything else...
Of course, the nice part about a wide aperture lens is that you end up with a shot at all whereas if you had a bottom end of f3.5 you couldn't get anything reasonable. It's always amazing how our eyes fool us. You think you're in an environment with adequate light for your trusty f/2 lens, and it's still too dark when you actually meter.
Spot on comment. Faraday Cage. Your comment is spot on. I've tried this sort of shot many times before with Canon G9 and G10 compacts which gave me the nearest thing to a good result under the same conditions. Both are f/2.8 wide open. However the E-P2 combined with the new 25mm f/0.9 Voigtlander surpasses both. Sure! You can still find a few things to knock with these indoor shots. But to me they are great, and as you have so rightly observed, " better than no shot at all".
