Music. Photography. Thoughts.
While we were getting ready to go shopping, Tuna sat down on Zuleikha’s chair. She loves places which are nice and cuddly – especially when they’re also useful as a lookout:
Tuna the cat on a high chair, November 2014
Taken with the Olympus E-PL5 camera and the Panasonic Leica DG Summilux 25mm/1.4 lens at f/2, with ISO 800. No noise reduction, as usual almost no post-processing except from adjusting the white balance, exposure, and contrast a bit.
Thanks for viewing.
Today the weather was really nice around here, so during our lunch break, my colleague Arno and me decided to take a short walk around the block. It was a bit chilly in the shadows of buildings, but as soon as we were out in the open it became really enjoyable.
There was some action at the relatively new datacenter building next to our employers’ ones, and it looks as if finally they put up some kind of logo on a wall. A big pink “Z”:
Pink “Z” 1/3
Pink “Z” 2/3
Pink “Z” 3/3
All images taken with my Olympus E-PL5 camera and the Panasonic Leica DG Summilux 25mm/1.4 lens.
Thanks for viewing.
We gave Mitchie’s VF-2 viewfinder to my brother Willi, for whom the E-PL1 is a totally new camera with it, as he said. And for Mitchie I ordered the newer VF-4 viewfinder which has a higher resolution and a bigger picture. It arrived today, and one look through it confirmed it: this is like an old Olympus OM – big, even brighter than its older film sibling, and with lots more overlaid information in the picture of course. Should be ideal to manually focus lenses for instance, but even the initial experience of looking through it confirms: this is big cinema indeed. I recently looked through a Nikon D700, and I definitely prefer the VF-4 (ok, that might be a bit unfair, because the Nikon had the 50-500mm “Bigma” lens mounted which isn’t as bright as our small primes of course).
To show you the difference, here’s a photo of both our E-PL5 cameras:
Tabletop with two cameras. (Almost) identical twins. Photo taken with Olympus E-520 and a ZD 50mm/2 Macro lens (and two studio strobes). More info about the photo is on Flickr (click on it).
Now I understand why everyone who tried it loves the E-M1. Or the E-P5 which comes with this same viewfinder. It’s compatible with “lesser” (cheaper but not necessarily worse) cameras like ours, but you might need a firmware upgrade – so in case you’re interested, don’t forget to consult the Olympus pages first.
Thanks for reading.
Got this as a present some while ago:
adidas® Victory League. Olympus E-PL5 with M.Zuiko 45mm/1.8 at f/5.6, two lights, both gridded. 1:1 raw conversion, quasi out of camera.
Thanks for viewing.
I was changing the standard reflector of the newer studio strobe to a gridded one, and played around with hard light. Then I used it as an effect light from the front, like here:
Fruits. Olympus E-PL5 with M.Zuiko 45mm/1.8 at f/5.
You can see it in the reflections that I was using two lights, and they were set up like this:
Setup shot of “Fruits”. Olympus E-PL5 with Panasonic 14mm/2.5 lens at f/5.
I had the side strobe with the socked beauty dish on 1/16th power, and the front gridded strobe at 1/32nd power, which gave me an aperture of f/5 at ISO 200. Could have gridded the beauty dish as well to get less spill onto the background (a 5-in-1 reflector/diffuser/light blocker). But even with a quick setup like this you’ll get some usable results.
Update: I just did that – a shot like this takes half an hour, together with setting up and removing the lights and background plus the few things that I do in post processing:
Fruits II. Olympus E-PL5 with M.Zuiko 45mm/1.8 lens at f/4.
As you can see, there are still two lights, but changing the sock to a grid on the beauty dish takes away 2/3rds of a stop of light. I decided not to adjust the light but the camera’s aperture, so now that side light is more an effect light, and the gridded light from the front is more of a main one. Also changed angles a bit, and all in all this one is lit a bit more on the “dramatic” side. Small changes and movements can make quite a difference.
In the end it’s all more or less a matter of taste – and for me it’s still an interesting way to learn to light.
Thanks for viewing/reading.
Zuleikha considers to change her horn for a smaller one – one more reason for me to take some photos of the current one. For this photo I used two studio strobes, one with the beauty dish as main light, the other from behind and above the black background. Taken at an aperture of f/8:
Model 702 horn, by Meister (master) Hans Hoyer. Olympus E-PL5 with M.Zuiko 45mm/1.8 lens at f/8. Two studio strobes at 1/8 and 1/32 power.
Thanks for viewing.
P.S.: while thinking about what I could show you as an example of good music made with wonderful instruments like this one, of course Maurice Ravel’s Bolero came to my mind first. The best interpretation I ever heard (and I bought the CD and gave it as a present to our aunt) is the one with Seiji Ozawa and the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra. Sadly, the video on Youtube doesn’t play here in Germany, most probably due to a legal problem with Gema I suppose. So consider listening to a version conducted by the wonderful Daniel Barenboim instead – his isn’t really worse than Ozawa’s, just different of course, and it’s always a pleasure to see that maestro perform. There’s a short moment where you’ll see a hornist with a double horn, and later you see them as a group – but all the other instruments and performers are also playing so good.
If you want to see Seiji Ozawa instead – I didn’t know until today that he even performed the also very beautiful Polovtsian Dances from Borodin, together with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, open air. And also with this one, you’ll see that Ozawa is the one in classics who really understands rhythm – the man lives and breathes it. But watching Barenboim is even more interesting, at least in the Bolero above. Here’s one who’s conducting with ever so slight movements, and still it works out very beautifully. Highly recommended listening. And both pieces are wonderful.
Yesterday I wrote about some sudden problem with my light meter, and that it began working normally shortly afterwards. It still measures just fine again today, so I don’t have the slightest idea where that hiccup came from. Measured only the first of these two photos – by now I pretty much know the apertures I need anyway as long as I don’t move things around:
Concert cards. Olympus E-520 with Zuiko Digital 50mm/2 Macro lens at f/6.3.
Zuleikha, looking at a toy catalog, November 2014. Olympus E-PL5 with Micro Zuiko 45mm/1.8 lens at f/6.3.
Oh, and while you can count every single eyelash of our daughter, the chin and everything beneath falls nicely out of focus already even at an aperture of 6.3 – so whoever said that Micro Four Thirds wouldn’t give you enough blur or had no “depth of field control” obviously never took any portraits like these. Just love those lenses.
Thanks for reading.
Today I wanted to take another cat photo, with flash – but my light meter constantly showed me “E.u” (about which the manual said: underexposed). Hm. So I guessed the exposure for this one:
practicing
After changing batteries a few times (which didn’t help), and simply waiting a bit and trying again, it worked:
measuring
Strange. Thought it was the battery, tho the symbol for that showed just fine. And now it works with the battery which was in it before. Have to keep watching that…
By the way, if you care for these settings you see: yes I set the light meter for a reading at ISO 125, both for the E-PL5 at ISO 200 and the E-520 at ISO 100, which are their lowest settings. And according to DxO these settings are pretty identical, and both are nearer to what they also measure as ISO 125 than to anything else. So setting that ISO value in the light meter gives me good results, and I agree with DxO in this regard, even if I cannot understand some of their lens measurements.
Thanks for reading.
Zuleikha got her instrument from / for school yesterday, and I took some photos for her so that she can write about it on her blog. That’s why I only show one of them here which I took using the “PanaLeica” 25mm lens, and with the camera set to black & white. So this is a kind of a “teaser” image while waiting for her to show the ones in colour:
French Horn
Thanks for viewing.
“Picasso, Monet, Degas, Warhol – and almost any other artist of renown – would have been eviscerated by modern critique culture.”
David duChemin in “About Critique“
Reminds me of Ian Gillan (lead singer of Deep Purple), who said to the media lately that he (or Mick Jagger or Bob Dylan or whoever has some kind of profile) would fail the first rounds of today’s “star search” TV shows…