A new lens.

Hi everyone,

All being well I’m going to take my latest lens acquisition for a test at the weekend. I’ve bought a Panasonic Lumix 14-42 mm II lens at a good price. I’m swapping it over for my trusted and much loved Lumix 12-32 mm. The new lens fits squarely in with my love of small, lightweight lenses as it’s only 49 mm in length and weighs only 110g. Another advantage is that this lens takes the same 46 mm filter thread as many of my other lenses including some of my favorites, like my Lumix 14 mm f/2.5, 20 mm f/1.7 and 35-100 mm as well as M.Zuiko 12 mm f/2, 17 mm f/1.8, 25 mm f/1.8 and 30mm f/3.5 (macro) lenses and my Sigma Art 60 mm f/2.8 lens.

I do like the Lumix lenses for their size and weight, I’m not obsessed with the info to be found on lens testing sites. My experience is that these cheaper lenses with careful handling are very capable of producing very good image quality under most conditions. Especially so if one invests even a little time in post processing applying some basic adjustments as may be required to lens corrections, sharpness, contrast, saturation, shadow detail, vignetting, lightness etc.. I’m not hung up on an endless quest to find the ultimate in image quality especially if it comes, as it inevitably does, at a much higher price point and considerably heavier weight. I have neither the funds nor the will to play that game, I’d rather be out taking pictures and working on my shots. 🙂

The new lens looses a little at the wide angle end and gains a bit at the telephoto end compared with my 12-32 mm but I usually take my Olympus M.Zuiko 9-18 mm so it’s not an issue. So my kit for the day, in my new small Manfrotto bag, will be my PEN-F camera, 9-18 mm, 14-42 mm, 35-100 mm and 14 mm or 20 mm lenses or I might leave the primes and pack my 12-32 mm (70g) for backup. I’ll post some pics soon. Net lens weight 542g plus hoods, front and back lens caps and filters.For comparison my Olympus M.Zuiko 12-40mm PRO lens weighs approx. 380g, it’s weather sealed and constant aperture but it’s heavy and it’s only one lens.

Kind regards

Leigh

Manfrotto MB MA2-SB-S Advanced² Camera Shoulder Bag S, Small

November 14, 2021 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in Leigh Kemp, photography, Photography equipment, Travel | Leave a comment

Hi everyone,

I love my small Manfrotto bags and, as soon as I stumbled across this one I had to have it. 🙂 Unlike my other Manfrotto bags this one comes with a rain cover, detachable shoulder strap with padded shoulder pad, belt loops, an internal pocket inside the top flap and a bungie pull cord to fit a small tabletop tripod like my Manfrotto Pixie shown here. With careful packing I managed to fit my PEN-F and Lumix 12-32mm, 20mm, 35-100mm and Samyang 7.5mm or 14mm Lumix (below the 20mm) lenses all with lens hoods fitted. I’ve chosen to stash the rain cover in the internal top pocket for quick access, the pocket could be used for spare batteries, lens wipes,filters etc.. The bag comes with two red soft padded velcro-fitting divider inserts, I’m using one. I think that it should be fairly shower proof as the material is claimed to be water repellent and I have no reason to doubt that but the inclusion of the rain cover for heavier downpours is a great feature. . Cost, £29 on Amazon, some pictures:

Fully loaded with rain cover stored in the inside lid compartment..

Front, you can just see the red bungie cord stored away.

Back with belt loops and the top grab handle..

All the best,

Leigh

“Lost in thought”

November 12, 2021 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in HDR, Landscape, Leigh Kemp, Monochrome, photography, Travel | Leave a comment

Hi,

Another of my shots taken with my Lumix 35-100mm.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/leighkemp/51673649982/in/dateposted-public/lightbox/

Best wishes,

Leigh

Go Heath, go!

November 12, 2021 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in Leigh Kemp, photography, Photography equipment, Travel | Leave a comment

Hi folks,

Heath Robinson would have been proud! . Whether or not Manfrotto had this in mind when they conveniently provide two loops at the back of the bag I don’t know but I had the idea of adding the strap from my WANDRD tech pouch and thus an extra carrying/support option. 🙂

Kind regards

Leigh

“Pulling power”

November 11, 2021 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in HDR, Leigh Kemp, photography | Leave a comment

Hi folks,

Tractor used to tow fishing boats up the beach, another shot with my Lumix 35-100mm lens.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/leighkemp/51672815993/in/dateposted-public/lightbox/

Kind regards

Leigh

A bit of extra padding

November 11, 2021 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in Leigh Kemp, photography, Photography equipment, Travel | Leave a comment

Hi everyone,

In an attempt to help alleviate my neck and shoulder problems at least a little I hit on an idea. I bought a cheap pack of two soft, padded, wrap-around, velcro-sealing pad “things” designed to go on car seat belts. I fitted them to two of my small Manfrotto camera bags which have a strap width of approx.4 cms. It does help a bit to cushion the weight and, provide the bag strap isn’t wider than 4 cms then they should fit any bag . I chose these as the bags don’t have detachable straps that one could thread a pad through and thus I needed something that was a wrap-around fit.

Best wishes,

Leigh

“A band of gold”

November 11, 2021 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in HDR, Landscape, Leigh Kemp, photography, Travel | Leave a comment

Hi everyone,

Taken earlier today in Bognor with my Lumix 35-100mm lens which I made a point of using almost exclusively.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/leighkemp/51672084676/in/dateposted-public/lightbox/

Best wishes,

Leigh

TG-5/6 Lens hood

November 10, 2021 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in Leigh Kemp, photography, Photography equipment, Travel | 4 Comments

Hi,

Anyone looking for a lens hood for their TG-5 and presumably TG-6 camera might be interested in the following. I fitted a 58mm plastic petal lens hood and 58mm lens cap The hood screws in turn into a 52-58mm step up ring and the adapter for the TG-5. It doesn’t vignette or add any real weight to the camera and the only issue is that it partially blocks the flash output but for outside work in strong light its certainly helps and also helps to keep any rain droplets etc. from the front of the lens as well as adding a bit of extra protection from knocks.

Kind regards,

Leigh

One of my most enjoyable photo walks.

November 9, 2021 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in Landscape, Leigh Kemp, photography, Photography equipment, Travel | 2 Comments

Hi everyone,

As I mentioned in one of my recent posts, I was intending to have a photo walk with prime lenses and travelling very light. So I chose to take with me my Olympus PEN-F camera, Lumix 14mm f/2.5 and 20mm f/1.7 prime lenses and my Lumix 12-32mm and 35-100mm zoom lenses. I really wanted to have a “prime” lens day and try and constrain myself to using only primes and that’s what I did. I love my 12-32mm, it’s probably become my favourite all-round walk about lens but I left it in my bag and fitted my 20mm instead for most of the trip only swapping it for my 14mm for a few shots.

Whatever bag I take I’m going to suffer pains in my neck, arm and shoulder and yesterday sadly was no exception but my Think tank sling bag goes part way to mitigating that, certainly not perfect but the best that I’ve come up with. So, back to the lenses, I really like the 20mm focal length it suits me well, not so wide as my 17mm which I find too wide and not so tight as my 25mm, its got that “standard” lens FOV and perspective which I enjoy. Like the 14mm and 12-32mm lenses it’s a really light and compact pancake type lens, it’s also very sharp.The auto focus can sometimes hunt in low light which is, at worst, a minor inconvenience and it does make a noise but, as someone that doesn’t shoot videos, the later isn’t of any importance to me.

On to my 14mm lens, like its slightly larger 20mm sibling its a nice small and sharp little lens, not quite as fast but as someone who doesn’t give a jot about bokeh and doesn’t habitually shoot in very low light that doesn’t bother me at all. I took it to give me a wide angle prime option and it fits the bill nicely. I didn’t use my two zooms yesterday, deliberately so and there were a few shots that I’d have framed differently with the 12-32mm fitted but I did enjoy the discipline of restricting myself largely to one lens. My 35-100mm never got used, again, 🙂 , When deciding on whether or not to take a telephoto lens option I had a look at my other choices before deciding to pack it. I figured that if and when I rarely need a telephoto then it makes sense to take a zoom rather than my 45mm or Sigma 60mm prime lenses. Both of these lenses are very sharp but the 35-100 is lighter than the 60mm and about the same weight as the 45mm so it went into the bag. It’s also a very nice compact, lightweight and sharp lens and, on the odd occasions when I have used it, I’ve been suitably impressed with the results. I won’t mention my 12-32mm as I’ve waxed lyrical enough about this great little gem of a lens, suffice to say I wouldn’t be without it.

For me pancake lens designs are the way to go, small, light and sharp and that’s all I require, my only wish is that there were more. Yesterday was as far as I remember, the first time that I’ve not carried at least one Olympus lens with me. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been a big fan of their cameras and lenses since I bought my first Olympus film camera in the 70s but I really like the Panasonic Lumix lenses for their low weight and compact size. Optically the Olympus lenses are very good and well made but they’re heavier and bulkier and I simply cannot carry their weight anymore. I also think that, when married to a small MFT camera like the PEN-F the pancake lenses are much more in keeping with the spirit of the MFT system.

You’ve seen the shots from the trip in my previous posts but I’ll post them again here, first four taken with the 20mm lens and the last one with the 14mm. All-in-all a thoroughly enjoyable experience, walking around in the late Autumn sunshine conjured up fond memories of my 35mm film cameras and a small prime lens or two. Put in the simplest of terms it was “fun”. 🙂

Kind regards

Leigh

“Last but not least”

November 9, 2021 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in HDR, Landscape, Leigh Kemp, photography, Travel | Leave a comment

Hi everyone,

The last of my shots from my trip out yesterday.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/leighkemp/51667629298/in/dateposted-public/lightbox/

Best wishes to all,

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.