My parents in laws' garden has some exotic surprises.
OMD EM5 mk1 75mm at f5.6
17mm love
Just another example of the excellent street photography benefit of the Olympus 17mm's Bokeh. This was shot (late evening-darker than it looks) at f1.8 with focus hitting the back of the mans Kimono, but the transition backwards is so coherent, that the focus area looks to be much wider. Even the sign across the road is almost readable and the lady with the umbrella is also quite defined.
Pen F and 17mm at f1.8
There is a pleasant mix of foreground "snap", without the background being too overtly blurred. It's an old fashioned thinking, made to be of practical benefit, not a deliberate, fast drop off Bokeh in the more modern style. The same image taken with the 20mm Panasonic or the 12-40 zoom (even at f2.8) would show a faster drop off to softness which some will preffer, but for street shooting shows focus misses too aggressively. Bokeh has no wrong or right. Like texture, colour and contrast, it has it's different forms to suit a variety of situations and tastes.
Tri X (like)
The Pen F has a few jpeg based features that are already well thought of. Fuji (mostly) and Olympus have been developing their jpegs to new heights in film simulation and usability and the newest Olympus offering aims to simulate the look of Kodak Tri X film (or any mono film with a strong mid tone curve and rich, gritty contrast).
Pen F with 40-150 at 150/f2.8 ISO 1600
The camera has become a solid friend, out performing the OMD EM5's enough to be considered the safer bet in work conditions. The Tri X-looking mono stirs up memories of long hours spend in my dark room, looking for the magic image and taking every little morsel offered. I prefer a slightly less contrasty image with brighter and lighter tones and clean, tight grain (more FP4 like), but the look is genuinely "filmy".
I Hate Buying Gear
I really hate buying new. It's not that I don't lust after beautiful glass and cool looking new cameras, but I hate the process.
When I worked in a camera shop, I developed the habit of not buying before trying and two things happened. I either did not take to the new gear pretty quickly, saving the hassle, or if it suited my pre conceptions I would then test a potential purchase against several of it's siblings to make sure I got a good copy.
Often my rudimentary* testing could not clearly pick a poor lens from a better one and if this was the case, there was not a problem big enough to find. After a lot of this, I rarely found a bad copy but the fear was still there of spending my hard earned on a "dud". One of the reasons I switched to M43 was the consistency of the lenses, both in performance and variation.
Enter the 40-150 f2.8, bought on faith and without comparison. Nothing but good things have been said about this lens, but I was suspicious of it until proven otherwise. My first job with the lens, after some basic tests was a disaster (NEVER use new gear on a job until you are fully conversant with it). The images taken of slowly moving subjects on a bright day were soft- "soft focus lens" soft. Tests had proven the lens to be as sharp and clear as my 75mm (at close distances and indoors) but these images displayed a hazy fuzziness with blown out highlights that were unworkable (think mobile phone photos pre smart phone).
Unhappy with the lens, but having had it awhile, unused due to poor health, I felt like I was stuck with it. More testing pre sale, just to make sure.
All images were good !?!
It is a bit sharper and crisper than my much loved 75-300 and matches the 75. What to do?
Today I think I have nutted out the issue. Edit; looks to be a firmware issue to.
The two images were taken within seconds of each other with identical settings, but different focus pulls. The only thing that could be different is the point of focus. On checking, the hazy image has no better focal point closer to the lens (both are heavy crops), so the focus miss must be behind her and the slightly more coherent bokeh supports that.
On checking the original shoot images, the focal point is just behind the subject also.
When the lens misses focus to behind the subject (an issue with moving subjects on EM5's) , the resulting foreground bokeh is very soft and hazy**, almost glowing. This looks to be a mostly bright day phenomenon so far, greatly exaggerating brilliance and the lens also looks to over expose a touch which does not help.
I must admit, this has firmly relegated the two zooms to the scenery work they were purchased for as I just don't get the snappiness from them that I get from my primes and that outweighs the convenience benefits. Stopped down and used carefully they are excellent, but for wide open portrait use they are neither consistent nor fast enough.
*In the past I would do a bookcase test, viewing identical images at 100%, then I switched to corner tests as that looked to be the first indicator of trouble, but lately I just take images in good light hand held with the different lenses, but the same camera, choosing off centre focus targets. If the issues are bad enough to see this way, they are bad enough to matter. Remember, a lens as good as the best image it can take, not the worst, but consistency is key.
** Lightroom 6 has the new dehaze feature on both the brush and effects palettes, helping to negate the issue.
Bamboo Dreams and Disapointments
Japan entices with many stereotype images that are often as obtainable as your imagination hopes they will be.
But not always.
Kyoto is famous for, among other things, it's bamboo groves. The temple areas on the outskirts of the city are especially bountiful, but on our first visit the weather was not. Slow, hand held lenses in wet and overcast conditions are a tough call, even for the capable little OMD's, but occasionally a composition appears to save the day.
The camera was the OMD and the lens, the 75-300 zoom at about 100mm.
Forgotten corners.
Urban decay has always drawn me. Maybe it has trawling through old magazines as a child with romantic ideas of travelling to third world countries (and changing them of course, we thought a photo alone could do that back then), seeing abstraction in details or just being drawn to worn down and "storied" places.
Doing one of my early morning photo walks, I stumbled on this image in an abandoned office foyer. One of those places that show neglect now and only highlight the "after thought" nature of the original place. I could barely be bothered to investigate, but on looking close, I discovered the plant was not a fake and was somehow thriving in its squalid location. Moved by its effort to survive, I became determined to capture its struggle and composed the above image through a panel of frosted glass (the only one facing the sun). beauty can be found everywhere,
The camera was the OMD and the lens the 25mm at about f4. There was a little post processing to get rid of the less attractive spots of bird poo, but otherwise it's as was.
End of an old Bugbear?
After a long while focussing (no pun intended) on street and portraiture photography, I have returned to, or intend to return to landscape photography as well. The streetwise Pen F and action oriented 40-150 Pro were purchased against their own marketing assumptions for this purpose as I have had the 12-40 for a while, but lacked an unbroken range from wide angle (24mm equiv) to medium telephoto (300mm equiv) and a kit with consistent quality across the frame and through the range.
One of the weaknesses of my previous SLR kits was in the use of long lenses for slow to medium slow shutter speed exposures (5 sec to 1/125th). Vibrations that are hardly noticeable, even to touch, are severe and unforgiving when everything is stretched to the limit. Longer exposures have some settling down time and shorter ones can even be hand held, but these shutter speeds are the "sweet spot" of frustration. Heavy tripods with mirror lockup and cable releases applied, tripod collars used when required and a few other tricks such as "weighted" tripods and supporting metal rulers under the lens all failed to arrest quality robbing vibrations.
The Pen F sports two things that I hoped would eliminate the problem. It has an electronic shutter that creates no vibration or sound and can be fired using a variety of methods from a gentle touch on the back screen to mobile phone wifi release via an app. Using the first method, my work routine became (very quickly), mount the camera, compose, polarise to cut out reflections, then gently touch the frame where the image was best focussed, firing the camera after a short delay. No noise, no mechanical hints or distractions, just pure image taking, fast and efficient. The quiet gentleness of this system is ironically most similar to using an old leaf shutter or my ancient 1970's Canon F1 SLR with its cloth shutter and mirror lock, so we have come full circle (lets not talk about the clunky T90's).
Today was the perfect day to test the kit out, being still and wet with a high over cast cloud cover. So with polarisers attached and my meagre remaining tripod option in hand off I went. There is always some expectation of failure when a theory is tried out in practice* but my confidence was bolstered with a strong determination to succeed.
*Mathematical theory does not often survive scientific experimentation.
These 4 were taken with the 40-150 at iso 100 using shutter speeds in the 1/15th of a second range. All the images in this post were taken within 100 meters of each other in the Cataract Gorge, Launceston. The compressed upload does not go close to showing the full detail....exciting!
A couple of wide angle shots from the same places. I toned down the fluorescent greens in post (tones accepted on a Velvia slide, assumed to be fake in digital!).
Changing Shape
Not much of a photo, but a really good example of how colour can change the "shape" or perception of depth in an image. In the mono image the top right of the frame is of no consequence, not so with the colour, where the eye is inevitably drawn to the orange an the little strip of blue in the lower right. My first impression of the colour image is of a shared importance between the hat and orange corner, then a secondary discovery of the blue strip matching the blue pullover and hat (this could be intensified to strengthen it). The mono image is very much about the person, front and centre with the contrast in the hat, texture and tone, as the primary attention getter.
Pen F and the 75mm
NO PHONES PLEASE
I made a conscious effort to avoid mobile phone images this time or at least put some emotion into the images. Easy to get, but sooo boring and cliched , they are the modern equivalent of the "man smoking" image, but less characterful.
Lollypops are ok though.
And cigarette machines.
Or a mothers trials. Ignore the phone in the background.
All taken with the pen F and 17mm. Starting to detect a "bigger" feel to the images from the Pen.
Changing Times
The Tokyo fish markets are moving later this year. One of, or the biggest in the world, it is an institution amongst the Tokyo millions and more recently the many tourist ready to brave the frantic environment.
Not technically a tourist attraction, the market workers tolerate the steady influx each day (after 10 am), but keep your eyes open as they are still at work and give little warning they are bearing down on you!
I hope the character (and characters) of the old marked transfer well, but I am glad to have made it there twice before it is gone.
Images taken with the Pen F and 45mm.
Many crossings
Shibuya crossing, Tokyo. Said to service up to 1000 people every time the lights turn green on the multiple crossing points is the main access point to one of the worlds busiest subway stations.
All of the above images were taken on two crossings with the little Epm2 and 17mm lens.
Strange Choices
I had a coffee with a friend the other day. Opposite where we were sitting was a girl with striking red hair.
So I printed the image in black and white?
More Melbourne
A few more images from the overnighter in Melbourne a few weeks ago. The first batch from the market, mostly with the 17mm.
Some abstracts.
Some more street, again mostly with the 17mm and one or two with the 45mm.
Travel well.
Japan Again
Off to Japan again soon if I recover from a bout of Swine flu/Pneumonia in time. Two weeks in hospital (1 week in a coma) really strips the body of muscle and endurance, but I have 3 weeks to get myself at least strong enough.
As usual gear is on my mind, especially with my strength down a lot at the moment. My wife and I went twice last year, so I know what to expect and I also know that I can make do with what ever I take (nothing beats actually doing something to get over "pre game jitters").
Last trip I had 2 OMD bodies. One with a short lens (17mm) on a Gordy 60" strap (one of the best things I bought this decade) and one in the hand (45 or 75mm lens) on a left hand wrist strap.
This setup worked well for me, especially in Harajuku where the hand camera/75mm allowed candid portraits and the strap camera/pre focussed 17mm combo grabbed the passers by. I tried the same thing in Melbourne recently, but with a shorter strap and it was awkward, so switching back to the longer strap should work better.
EPM2 and the 17mm from a recent trip to Melbourne
To add to the confusion I just purchased a Pen F for its silent shutter (street and landscape applicable). It looks like at this stage much the same combo as above, but an EPM2 as the strap camera and the Pen F as the hand camera. The Pen F mostly for its very slight speed advantage over the OMD's (not AF, but general functions like screen to eye piece switch over) and the EPM because of its top on/off button, no eye cup to loose, quiet shutter and it's less serious look. It also gives me 2 extra batteries (8 total).
For lenses, probably the 25/75 combo for the Pen F and always the 17 for the EPM.
Bags are always a pleasant problem as I have far too many. The main priority this trip will be comfort and weight, so maybe a light weight, waxed Domke F3 (purchased in Japan) or a little Kata Nimble 3? My most comfortable strap is on a camera converted leather satchel, but the bag itself is quite heavy. To get there a Pro Tactic 350 back pack which is rigid enough to rest my feet on, on the plane and great for getting fragile things home with.
Updated before posting. The 75 will be replaced by the 75-300 as the 45 does much the same job, but is much smaller. The bag will be the Nimble as it is the most practical if the least lovely.
So; Pen F and EPM2 with the 17mm, 25mm, 45mm, 75-300mm
New gear and revelations
I recently had a stint in hospital. Not something that would prove lethal in a modern first world hospital, but something that made me very grateful I do not live in a third world country.
On waking up from a long sleep, I found a photography magazine that my mother had brought in for me. In her own words it was a bit odd to give me a magazine on photography, but what else would interest me? Then something funny happened.
I got the photo bug back. The type of feelings I used to get, before I worked in a camera shop for nearly a decade (and got quite sick) and it struck me that in many ways nothing has really changed. Photography is still practiced with the same goals as it always had and the technology is there to facilitate that not change it. Put simply I had forgotten that a good image is simply a good image. Here where people going bush or travelling and taking the same images as we have always taken presented the same way it has been for years. How had I lost sight of this? Too much time talking gear, not enough looking at photos? Or maybe I just stopped buying paper magazines too soon. The magazine format and nowhere to go also makes you take your time and absorb, so maybe this helped.
What do you do when the bug bites? You buy more gear (please ignore all relevant posts prior to this about less is more, just for this post). My lofty wish list* was whittled down to reasonable shopping list after some quotes came in. I decided on a "new tech" camera, a problem solving lens and a new Pro1000 Canon printer (still not purchased, but coming). The logical set up would have been a 60mm macro to fill a gap and EM10 mk2, but I was/am embracing life!
My first purchase was a Pen F. Did I really think it would change my world? No, I have been around cameras too long to think a couple of generation shift would make much difference these days. It did however have a couple of features that I could really do with. A silent, vibration free shutter for long lens landscapes and street shooting and a better manual focussing dynamic than the EM5, both real benefits, not "fluff". The EM10 mk2 actually has most of the features I wanted and is better for a video set up, but the Pen is dead gorgeous and felt better in the hand.
How does it go? It is better laid out than the OMD EM5 (one of the few early criticisms of that camera), but the menu has been changed a bit, maybe to accommodate its extra features so I cannot get the two models set up the same (Grrr). It seems that Olympus has just chosen to drop some features on some buttons in the custom menus. It does have some new ways to do AF selection, but I cannot match these with the older cameras. AF may be slightly faster, but the more precise focus point is a blessing.
The extra pixels do not make a sharper or contrastier image, but the extra file size, the silent and vibration free electronic shutter, mounted on a tripod with the pro zooms should produce some big, waste free images. Maybe the dynamic range is better? Still to be confirmed.
The second thing was the 40-150 f2.8 pro lens. This one broke all of my rules, but I was after a landscape lens that would give me a gapless range with my 12-40 for tripod work. As stated before, I prefer prime lenses for most work, but zooms are just too good for tripod work. If you don't have to shoot quickly why waste pixels with poor framing options.
PenF 40-150 at 75mm f2.8 lower right third of the image, about 4mp (off centre sharpness test). The 75mm lens image is identical. Standard processing.
I love my 75-300, but there was a sizeable gap between 40 and 75 in an area that I use a lot, and the corner performance of the long zoom is good but not perfect. The fast, heavy, weather proof and expensive 40-150 ended up being the best choice. I am not going to further bore you with irrelevant test images, but here is my take after using the lens for a week or two.
It looks to be as sharp as the 75mm at the same apertures and focal length across the frame.
It is slightly sharper in the centre than the 75-300 at equivalent focal lengths, where the cheaper zoom is strongest, being roughly as sharp at f2.8 as the longer zoom at its widest aperture, but sharper stopped down to the same aperture. It is clearly sharper in the corners, being nearly perfect across the frame-my main reason for buying it. It sits more steadily in the hand, has a noticeably "snappier" looking image and is nicer to use except for the weight. The tripod collar helps with balance also, but this is really an issue introduced by the lens itself. Bokeh, in comparison to my primes could be slightly better, but for landscapes that is irrelevant.
Both the 12-40 and 40-150 seem to be designed to create beautiful images to the eye, regardless of how very well they do on the test bench.
*The 4 perfect primes list of the Leica 12mm and 42.5 ($3000), the 300 f4 ($3500) and my 75mm as well as the newly announced 25 f1.2 ($?). Impractical or ideal?
Autumn Fail
I missed Autumn this year.
EM5 12-40 40 f4
Between the changes to my work circumstances, impatience to get to Japan again for more street shooting and cultural cleansing and an ample dose of apathy, I missed Autumn.
During a flood emergency in my basement (and record flooding locally that even made the news in the Czech Republic!), that forced me to manually bail out the 8 bathtub sized pool under the house, a little magic caught my eye in the garden. I dropped the bucket and grabbed the first fully loaded camera that came to hand.
The lens is the 12-40 that is still in the "not sure" category with me, but I think I have come to terms with its character. Pekka Podka said in his review that Olympus intended to have a lens not high in super fine detail resolution like the older 12-60, but strong in contrast and smooth rendering (not exactly sure on the precise wording there, as it looks as though his excellent site has been taken down).
I feel the images have a slightly under exposed look to them, with too much noise and softness, but I have not yet explored its exposure accuracy and forget that I tend to shoot in poor light hand held, where f2.8 is a luxury. Every time I test it, it comes up with comparable quality to my primes**, but in the field something (maybe me?!) goes awry. I also feel the lens misses focus more than other lenses on the EM5 mk1*, but will probably be better on the newer cameras.
It does not help that I tend to use the lens at 40 f2.8 where it is known to be weakest by a small amount, especially compared to the 45/75 lenses. When I do landscape work it is sharp edge to edge and the focus issues* go away.
If I look at the images it takes at normal size or when printed, it does a lovely job, but if I go in and pixel peep, it looks to have less detail than the tele primes, rendering a simpler sharpness more on par with the 17mm. Like the 17mm it sharpens well and the colour/bokeh/contrast are good.
*The EM5 mk1 has a small achilles heel with its focus. It tends to shoot past small subjects. This varies by circumstance and I feel with some lenses and it frustrates my father in law no end when he tries to photograph small spiders, as it focusses perfectly on the ground around them.
** not as sharp as the 75mm (no surprise), smoother, but less snappy than the 45, roughly equal to the 25mm (but more ca) and better in the corners than the 17mm. It is also known to be a better edge to edge 12mm than the prime.
No Eyes Here
A theme that has crept in to my street images around home is heavily shaded eyes.
Evandale Market EM5 12-40
The reason is, of course, the light.
The Spring or Autumn light in Tasmania is strong, bright and low in the sky and the people lucky enough to share it are going to need some shade for those eyes.
OMD 17mm
In Japan it is Umbrellas, but In Tasmania it's manually shaded eyes.
Manic Melbourne
Meg and I had a little jaunt over to Melbourne a few weeks ago, she for work and me just because.
I spent the better part of three days working on my street technique and discovered a few things.
1) your mistakes are often your best stuff, even after all these years. Frustrating but true. Maybe it's that you are as surprised and delighted as another viewer by the discovery of a new image taken "less well" that works or maybe it is just luck.
OMD 45mm
2) Technique that works in one city may not work in another. Harajuku Japan suited the 17mm focussed on about 2 mtrs at f4-5.6. Melbourne defied this. Maybe the distances were different, or the people or the light or maybe my mojo was not packed in the case when we came over, but for some reason a longer (25/45mm) lens was more successful, even for grab shots.
EPM2 45mm
3) Revisiting the same place gives you a feeling of easy comfort, but this may not always be a good thing. Seeing differently is not always linked to just seeing different things, so reinventing yourself in a known haunt is tough, but clearly defined and going somewhere new is not automatically going to change you, just your view. Be aware of the difference between improvement and being in a rut.
OMD 45mm
4) Those little OMD cameras (and Pens) frikkin' rock, even the old ones! The lenses aren't bad either. Yeah they miss the odd shot, as do most cameras, but if you are prepared and "sorted" with your technique, they are quiet responsive and deliver a deep and glowaciuos image. This is only getting better in the newer models, but any of the cameras with the 16mp sensor or later are good.
EPM2 25mm
Welcome back Silver FX
A year ago I switched to a Mac computer. In the process I lost the FX suite (now owned by Google). I purchased Silver FX at full whack a few years ago, then it grew into the full suite thanks to Google upgrading anyone who owned one to all and found some good stuff in there.
Paying for it again (even at less than $40) was a bit of a pride thing....really shits me. I had the disc, but no go and my activation number was ignored, so I let it go grumpily.
Reading a blog on line the other day (more photos less gear?), I noticed an announcement that it was free at the moment, so I grabbed it again.
Not too proud to say I missed it and am glad to get it back.
Lightroom and PS can do a lot with mono conversions, but there is something about the depth or control and a programme with full focus on only black and white that makes a difference. It is dated by the standards of some of the "film simulation" programmes out there, but I am not interested in that, I just want the best digital mono image I can create easily and cleanly. My favourite tools are the contrast and structure sliders and the filter controls.
All of the above were taken within 50 feet of each other at Perrin dunes on Tasmanias' east coast with the 12-40 and 75-300 lenses. All very "Death Valley".
The colours are from the copper and gold toning options at weakest setting then modified to a finer degree.
ANZAC Day
It only means something to Australians and New Zealanders, but it is our shared national day.
It is also a great time of the year (high Autumn) to photograph proud men and women and the spectacle of military pageantry.
Gear? The OMD and 75-300 zoom (look at that colour!)
The one above is from my old favourite kit (1Ds mk2 and 135 f2L). Much the same quality, but twice (three times?) the weight of an OMD and 75 f1.8. How things have changed.