Tag Archives: camera

Olympus M.Zuiko 9-18mm f/4-5.6

by in Landscape, Leigh Kemp, photography, Photography equipment, Travel and tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Hi everyone,

I’ve owned this lens for quite a few years now and never really written much about it. With its 18mm-36mm full-frame equivalent focal length range it makes a great travel/walkabout lens if one likes taking street shots, landscapes, architectural and interior shots. Its very small and light at 154 grams and 49.3mm when in it’s collapsed transit position as shown above. Some may not like its plastic construction, although it does have a metal lens mount, or its switch to lock the lens. You don’t use the switch to extend the lens it is used when one wants to fully retract the lens and lock it in this position. It’s also not a very fast lens at f/4 at its widest and f/5.6 at its tele setting but it is very sharp and extremely versatile. It covers the popular full-frame equivalent wide angle focal lengths of 21mm, 24mm, 28mm and 35mm. As a useful bonus the lens accepts 52mm filters and the lens hood is a bayonet-fitting aftermarket one from JJC at a much lower cost than the proprietary one from Olympus, I refuse to pay £30 for a bit of plastic when they should be included with any lens. I can thoroughly recommend this lens for any Micro Four Thirds system users wanting to get a compact, lightweight ultra-wide angle lens at an affordable price especially if, like me, you find one second hand at a good price. Here’s a few shots I’ve taken with this lens. Over the years I’ve taken some of my all time favourite shots with this lens.

Kind regards

Leigh

Billingham Hadley Digital camera bag, first thoughts.

by in Leigh Kemp, photography, Photography equipment, Travel and tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

HI,

I took delivery of my new camera bag. The bag, is, as I knew it would be, superbly well made. It’s in excellent condition without a mark on it, a great second hand buy. One of the two internal dividers was missing but that doesn’t bother me for the price paid and they do spares if I choose to get more. A brilliant added bonus was the inclusion of the matching SP40 padded non-slip leather shoulder pad which, if bought as an accessory, is quite expensive. The big appeal of this bag, apart from the excellent quality of materials and manufacturing, is the extremely well padded plush interior with padded top, the good-sized front pocket which holds quite a bit and its weather proofing and it should be perfect for my day-to-day requirements, also no more zips, velcro and fiddling around fitting and removing rain covers!. I chose to try it for size with my Olympus PEN-F camera fitted with my M.Zuiko 12-45mm zoom with lens hood attached and it fits very well as the bag has some height to it which is another reason why I wanted it. Below a few shots of the bag and contents, if I was packing for a lengthier trip I’d probably squeeze in a small USB power bank and an extra spare camera battery into the front pocket and additionally pack one of my small, fast standard prime lenses in the main compartment if I get another padded divider.

PEN-F camera with 12-45mm lens attached, small four filter pouch, neoprene pouch containing lens brush, lens wipes and microfiber cloth, filter wrench as I’ve started to use filters more frequently of late, Tile Mate bluetooth tracker, spare camera battery plus two extra SDHC cards in a waterproof battery case, small cheap MP3 player and bluetooth ear buds as I occasionally like to listen to some music on my travels.

Kind regards

Leigh

I bought a Billingham Hadley Digital camera bag.

by in Leigh Kemp, photography, Photography equipment, Travel and tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Hi,

Back in the late 70s I bought one of the first Billingham 550 model camera bags ever made eagerly waiting weeks for it to be made and delivered as they were on lengthy back order such was their demand. It was a great bag, pretty large, quite heavy, but aged about twenty I was able to carry a lot more weight than I can now, it was really beautifully made and, at that time, it ticked all the boxes for me for a camera bag. It certainly wasn’t cheap even then given what I earned in those days but it was such a quality camera bag, it just screamed quality the second that one laid one’s eyes on it. I’ve been looking for a small camera bag specifically for a trip that I’m planning for later this year and I re-discovered their bags and I found one of these second hand at a very tempting price so I’ve ordered it. For my minimalistic requirements carrying just a small micro four thirds camera, one or two small lenses and a few essential accessories, spare batteries etc., I think that this bag will fit the bill very nicely. It’s pretty nigh impossible to find a bad review of Billingham camera bags, they’ve been making bags for fifty years and my experiences back then would bare this out completely. A quality UK product made from top quality materials, multi-layered waterproof canvas without the need for a separate rain cover, protective well padded interior and dividers with leather and brass fittings, arguably the best made and longest lasting camera bags that money can buy and the perfect stylish but still discrete companion to compliment my passion for retro-styled cameras and lenses 🙂 with the added bonus that to anyone not in the know it doesn’t look very much like your typical camera bag.

External Dimensions: W210mm (8¼”) x D130mm (5⅛”) x H210mm (8¼”) Internal Dimensions: W180mm (7⅛”) x D100mm (4″) x H170mm (6¾”) Capacity: 2.50 litres (0.09 feet³) Weight: 0.47 kgs (1.04 lbs)

Kind regards

Leigh

TTArtisan 23mm f/1.4 lens test shots.

by in Landscape, Leigh Kemp, photography, Photography equipment, Travel and tagged , , | Leave a comment

Hi everyone,

I took my new TTArtisan 23mm f/1.4 lens for a test drive this morning in Chichester. All shots taken on my Olympus PEN-F camera at f/5.6 plus Kenko 1.0 black mist filter, with minimal processing for sharpness, noise reduction where appropriate, correction for converging verticals and processed with a Fuji Astia+ film emulation LUT. Not bad for an £83 lens. 🙂 I could improve more with additional processing but I wanted to keep things as basic and simple as possible for the purpose of testing. As I thought it might be this lens is a lot of fun to shoot with. Zone focus at about 7m at f/5.6 and everything is acceptably sharp from approx. 3m to infinity. The lens is a bit soft even at f/5.6 more so with the filter fitted but nothing that cannot easily be corrected in post. I only wanted the filter on for the interior shots taken inside the Cathedral.

Kind regards,

Leigh

Quality genuine leather camera strap from a UK company at a great price.

by in Leigh Kemp, photography, Photography equipment, Travel and tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Hi everyone,

I just took delivery of a new handcrafted leather camera strap for my PEN-F camera made by a UK company called Bowman Leather: https://www.bowmanleather.co.uk/ . They do quite a range of straps and I’m very impressed with the quality of materials and workmanship, the attractive “organic” cloth, and not plastic, drawstring bag inner packaging and the very fast 24 hours tracked dispatch at a very fair price. Great to see a UK company producing quality items like this. I chose their Stride – Thin Leather Camera Strap in Mid Tan colour which I think looks great on my PEN-F camera and they have several other colours available. I’m delighted to see that they use traditional manufacturing methods and sustainable materials and they offer a 10% discount for new customers as well as a plant a tree policy. This strap is comfortable, pretty supple and should last me a long time, they have a 10 year warranty policy so they must be confident about the quality of their products.

In these days when just about everything seems to come from China I’m more than happy to pay for a quality product like this from a UK manufacturer. As always, this review isn’t solicited in any way and I paid for the item from my own pocket.

Kind regards

Leigh

I bought a new lens, TTArtisan 23mm f/1.4.

by in Leigh Kemp, photography, Photography equipment, Travel and tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Hi everyone,

I’ve been looking at this lens for some time now and finally decided to pull the trigger and purchase one for £83 UK with free delivery from the manufacturers in China, when it comes to such things it doesn’t get much cheaper than that 🙂 . The lens is the manual focus TTArtisan 23mm f/1.4 which, as a 46mm full-frame equivalent, should fit in nicely with my favourite focal lengths. The lens gets pretty good reviews across the board as long as one is aware of it’s limitations and stopping down to f/5.6-f/8 would seem to be the accepted way of getting the best out of it but that’s probably true, to a greater or lesser extent, for a good many Micro Four Thirds lenses. I’m very much enjoying a retro “filmic-look” experience right now both in gear and in processing and I’m really liking using lenses with less than clinically sharp rendering and saturated colours as is the case with my other TTArtisan lenses. When I say that I’m enjoying the retro-look I think that I always enjoyed it even back in my film days when it was current and not “retro” and I shot with Fuji, Kodak and Ilford films on small, solidly-built, lightweight Olympus 35mm film cameras and lenses. 🙂

I can happily live with such things as less than tack sharp edge-to edge/corner to corner sharpness, vignetting, slight barrel distortion, chroma etc. it doesn’t bother me in the slightest that’s what gives these kind of lenses character. 🙂 The thing is that now, thanks to modern digital post processing one can correct for these sort of things as and if one wishes something that simply wasn’t possible back in the analogue days when it really was a case of what you got was largely what you lived with. I’m really looking forward to trying it on my all-time favourite digital camera my Olympus PEN-F, a modern classic in itself. I’ll post my experiences with the lens and some shots when I’ve been out and tried it. I think that it’ll make a nice compact manual-focus companion to one of my similar focal length auto focus lenses such as my Olympus M.Zuiko 17mm and 25mm f/1.8 or my Panasonic Lumix 20mm f/17,

Kind regards

Leigh

Revisiting manual focus lenses.

by in Leigh Kemp, photography, Photography equipment, Travel and tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Hi all,

Just lately I’ve dug out my TTArtisans manual focussing lenses, my 17mm f/1.4 and my 35mm f/1.4. It’s been a long time since I only packed manual focus lenses. Whilst I fully appreciate the value of autofocus especially when it comes to ultra quickly nailing focus, there’s something about manual focusing. It hard to put into words exactly but it’s not a hinderance given my typically slow-paced landscape photographic interests where I’m not capturing fast action or have the need to zone-focus. Not only has it taken me right back to my film days but most importantly it has slowed me down and somehow concentrated my mind and involved me more in the shot. Of the two lenses I surprisingly prefer the longer focal length which equates to 70mm in full frame terms. They both have their quirks but this gives them some character, they’re not the “sharpest tools in the box” and, if edge-to-edge image quality is absolutely paramount, then “these aren’t the lenses you are looking for” 🙂 but, for the price, they’re a lot of fun and a good buy. I decided to pair them with my old, largely redundant, Olympus E-PL5 camera in order to make things as compact and lightweight as possible. I’ve fitted step up rings and lens hoods to suit my preferred filter size of 58mm.

I call this my “Silver Machine” 🙂 Olympus E-PL5 and TTArtisans 35mm f/1.4 lens.

Kind regards

Leigh

The joy of small, lightweight cameras and lenses.

by in Leigh Kemp, photography, Photography equipment, Travel and tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Hi all,

Lately I’ve been drawn more or more towards my smallest cameras and lenses such as my Olympus Pen E-PL8 camera. For many years now I’ve realised that I hate carrying heavy kit, what’s taken me a lot longer to somewhat reluctantly fully come to terms with is that it’s not just a case of likes and dislikes but that I can no longer physically do so. Fortunately my photographic interests lend themselves to small cameras, small lenses and a small camera bag to carry my gear in and that, for me, has always been the beauty of the Micro Four Thirds system it’s what first attracted me to it and as my physical health has changed I’m more than glad that I did so. Just about all modern cameras and lenses are extremely fully-featured and capable of producing excellent results. The system is also blessed with an excellent selection of very small and lightweight lenses which suit my purposes pretty much exactly.

I always chuckle when I hear terms like “entry-level” and “kit lens” used to describe gear made for casual usage and suited for “noobs” and those who don’t take their photography seriously. In my opinion they’re more than often hyped-up marking terms designed to make one feel the need to upgrade to more expensive gear in the belief that more expensive gear makes better photographs or at least that’s how it’s often perceived as if the person behind the lens doesn’t figure in the equation. I’ve got a 4ftx3ft framed landscape picture on our living room wall which has all the detail that one could want taken on a 16 MegaPixel sensor-equipped “entry level” camera 🙂 . It’s not about the gear, it’s about what one “sees” and how one uses it. If I take a shot that I’m not happy with it’s me that’s at fault, not the camera or the lens’ fault.

If one takes the EPL-7 or E-PL8 and similar cameras for example they have just about all the day-to-day features than one could ever want unless, understandably, some genres such as wildlife photography, astrophotography, sports photography etc. demand the use of more specialised gear. Sure many models like the E-PL8 have just an LCD screen, something that I personally don’t like, but add on the optional Olympus EVF and it has the best of both worlds just like it’s bigger and more expensive brethren. It’s metal-bodied, small, lightweight, beautifully styled, discrete and unobtrusive and doesn’t scream overly expensive and, when fitted with a small lens like one of the pancake prime or zoom lenses, it becomes pocketable!. The E-PL10 even has an electronic shutter which is a feature that I use frequently when I’m shooting HDR but, for some reason best known to Olympus, they dispensed with the ability to fit an add-on EVF so I personally wouldn’t buy one purely for that reason.

So, in my opinion, anyone looking for small, lightweight camera gear to carry around for genres like landscapes/cityscapes, portraiture, walkabout street photography and when travelling these cameras and lenses make excellent sense and anyone used to habitually carrying heavier kit will find the experience nothing short of liberating, I certainly have ever increasingly grown to do so.

Kind regards

Leigh

My night time settings

by in Leigh Kemp, photography, Photography equipment, Travel and tagged , | Leave a comment

Hiya,

Before I started out on my two recent night time photographic adventures I took a bit of time to program into the Olympus camera’s MYSET settings two additional sets of settings, one for handheld and one for tripod-mounted, the later of which, I didn’t end up using. I took one of my fastest lenses, my M.Zuiko 17mm f/1.8. The only other thing that I took and used was my Kenko Black Mist 0.5 filter, Here’s my settings:

Handheld: (Walkabout street shooting etc.)

Auto ISO, I set the upper limit to ISO 6400 with a threshold of 1/60th second, probably could have been less at 1/30th or even 1/15th of a second thanks to IBIS and a moderate wide-angle lens but I decided to play safe. As it was I never exceeded about ISO 2000 even in the dimmest light.

All axis Image stabilisation set to on, a must unless you have very steady hands. 🙂 .

Aperture Priority.

I set low speed burst mode so as to take short burst to increase my hit-rate and this worked very well.

Single autofocus with manual focus adjust (SAF/MF), a quick way of tweaking focus if required. I prefer this to using the manual focus clutch on this lens or switching to and from SAF to MF with a programmed function button.

Focus-peeking and image magnification set to on.

Aperture set when switching to this MYSET to default to the widest lens aperture (f/1.8 with the 17mm) and I can adjust it from there as desired.

Tripod-mounted: (Longer exposure landscape shots, not just for night time shots)

ISO 200

Image Stabilisation (IBIS) set to off.

Aperture Priority.

Custom self timer set to wait 3 seconds and then take 3 shots at 0,5 second intervals. I prefer this method to keep on plugging in and unplugging a cable release.

Single autofocus with manual adjust (SAF/MF)

Focus-peeking and image magnification set to on.

Aperture set when switching to this MYSET to default to f/5.6 and I can adjust it from there as desired.

Kind regards

Leigh

PS. I might also set live view boost to the 1 setting if required in very low light, pity that one cannot map this to a program button.

Pixis at the end of my garden! :)

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Great title huh! 🙂 , I was going to take a picture outside but the light’s pretty poor at this time of day so you get this one instead.

Hi everyone,

For some years now I’ve occasionally used my Manfrotto Pixi table top tripod. This little tripod has come in handy a few times. It’s small, light and pretty sturdy and best-suited for one of my smaller cameras and lenses but it has its limitations. The height cannot be adjusted and the ball head does not permit portrait orientation shots to be taken. I decided to get one of their Pixi Evo 2 tripods to address these issues. It is a bit bigger and heavier but still just small enough to slip into one of my camera bag compartments. Unlike it’s smaller sibling, the ball head is loosened and tightened by a three-sided knob rather than a hold in button. The head can be adjusted to facilitate portrait orientation shots and the legs can be adjusted individually to heighten the tripod with click stop positions, nice for uneven surfaces. There’s also a wheel with which to tighten the tripod thread unlike the Pixi which requires the whole tripod to be turned. Lastly there’s a small lever on the side which allows the legs to be adjusted to lay flat albeit significantly reducing the tripod height and having a much wider footprint. In that position, as one might expect, the tripod is extremely stable. The weight handling is claimed to be 2.5Kg which is comfortably more than enough for my cameras and all but my heaviest lenses. The tripod is heavy enough not to blow away with the slightest puff of wind. How it might hold up to the Winter winds straight from the sea on the Bognor Regis seafront is yet to be established 🙂 and it might also make a nice compact chest pod.

So all-in-all a worthwhile and, as these things go, relatively inexpensive upgrade which, who knows, just might encourage me a bit more to take a tripod with me on my travels. 🙂 I’d have liked to see a quick release mechanism incorporated similar to the Gorillapods but I can add one of mine but it would add extra weight and bulk, my bête noire, so for the times I foresee myself using it, I probably won’t bother at least to start with. I’m not a Vlogger but if I was and I was using the tripod as a hand grip/ selfie stick I’d probably still go with my smaller Pixi tripod as the Evo 2 is somewhat larger and heavier in one’s hand and thus grip-wise it doesn’t feel so secure unless one has somewhat larger hands than mine but because of it’s adjustable legs it does have more reach which, I guess, might be desirable.

Best wishes,

Leigh