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First I saw this tree, and I liked how the light surrounded its needles. I played around with that photo quite a lot, which I also normally don’t do – so this is changed in contrast, saturation, and sharpness, then de-saturated and toned with the LAB ‘a’ and ‘b’ curves, and I also added some vignetting. This is the end result of that unusual heavy processing:

A few minutes later, we met a neighbour who last time introduced herself to Zuleikha as ‘Biggy’ (if I remember that correctly). She asked for a picture together with Zuleikha, but those taken in the harsh sunlight weren’t usable at all. I offered her to take proper photos whenever she wants, but from today’s snapshots I liked this one best:

Short before returning to our home, I tried to ‘catch’ a bird – but that one seemed to be hiding as good and fast as possible. Here it’s on the run behind some garbage boxes:

And back at our home again, I took a photo of a styrofoam cat, which – at the time of exposure and development of this picture – still had no name yet:

All taken with the E-520 and that 40-150mm kit zoom, and with natural light.

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Update: after much consideration, and writing down lots of possible names, Zuleikha named her cat ‘Fairy Kitty Lonien’.

When I looked at the other photographers, most of them had DSLRs with kit or “super zoom” lenses, and some carried two bodies with both a normal and a telephoto zoom lenses. And that is exactly what I also have already: if I mount the normal kit zoom to the E-PL1, and the tele kit zoom to my E-520, I have a range which equals 28 to 300mm on a “full frame” camera. Plus, these Olympus kit zooms are superb for their price ranges, so much so that Olympus is rather famous for their two “middle tier” (Olympus calls it “HG” for “high grade”) zooms with 12-60mm, and 50-200mm. I don’t have any of those, since each of them is around or above 1,000€, but those standard grade kit zooms also count to the best available ones from any maker.

So a few minutes ago while having a smoke on our veranda, I took the Pen camera with its 14-42mm lens, and tried it at both its short and long ends:

In that first one, I applied -0.3EV exposure compensation because of the really high contrasty scene with lots of highlights from the direct sunlight. The camera was on the table tripod and on the ground, with the VF-2 electronic viewfinder tilted upwards 90 degrees (that’s just wonderful to use). Focus was on that small red toy plane in the foreground. Aperture was 5.6.

I took the second image at the long end of the lenses’ range while sitting in a chair, with +0.7EV exposure compensation to “expose to the right” (having a live histogram in the viewfinder is also wonderful and something you cannot do with conventional DSLRs with their optical viewfinders). This was also taken with an aperture of f=1:5.6, and tho I know the lens is sharper at f=1:8.0, it’s still pretty sharp if you ask me:

The camera chose ISO320 by the way, but since I took care of a correct exposure, noise is no issue at all – the image is as clean as one could wish.

Like I said (or wrote) already, I’ll use the 40-150mm zoom on my E-520 DSLR for a while, and that one is even better and sharper than both normal kit zooms. That way, I have a real huge range covered, and if I need a fast lens or want to have a real shallow depth of field, I can use my 1:2.0 macro lens, or even the 1:1.4 normal prime (either on the OM-2N “full frame” film camera, or with an adapter on the E-520).

Most important thing, seen in a few years from now, is that you used a capable camera at all – and also that the photographer was able to “get the shot” and to catch those moments. Family and all that – what else counts?

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Ok – I have to admit (again), that I’m no pro in this. In fact, that was the first demonstration where I also took photos, and doing so while being in the middle of a huge crowd of people is an experience of itself. I ended up thinking hmmm – my lens is either too wide or not wide enough (depending on the distance, which at times can be very close – or far away), and I looked at all those people carrying DSLRs with zoom lenses. Almost as many had smaller ‘Point & Shoots’, or even camera phones. There was only one other couple I saw where the guy also had an E-PL1.

But I didn’t want to change, so I kept using that small Pen with Mitchie’s 20mm lens, while Mitchie was using hers with the almost-glued-on Olympus 45mm lens. And maybe this is why the best of mine were those of people with self-made posters:

I have to improve in this; I know. And maybe I should have taken lots more time – but we were with our 7-year-old, and had to constantly watch her, and we also had to leave quite early.

Haven’t heard, read, or seen the news yet, but I hope it stayed as peaceful as it was during the time we spent there. It was important to be there, and to stand for our rights, and for democracy. And I’m glad we did this – good photos or not.

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First I thought ok, if I can’t be at the European Central Bank, let’s at least take a photo of Deutsche Bank, which is opposite of Vodafone in Eschborn, just over the A66 motorway bridge from my employers’:

No protests here of course – and not many workers and employees as well, due to yesterday’s Ascension Day. I cropped this into 16:10 format in post, and also corrected the perspectives a bit. Sometimes I do wish for a view cam, or at least some cool tilt & shift lens. But I probably wouldn’t have carried the former, and not even a tripod for the latter.

Walking further on, and looking up, I suddenly felt small, at least compared to that high current mast towering over the trees, which made even those look small:

Crossing back under that A66 motorway, I took this “street art” graffiti (which is on top of multiple layers of older graffiti; that’s how they do it):

Cropped this into square to fit that symbol a bit better.

On the other (Frankfurt) side of the motorway, I stepped into the fields to take a close-up of this single beauty:

I took this one using a minus 1.3EV correction to avoid blown-out highlights. Using that electronic viewfinder is wonderful, especially with those red and blue over- and underexposure warnings. This is something you really don’t see in an optical viewfinder; with those you have to rely on experience, luck, and/or multiple exposures until you get it right. With that VF-2, you take one shot and just have it. I love that.

On the bridge over the small creek, someone obviously had romantic feelings during last winter:

And when you lift the camera just a bit higher, you see this:

Here I did like they used to say during film days: “Expose for the highlights, develop the shadows” – something I usually don’t do with those digital cameras from Olympus, since you run into noise territory if you overdo it. That newer OM-D E-M5 should handle this nicer, just like any camera with those Sony sensors, it has an advantage of at least 2 stops in dynamic range over my little old “Pen”. But I’m an amateur and hobbyist only, and a result like this is actually quite good – nothing for pixel peepers, but good enough if you want to print something like this. I’ve seen and proved that.

A few steps further on, you come into open fields. Lots of sun, and an ideal place for the farmer who still does some real important work there – growing food for us all. Even in this harsh and direct sunlight, those Pens can do a remarkable job (but without that viewfinder I probably wouldn’t have gone that low with my camera):

And coming back to the company where I work, I caught a colleague who crossed that bridge of which I took photos from inside lately:

And even with this one, I was impressed about what you’re able to get with these small cameras. Nothing was really blown out, and nothing too dark as well – perfect. Love that “Pen”! And that viewfinder is a big big recommendation, at least if you use the camera in sunlight that bright like it was today.

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The one on the left is of/about Henri Cartier-Bresson, and the other one is Kirk Tuck’s latest. I have all of Kirk’s 5 books now, and can recommend them all.

Took this photo with using the natural sunlight, but with placing a diffuser into our window to avoid too harsh light & shadow transitions. Corrected the exposure plus 2/3rds of a stop because of the white table cloth (which usually confuses in-camera measurings), and to “expose to the right”. In post processing, I cropped it to 16:10 format.

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Instead, I’ll show one I just took minutes ago from outside at our veranda. I stood there, having a smoke when I saw the low sun in the tree above, and the sky with an opening in the clouds just above it. I took this one with the E-PL1 and the Panasonic Lumix G 20mm f/1.7 lens with a correction of minus 0.7EV to keep all the highlights in the clouds from burning out. In RawTherapee, I used settings of minus 10 for the contrast, and minus 5 for the saturation to get as many “tones” as possible without flattening those colours too much. This was the result:

You can see at those branches and at the dove how low the sun already was.

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Well maybe first because I tried something new. I did mostly people shots, and most of those were candids. But I wasn’t always close enough, or I got the lighting wrong, or I shot from the hip and missed it, anyway – I failed big time.

Another reason could be that my own expectations are much higher than they used to be. I see a missed shot, and I can still learn from it. Ming Thein has just written an article about perfection and content, with lots of very very good examples – well worth a read if you’re interested in photography.

Just a few minutes ago, I took a photo of Zuleikha reading. I let down the shutters on the window about 2/3 of their way, and with ISO 100 and an aperture of f=2.0, that gave me 1/10th of a second. Not perfect but just hand-holdable with the good in-body stabilization of Olympus.

Like I said: that image isn’t perfect. But it’s by far the best one I took today, and I like it a lot:

Thanks for viewing and reading.