Hi folks,

Thank heavens that I’ve been able to get into macro photography as it means that I can try experimenting with this whilst confined to home. I’m itching to get out and about and pursue my main interest in landscape photography again but it’s proven to be quite absorbing.

My small macro setup, light tent, OM-D E-M5 II, M.Zuiko 30 mm macro lens, Godox TT350O flash and X-1 radio flash trigger and LED ring light. This has proven to be a very flexible lighting arrangement.  The ring light can be operated either stand alone in manual flash mode or as a continuous light source and/or used in conjunction with the X-1 and TT350O. I also have four mains powered LED lights that came with the light tent  The TG-5 is there to take the closeup picture below of the EM-5 II. I’ve also been experimenting further with the TG-5’s amazing microscope mode which allows focus as close as 1cm  and both cameras have focus stacking and/or focus bracketing.

I’m using Olympus’ Capture tethering software and their Workspace software with the camera connected by USB. I found some interesting PC and Android software called Spacedesk which has enabled me to add my 10 inch Android tablet as a fourth monitor connected by USB which is much faster and more reliable than WIFI, the software also has a touch screen mode. This allows me to display the two Olympus programs across the four monitors. The Capture software on the two larger displays and the Worskpace software on the two smaller displays.

Top left: live view display and Capture tether controls, top right: Capture output full screen, bottom left: Workspace main window and bottom right closeup of a captured file. By moving the Android tablet near to the camera and displaying the Live view window output from Olympus Capture software on it I can extend the battery life on the EM-5 by turning off the LCD screen  and also have a larger live view display which, along with focus peaking makes fine focus adjustments even easier. As soon as the camera has finished writing to the PC the Workspace software will display the files and one can examine them in more detail as I’m doing here on the bottom right display.

Some colourful batteries and green background that I chose for this post.

The same after using Green Screen Wizard software to change the background to one of my choosing.

An interesting learning curve and something that I can see myself doing more of in the future.

Stay safe, stay at home my friends and kind regards,

Leigh

PS. I discovered another nice thing about the Spacedesk software, one can connect more than one Android device by USB or WIFI so it’s possible to extend one’s Windows desktop to even more displays. 🙂 I did so by adding my smaller 7 inch tablet as a 5th display.

They just gather a lot of dust!.

Recently I found some of my old, and I mean old, Canon EF fit lenses from years ago and I’ve decided to take a punt on a cheap £20 K&F Concept mount adapter so that I can have some fun with them on my OM-D camera bodies. Sure they’ll all be manual focusing, no problem as all my old film camera lenses were and I didn’t have the luxury of modern-day focus peaking in those days and they’ll be fixed aperture but it’ll be a bit of fun trying them out. With the sensor crop factor of 2x it’ll be interesting as the 80-200 mm becomes quite a compact and lightweight (by EF lens standards) 160-400 mm f/5.6. One of the Sigmas becomes a rather interesting 36-400mm f/6.3!.I guess you’ve spotted the novelty lens coffee mug that I was bought as a Christmas pressie posing as the real thing. 🙂

So I’ll have a 36-400 mm, a 160-400 mm, a 56-180 mm and a heavy 34-70 mm to try out. I’m not expecting miracles but it’s got be better than watching them gather even more dust.

A few old shots taken with the 35-70 mm in Paris as part of a commission many years ago now. Taken on a Canon EOS APS-C (x1.6 crop) sensor body.

Best,

Leigh