Adding a rubber lens hood to my M.Zuiko 12-45mm Pro lens.

Fully Retracted

Fully extended

Hi,

I’ve had a couple of these screw on 58mm fit three-stage collapsible rubber lens hoods laying around for ages, so long in fact that I can’t remember what I bought them for. 🙂 I thought I’d try one with my M.Zuiko 12-45mm zoom lens. The advantages over the proprietary lens hood for me are two-fold. First it enables me to easily rotate the attached slim-fit CPL filter with a hood attached and secondly it works very well in conjunction with my camera rain cover which has an elasticated fitting at the lens end. I tested and, importantly, when fully collapsed, it doesn’t vignette at the wide angle end of the zoom range. Purely to save space in my bag whilst travelling I’ve left my Olympus hood attached in the reversed position at least temporarily, to act as a backup hood should I get any issues with the rubber hood. It won’t last forever but, at about £3-4 UK it’s cheap to replace when I need to and I already have a spare. I’ve tested it out on a couple of recent outings and it works well.

I paid about £17 UK new for this rain cover on Ebay a few years back. They’re made by a UK company that also make all sorts of rain covers for baby buggies etc.. So I thought they’d know more than a bit about keeping things dry and if they can keep someone’s baby dry from the rain then they can keep my “baby” dry 🙂 and it does so. It’s turned out to be the best I ever used, very quick to fit with an elasticated front end which stretches over the hood to fit and can’t slip off and a draw string at the camera body end. Roomy enough to take my longest lenses and very easy to turn a zoom ring through the fabric, sometimes the simplest things work the best. Having a weather-sealed camera and lens isn’t reason enough to get it soaking wet if one has the means to keep it dry. I regard camera weather-sealing a secondary line of defence against water ingress and not a primary one.

By-the-way the camera half-case, stylish as it is, isn’t there purely for cosmetic reasons. It adds a bit more grip and protection to the camera and, having had a broken latch on the hinged battery access cover in the past before I replaced it, the flap with side fastening popper holds the battery snuggly in place should it ever fail again. Lastly, the base of the camera has a push-fit rubber cover which covers the contacts for the optional grip when not fitted. Although not overly prone to doing so it cannot fall off and get lost with the half-case fitted.

Kind regards

Leigh

I love it when a plan comes together.

April 4, 2024 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in Leigh Kemp, photography, Photography equipment, Travel and tagged filters, Photography, reviews | Leave a comment

Hi everyone,

I’ve managed to solve a dilemma I’ve had for a while now. When I start thinking about travel landscapes, all that lovely blue Mediterranean water and skies and sunshine (whatever that is) :), bring it on! 🙂 I also start thinking about using one of my various CPL filters and just maybe occasionally an ND filter. What often deters me about using a CPL is that one has to tediously keep removing and re-fitting the lens hood on the go which doesn’t suit my walkabout style of working else it’s very fiddly as there’s not enough room inside the manufacturer’s lens hood to get one’s fingers in and turn it and even with my slimmest CPL filter it still vignettes at the 12mm (24mm equivalent) end of my zooms with the hood fitted. I’ve tried various after-market hoods to no avail and finally found one that works with my 12-60mm Lumix f/3.5-f/5.6 zoom lens which doesn’t cause vignetting at the 12mm end. As it turns out it was a humble metal screw in 58mm wide angle lens hood that I’ve had kicking around for years which I had somehow overlooked. This means I can leave my 58mm Marumi DHG Super CPL filter mounted and just turn the hood to adjust it, quick and effective, which was exactly what I wanted to achieve. 🙂 Trying to remember of course to turn it clockwise else it’ll be a case of “it came away in mi ‘and guvnor!” 🙂

Happy Days 🙂

Best wishes,

Leigh

Papa’s got a brand new (camera) bag :)

April 4, 2024 by Leigh Kemp - UK-based "Paintographer" in Leigh Kemp, photography, Photography equipment, Travel and tagged bags, gear, Manfrotto Compact 1 Advanced Shoulder Bag for CSC – Black, reviews, Travel | 8 Comments

Hi everyone,

Apologies to the late and great James Brown, I couldn’t resist it 🙂 . For my next trip I was looking for another small, lightweight bag with an extra bit of storage when compared to my older Manfrotto bags. I like the Manfrotto bags as they’re lightweight, compact, well designed, well padded and rugged. Another good thing about their bags is that they do a mind-boggling range which seems to be continually changing so one can pickup their previous generation designs at a fraction of their original price, I paid £19.99 UK for my new bag. The model number is Manfrotto Compact 1 Advanced Shoulder Bag for CSC – Black (MB MA-SB-C1). Outer dimensions – ‎26 W x 12 D x 18 H centimetres. weight – 0.54 Kilograms according to manufacturer’s specifications. Important to note that the 18cm height includes the top compartment. I’m happy to say that, unlike one of my other Manfrotto bags, they have included a rain cover that doesn’t require having to detach the bag strap to fit/remove it every time one wants to use it, nice touch! as everything can get very wet very quickly whilst faffing around detaching the strap, threading the cover through and re-attaching it if one’s caught out in a sudden heavy downpour as has happened to me on occasions. I also noted that the bag’s fabric is smooth and not coarse like my older bags so water should run off it and it should be fine in all but heavy rain.

Here’s a few pictures, the first a size comparison with one of my older, smaller bags, a shot of the back of the new bag and, lastly, a shot of the bag’s main compartment. It has a top zipped compartment in which I’m stowing two rain covers, the one supplied with the bag and another for my camera with enough room left for my mobile phone and case. The main compartment comes with two dividers and I’ve packed my OM-D E-M5 MK II camera with Lumix 12-60mm f/3.5-f/5.6 zoom lens and hood fitted on its side, my Lumix 20mm f/1.7 lens and hood. two JJC battery/SDHC card boxes, each of which contains one spare camera battery and two SDHC cards and lastly one of my dual USB camera battery chargers and one of my Anker 6700 mAh USB power banks. There are also two small velcro-fastening pockets in which I put a microfibre cloth, several Zeiss lens wipe sachets, an extra filter and USB charge cable. Lastly as shown in the shot of the back of the bag, there’s one additional shallow zip-up pocket big enough to store my very small table top tripod and a lens pen. All the zip pockets open from the back so, when the bag is hanging from one’s shoulder or crossbody, (my preferred method as it’s less easy to snatch), they’re against one’s body, a nice feature to help prevent pickpockets gaining access to the bag contents, the main compartment opens outwards away from one’s body. The supplied shoulder strap has a nicely padded shoulder pad and not the rigid plastic/rubber type which cuts into one’s neck when wearing lightweight summer clothing and I like having a grab handle on the bag. I always like to try and accommodate a USB camera battery charging solution in addition to the charging gear I pack in my hold-luggage as, if the latter goes walkabout, I can still charge camera batteries or my mobile phone at least for a while and also as a backup camera battery charger should the other one fail or get damaged.

All-in-all another nicely designed Manfrotto bag that accommodates all the gear that I want/am restricted to having to take with me as hand luggage eg. rechargeable batteries and still small enough to fit under the seat on an aircraft. Also worth noting that, if you register your purchase online it comes with a 60 months warranty. Whether it’ll be my go-to travel bag in five years time only time will tell but for now, it ticks all the boxes.

Kind regards

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.