A Fun E-Mx Comparison

 

It has been a long time since my last post, and I am sorry for for not giving prior notice, but I have been traveling ever single weekend for the past month, and I still have a couple more weekends to go, this kills any spare time I have for posting here, but I am able to squueze some time to share a few fun photos with you. As you might notice, I don't have my regular signature on the photos, and the photos are larger than usual (do click them to see a larger version), the reason is that I have prepared all this post on the iPad, the collages in this post (with the grungy color effects below) were prepared using Autodesk's Pixlr+ app, resized to 2500px, and uploaded and posted using the Blogsy app.

Freezing Time With Flash

 

What you see above is the result of a lot of spare time. Almost every year, me, my brother, my cousin and my cousin's cousin gather in a deserted flat in the countryside for two days, for no other purpose but to spend some "male" time together, and do a lot of photography. Let me take you behind the scenes.

Sample Photos: PanaLeica Nocticron 42.5mm f/1.2

 

I got a surprising call from Panasonic to test out their much lusted-over new uber lens, the 42.5mm f/1.2 beast, for a couple of days. In this quick post I will show a few of my favorite pictures taken with this lens. I won't be reviewing it in detail until later, but in short, the lens is extremely sharp, and I didn't come across any weird bokeh issues as mentioned by some sites. All photos shown here are shot wide open at f/1.2, look at those smooth backgrounds!

A Quick, Simple 2/3 Lights Setup

The final result

 

I received a request from an anonymous commenter to show the lighting setup and the processing done to a picture of my daughter wearing a scarf. And since I didn't have any BTS pictures of the setup, I decided to shoot a similar picture, in the same place, with the same scarf, and show the lighting steps as I progressed. Click through to read the rest.

Olympus M.Zuiko 45mm f/1.8 Mini Review

 

My iPad is back, hurrah, now I can use the brilliant Blogsy app and post more frequently. It's a silver iPad Air with the handsome looking iOS 7 (although some apps still look old fashioned, and uses the old keyboard, hmm, like Blogsy for example).

 

Today I will show you a few of my favorite pictures taken with the Olympus 45 1.8, one of the best lenses you could ever get for your MFT camera. Hit the jump for the full post.

Yongnuo RF-603 + Olympus OM-D: Reloaded

Do you remember my RF-603 modification post? In that post I was able to modify my Canon version of the Yongnuou RF-603 trigger to make it work with my Olympus camera to trigger external flashes.

Now thanks to member Earlack and his post in this dpreview thread, I was able to further modify the camera cable of the triggers so that they can also wirelessly trigger my camera. Full details after the jump.

Abstracts With The Olympus 40-150R

Tilted Lamp Post

Have you ever seen any of Gavin Hoey's 15 Minute Photo Challenges? Theses videos usually inspire me to just grab a camera with one lens and shoot the heck out of wherever I am at the moment.

OM-D, Bits & Pieces

 
Today I will talk for a bit about my recent experiences with my OMD, and I would like to start with the image you see above, this was taken during an auto-cross event that I attended last Saturday, it is a wheel of a Mitsubishi Evo wearing a slick tire as you can see, the car was stationary for a moment before starting the race.
 
I captured the image you see above @ 300mm equivalent with my Olympus 40-150mm f/4-5.6 lens wide-open, I like the lighting, the grooves on the brake disc and the worn out slick tire. That lens is quite sharp and incredible considering the $100 price when purchased as a kit.

Macro Fun @ Home

 

I have been sick for a few days now, and I had to spend the weekend at home, so yesterday I decided to have some quick macro fun, I didn't expect to get great pictures, but the purpose was to have fun and to experiment with some of my less used equipment.

Home Pastries With The OMD

 

That looks tasty, my wife was baking these pastries at home and I immediately remembered a short movie Phillip Bloom made of his mother cooking, it was brilliant, so I decided to do something similar but with stills, and document the main parts of the process. It will be also a chance to talk about the OMD for a bit.

Yongnuo RF-603 + Olympus OM-D

OM-D + RF-603 working happily, excuse the quality, picture taken with my phone

During my DSLR sale, I kept all of my lighting equipment, one of my recent purchases were a couple of YN RF-603 wireless triggering kits (Canon 5D version), I never had a chance to use them on a real shoot with the 5D, however I tested them and they worked as advertised. I bought 2 kits, so I had 4 transceivers, they can trigger 3 flashes from the 5D, and they could be used to trigger the camera wirelessly as well.

 

Anyway, that's not the point, when I bought the OMD, I ordered an FL600R flash as my TTL, on-camera bounce flash, and I had a couple of YN-560 II powerful manual flashes to be used in lighting setups. I kept the RF-603 kit when I wanted to trigger all three flashes for setup shots, I know the YN-560 II flashes have optical triggers, and the Olympus FL600R can can be controlled remotely from the OMD, but I wanted the reliability of wireless triggers, especially if there are line of sight issues. When I tested the RF-603 triggers, I discovered they don't work with Olympus, I had totally forgot that I bought the Canon version, hmm, I thought, that's a bummer, let's see what I can find on the interwebz. Hit the jump to find out.

Olympus OM-D: First Impressions & Comments on DOF

Olympus 45mm f/1.8 wide-open

You probably already know my story with the DSLRs and why I suddenly decided to switch, and start a new life with micro four thirds and Olympus, here's the link if you haven't already read it before.

These are my first impressions on the Olympus OM-D, I have not had a chance to thoroughly use the camera, I only used it 3 times briefly, at home, at work and at a petrol station where the picture above is from. Hit the jump for a quick, fun read.

The Truth Behind The Migration

I didn't expect the comments I got on my previous post, it seems there a lot of people interested in the change, some people thought full frame was a bust, that it doesn't differ from crop sensors, some thought that I finally saw the light and will move to Nikon, and others are interested in learning from my experience in order to avoid my mistakes.

To all, here I tell the full details of the story, the morals, and my advice to recent camera owners, it will be long, I will try to ingest some pictures to make it less painful, and for the impatient, please jump for the summary at the end of the post.