Old And New Muscles
With COVID, some habits like travel have become mostly memories or future plans with no hard guarantees. This has led, for me, to neglect of photographic habits that would get a run a couple of times a year, usually going from rough to smooth over a week or two of use.
Japan is my street destination. Little is done in that sphere without a plane ride to somewhere being made. Without travel, I have not touched my 17mm, nor used my older EM5’s or 45mm as much as I normally would. This weekend I was reminded what I am missing and to a certain degree, what I need to re-incorporate into my daily work thoughts as well.
Taken near instantly wide open, the 17mm shows again that rare and often overlooked ability to lend context and form to backgrounds, even when used at it’s widest aperture. A lens with a mixed review history, it is becoming a well loved classic.
Also of note is C1’s recovery of a poorly exposed grab shot. I can forget where some of these files start, accepting their otherwise fine nature from processing onwards.
The combination rarely misses (but does more than the later cameras). When there are misses, the lenses long throw Bokeh has the ability to hide many focus errors.
Sharp enough? This is technically the weakest combination I can put together for this type of close scrutiny (17mm wide open, oldest camera).
Stopped down a little, sharpness is sublime and that expanded Bokeh effect is even stronger. This 17 and the matching 45 are both warm toned compared to the 1.2 versions, which is fine, but I generally drop it back a little. Warmth has the effect of visually un-sharpening an image, even making it look muddy if too strong, so cooling off the tones (and adding blue channel saturation in Lightroom’s Camera Calibration option), tends to increase visual snap, even though the actual sharpness stays unchanged.
I will miss the simple, but brilliant image files of the EM5 mk1 when the last two (and my Pen mini) finally die. These ten year old cameras and their mid range lenses are a potent combo.
The 45mm has the opposite Bokeh effect producing pleasantly soft backgrounds wide open, balanced with high sharpness. This image, out of consideration to my wife after sticking the camera in her face, has been de-clarified slightly, but still shows high detail retention at F1.8. By mistake I used ISO 800, but Capture 1 treats that like ISO 2-400 in Lightroom. At lower ISO’s they are similar, maybe the Lightroom file is slightly “nicer”, but at higher ISO’s or if recovering under exposed parts of an image, C1 is the only real choice. I am starting to see Lightroom’s treatment of M43 (and Fuji) as the “kiddies” version and C1 the mature one.
Pixel level with C1, no added noise reduction, after raising the shadows slightly and with automatic lens corrections added (something Lightroom does not provide for many brands). Where is the noise? It is no exaggeration to say C1 makes me feel like I have “upgraded” to a larger sensor, while allowing me to enjoy all of the benefits of a smaller one.
Images like this one above taken with the EM5, have very natural tones and great highlight roll-off
Gorgeous, natural tones with a film-like colour palette.
It’s easy to forget the power of older gear and to let honed skills get rusty.