Olympus and Lightroom sampler #2

What already? Yup, the second in the series, hot on the heels of the first.

This a much simpler image to work on, having no actual faults, just needing some help. I love this image for it's mid 20th century look, both in style and subject matter.

The first image is poorly composed, flat and lifeless.

The second image has had cropping applied and the intensity of the image was boosted with +40 contrast, -60 highlights, +35 whites and -60 blacks. The whites slider adds brilliance and the blacks adds intensity. Clarity is also boosted to +35 and there was a little sharpening and noise reduction. The noise reduction is a good way of adding smoothness to an image as long as you have not applied too much sharpening, that will create a "painterly" look. The Lightroom technicians seem to have been working on retaining sharpness when NR is applied. The smoothing element is a bonus and tends to add to the medium format film* look of sharpness without effort. 

When sharpening, the radius control is important here as it can be used to smooth or exaggerate the effect of texture in the concrete building. I chose 0.8 to smooth it.

The final image has had the standard brush sweep of +10-15 clarity, sharpness and contrast applied to bring out the detail in the left side of the building. The crop has also been slightly adjusted to make the angle of the building more majestic.

*Recently, Ctein, a premier colour printer and photographer of many years, stated that Pentax 6x7 film and M43 files from an EM5 are about equal in quality. He has used both extensively and interchangeably for his portfolio prints. He is also a bridge image fan (among other things), which has strong similarities to my love of older buildings.

Olympus and Lightroom sampler #1 simple recovery

I am going to do a series of Lightroom samplers. Things I am doing for myself as I do them. Each will show either the capabilities of the M43 sensor and/or the power of the programme.

Here is an example of the powerful recovery tools available in Lightroom, from the perspective of Olympus files.

The original image on the left was badly captured. I had left the Aperture priority setting to a wide aperture while capturing details in the dark of the alley, with the result of blowing out the sky badly in the next composition. OMD (Sony) sensors are renown for their ability to recover highlights (one of the reasons I switched from Canon), but full -100 recovery made little difference. I find the highlight recovery tool to be fairly weak in Lightroom, so I have started to look for other ways. 

The second image has had it's overall exposure reduced to -1, and -100 highlight recovery, then the shadow recovery tool is pushed back up to +60.

The shadow recovery tool is much stronger especially if used to get back deliberately reduced exposure, but with a trade off of revealing noise in the shadows if the image is naturally under exposed in that area. Some mild luminance noise reduction is added. I have found the shadow noise from the Olympus sensors to be fine black dots with little loss of detail, pretty much how I like my film grain to look. When working on some Canon crop frame files recently, I was abruptly reminded of the ugliness of digital "colour blotch" noise associated with most sensors.

A tight crop showing the shadows from the second image. 

As you can see, the grain at ISO 200, heavily recovered from reduced exposure, even in a natural shadow area is none the worse for ware.

The final image has had a little brush work in the wall and a global reduction in the black slider to add contrast. Contrast, sharpening and clarity are all about +10-15, bringing out the brilliance of the lit wall section and making the pattern in the shadow area more defined.

Golden

I love Spring and Autumn for their light. I thought this would make a nice addition to the blue and red ones posted recently.

OMD 75mm

Old and new

The other day I wrote a post about the excellent 400mm L lens and EOS 1Ds Mk2 combo. The image I used to demonstrate the quality the pair could produce has always been a marvel to me, showing the capability of an older, non stabilised lens and an "obsolete" 16mp camera.

Different images (the new one I stumbled on while cleaning out my library), taken three years apart, in different light and a female, rather than male monkey. Cropping roughly the same, from a slightly out dated OMD M43 camera and budget 75-300mm lens. Just goes to show. Granted the 400mm was used with a tele converter, but the Olympus lens is a slow, cheap zoom. The eye and chin hair detail look to be the same, with both having the appropriate level of processing and I can't help feeling the Olympus colour is more accurate in it's lighting circumstances.

The odd thing is, the current second hand value for the Canon setup is about $2000 au and the Olympus $800. 

70D test shots

I stumbled on these the other day. The 70D that I tested toward the end of 2015 with the 40mm acting as a 65mm on that body. The body did not have the date set so it came up as Jan. 2000 in Lightroom and got lost.

The exposure has been tweaked a little (reduced contrast, highlights, blacks and lightened whites, all about +/- 20 value), but not the colour. 

And another, not an MG.

Lovely colour and smooth bokeh from the lens. A pleasant focal length also. I have toyed with the idea of a Canon body and the 24/40mm pancakes, but I don't think I can go back to an SLR.

On first seeing the images, my first thoughts were I had over done the colour and contrast compared to my usual settings. I thought the images had a glassy and clear look and the perception of sharpness at normal size was excellent, but they were I assumed taken on a kit zoom (if on my Olympus) as the high level of detail I am used to was missing. The Olympus and Panasonic M43 cameras provide a very sharp image, with a lot of fine detail that contributes to their non glassy look. One way to bring back the glassy look is to un sharpen, apply noise reduction or use a less sharp lens. Canon files to me look like Olympus files with noise reduction, saturation, some blue channel and contrast added.

This is not "camera bashing", but a good opportunity for me to evaluate a camera without any pre conceptions. My response to the colour was positive and also to the perceived sharpness. Fuji and Canon, both give a high level of subjective quality without the bitingly detailed sharpness and micro detail of Olympus. Even the best full frame Canon's I have used and their sharpest lenses render differently to the M43 cameras. Neither is better, but it was funny that I assumed the Canon images were Olympus with a (still pleasing looking) sub premium lens.

The difference a camera can make

Two images, both similar of the same subject in the same location.

Panasonic 20mm at f1.7 OMD RAW image with basic processing for exposure.

XE-1 Fuji 27mm at f2.8 jpeg image set to Velvia.

The Fuji cameras can produce some lovely images, but if using jpeg, you must remember to set the right film simulation. My father in law was never that pink!

Preparing for the season

It is almost crunch time. My investment in the PenF and two pro zooms is about to be put to the test in the high season of landscape in Tasmania, autumn.

Last year, I effectively missed autumn, worrying about other things. The above images were taken while testing my hopeful landscape kit the XA-1 and two basic zooms. The results were good, but the jpeg only idea did not sit well with me and RAW landscape with Fuji, even the XA with the traditional sensor (avoiding the issues with the water colour sharpening effect in processing), produced nice, but slightly fake colours. I have nothing but praise for a kit, made up of a base model camera and lenses. Especially stopped down, these lenses were a match for the dearer Fuji glass and superior in my opinion to any other "kit" lenses. All of the images were taken at Hollybank reserve in the states north. It was once a Tennis racket factory, hence the slightly plantation look to the landscape. It all felt a bit rushed on the day and the images support this. I really hate breaking in new gear or techniques. It distracts from the process.

making do...ok

So. Lots of claims by me of sports being photographed with a combination of single shot AF without AF tracking and manual focus. How did I go when the rubber met the road?

Some basketball yesterday. The usual poor light and fast pace. The actual assignment was to document one of the referees involved, but in his down time, when the other referee was officiating, I grabbed some quick action shots.

All of the images were captured with an EM5 at ISO 1600-3200 and the 40-150 f2.8. All of the longer shots, including two dozen of the main subject (the referee) running down the court* were captured sharply with single shot AF on centre point only with timing and minimal hesitation (a second shot of a converging or receding will always be out of focus due to the lack of tracking), For the close action under the net, I used S-AF with a wider capture area of the middle nine points and the camera at waist level. Manual trap focus would have been better, but the lens was a little long (40=80mm) and the F2.8 aperture too shallow for zone focussing. Except for my miss cues, there were no AF fails. A wider lens like a 25mm would have been better, but I was not at the event for these shots. I missed the ball in the action a lot, but that was me out of practice, not the camera.

The mono conversion is my standard pre set, Mono 1 (I have 6 mono ones, all designed to create a remembered contrast look from my film era memory). The look is much like my memory of pushed TriX in Rodinal 1:50, but without the excessive grain. Not much noise reduction is used to allow a slight "grainy" look to come out and it is tight looking grain, as Rodinal would render it, but not at the expense of clarity.

*I can't show these as they belong to the client.

learning from sharing

The other day I posted under "thoughts", a little bit of the enormous capabilities of Adobe Lightroom as I understand them at this point. In the post I commented that I am "not an expert" and "I am always learning", but hoping that someone would gain something from my own habits and understanding. Little did I know that my own learning curve would take a spike. It goes to show, talking to other people with the same interests is always a benefit as long as you have a "growth mind set". A kind and knowledgeable readers comment (you should read the comment to as it makes some very good points) would not only teach me a trick, pointing out that some of the brush work I had done was visible (ouch) and also remind me of something I had forgotten.

I will admit, I pushed the processing of the image chosen for the example beyond my comfort zone. Doing that much brush work is probably beyond my skill at this point and I was caught out fair and square. In the past, when this much work was needed, I would either take more time, working on each area with a magnified view or re evaluate the value of the image.

Basically, when using the brush, graduated filter or any other manipulative feature in Lightroom, always make sure the playing field is in your favour. The two errors I did in my posted image were editing from the original view and NOT CLEANING MY SCREEN. If (assuming the screen is clean) you lighten the image or in some cases deliberately over do the brush work to make it more visible in relation to the rest of the image, you can always push it back later. 

One of the beauties of Lightroom is that it is non destructive editing. You can push, pull, reset and start again. Nothing is actually real and final until it is exported. For example, of you are sharpening an edge or adding noise reduction selectively, you could reduce exposure to see the area darken as you work, making sure you have not missed anywhere, then double click on the exposure slider when done to reset the exposure to normal. If you click on one of the brush starting point dots, even months after your edit, the area previously worked on will show up as a red cloud. To re do the image, I (after I cleaned my screen) lightened the whole image to see it better, then re applied the brushing). 

The above image on the left is an already edited mono conversion, taken at Perth Zoo a couple of years ago. As is, it is ok, but showing the clumsiness of my early brush use. The second image has been lightened (thank you Olympus Hopeful), showing the areas that have not been fully removed and areas that have heavier brush work applied. Mostly invisible, but not great. The last image has the poor areas touched up by applying -30 exposure and then a new brush edit applied around the edges and the main body of the Zebra with +35 contrast, +30 clarity, +20 sharpness and +10 dehaze. Remember, that these settings will not darken light areas, only dark areas, so they intensify the edge.

Notice the glow on the main body. There is no extra exposure added, this is all from contrast, clarity and dehaze control. Another point of note is these manipulations were done to a re imported jpeg, as the original eludes me (I will not be doing a post on organising and filing for a while!).

The trick I was reminded of, that I read once before in an interview with one of the official UN photographers, John Isaac is to use the brush on weaker settings, but with more passes. He felt that multiple passes on a gentle setting is less destructive than hitting it hard in one go. 

Canon colour from Olympus

I often go on about the Canon (or Fuji) look and how I have needed on some level to mimmic to some extent that look in my images. Digital Canon followed Fuji Velvia (shot with Canon), forming in me a taste for rich colours, strong contrast, a cool base palette with strong but cooler warm tones. Olympus cameras take beautiful images, but they are more like Kodachrome than Velvia. The neutral base and emphasis on skin tones and warmer colours matched with (in the EM5's especially) strong and deep blacks, looks very Kodachrome to me.

Olympus OMD and 75-300 lens at 75mm. 

Why do I need the look of one brand in another camera brand? 

Because I love the size and lens consistency of the Olympus cameras, I do like their images, but I miss the Canon/Fuji look sometimes, especially when the light is poor and (in my mind) I feel another brand would handle dull and uninspiring light better. This is a Fuji jpeg strength. The Sony made, Olympus sensors are better performing than the current Canon crop frame cameras at the moment in a lot of areas as well, like dynamic range (highlight recovery) and noise (Olympus black speck noise is sharp noise, not mushy noise).

An Olympus image (OMD 25mm), with reduced sharpness, clarity and increased contrast.

A Canon full frame image (5D mk2 35L), with increased sharpness and clarity, and no change to contrast.

This is one of the "haunting" images. There is nothing here Olympus cannot provide and it turns out that the original Canon file did not look this way anyway.

The good news for me, is I think I can now easily and consistently get Canon colours out of my Olympus cameras when I need. The "Hollywood" glow is actually a result of noise reduction, un sharpening and/or reducing clarity. The black and white sliders in Lightroom give an image a more contrasty and brilliant look, toning the shadows and highlights to give more colour depth and the blue slider in camera calibrations cools shadows while giving warm tones more "pop". I also need to correct my own colour memory, because on investigation, the Canon files that make me so unsettled often required a lot of work. There was a reason I switched and I have to remember that.

GAS release

I followed my own advice and re read out some old reviews on the EM5 mk1 (Ctein and others), then wrote a bit about things that have been on my mind lately. Itch scratched (a bit easier than this guy).

Shooting sport without tracking AF

While looking at my future needs for possible sports photography, I analysed the actual needs of each type of sport and the techniques required.

Field sports.

Longer lenses allow for better focus as the subject moves less in relation to you. If shooting length ways down the ground, with decent depth of field, the single shot or continuous AF of even the EM5 mk1 will get the job done. If trying to follow action from the side, manual zone focus and timing will get good results.

Swimming and distant athletics.

This is the one I did recently that started the madness. Manual zone focus will get diving in, the lanes guarantee the same plane of focus from the side and focussing on the "bow wave" of the subject will work for single or continuous AF for converging targets.

OMD 40-150 pro at about 100mm f2.8

Short distance sprinting.

This is the tough one. How I used to do it was to focus on the runner about to leave the blocks (from the finishing end), shift focus once or twice down the track getting the subject with a short burst as they pass through the focus point and then settle focus on the finish line, usually zoomed right back (this can be achieved by memorising finger placement at each of the focus points). Using the most depth of field possible and with a bit of practice, a set of 10 or so good images out of 15-20 is the norm, including zooming. If shooting from the side, practice panning with good depth and a slowish shutter speed, the longer the lens, the longer the focus sweet spot holds. The long lens trick I learned photographing dragonflies in flight (remember to keep one eye on the action and the other on the eye piece).

IDs mk2 and 400 f5.6L. With the long lens, the 2-3 meter "hops" the dragonfly made were relatively small adjustments. Closer would have meant greater shifts.

Tennis and Netball.

I used to shoot a lot of Netball and found that the field sport techniques worked (shooting long down the length or zone focus from the side), but you also have the opportunity to do some high or low wide angle and short lens work around the goals or base line in tennis.

The trick is to be smooth and gentle with focus, no jerky movements and trust to depth of field if available. Single shot AF is ok as long as the total process of focus and fire is not slower than the subjects movement. Practice on moving cars is good to. Shoot wider than needed as 16-20mp has plenty of cropping power for web work.

This an example of a 2-3mp crop of a failed "trap focus" composition. One of the reasons good corner sharpness is handy.

Fighting G.A.S.

I have a slight case of GAS (gear acquisition syndrome).

I decided I should look at the merits of tracking autofocus in the M43 world as I shot some sport and may have some more on the horizon. 

Even though I have rationalised the benefits away for the level I will be working at (high school), the lure of the new will not go. Even old new, the EM1 mk1 is calling to me. I am fighting false promises, shunning the reliable and well known for the new and exciting. I need to count my blessings, take stock of what is good, what is working and move on.

One of the best things to do is get my gear out, clean and check it as I find the intangible tends to over shadow the real when my imagination takes hold. I learned this trick with Canon gear. I had more of a problem settling on it, even stressing over the physical look of some of my lenses.

Yep, take a breath.

remembering old tools

I often wonder (don't regret really, just ponder) what it would be like to have just the best custom kit for each job*. A specialised landscape, sport and street/travel kit.

One lens/camera combo that I would have kept for that thinking, if that was how I chose to go would have been the Canon 1Ds mk2 and the 400 f5.6L. The lens, like my other favourites from Canon, the 70-200 F4L and 135L, was not stabilised, but it hand held well, easily lower than it's reciprocal focal length/shutter speed equation.

1Ds mk2 with 400 f5.6L with 1.4 teleconverter wide open at 1/125th, cropped to 1400x1700 from the image below.

The OMD sensor has similar properties and the same pixel count, but the quality out of those old Canons was way better than anything I had seen before and the colour more natural than the lush colour of the current crop (much like the Olympus look). I remember showing a friend, a 5d mk2 user, an 8x10 of the above and telling him the long list of compromises made to get it. I don't think he believed me until I showed him the "full monkey".

The full file.

Ahwww, cute. 5d Mk2 and the same lens.

The lens was a giver. I remember trying to convince a customer to buy it over the 100-400L, but he went with the versatility. He later regretted the decision after we compared identical images from similar cameras. To top it off, after selling it and the 135L to a shop in a neighbouring city, I found out from my wife, that a friend from her work bought them both and has them back here. Haunted still.

The Olympus glass is the equal of the Canon I had (the 45 is nearly identical to the 85 f1.8 in look and performance, but less than half the size, the 75 matches or beats the 135L, 40-150 is better/faster/longer than the 70-200 f4L and the 75-300 surprisingly close in end result to and easier to use than the 400 and a little longer), but if I had held onto those lenses they would have been (were) the nucleus of a good SLR sports kit.

*Fuji for landscape (14, 18-55, 60 and 90 macro), Olympus for street and portrait (17, 25, 45, 75) and Canon for sport (24, 40, 135, 400). Selling and buying gear for me has been a bit of a merry-go-round and I don't regret most transactions, but some clear thinking in hind sight would have spared me from selling off a couple of camera and lens combo's that just worked.

The ideal is one kit that works (that I have), but it is sometimes fun to remember past successes, just not dwell too much on the ones that got away.

Art for art

I did a little shoot today, launching a school production season with local talent done well, Matthew Garwood as the speaker. 

EM5 mk1 ISO 3200 40-150 at 150 f2.8. Not bad for a "tiny" and "old" sensor.

Amazing ink. Very Asian inspired and very well done.

Glad I bought the big lens. It allows close shots, with very a good success rate.

Hope there are more of these types of shoot.

Big Weather and free food

Thunder storm brewing, we can hear it rolling in. Pizza guy just tried to deliver a paid for Pizza to us (right address, wrong name), but too honest. Madness abounds.

OMD 40-150 at 40mm. Editing consisted of darkening the "black's" slider, reducing noise for smoothness, adding clarity to separate the cloud details and a bit of contrast added.

Early images rediscovered.

I just found a bunch of images from my first trip away to Melbourne with the new EM5. They are processed (as possible) jpeg's as RAW was not available at the time. 

The first five are with the older 20mm Panasonic, the next two are the 45mm Olympus and the last one was with the 14mm Panasonic. When I worked in the shop we used some of these to sell a lot of OMD/Pen cameras. I was blown away with the ease that images were achieved at night (exposure peeking, stabiliser, lens sharpness wide open etc.) and that enthusiasm rubbed off. My comparison was to Canon "L" glass and crop frame SLR's used in Italy the year before. 

Colour vs Mono #4

Another pairing off. This one comes and goes with me. The mono image is cleaner and better balanced, but the cool colours show the late time of day and inclement weather better. 

The mans shoulder is balanced well with the umbrella and the background lights are effectively invisible in the mono image. In the colour one, the umbrella colour, the pink lights and the mans neck and collar become much stronger. The colour image shows a strong contrast between the cold light of the time of day and the artificially lit elements.

OMD 17mm f1.8

Colour vs Mono #3 No winner

Another look at the contrast between mono and colour processing. No superior choice here to my mind. I honestly cannot choose a "winner". The vibrant colour vs the restful tones. Both work but differently.

Pen F 75mm f2

A trait of some converted images is they can look "dirtier". The mono image needed a lot of spotting out of a dozen or so tiny, but noticeable black spots on the front column. They are in the colour image, but the strength of colour hides them. When reduced to tones and textures only (with an increase of contrast to make the mono image stronger), they stand out a lot more.

Two conversations

Both taken from the same spot, with different subjects and different treatment.

The first image screams opulence, youth, maybe arrogance, but definitely status or the attempt to display it.

The mono version of this looses the critical gold of the phone and the complimenting background colours, but the Apple logo stands out more.

Pen F 75mm f2

The second image has a much more humble feel. Someone, not necessarily worried, but with something on their mind, distracting them from presentation as they fall into habit.

The colour version of this image has a mish-mash of badly coordinated hues, cold and drab, but the mono version strips them away. 

Pen F 75mm f2