Hi folks,

In many ways my wife is always an inspiration to me. I’ve often joked with her that her handbags are like Dr. Who’s T.A.R.D.I.S. Full of “useful things” that she “might just need” just like my camera bags are for me. So I set myself a small challenge to see just how much small lightweight camera gear I could fit into one of my tiny Manfrotto camera bags and here’s the result, oh and for the record, my packed camera bag  weighs in at less than her packed handbag and at the less than princely sum of £7 my camera bag cost me considerably less than any of her handbags. 🙂

First off to give a sense of scale, the bag is approx. 8 inches wide –

Back pocket: memory card case for 6 spare cards, 4 moist lens wipes, 2 spare camera batteries in a neoprene case, a 52-58 mm step up ring which adapts my ND filter to fit my 9-18 mm lens and a pair of filter wrenches.

Main compartment left: Olympus PEN-F with Lumix 12-32 mm (37 mm filter thread) and JJC hood (which will accept 58 mm filters), hard case (originally designed for stereo ear buds) containing Olympus 9 mm fisheye body cap lens (or maybe my 15 mm body cap lens) and a 58 mm variable ND filter.

Main compartment right: M.Zuiko 9-18  mm (hood fitted), Lumix 35-100 mm (hood fitted). Underneath these lenses my Lumix 14 mm or Lumix 20 mm, Olympus M-CON macro converter (fits the 12-32 mm, 35-100 mm , 14 mm and 20 mm lenses) and the hood for the 14 mm or 20 mm into which the M-CON sits neatly.

Lastly I fitted two sticky pad/feet things to my lens back caps to cushion them. So my camera, a total of six lenses (I’m counting the M-CON as a lens) and other vital stuff that that I “simply must carry with me and I might just need” all into a small, discrete, lightweight bag. Whilst I was taking these shots she came into the room, saw me sitting on the floor taking pictures of the bag and it’s contents on the carpet and said, with a smile on her face and a look that one usually reserves for animals and small children,  “I won’t ask!” and then walked out. She knows me too well!. 🙂

Kind regards

Leigh

Hi everyone,

Following on from my post yesterday I thought I’d do a posting with a selection of shots taken with my M.Zuiko 9-18 and 14-150 mm lenses.

Kind regards

Leigh

Hi everyone,

If you’ve been following my blog for a while then you’ll know that I have an obsession with compact and lightweight kit for travelling and I’ve been experimenting again and I think that I’ve probably arrived at my best load out yet. My new Olympus PEN-F, M.Zuiko 9-18 mm and 14-150 mm lenses and my Olympus Tough TG-5 as a second camera which is weatherproof and rugged and which can also serve as a backup. I’ve used the 14-150 mm quite a bit in the last few years and it’s very sharp and light. All of this in one of my  very small Manfrotto shoulder bags which were bargains at £7 each 🙂 🙂 and which are small enough to just about squeeze into your average hotel room safe.

So coverage from, in full-frame terms, 18 mm ultra-wide angle through to 300 mm telephoto. The TG-5 also has an amazing macro mode which focuses down to 1 cm! as well as USB charging and a useful 24 mm- 100 mm zoom range. Throw in a couple of spare batteries for each camera and spare memory cards and I’m good to go. Another bonus is that this bag is easily small enough for air travel carry on luggage to fit under the seat in front and still allow leg room, I don’t like putting my camera gear in the overhead lockers unless I’m forced to do so.

Another of my obsessions is rain protection so I dug out an Olympus camera wrap thing that I got in with something that I bought as well as a couple of my small red nylon waterproof  drawstring bags. Even though the 14-150 mm and especially my TG-5 are both weather-sealed,  two lessons that I learned the hard way a long time ago on a boat in Greece is that, prevention is much better (and a heck of a lot less costly) than cure and you’ve got to have somewhere to keep things separate if and when they get wet and my PEN-F and 9-18 mm are not weather sealed so they add an extra layer of protection in transit which is never a bad thing. It’s a snug fit but it works. 🙂 Pull a rain cover over the bag and one has three layers of protection against the elements.

If this all sounds like paranoia and overkill, if you’ve ever been caught out in the open in heavy rain storm or drenched by waves out at sea in rough weather, you’ll appreciate that it isn’t !. I’m not really overly concerned about my TG-5 as it’s waterproof down to a depth of 15 meters which is a part of the reason why I bought it and what makes it a good choice of a lightweight all-weather backup camera but my other gear wouldn’t take too kindly to a soaking.

Best wishes,

Leigh

If your preference is for big heavy DSLR kit and lenses then you are probably reading the wrong post. 🙂 If, one the other hand, you have an interest in small, lightweight, cameras and lenses then please read on…….

Hi folks,

Sadly, at my advanced age, I have to concede that the opposite is much nearer the truth, my camera is probably too sexy for me. 🙂 . Rain, rain and more rain and the forecast for the next few days, yes, you guessed it, even more rain, you just gotta love the UK weather. So, frustratingly, after weeks of lockdown,  I haven’t been able to put my new camera through its paces yet except for setting it up to my preference and taking some indoor test shots.

I think I’m going to have a lot of fun with my new Olympus PEN-F which I bought “preloved” in near mint condition for a very good price. I’m really looking forward to testing it out and it has some very interesting features and, it IS a very sexy camera, especially in the silver finish and thus puts a huge tick in my “I like retro looks” box 🙂 . It also fits hand-in-glove with my preference for lightweight kit, especially when combined with a few of my fast and lightweight M.Zuiko primes like my 12,17,25 and 45mm lenses and/or small compact zooms like my M.Zuiko 9-18  mm and Lumix 35-100 mm. I can carry this camera and three lenses, plus the obligatory spare batteries and memory cards and my M-CON macro converter, in one of my very compact Manfrotto bags.

Another small, but financially important, plus for me is that the camera uses the same BLN-1 batteries and thus my USB chargers as my OM-D cameras. Don’t be fooled by it’s retro styling though, this camera has a 20 MP sensor, a 50 MP JPEG/80 MP RAW hi-res shot mode, silent electronic shutter modes and just about every other feature that one could expect to find in a modern digital camera as well as Olympus’ great solid build quality. I really like the dedicated exposure compensation dial on the top as well as the highlight/shadow control wheel which puts these controls right where you want them and of course that  very interesting dial on the front.

Can’t wait to try it out properly a post some shots taken with it.

Kind regards,

Leigh

Hi folks,

I’m very excited by my new camera, more news when I upload some shots taken with it. It’s a camera I’ve been hankering after for ages.

Can you guess what it is yet? 🙂

Kind regards

Leigh

Hi folks,

I’ve been looking for one of these LCD hoods for a while. The problem is that all the one’s I’ve found require sticking parts to the camera, something that I didn’t want to do. Enter the Movo LH30 Deluxe LCD Hood Shade for Flip-Out DSLR Camera and Camcorder LCD’s (for 3″ Screens). , catchy name huh?!. It’s cheap and cheerful and it does the job, it’s not made well enough to last a lifetime and it perfectly fits my OM-D E-M5 Mk II articulated screen.  I think that they are also available for 2.75, 3.25 and 3.5 inch screens under the MOVO and NEEWER brand names.

I don’t usually use the LCD screen very much out and about even though they have their uses, partly because I’m so used to using viewfinders for all these years, partly to conserve battery consumption and partly because in strong sunlight and in hot countries etc., they’re absolutely flipping useless, you can’t see a darned thing. This lightweight unobtrusive little bit of kit works like a charm. Always nice when one finds something that one’s been looking for for ages and it works as expected. 🙂

Best wishes.

Leigh

Hi folks,

I’ve given up doing videos as they’re time consuming to do and nobody much looks at them so I’m doing a normal blog post instead.

My home macro “studio” (far too pretentious a word) 🙂  is so confined, or to put it another way, as the old saying goes, “you can’t swing a cat in here”. So I’ve been choosing my recent investments in macro gear with this firmly in mind.  I’ve also done this strictly on a budget.

My first addition was the small light tent. I quickly discovered that the backdrops supplied with it are made of a sort of felt/lint material which attracts dust like it’s going out of fashion and shows every blemish and scuff mark, not great and especially so when I’m doing green or blue screening so I bought some very cheap non-shiny, fine grain, sheets of thin A4 coloured card and I also used an old box file to raise the “stage” up a bit. As many of you know I’m not a lover of tripods or flash in my regular work, but for this kind of work it’s essential to have a steady platform and indoor lighting options. Another very cheap addition that I bought is one of those small “helping hands” things to hold flower stems, other objects or some white card to act as a reflector and/or for setting manual white balance.

A while back I bought a small Godox TT350o flash gun which hasn’t seen much use just in case I ever needed one for family shots of the grandkids etc. and I added a Godox X1T radio flash trigger which is the unit connected directly to the camera’s hotshoe. This unit also has a pass-through hotshoe on top to which I added a cheap manual LED ring flash. This unit, seen mounted on top of the X1T, is quite versatile. It has 7 brightness settings as well as the facility to turn on the lights continuously and set their brightness as well as switching off either the left or right bank of LEDs so their light isn’t so flat. It’s also supplied with four diffusers, an opaque one, a translucent one as well as yellow and blue ones to change the colour temperature of the light source and includes adapter rings to fit most filter threads but I had to buy 46 mm to 49 mm step up ring.

So I can run just the TT350 triggered by the X1T or the LED ring flash (in flash or light mode) or both together as required. You set a common radio channel and group to both Godox units and the trigger controls the flash as a slave unit. As a personal preference I’ve been using manual focus and manual flash settings, the camera’s focus peeking and magnification features are great focusing aids. The X1T trigger sets the power for the TT350 flash gun.

As I mentioned space is very tight so I’ve just added a cheap focus rail, not generally to be used for it’s common usage but rather to allow me to quickly and easily move the camera in two additional axes, left/right and, most importantly,  forward/backwards. If I  had the space I’d move the tripod but, as I haven’t, this is a really handy way of achieving the same. The rail should also prove very useful for when I use non-macro lenses with my Olympus MCON-P01 macro lens attachment.

I’m waiting to take delivery of the last two bits of kit, a mains adapter for my E-M1 Mk1 and power grip which will make life a lot easier as I’m running through camera batteries very quickly and also a PC sync cable so that I can remove the X1T and the ring flash from the camera’s hotshoe mount and connect the X1T to the camera’s PC socket and thus reduce weight and, particularly, height.  I’m also very pleased that I chose to buy secondhand a 30 mm macro lens and not their 60 mm model as it provides a wider angle of view which is very useful in this confined space. Their 60 mm does have focus limiting, D.O.F scale and weather-sealing but I’m not outside photographing insects or flowers etc. so it’s not important to me and it is very sharp and  focuses down to a smidgen under 1 cm!.

And lastly I said that I’ve been trying to do this on a budget :

Ring Flash – £21.50
Godox X1T Radio flash trigger – £37.00
Step up ring £3.99
Light Tent and four mains powered LED lights – £44.99
DC Mains Adapter for OM-D E-M1 Mk 1 camera – £19.97
Helping Hand – £6.72
Coloured card (25 sheets each of blue and green) – £5.98
PC Synch Cable – £5.89
Focusing Rail – £22.99

Total expenditure = £170, helping to keep my sanity during lockdown, “priceless” 🙂

And on the subject of cats, a shot of my wife Valerie’s broach.

Stay safe, kind regards,

Leigh