CCC Forum

Last month I spent an afternoon in Brighton with Amateur Photographer magazine and Olympus Cameras on a photowalk. Afterwards, along with other attendees, I was invited to provide some images and thoughts on the experience. An article has just been published on the AP website.

https://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk/l ... ezy-120157

The stipulation for my input was 30 - 50 words, which included details of the kit used and whether I would consider buying the camera. It was an extremely tough challenge to sum up the experience in such a short space. I eventually I submitted 57 words, but added a codicil with my published comments being an amalgam of the two. Some of the other participants' proved to be considerably more verbose in what they had to say.

The bird lady was an interesting find and she spent some time feeding the pigeons. She did not mind being photographed, but I am not sure that I would have swapped places with her.

And would I consider buying into Olympus? The kit I used certainly performed well and I was impressed with the way that the camera handled. If I were seriously considering a switch, it would definitely be a contender. That said, with strong rumours of both Canon and Nikon entering the mirrorless area, our options are about to become more extensive.

In my response to Ron about the Brighton trip in the post about the bargain basement Sony A7, I promised to show the other two images which I sent to AP for the article. Until I saw what had been published, I did not think about all my selections featuring shots of people.

This first one, taken wide open on the 17mm f/1.2 lens and shot as metered, really demonstrated how much detail can be recovered from the E-M1 MK II Raw files. On first viewing the image in Lightroom, I thought that the highlights in the coin cascade had blown, but a Highlights reduction quickly recovered them. Given the option, I would have taken this with a longer fast lens to isolate the background a bit more. The Olympus 45 f/1.2 might have fared better. Even so, I was impressed how sharp the 17 f/1.2 was at maximum aperture, although at £1,200 should I really expect anything less?



There are some interesting shops and other places around The Lanes area, where this second shot was taken. It is wide open at the long end of the 12-40 f/2.8 and been cropped from the original.



All in all, we covered a lot of locations during the walk and I could have done with longer in most places where we stopped. Maybe, I will think about a return visit soon.