Hi everyone,

I visited a local park this morning for a photo-walk and with the express purpose of trying out my new camera rain cover modification. Although the weather forecast mentioned a possibility of rain that wasn’t really what I was interested in so much as the effectiveness of the modification in keeping the cover firmly in situ whilst walking around and taking shots. As things turned out and such is the somewhat unpredictable nature of British weather it was a beautiful sunny Autumnal morning with blue sky and wispy white clouds about which I’m certainly not complaining. 🙂 . I took my EM-5 mk I camera and M.Zuiko 12-50mm lens. Purchased years ago with my original EM-5 I camera this lens has seen relatively little usage over the years. I quickly, possibly too quickly, moved on to other lenses in this zoom range like my faster M.Zuiko 12-40mm and 12-45mm PRO lenses and my trusty workhorse Lumix 12-60mm but it is well suited for occasions like this. It’s lightweight and the construction of the lens is such that it doesn’t change length when zooming unlike the “trombone” type zooms, ergo it doesn’t cause the cover to bunch up and jam when zooming and is thus ideally suited for use with a rain cover.

I think that this lens has attracted some unfair criticism and you can pick them up very cheaply used, It also features a customisable lens function button on the lens like many of their pro-series lenses which I’ve used to quickly switch between normal aperture priority mode and a pre-programmed HDR mode, variable-speed electromagnetic zoom mechanism and manual zoom, a minimum focus distance of 20cm and a useful pseudo-macro capability. I’m not a pixel-peeper, I’ll leave that to others with nothing better to do 🙂 . I’m very happy with the rain cover modification which performed exactly as intended . Although both the camera and lens were sold as weather-sealed I’m more than reluctant to totally trust the seals after so many years but it does potentially offer another layer of protection, below some shots with minimal editing, I set out to try and capture some of the beautiful Autumnal colours in the foliage and anything else that caught my eye. I broke my cardinal rule about always fitting a fresh battery and memory card before shooting in the rain which, as things turned out, didn’t matter. The last thing one needs is having to break off shooting and find a dry sheltered place do so which puts a bit of a dampener on things (pun intended). 🙂

All the best,

Leigh