The beauty of Micro Four Thirds.

April 12, 2026 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in Landscape, Leigh Kemp, Photography, Photography equipment, Travel | Leave a comment

Hi everyone,

This year marks the 13th Anniversary of my switch to using Micro Four Thirds cameras and lenses. During this time my cameras and lenses have travelled thousands of miles and taken thousands of images. If it wasn’t for the small size and particulary the low weight of my cameras and lenses I wouldn’t be able to still be taking pictures today. Above is a shot of three very small and ultra-compact lenses that constitute a very nice lightweight travel kit. The Lumix 20mm f/1.7 prime lens and Lumix 12-32mm and 35-100mm zoom lenses which, along with a small camera body, all fit in my Billliingham Hadley Digital camera bag along with a few accessories.. When travelling it gives me the flexibility of taking just one lens with me when out and about such as the 12-32mm, two lenses by including the 35-100mm when I think that I might require it and the 20mm lens is there for low light/night time shots and one can get some nice environmental portraits with this lens as well as making a versatile all-round walk-about lens. I have found the 12-32mm to be such a useful lens that I own two of them and one lives in my travelling tech bag as a backup should I ever require it. The only thing that I’ve done is adding after-market lens hoods to suit my preference. and enable me to fit my standardised 58mm filters.

20mm f/1.7:

Weight	100g (3.5 oz)
Dimensions	63mm diameter x 25.5mm length

Lumix 12-32mm f/3.5-5.6

Weight	70 g (0.15 lb)
Length	24 mm (0.94″)

Lumix 35-100mm f/4-5.6

Weight	135 g (0.30 lb)
Length	50 mm (1.97″)

So you can see from the above specifications just how small and lightweight these lenses are and they are all more than acceptably sharp.

Kind regards

Leigh

Monochrome Landscape.

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

Hi everyone,

Olympus PEN-F camera and M.Zuiko 17mm lens. Processed in DXO PureRAW 6, Skylum Luminar NEO, DXO Filmpack 8 and selective adjustments in DXO NIK Collection 6 Vivesa.

Kind Regards

Leigh

Lumix 14mm f/2.5

April 9, 2026 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in Leigh Kemp, Photography | 5 Comments

Hi everyone,

A few shots taken in Bognor this morning with my Olympus PEN-F camera and one of my oldest lenses, my Lumix 14mm f/2.5, the black and white processing in DXO Filmpack 8. I’m not a street photographer but it’s fun once in a while.

If I was a street photographer I’d have cropped one of my shots like this.

Kind regards

Leigh

Latest thoughts and ramblings.

April 8, 2026 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in Leigh Kemp, Photography, Photography equipment and tagged camera, cameras, lenses, Photography, Travel | 2 Comments

Hi evryone,

It’s getting ever increasingly more difficult to get the shots that I want. I’m now down to taking out just one small prime lens and pretty much the lightest of my Micro Four Thirds camera bodies. I started with prime lenses years ago and then bought several zoom lenses including my original travel zoom my Olympus 12-40mm f/2.8 PRO lens which is now far to heavy for me to take out. The lens that I need doesn’t exist and in terms of technology probably won’t exist for many years to come that’s a “standard” zoom lens that covers my preferred focal length range, mid wide angle to medium telephoto, as fast, light and compact as a standard focal length prime lens It’s a bit ironical as a standard zoom is what I need nowadays as , with my mobility problems, it avoids having to zoom with my feet or maybe that should be move with my legs but it’s not adequate as a one lens solution as I need a fast lightweight, compact lens for both day and nigh time use. So, the lens that more or less ticks the weight and speed boxes the best and covers most of my requirements albeit with its limitations is my M.Zuiko 17mm f/1.8 35mm equivalent lens. I’m missing some shots because my legs get very achy and tired very quickly on leaving the house not to mention painful by the end of the day but at least I’m getting some shots. At the risk of sounding melodramatic I’ve come close quite a few times to considering selling up my gear but something inside always stops me short of doing so.

Filters:

I’m not a big user of filters as I like to do most in post processing but I have narrowed it down to an absolute maximum of four filters that I’m experimenting with taking out and about with me.

Marumi Super DHG circular polarising filter. Not a filter that I need that often but useful on occasions.

Tiffen FusionPOL combined 1/4 pro black mist and CPL filter. I very rarely take portraits of people but it’s handy to have the black mist effect as well as the CPL but, for me, it’s not as useful as my other two filter below for use at night.

Kenko Black Mist #0.5. This filter has a pretty strong diffusion effect and works well if one want the halation to effect the whole image. It has it’s uses in both day and nigh time but I find my last filter give a more pleasing all round effect.

K&F Concept Shimmer Diffuser 1 filter. Unlike the black mist filter this filter is much more subdued, the halation is localised to light sources and hardly noticeable in daylight. I like this filter for nigh time use as the effect it a lot more subtle that black mist filters.

Software:

I’ve just invested in upgrading my DXO PureRAW software to the latest version 6. I’m a fan of DXO’s lens correction profiles which apart from lens distortionc correction it also includes corrections for lens-specific global sharpness and, vignetting as well as chromatic aberration correction option and, in my opinion, the best noise reduction out there and now incorprorating the DeepPRIME XD3 denoising tecnnology, The latest version also includes saving as compressed DNG format.

Kind regards

Leigh

Emsworth landscape

April 2, 2026 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in Landscape, Leigh Kemp, Photography, Travel | Leave a comment

Hi everyone,

A landscape shot of Emsworth from my recent visit.

Best wishes,

Leigh

A painterly work of Emsworth.

April 2, 2026 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in Landscape, Leigh Kemp, Paintography, Photography, Travel | 2 Comments

Hi everyone,

Another work of Emsworth, Hampshire, UK.

Have a great Easter, Kind regards,

Leigh

Emsworth, Hampshire.

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

Hi everyone,

Some shots from my visit this morning to Emsworth in Hampshire all taken with my M.Zuiko 25mm f/1.8 lens and Olympus PEN-F camera. I took my M.Zuiko 12mm f/2 lens as well but didn’t end up using it, this focal length is too wide for me. Nice lens but, try as I might, it is just doesn’t work for me.

Kind regards

Leigh

Today’s trip out with two prime lenses.

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

Hi everyone,

All being well I’m heading out to Emsworth in Hampshire today to try out a combination of lenses that I haven’t used for quite a while, I’m taking my 12mm f/2 and 25mm f/1.8 (24mm and 50mm equivalent) lenses. These prime lenses were amongst the first lenses that I bought years ago for my Olympus cameras. I’ll upload some shots taken today with these lenses in a future post but here’s a few shots taken in Emsworth on a previous visit back in 2021. It’ll be interesting to see what I can find today using these lenses again. The only other items I’m taking with me are a spare camera battery, spare memory card and my combined 1/4 strength Tiffen Black Pro Mist and CPL filter. As it’s a fairly dull day I’m not sure if and when I might use the filter but it tends to live in my small camera bag nowadays and doesn’t take up any space or add any appreciable weight.

All the best,

Leigh

A short walk in Bognor Regis with my M.Zuiko 45mm f/1.8 lens.

March 30, 2026 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in Leigh Kemp, Photography, Photography equipment | 3 Comments

Hi everyone,

I’ve been feeling totally uninspired of late but I thought I’d ignore the cold wind and take only my 45mm lens for a short walk in Bognor as part of my reacquaintance with using this lens. Below some shots, I wouldn’t take only this lens out with me again as it’s too tight for framing my shots as I like them and it doesn’t leave much room for manoeuvre in tight spots I’m much happier with a lens between 17mm and 25mm (35mm and 50mm equivalent) which is where my Lumix 40mm equivalent f/1.7 lens fits in nicely as this suits my walk-about style much better and it’s how I see things. It is an excellent short telephoto portrait lens but I very rarely take shots of people or hanker for a longer lens which is why it’s been sitting on a shelf for ages. It was however fun trying to find subjects that I could more or less frame as I wanted with this lens and it was, as always, a joy to use

Kind regards

Leigh

Photo processing software licensing

March 29, 2026 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in Leigh Kemp, Photography, Photography equipment | 8 Comments

Hi,

Some years ago I promptly gave up Adobe products when they went over to a licensing model. I object strongly to having to pay and pay again to keep using a piece of software, I’m happy to pay a one-off payment for upgraded features where I feel that they represent good value for money and are of benefit to me or a one-off upgrade to a new software version where it offers sufficient useful extra functionality but to have to pay for the same upgrade features over and over again annually is something that I strongly object to. For some some years I’ve used Sklyum products including every version of their Luminar software, their Aurora HDR software and many one-off paid add-ons eg. LUTs etc.. I note that they now do an annual “Season Pass” which one has to pay in order to retain some of their add-on extra features that one’s already paid out for when one’s “pass” expires. as well as some extra features that I have absolutely no use for. For this reason I shall no longer be spending any money on their products. These companies seem to think that one has unlimited funds and very deep pockets, they want to try being reliant on a UK state pension!. Skylum marketed heavily on their software being “Pay Once” and not a subscription but they, like the vast majority of their competitor have done are moving in that direction which I find personally totally unacceptable.

Kind regads

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.