My camera gear and new camera bag, travelling ultra light – approx. 1.5 Kg (3 lbs) total weight!.

January 28, 2020 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in digital art, Leigh Kemp, photography, Photography equipment, Travel | Leave a comment

Hi everyone,

I’ve manged to get the total weight of my camera gear down to about 1 Kg. Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mk II + Fotodiox grip, battery and memory card fitted (550 g) M.Zuiko 9-18 mm (approx 155 g), M.Zuiko 25 mm 1.8 (approx 136g) and Panasonic Lumix 12-60 mm (approx 210 g) and including my new thinkTANK Turnstyle 10 v2 sling bag (400 g) and few essential, such as spare batteries, memory cards, lens wipes and my thinkTANK Emergency camera rain cover, approx 1.5 Kg!.

I own or have seen faster and debatably sharper lenses but I’ve not seen sharper, faster and lighter lenses and certainly not a price point that I can afford or justify. The 12-60 mm is also weather-sealed to compliment my camera’s weather sealing. I chose the Fotodiox grip in preference to Olympus’ own grip as it doesn’t need to be detached and re-attached every time to change the camera’s battery.

My kit, chosen for it’s weight, size and focal length coverage to suit my photographic interests, which as I guess most of you already know are travel/landscapes.

summer 2020 gear new small
The bag seems like it’ll be perfect for my day-to-day requirements. Heaven knows I’ve tried all types of bag, shoulder bags, backpacks etc. and they all hurt. Could this be the one?!. The strap is nicely shaped and well padded.

TURNSTYLE 10_1

Main compartment, easy access to my gear. I’ve added a HeroClip to the top loop to easily hang it up or suspend it from a tripod hook. I really like the idea of swinging the bag round and my gear is right there where I want it.

TURNSTYLE 10_2

Rear compartment will hold an 8 inch tablet but is ideal for stashing my thinkTANK emergency camera rain cover which could also hang from the HeroClip to dry out when required.

TURNSTYLE 10_3

Main compartment for my camera and my choice of lenses. There’s also a horizontal stacking divider provided but I’m not currently using it.

TURNSTYLE 10_4

Another inside compartment, maybe for some paperwork, travel documents or suchlike.

TURNSTYLE 10_5

Front compartment comprising of three pockets for my filters, lens wipes, memory cards etc. and a larger front section in which you can just see my NEEWER battery case which is holds four Olympus BLN-1 batteries perfectly and securely.

TURNSTYLE 10_6

End compartment housing the bag’s rain cover, shown with the waist strap ends tucked in. I think that the addition of the waist strap to the V2 is a very useful feature to stop the bag swinging around on the move.

TURNSTYLE 10_7

Ultimately I don’t know how this bag will work out but I hope that my shoulders, back and neck will thank me for it. :).

Kind regards

Leigh

PS. A while back I started using Cordweaver camera straps. like the red one shown in this post.

Contre-jour

January 28, 2020 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in Fine Art, Fine Art Prints, HDR, Landscape, Leigh Kemp, photography, River, Travel | 1 Comment

Hi everyone,

Something a bit different for me.

49454270177_0f6ebcf6c7_c

https://www.flickr.com/photos/leighkemp/49454270177/in/dateposted-public/lightbox/

Best wishes, Leigh

As I sit here looking at my modern digital cameras I’m reminded of my first camera and, in particular, the first photograph that I ever took. Nowadays we take cameras and camera technology pretty much for granted but when I was a child I can’t remember many photographs. The only time our camera saw the light of day, and it had to be the light of day, as there wasn’t a flash, was on a few family occasions, the usual thing, school sports days, birthdays, etc.. My interest in photography didn’t start until my grandfather “loaned” me his camera to take with me on a week-long school trip, sleeping under canvas, in Snowdonia, North Wales. It was a somewhat battered old twin-lens reflex camera in which one looked downwards in to the viewfinder when taking a photograph.

I remember being very excited at being entrusted with the family camera, film wasn’t cheap and I had very little to no idea how to use it. The experience must have made some kind of impression on me as, after all these years, I still remember taking my first photograph. The coach stopped en-route at Blenheim Palace, the ancestral home of Sir Winston Churchill and it became the subject of my first photograph. Although, sadly, like my other photographs from the trip, it has long since disappeared, however, I really don’t need the photograph to remind me as the experience is indelibly etched on my mind. I wonder if this is perhaps where my interest in landscape photography stems from but that’s probably too much of an assumption. As far as I remember I was the only kid on the trip to have a camera, that’s how different things were, nowadays, just about everyone has a camera of some sort built in to their mobile phones. It also taught me to be disciplined to the point of being frugal when taking photographs as the trip was for one week and I only had a 12 exposure black and white film in the camera.

Some years later I really got the photography bug and bought my first camera, an Olympus OM-1 35 mm film camera and I went on to own their OM-2 and OM-4ti cameras and a range of lenses. Film was still pretty expensive considering I earned about £20 a week in my first job so I got in to developing and printing my own black and white and, later, colour films to help keep the costs down and make things more affordable. Not only did this experience teach me an awful lot about image-making start to finish, many of the techniques and skills that I learned in my makeshift darkroom, a small room adorned with genuine World War 2 blackout curtains fitted to keep out the light, another hand-me-down from my grandfather, these skills would re-surface and be invaluable some years later when I started working on processing my digital images.

I put myself through University as a mature student and I badly needed the money so I had to very reluctantly part with all my photographic equipment, but needs must. After I graduated I bought my first digital camera, a small fixed lens Kodak compact camera, reduced in a sale. It had, by today’s standards, a laughably small maximum image resolution of 640×480 pixels or, to put it another way, a stunning 0.4 Megapixels!. For all of this and further equipped with screw on wide angle and telephoto lens attachments, it proved to be a fabulous little camera which I took all over the place with me. Put simply, digital photography was a revelation, to me, no requirement for film, no real running costs and a lot of image capacity on a small memory card which I found absolutely liberating.

A few years before that I had discovered some free graphics editing software on the cover disk of a computer magazine and that started off my real passion for working with graphics and, ultimately, photo processing. So I then had all the tools I required to develop, pun intended and further, my interest in digital photography. Processing is where the magic starts for me, I am totally absorbed in and fascinated by the range of options that digital processing affords me. It encourages me, if, that is, I ever need encouragement, to constantly experiment with new styles, new techniques and is such an important part of my enjoyment and interest in photography.

I went on to own several DSLRs but, as I got older I began to find that they were simply too heavy and bulky. I switched over a few years ago to Micro Four Thirds cameras and lenses. My choice of MFT system was heavily influenced by my experiences with my Olympus film cameras, maybe it was, in truth, part based on nostalgia that I decided on their OM-D system. As a landscape/travel photographer I have to carry my gear around all day and the weight and bulk saving is highly significant. I’ve been very impressed with the image quality of my Micro Four Thirds equipment, it has traveled with me extensively, never let me down and I have never had cause to question my decision to go over to that format.

So my 50 year photographic adventure has led me from twin-lens reflex and single-lens reflex film cameras to digital cameras, from stumbling around in a dimly-lit darkroom to working with my images on my computer. I’ve heard it said on occasions, including a comment I read some while back by a very famous photographer, that cameras being so much an every-day item now and available in mobile phones etc. devalues photography. I feel quite the opposite, I firmly believe that it empowers everyone with affordable technology to take photographs and enjoy photography and that, in my opinion, is fantastic. Although I’ve very much enjoyed my personal photographic journey I do confess to feeling a slight tinge of regret that the technology wasn’t available when I started out but one can’t put the clock back and I intend to keep on embracing all these great technological advancements, experimenting and enjoying my work.