“Who forgot to tell the seagulls?”

First off there’s an ultra lightweight day out, “I don’t want to carry anything” kit comprising of my Olympus E-PL5 camera and two zoom lenses. A Panasonic Lumix 12-32mm and an Olympus M.Zuiko 40-150mm which together weigh next to nothing, you don’t know that you’ve got this one with you. The camera accepts my Olympus EV4 viewfinder so I can fit this and thus avoid using the LCD screen as I’m not fond of these screens especially in bright light.

PEN E-PL5 and Panasonic Lumix 12-32mm lens.

Next, a one camera, one lens weather-sealed setup comprising of my Olympus E-M5 mk 1 and Olympus M.Zuiko 14-150mm. A great all-weather travel combination.

For a fun day out with manual focus lenses my Olympus E-M5 mk II, TT Artisan 17mm and 35mm prime lenses and my Olympus M.Zuiko 12-40mm PRO zoom lens which, along with the camera body, gives me a weather-sealed option in case the weather takes a turn for the worse. This is my heaviest loadout because the 12-40mm is, by far, not my lightest lens but these lenses are all very sharp and a lot of fun to use.

For the times when I like to just go out with a camera and all prime lenses. My Olympus E-P5 camera with EV4 electronic viewfinder and Olympus M.Zuiko 17mm, 30mm macro (which is tack sharp and doubles as a very good all-round “street” lens) and 45mm lenses. I chose the 30mm over my M.Zuiko 25mm and Panasonic Lumix 20mm lenses for it’s macro capabilities as it focus down to an amazing 1cm!.

Lastly, probably my favourite day-to-day loadout, my Olympus PEN-F and three zoom lenses, Panasonic Lumix 12-32mm and 35-100mm and Olympus M.Zuiko 9-18mm lenses.

All of these loadouts except, where noted, are lightweight and very portable, versatile and fit in a small camera bag. Maybe it’s given you food for thought.

Kind regards

Leigh

“Ice Cold on the Seafront”

July 17, 2021 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in Leigh Kemp, Monochrome, photography, Travel | Leave a comment

Hi everyone,

Worthing seafront. I know what you’re thinking. What amazing legs I have for a man of my age!. 🙂 Another test of my new PEN E-P5 with my M.Zuiko 17mm f/1.8 lens.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/leighkemp/51316516122/in/dateposted-public/lightbox/

Best wishes,

Leigh

“Pretty – Vacant”

July 16, 2021 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in HDR, Landscape, Leigh Kemp, photography, Travel | Leave a comment

Hi folks,

Worthing beach. PEN E-P5 and M.Zuiko 45mm f/1.8. I took three M.Zuiko primes with me today, my 17mm f/1.8, 12mm f/2 and 45mm f/1.8 to try out my new E-P5. I didn’t like any of the shots taken with the 12mm as usual, it’s just too wide for my tastes. A lovely lens but too wide.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/leighkemp/51314891732/in/dateposted-public/lightbox/

Kind regards

Leigh

“The invasion of the giant flip- flops!” :)

July 16, 2021 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in Leigh Kemp, photography, Travel | Leave a comment

Hi everyone,

A fun shot taken on my travels. Now tell me if you find a more bizarrely titled shot today. 🙂

https://www.flickr.com/photos/leighkemp/51315634825/in/dateposted-public/lightbox/

Best wishes,

Leigh

An ever so simple tip

July 16, 2021 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in Leigh Kemp, photography, Photography equipment, Travel | Leave a comment

Hi folks,

If you have a quick release plate fitted to your camera and you’re like me and never seem to have a coin handy, let alone a screwdriver 🙂 when you need one to fit it or remove it then this tip might be handy. Find yourself a metal washer that fits the screw and attach it to your camera bag. I’ve done this with all my bags, shown here attached with a small locking carabiner, job’s a good ‘un!. 🙂

Kind regards,

Leigh

Cordweaver camera neck and wrist straps.

July 15, 2021 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in digital art, Leigh Kemp, photography, Photography equipment, Travel | Leave a comment

Hi,

A small free plug for Brian, the maker of these Cordweaver camera straps. I just took delivery of two more neck straps and they came next day in the post. Excellent quality and first class service as usual. I now have five of the neck straps and two of the wrist straps on my cameras and I can thoroughly recommend them.

Original Post July 23rd 2019:

Hi everyone,

I’ve standardised on these great camera neck and wrist straps by a company called “Cordweaver” – https://www.cordweaver.co.uk/ . The straps are very light and strong and are available in a choice of two colours, red and black and various lengths, the leather ends are hand-sewn with strong polyester waxed thread. Connection to the camera is via the fitted 16mm diameter split rings and the wrist straps are made out of Type III 550lb Paracord with 7 internal strands.

Great service, very quick dispatch and very high quality merchandise. I used one on my EM-1 and one on my TG-5 for my recent trip to Porto and it was great, so good I’ve since bought another three, 🙂 very comfortable to wear and strong and it would be very hard to cut through should someone try and grab the camera.

cordweaver straps

Additional: The wrist straps come in two types, with Peak Design style connectors (as fitted to my EPL-5 on the top left) and, without, (as fitted to my TG-5). It is also supplied with a spare Peak Design connector, a nice touch.

Lastly, I really like how flexible they are and tuck in nicely in my camera bags unlike some of the stiffer and more bulky neck straps I’ve used. The wrist straps act like slip knots at either end so they tighten at both the camera end and the wrist end should the camera slip from your grip, the addition of a rubber grommet is another nice feature.

Kind regards

Leigh

“Simple Pleasures” Monochrome

July 15, 2021 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in Landscape, Leigh Kemp, Monochrome, photography, Photography equipment, Travel | Leave a comment

Hi folks,

Another test of my new TT Artisan 35mm f/1.4 lens,it’s sharp! 🙂

https://www.flickr.com/photos/leighkemp/51314338995/in/dateposted-public/lightbox/

PEN E-P5 and TT Artisan 35mm f/1.4 lens.

Tomorrow I’m looking forward to putting my latest acquisition, a used Olympus PEN E-P5 camera through it’s paces.

Kind regards

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 back in 2013 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-plus 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.

Cameras:

Olympus: OM-D E-M5 Mk II (titanium) & HLD-8G grip, OM-D E-M1 Mk I (black) & HDL-7 grip, OM-D EM-5 Mk I (silver) & HDL-6 grip, PEN EPL-5, PEN EP-5 (silver) +VF-4, PEN E-PL8 (Silver) +VF4, Tough TG-5 (red), PEN-F (silver), Canon Powershot G10, Nikon Coolpix A100

Lenses:

Olympus: M.Zuiko: 12 mm f/2, 17 mm f/1.8, 25 mm f/1.8, 45 mm f/1.8, 30 mm f/3.5 macro, 9 mm f/8 body cap fisheye, 15 mm f/8 body cap, 9-18 mm, 12-50 mm, 12-40 mm f/2.8 PRO, 14-150 mm II, 40-150 mm II, 12-45mm f/4 PRO, MCON-P02.

Sigma: ART 60 mm f/2.8.

Samyang: Manual focus 7.5 mm f/3.5 fisheye.

TT Artisan: Manual focus 17mm f/1.4, 23mm f/1.4, 35mm f/1.4.

Panasonic Lumix: 14 mm f/2.5, 20 mm f/1.7, 12-32 mm x2 (black and silver), 12-60 mm, 14-42 mm II, 35-100 mm, 45-150mm.

PEN E-P5, 9-18mm,12-32mm, 40-150mm II. A lightweight kit with virtually continuous coverage from 18mm wide angle to 300mm telephoto.

OM-D E-M1 I, 14-150mm II, 12-40mm PRO. . Heavier than my other kits but with complete weather-sealing. Coverage from 24mm wide angle to 300mm telephoto with some overlap for backup.

OM-D E-M5 II, 17mm, 35mm, 12-60mm. A balance of two fun manual focus lenses with a weather-sealed body and zoom lens.

PEN E-PL5, 9mm, 15mm, 25mm, 60mm, 12-50mm. Another lightweight fun kit with a zoom option.

TG-5, OM-D E-M5 mk1, 7.5mm, 12mm, 17mm, 45mm, 30mm macro. M-CON.

PEN-F, 14mm, 20mm, 12-32mm, 35-100mm. Probably my favourite lightweight day-to-day kit. Two fast primes and two zoom with almost continuous coverage from 24mm wide angle through to 200mm telephoto.

Software:

Corel: Paintshop Pro Elite 2020 & Video Studio 2019.

Skylum Software: Aurora HDR 2019, Luminar 4, Luminar AI and Luminar Neo.

DXO Labs: PhotoLab 5 Elite, Viewpoint 3, NIK Collection 6, Film Pack 5 and PureRAW.

Anthropics Technologies: Landscape Pro Studio 3 and Portrait Pro.

EyeQ: Perfectly Clear

Topaz Labs: Studio 2, Sharpen AI, A.I Gigapixel, AI Clear, AI Adjust, DeNoise AI and Various legacy plugins.

Adobe: Lightroom.

GreenScreenWizard Studio Pro.

Serif: Affinity Photo

Microsoft: Image Composite Editor (Free).

Darktable (Free).

Olympus: Olympus Capture, Olympus Workspace and Olympus Webcam (Free to Olympus owners).

Sony: Movie Studio Platinum.

Lighting Gear:

Godox TT350o flash, Godox X1T radio flash trigger, Godox Lux Junior flash, LED ring flash, GVM RGB LED light, Olympus MAL-1 Macro Arm Light. Two Godox LED36 lights, Godox Litemons LED6R light. Three Bowen studio flash heads, barndoors, honeycombes, umbrellas and flash meter.