“Chania Nights”

October 20, 2026 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in Leigh Kemp, Photography, Travel | 1 Comment

Hi Everyone,

Street shot, Chania, Crete by night. Lumix 20mm f/1.7.

Kind regards

Leigh

The big “C”

October 16, 2026 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in Leigh Kemp, Photography | 4 Comments

Hi everyone,

I have chosen to share some news with you all. The doctors have told me that there’s a near certainty that I have Stage 4 lung cancer. They still have a couple of tests to do but I feel pretty certain that their diagnosis is right. Unfortunately stage 4 cannot be cured but it can be treated to prolong life so, given the best case scenario, you might hopefully be stuck with me for some time to come 🙂 however my ability to get out and take photos has for some time now been getting increasingly harder.

I’m not wishing to be sensationalist, melodramatic or seeking sympathy. I’ve been running this blog for more than 13 years and, in that time, I’ve made many good friends and I feel like I want to let my friends know where I’m at. My blog has always been much more than just about sharing my photographs, experiences, travels, techniques and gear etc. and one of the most enjoyable and rewarding things has always been meeting, conversing and sharing information with you all.

As you can imagine this has come as a huge shock to me, my family and friends and I’m determined to take whatever treatment options that I’m offered and fight this thing with all my strength of body and mind. Without bursting into my rendition of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” which, trust me, you really DON’T want to hear 🙂 , I’ve been truly blessed with a loving wife and family and good friends, a great many very happy memories, some fabulous travel opportunities, been fortunate to be able to indulge my passions for photography and music, what more could I have possibly wished for?!.

Warmest Regards to you all,

Leigh

Modular Thinking

October 6, 2026 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in Leigh Kemp, Photography, Photography equipment, Travel and tagged Photography, Travel, cameras, camera | 2 Comments

Hi everyone,

As previously mentioned I recently bought a 52mm Kenko Nostaltone filter. My usual filter size is 58mm, I got the 52mm because I didn’t want to wait until April of next year to get a 58mm size from Japan and the 52mm is also a tad cheaper which is never a bad thing 🙂 . This isn’t a problem as the vast majority of my lenses have a filter thread size of 52mm or less.

This got me thinking on adapting four of my most frequently used small, light Micro Four Thirds lenses to this filter thread size. My Lumix 14mm f/2.5, 20mm f/1.7 and 35-100mm f/4-5.6 lenses all have 46mm filter threads as do quite a few of my other lenses and my Lumix 12-32mm f/3.5-5.6 lens has a 37mm thread size so I bought four step up rings to step them all up to 52mm.

In order to minimize things I adapted one of my metal screw on 46mm hoods by fitting a 52-46mm step down ring and, to the front of the hood one of my 58mm magnetic adapter rings and lens caps allowing the hood to be used on three out of four of the above lenses. Why carry several lens hoods when one will do?, after all I can only use one lens at a time 🙂 . The exception to the above being the 12-32mm lens to which I fitted 37-52 mm and 52-58mm step up rings plus another of my 58mm magnetic adapter rings and lens caps. No vignetting at 12mm with a 52mm and/or 58mm filter/s fitted.

It all might sound more than a bit complicated but there is method to my madness 🙂 and this arrangement is very versatile as it allows me to shoot with:

No filters fitted with or without a hood.
With a 52mm filter fitted with or without a hood
With a 58mm filter snapped on to the end of the hood.
With both 52mm and 58mm filters and a hood if, not frequently, I so wish.

As an added bonus my TG-5 camera and filter adapter also takes a 52mm filter size for which I have a 52mm CPL filter I bought some while back. Fitting the 52mm CPL to one of my lenses as well as the hood allows me to rotate the filter by rotating the hood which is my preferred way of doing things as it’s quicker, less fiddly and still provides protection from knocks and flaring.

In total, 3×46-52mm step up rings, 1×37-52mm step up ring, 1×52-46mm step down ring, 2x58mm magnetic filter adapters and caps, one 46mm lens hood with 58mm front thread, there you have it 🙂

Kind regards

Leigh

Kenko Nostaltone Orange filter.

October 2, 2026 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in Leigh Kemp, Photography, Photography equipment, Travel and tagged art, camera, Nature, Photography, Travel | 6 Comments

Hi everyone,

The other day in a post I mentioned I was waiting for delivery of a new filter. This filter is one that I’ve been greatly looking forward to trying out. Kenko make three Nostaltone filters in orange, blue and green. They all have different properties, I chose the orange version to try out as I have a leaning towards warmer, softer, diffused images. The orange has a stronger colour effect and some unusual flare properties as well as a weaker diffusion effect compared with the blue version. The blue version has a weaker colour effect and a stronger diffusion effect and also some interesting flare properties. I’m not sure about the green filter as I’ve not been able to find a lot of information on it. These filters are somewhat hard to get in the UK and mine came by a very bizarre route from Japan to the UK via Spain and France!.

Below are some straight out of camera shots taken with the Nostaltone filter mounted on my Olympus 9-18mm lens at ISO 200 with sunny white balance setting. I wanted to find some Autumnal foliage as I though the filter would work well with the Autumnal colours. It’s been a lovely sunny day, because we’ve had a long, hot, dry summer the foliage is still very green for this time of year, I’ll probably repeat this later in the month. I haven’t done anything in post with these images except for lens corrections and, as the filter softens the image, I’ve left it that way and not applied any sharpening. I edited the last image to make it look more Autumnal. 🙂 With one minor exception I couldn’t get it to exhibit the blue lens flares, even without my lens hood fitted which might be a factor of my lens choice, I’ll be trying it with different lenses.

Kind regards to all,

Leigh

Photography in one’s advancing years.

September 29, 2026 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in Leigh Kemp, Photography, Photography equipment, Travel | 2 Comments

Hi everyone,

I found this very interesting video and as I’m inexorably nudging towards 70, I can fully identify with what he’s saying. My own minimalist camera choice closely resembles his. A small camera bag, one camera body, a spare battery, a small filter pouch with an absolute maximum of four small diameter filters, a lens cloth and, in my case, a couple of very small and lightweight zoom lenses which weigh in at a combined lens weight of 288g or approx. 10 oz!.

As someone who doesn’t habitually shoot many shots at telephoto focal lengths if I’m going to carry a “what if” lens, particularly when travelling, it has to be the smallest, lightest, most compact telephoto that I can pack and at 133g with a length of 5.6cms that’s my Lumix 35-100mm (70-200mm equiv.) f/4-5.6 lens which fits in the palm of one’s hand. At this weight I can live with it even if it only gets used very occasionally. It’s small size means that it’s an eminently pocketable lens which is useful. This lens nicely compliments my equally small and lightweight M.Zuiko 9-18mm (18-36mm equiv.) f/4-5.6 lens which I more than often find myself using at or towards the long end.

In the flashy promotional gear videos you always see a young, fit-looking guy bounding up the rocks with the waves crashing effortlessly carrying a backpack full of gear and a tripod with a heavy camera and lens hanging from his neck. Nowadays I couldn’t even climb up the rocks let alone do so with camera gear. 🙂 So at the end of the day it boils down to a simple choice, adapt to one’s physical limitations or give up. In total honesty do I feel slightly aggrieved that I’m not that man in the videos?, absolutely, will it prevent me from pursuing and enjoying my photography?, absolutely not!.

Kind regards

Leigh

The Taylor Swift Look :)

September 28, 2026 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in Leigh Kemp, Photography, Photography equipment, Travel | Leave a comment

Hi everyone,

I recently discovered that Taylor Swift, another Olympus/OM Systems user’s favourite look for her Instagram page is using the Olympus Vintage 1 art filter. As I shoot RAW most of the time and Olympus’ Workspace software allows me to add the art filter in post I thought, for fun, and as I couldn’t find any obliging celebreties, I’d give a few of my recent street shots of Worthing the “Taylor Swift Look”. I never thought I’d have anything in common with Taylor Swift. 🙂 All shots taken with my Lumix 35-100mm f/4-5.6 lens and Pen F camera.

Moving swiftly on, sorry couldn’t resist the pun, I’ve ordered a new filter from Japan, one that I’ve been interested in for some while now. More on that when I’ve received it and had a chance to try it out but, suffice to say, I’m quite excited to see the effect this filter has.

Kind regards

Leigh

Photo walk in Worthing with Lumix 35-100mm f/4-5.6

September 22, 2026 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in Leigh Kemp, Photography, Photography equipment, Travel | 2 Comments

HI everyone,

As it’s been a beautiful, sunny, hot day I thought I’d take my 35-100 (70-200) mm lens and my PEN-F camera for a walk around Worthing. This lens is so tiny, light and sharp and it’s a real joy to use. Although street photography isn’t my genre it was fun, I particularly like the shot of the lady dancing to the rap music coming from the boom box. 🙂 I processed these shots with various Teal and Orange LUTs. Below, a few shots:

Best wishes,

Leigh

Farewell old monitors, you’ve served me well and ON1’s photo restore feature.

June 10, 2026 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in Leigh Kemp, Photography | Leave a comment

Hi everyone,

Lately I’ve been investing some time, effort and unfortunately money in getting good monitor calibration. The chances of getting a good calibration on one, let alone two, of my ageing 27 inch monitors was slim to say the very least if not totally impossible. I decided to bite the bullet and get two new Hewlett Packard 27 inch monitors to replace them. I’m very pleased with them, they’re by no means top of the line but good value for money. I installed the monitor drivers and attached my Spyder colorimeter and used the DisplayCal software to calibrate them at 120 cd/m² brightness down from their default 300 cd/m². I already had my NVidia GPU settings setup for full range RGB 0-255. On completion of calibration DisplayCal saves the monitor’s colour profile and you apply it. Nice to have two monitors with the same colour calibration.

The thing that I really like about the new monitors apart from their light weight and wafer-thin bezels is that it’s so easy to change their settings using the HP Display Center software rather than have to push fiddly buttons on the monitor and navigate through the monitor’s on screen display which makes adjusting RGB and brightness settings when calibrating them much quicker and easier. It’s also handy that this software has the facility to save a monitor’s settings to a file. In conjunction with my Iris eye-protect software I run with a warmer 5000 K colour temperature at 100 cd/m² during the day time and an even warmer 3700 K at 80 cd/m² in the evenings automatically switched at a set time to reduce the monitor’s blue light output further which rests my eyes before bedtime. When I run one of my processing programs it switches back automatically using its Colour Pauser function to my calibrated monitor setting of 6500 K at 120 cd/m². I’m a happy bunny 🙂

16 days after purchasing ON1’s Photo RAW MAX 2026.4 software they finally manged to get the license sorted out and I was able to try out their new Restore feature to colourise one of my old family black and white photos and it does a pretty good job which one can adjust afterwards as one likes, the shot below isn’t adjusted. My late mother did some modelling and film extra work when she was younger in the 60’s and early 70’s. People thought she looked like Joan Collins, of course I’m more than heavily biased but I think that she was prettier. I have absolutely no idea where the dog came from, she probably “borrowed” it for the shot. Her claim to fame was that she once stood on Dudley Moore’s foot at a party which, given the high heels she wore, must have hurt. A case of no fame, no pain I suppose. 🙂

Best regards,

Leigh

Worthing Dome

June 3, 2026 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in HDR, Landscape, Leigh Kemp, Photography | 4 Comments

Hi everyone,

The historical Worthing Dome Cinema on Worthing seafront. Five frame handheld HDR, Olympus PEN E-PL8 and Lumix 35-100mm lens.

Kind regards

Leigh

Monitor Calibration.

May 31, 2026 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in Leigh Kemp, Photography, Photography equipment | Leave a comment

Hi everyone,

I’ve been using one of those DataColor Spyder devices and their associated software to calibrate my two large post-processing monitors. I’ve always been somewhat underwhelmed with their software and decided to try the Spyder hardware with the DisplayCAL software. I think this software is more fully featured and does a much better and more thorough job of calibrating the monitors. Once setup it works perfectly with the Spyder sensor. I found this very useful Youtube video which walks you through setting up DisplayCal to work with the Spyder device.

The only additional thing that I did was disable the DisplayCaL system tray applet which loads through Windows Task Scheduler as it doesn’t play nicely with the IrisTech eye-saver software that I use to dim my monitors and change the colour temperature to warm white late in the evenings along with an Alexa routine which also changes the room lighting from 6500°K daylight to 3000°K warm white as the applet causes one of my monitors to periodically change brightness but this isn’t something that very many people would have to do. The IrisTech “Iris” software has colour pausers and colour triggers which can be set to automatically change to a set colour temperature and brightness when a specific program is launched.

On another note I bought ON1’s Photo RAW MAX 2026 software a week ago but unfortunately I’ve been unable to really use it as ON1 have an issue with their payment people FastSpring. The receipt for the software appears on my ON purchases section but not in the product and subscription section of my ON1 account so I cannot complete registering the software and thus using many of its features until this is resolved which is quite frustrating. I’ve been told that ON1 are working with FastSpring to resolve this issue, I hope they get it sorted soon. I’ve not been having much luck with software lately. 🙂

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 6.

Anthropics Technologies: Landscape Pro Studio 3 and Portrait Pro.

EyeQ: Perfectly Clear

ON1: Photo MAX RAW 2026

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.

Datacolor: SpyderExpress display calibration device and DisplayCal software.

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.