Tag Archives: camera

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

Wake up and smell the coffee

by in Leigh Kemp, photography and tagged , , | 2 Comments

Hi everyone,

Long term I don’t see a very rosy future for the camera manufacturers unless they wake up and smell the coffee. It seems that the only way that they can try and entice everyday folks into buying their gear is by incorporating more and more useless tech and pushing the illusion that these features will magically enable folks to take amazing photographs and/or video that their smart phones aren’t in any way capable of and, in order to do this for a shrinking market they’re making their gear un-realistically priced and un-affordable to many which is in total contradiction to selling their products and this, the size, bulk, complexity and weight of the gear isn’t going to temp that many mobile phone users into buying their gear. A camera is just that a one-use tool, one more thing to buy and carry around whereas mobile phones have many uses, they’re smaller, cheaper, easier to carry and affordable to upgrade. as well as being second-nature to operate for many, especially those of a certain generation.

The camera manufacturers need to seriously re-evaluate their strategies else they will sooner of later, probably sooner, find themselves producing ever more costly cameras for a dedicated niche market in a law of diminishing returns which can only have one outcome and those of us that enjoy using a camera will find ourselves sustained by the used camera market until we are confined to history . They’ve lost the plot, it’s not just all about how many megapixels or AI etc., it comes down to affordability, rational design and inspired marketing, look what David Bailey did for the Olympus Trip, I still have folks, old enough to remember, come up to me sometimes and say “who’d you think you are, David Bailey?” (wish I had his money) 🙂 that’s clever mainstream marketing, we don’t ever see any camera adverts on TV nowadays, nothing to raise awareness, tempt people and capture their imagination so what’s to make people aware of a thing called a camera? and why they might want to buy one. What little marketing one does see is largely aimed at photographers, we know what a camera is and what it’s for, preaching to the converted!, they’re repeatedly fishing in the same small pond. Is this a mixture of arrogance and complacency on the part of camera manufacturers? if so as the old saying goes “pride cometh before a fall”. Yoshihisa Maitan’s inspirational vision to empower people with affordable, lightweight, well-built cameras to take pictures has never seemed further away.

CC. OM Systems, Nikon, Fuji, Canon, Sony et. al.. 🙂

Here endeth the lesson for today 🙂 🙂

Kind regards

Leigh

We’ve forgotten about the art of photography

by in Leigh Kemp, photography, Travel and tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Hi everyone,

I watched an interesting You-Tube video by my friend Jimmy Cheng which reinforced points made in an earlier video by Peter Forsgard. The title of Jimmy’s video being “We’ve forgotten about the art of photography“. In the videos they both made what I think are very good points which have my full agreement. The points made regard the increasing number of sites that simply review camera gear, produce test shots, test charts and pixel-peeping etc. and don’t discuss photography itself either techniques and/or by way of real world shots.

I’ve always tried to make my blog a mixture of my work, my techniques and sometimes hands-on reviews of the gear that I use especially related to my love of photography, travel and travel/landscape photography in particular and not about all the technical mumbo-jumbo which, personally, I couldn’t care less about. I’ve NEVER been asked what camera and/or lens that I used for a particular shot as folks don’t generally care about such things and why should they?.

All the gear that I use has been paid for entirely out of my own pocket and I’m not trying to sell anything. I like to share my experiences especially so when I find a technique or bit of gear that I find useful and that I think will be of interest and useful to others. In an ideal world the balance of my posts would always favour sharing my work but it’s not an ideal world and, when I cannot get out, I like to take time to share my experiences and thoughts about the gear that I’m using in the hope that it might be of benefit to someone.

Kind regards

Leigh

Camera half cases, why fit them?.

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

Hi eveyone,

I’ve come to like camera half cases as can be seen in my previous post fitted to my Olympus OM-D E-M5 II and PEN-F camera models. I now have three, shortly to be four, of them fitted to my various camera models. For one, they add some extra protection from bumps, knocks and scuffs to the camera body as well as having a pop fastening flap for the battery compartment which proved very useful on one occasion in particular when the battery door broke on one of my cameras and I feel that they also improve the grip on the camera somewhat. They do also add a nice bit of retro styling to the camera which I like but that’s not the principal reason why I chose to fit them. I’ve also added Tile lost and found QR Code labels to the bottom of the cases as there’s nowhere on the camera bodies to attach them to. One can pick up the faux-leather ones for most models of camera on the likes of Ebay etc. and they’re quite inexpensive as camera accessories go.

If one values one’s gear, and what photographer doesn’t?, I think that fitting these is a “no-brainer” as my American friends say. Bash one of these and you can throw it away and cheaply replace it. Bash your camera body and that’s a totally different proposition with the considerable expense, inconvenience and hassle of getting it fixed always assuming that one can with out of production camera models, there’s more than a strong probability that it wouldn’t be cost-effective. At best you’ll reduce any re-sale value, at the very worst it could be a write off.

Kind regards

Leigh

Horses for my courses.

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

Hi everyone,

I am constantly revising and giving a lot of thought to my gear choices, partly based on experience and, unfortunately, ever-increasingly as dictated by my physical health. Below are three of my current favourite Olympus camera and lens combinations and my personal rationale for each.

Firstly, for travel, of the three, the middle weight combination my Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mk II camera and M.Zuiko 14-150mm II “super zoom” lens. Both are weather sealed with an excellent all-round focal length range without weighing me down too much. I’ve taken this camera and lens on lengthier travels and, like my other Olympus gear, they’ve performed faultlessly.

Next the lightest of my chosen camera and lens combinations, great for shorter stays and days out where I want to travel as light as possible whilst retaining as much versatility and image quality as possible, my Olympus PEN E-PL8, electronic viewfinder and M.Zuiko 12-45mm PRO f/4 constant aperture lens. Weather-sealed lens but not camera body but you probably won’t be surprised to hear that I have a suitable rain cover. 🙂 This lens also has the useful added advantage of a very close focussing distance.

Lastly the heaviest of the three camera and lens combos my Olympus PEN-F camera and M.Zuiko 12-40mm PRO f/2.8 constant aperture lens, a lens which has achieved pretty much legendary status amongst Olympus Micro Four Thirds users. I’m a huge fan of this retro looking stylish camera with its 20MP sensor and the lens is the bigger and faster sibling to the 12-45mm lens and shares its build quality, weather sealing as well as having a manual-focus clutch mechanism and lens function button. Again, the body isn’t weather-sealed but I can use a rain cover if needs must. It was amongst the first MFT lenses that I bought and I used to use this lens a lot more on my travels but, although it remains a great lens, it is the heaviest of the three. Nowadays this combination is mostly reserved for “special occasions” and/or for when I feel I’m up to carrying the extra weight for any length of time.

Kind regards

Leigh

Long time, no see.

by in Corfu, Leigh Kemp, photography, Photography equipment, Travel and tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

Hi everyone, hope you’re keeping well,

Well, it’s been quite a while since my last post. I just haven’t been able to get out and get any shots. Firstly my health hasn’t been that good, then there’s the weather which, with relatively few exceptions, seems like its been raining every day for months. We’ve also had and are still repeatedly having very high winds and we’ve had local flooding. I’m also reliant on public transport which is few and far between in this part of the World and financially it’s been a tough time. So, putting it all together, there have been very few days when I’m feeling up to it, the weather’s been sufficiently favourable and I’ve had the funds, usually one, the other, but rarely all at the same time. Notwithstanding all of this, we’ve booked a much-needed short holiday return visit to the beautiful Greek island of Corfu which we’re both very much looking forward to after last year’s disastrous week-long trip to Malaga Spain which saw me confined to our hotel room for days on end with a nasty bout of food poisoning resulting in very few opportunities to get any shots or, for that matter, do pretty much anything else.

Pontikonisi, Corfu – Olympus OM-D E-M1 I and M.Zuiko 12-40mm f/2.8 lens.

Naturally my thoughts have recently turned to which gear to pack. I considered taking my smallest, lightest camera, my PEN E-PL8 but decided that, for a few extra ounces I’ll take my much-loved, much-travelled and much-trusted OM-D E-M5 II camera principally for it’s weather-sealing, faster maximum shutter speed (particularly useful in very bright conditions and when shooting HDR) and electronic shutter. The large eyepiece I fitted some years ago after my laser ops in both eyes that resulted in halos in bright light. Regarding lenses, I’m typically going to travel light with only two lenses, my Lumix 12-60mm f/3.5-f/5.6 (24mm to 120mm equivalent) weather-sealed lens for general shooting and my Lumix 20mm f/1.7 for low light/interior and evening use. Both of these lenses have great image quality and have travelled with me on several previous trips abroad as well as in the UK particularly my Lumix 12-60mm which has the useful bonus of extra telephoto reach, punches well above it’s cost and weight and is significantly lighter when compared to my other “standard” zooms. All of this along with a few small accessories: spare battery/s, rain cover, lens wipes and CPL filter in one of my very small Manfrotto camera bags, another of my best buys at £8.00 UK each. 🙂

I’ve only splashed out on one new item a new camera strap by Tarion (https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0194X71JQ?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details) for which I paid the less than princely sum of £9.00 UK 🙂 seen here attached to my E-M5 II. The strap is pretty wide at approx. 1 3/4 inches, nicely made, it’s classic styling is esthetically pleasing and, most importantly of all, it should spread the weight and prove comfortable in usage. I’ve fitted my Peak Design type connectors and buckles to the strap enabling quick release. Worth noting that the strap does come with triangle rings which is a nice touch if one requires them. It’s funny how one’s tastes/needs in straps change over the years as one’s age, gear and physical condition changes, think neck and back pain 😦 . I did notice that they show a less secure method of attaching the strap than I’ve been using for years. For anyone wanting to adopt a more secure strap fastening method, if they don’t already, I suggest looking at this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_paXysiGsxs&ab_channel=ShotKit I did contact their support and, to their credit, they responded quickly and positively,

I have so many different types of straps and for that matter camera bags, which have worked well for me at one time or another but not so now. I’m thinking I should have a stall in the local market selling used camera straps and bags. 🙂

Olympus OM-D E-M5 II camera, bottom-opening leather-like half case, Tarion strap, Panasonic Lumix 12-60mm and 20mm lenses. The 20mm has a 46mm to 58mm step up ring fitted to act as a lens hood and also allow my 58mm CPL filter to be fitted without adding very much bulk to a very small, compact, pancake design lens.

Take care, best wises,

Leigh