Category: gear

Today I took Mitchie’s camera – an Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mark 2 which had her Panasonic Lumix 20mm f/1.7 lens mounted – to photograph my own E-M10 Mark 2 which has the Zuiko Digital 50mm 1:2 macro lens (from the Olympus 4/3rds system) mounted. Converted it to black & white, and cropped it into a 3:2 format:

The above image is stored on cupoftea.social which is a smaller server connected to Mastodon. And like always, thanks for viewing.

Mike Johnston aka “The Online Photographer” has found his perfect lens for the APS-C sized sensor cameras, and wrote about it on his blog. Together with the new Nikkor DX 24/1.7 he recommends a Z-50 as the perfect camera to do about everything, or, as he wrote:

“You can do 85% of anything you’d ever want to do photographically with a Z50, and you can do 85% of anything you’d ever want to do with a Z50 with the 24mm ƒ/1.7 lens.“

Well yes he’s right. Kind of.

What brought me into the µ4/3rds camp was the Panasonic 20mm/1.7 lens which I had bought for my wife. She still has the first version of it which isn’t available anymore, but here’s the second one:

That would be *my* perfect angle of view in a lens if I could have only one; the one Michael recommends and favours is a bit wider, like this one which I also have:

This little Olympus lens focuses much faster (on Olympus cameras at least) than the Panny does, but the Panny is a bit sharper. Just one of them would be fine.

The point where he actually recommends the camera is a bit controversial. The Nikon Z-50 doesn’t have IBIS (in-body image stabilisation) which is why I would still prefer my own Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mk2 or its newest version, the Mk4. Controversial because Olympus sold its camera/lens business, which is now called “OM System” – and my E-M10 doesn’t have a successor yet. The E-M5 is a lot more expensive, like the E-M1 as well, so…

… yes, in a way and if you can live without in-body image stabilisation (I couldn’t, drink too much coffee for that), then the Nikon Z-50 would be a good recommendation. If not, you could go for an OM-D E-M10 Mk4 as long as they’re available. The Nikon APS-C sensor is slightly larger than the µ4/3rds one (crop factor 1:1.5 instead of 1:2), but both have 20 Megapixels, which is more than enough – and the Olympus one is even stabilised. My 2 (Euro-) Cents…

Like always, thanks for reading.

After Ricoh/Pentax announced a new monochrome-only DSLR camera a few weeks ago, and after the first reports, photos, and tests about it, I’ve been thinking about a camera which only has a black & white sensor – the only other readily available model being a Leica for almost 10,000$/€ without a lens.

That Pentax camera with a sensor of APS-C size seems to be very popular at least in Japan where it sold out immediately, twice in a row. Meaning that Ricoh/Pentax just can’t seem to make enough of them, and that people seem to like black & white – who would have thought?

Anyway – when I was shopping lately, I went into a local drugstore to look for film – and all they had left was a single brand and version of a black & white film. Looking online later at home, I saw the same. The only other film in their online store, a color negative one was marked as “not available”. So out of nostalgia, I bought one:

Of course, looking at price comparison sites, I’ve found some more, but way less than in the past, and at the same time more expensive than ever. Well, that answers one question as it seems:

And maybe that also saves me from this one:

That’s a joke of course. Like Michael Johnston wrote lately, I also won’t be “shooting” film anymore, so this roll is for “special occasions”, and I’ll treat it like the last one. The photo of the film in front of my camera above has been treated with Nik’s Silver Efex Pro 2, using an Agfa APX 100 film simulation just as a demo for what you can do with a normal mirrorless camera.

Would I buy that Pentax? No. Would I buy an Olympus Pen-F with a black & white only sensor? Probably, if it were under 1k€. Otherwise, I’m perfectly happy with what I have.

Like always, thanks for reading, and for viewing.

Edit, from two days later (Saturday, 27th of March 2023):

Found another one in a second drugstore chain, same brand but different ISO/ASA of 400 instead of 100. I’ve looked on their webpage but haven’t found it there, but in the store it was the only one available. So here’s a pic of both of them together:

Both films are made in UK, so I wonder who makes them – probably Ilford?

Oh, and the photo this time is straight out of camera, cropped in-camera to a 3:2 format, and with the contrast set to +2 (on a scale from -2…0…+2). No filters set, uploaded to Flickr as is.

Like always, thanks for reading/viewing.

… then I set my digital camera to black & white, and sometimes also to the 3:2 format of the typical 24x36mm “Kleinbildfilm” which we used when we were young. And if I’m really in some kind of yesterday’s mood, I also use Silver Efex to simulate using Ilford HP5 Plus film which we used to use most of the time, self-developed and prints enlarged with my brother Willi’s Durst machine in our parents’ bathroom… except that we used Canon A-1 cameras at the time, not Olympus like now:

Within Silver Efex (Pro 2, in Windows 11) I used +20 percent brightness here. And I like that like with real film, the “grain” is more visible in the brighter areas, not like digital “noise” which would turn up in the darker ones. Very reminiscent of film and its behaviour indeed.

I could get a roll of Ilford film from time to time, but our darkroom equipment is gone since long.

Like always, thanks for viewing.

This sounds truly promising:

Another one:

How fitting to have a piano as the background music for this – what a great analogy. A piano is a mechanical masterpiece as well, just ask my daughter after she tried some upright pianos… 🙂

Time to dust off my OM-2N, and to get some film into it again 🙂