More fun with "junk"

A few more thoughts on the ancient 25mm for 1/2 frame Pen cameras. Kirk Tuck states that the Pen lenses can be as good as the new lenses, with the 25mm being one of the reliable, but not special lenses, still capable of pleasant surprise or two.

The shot below was one of the better focussed efforts taken last night in poor, but workable light. The intent of the designers was clear. Sharp, clear and contrasty with fair but not extra ordinary fine resolution. Could they resolve more in the days of yore? That is beyond doubt as even some of the lenses from this range and plenty of macro lenses etc from this period or a little later are stellar. This lens would be a slightly wide angle on a Pen 1/2 frame (the standard being a 38mm), so the design would probably be as much about bokeh as sharpness.

Pen F 25mm f2.8 "old croaker", f 5.6 ISO 800, hand held.

The above image is fully processed, with minimal sharpening and the 100% crop below is slightly sharpened.

Not too bad for a 50+ year old lens. 

A newer, prime or pro zoom lens would show higher fine resolution, but that is expected in the pixel peeping world of today. At normal viewing ranges, the difference comes more down to the rendering characteristics. Compared to my 25mm f1.8 the lens shows slightly more "nervous" bokeh, but possible a deeper looking, more 3D rendering. More on this later.

The only real thing to gripe about is the 43mm filter thread, making a hood a hard thing to find.

fun with junk

Scrounging around in the junk bin, I found a screw on Canon video camera 1.4X teleconverter. Not my favourite thing in the world. Hate this kind of poor fix idea actually, but the thread fit my 45mm and the day is wonderful, so a bit of experimenting was to be had.

First up, the close focus was not improved. Shame. Sometimes these things can add a little something to your kit. 

Secondly, the thing is sharp.

A couple of things to note about quick fix close focus options.

Extension Tubes are optically pure (no glass), but are fiddly, loose light (1/2-2 stops depending on length) and are more powerful on short lenses.

Screw in diopters are (usually) less well optically corrected, don't loose much or any light and are better on longer lenses.  

Tele converters are a good option if they are good to start with. The lens gains 1.4 to 2x magnification, but the minimum focus range stays the same.

The crop and the full size image. It turned out to be a great working distance for insects, but not close enough for serious work.

Next up, the Olympus 25mm....from a million years ago. Kirk tuck is a big fan of Olympus Pen lenses from the original half frame era, but the 25mm I saved from the tip during a work clean out is not one of the best of the bunch.

The first image is the slightly hazy, low contrast original. The second is the same image with a preset applied (called 70's designed to look like the 1970-80's film era) and the last is from the new 25mm f1.8, all shot at f4. The difference in the bokeh is noticeable.

Resolution and focus

Not lens focus or sensor resolution, but new years;

1) No more peeking at images at 100% (except for editing precision).

2) Print more.

3) Get another good year out of the OMD EM5 mk1's, then look at (maybe) upgrading.

4) Be more productive.

5) Be less retrospective.

6) Travel, Travel, Travel.

7) Be still* more often.

OMD 25mm f5.6

* contemplative, relaxed, observant, aware.

Blown Away

A few years ago Steve Huff blew many away with his success in recovering highlights from an OMD file using Photo Ninja. At a time when many things were being questioned when thinking about smaller sensor cameras, it came as a revelation. My own experiences with Canon highlight retention/recovery issues on their crop frame bodies primed me for a solution (actually the solution was Sony made sensors in general and to a certain extent still is today). 

A bit of a stuff up the other day. ISO 3200 setting used for strong light shots, and no SCP on. OK, I thought with happy anticipation, that I could try Lightroom's recovery of the Pen F images in much the same circumstances as Huff's images. Exposure reduction, and the highlight slider in the negatives to tame the effectively white cheek, without having to resort to contrast reduction.

The colour is a bit flat (no attempt to fix that), but the grain is very tight. A trick to remember when shooting high ISO images, higher than your camera likes; Set the ISO higher than needed and over expose and if possible reduce the file size (in RAW if available). Both of these things will help tame noise.

Santa's Seat

Tough gig being Santa in Australia. 30+ degree heat, heavy red suit, fake beard and then they give you a hard wooden chair. 

Pen F 25mm f4

The Settling In Process

I am always suspicious of new gear until I start turning out images that (a) I like and (b) stand up against images I have taken in the past in similar circumstances.

All new Pen F and 40-150 at 135 f4.

I also have to take into account the dirty window glass and flare that were part of the process.

A bit of the unusual

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