Weight reduction update

Panasonic GX7 + Olympus 12-40 f/2.8

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Dan, the "deed is done"
I hope the new kit will meet with your expectations.
Look forward to reading your findings in due course.

To continue on from my earlier #5...

After several tries with Fuji cameras and Funinon lenses, I 'saw the light' (apologies for this antiquated trope) and returned - I thought of saying 'backtracked' but that sounds too negative for what was, for me, a positive move - to Nikon, which I had been fervently in love with since the 1980s. I've recently offloaded the last of my Fujis. They are good cameras, but for me they just do not do what I want them to, especially in colors, and after many tries I found Nikons suit me best.

I bought a lightly used Nikon Z6, one of the last made in Japan so probably five years old when I acquired it.

Earlier this month I lucked into a 40 2.0 Z (SE) at a mate's rate price. Bought it in spite of all the meh! reviews I read about it online, used it a few times - and it's true love. For me it's the ideal street lens, not too tight yet not too wide, and it is now fast taking me away from my lifelong obsession with photographing lovely landscapes everywhere I travel, and concentrate more on people and small image segments of the places I visit.

Not since my Nikkormat years have I had a combo such that pleases me so much. It does everything I want it to do and gives me superlatively good images. Also weighs less than the D800s and D700s (especially the latter) I carted around southeast Asia for the better part of a decade.

How wondrous it is to have reached such a good place, camera-lens wise, so late in life. I hope to go on using my Z6/40 combo for a very long time.

Just goes to show that the best choices in equipment depend on what you shoot. My photography is very different. I use a prime for macro, and I have a nifty 50 that I use on very rare occasions, but apart from that, all of my photography is done with zooms, some quite long. If I did your kind of shooting, I would stick a prime or pancake on my R6 II and be happy as can be, as I love that body. The weight would be fine because the weight difference between the OM-1 and R6 isn't the bodies, which differ by a scant 77g. The substantial difference is all in the lenses, which are far smaller for MFT because of the much smaller image circle.

Here's the most extreme comparison with my new equipment. One is the Canon R6 II with an EF 70-200 f/4 plus adapter. The other is the OM-1 with the 40-150 (80-300 equivalent) f/4. Because the EF lens is internally focusing, I shot this with the Zuiko lens both extended and retracted.

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Here are my first macros from the iPhone. Early days but happy enough with the images - biggest problem was the physical act of taking the shots, as I missed the stabilising weight of the SLR lens and body (weight reduction may not be all that it's supposed to be ...)


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Dan, one of my buddies from the local camera club recently traded all her high-end Nikon gear for an OM-1 and loves it. She shoots mainly landscape and architecture

Thanks to this discussion, I decided to get my Olympus out of the cupboard and take a few photos. Beforehand, I spent some time exploring the camera’s menus, which I actually find very comprehensive and suitable for a wide range of users, myself included.

While using the 12-40mm lens, I noticed a clear inconsistency in the results. The photo I shared with you all is, in my view, very good; however, the ones I took a few days ago didn’t really impress me. I observed a noticeable drop in quality in all the shots, particularly in terms of colour, detail, and so on. It’s important to point out that my assessment is entirely amateur, based solely on the visual impression.

Perhaps I’ve become a bit spoilt after using Sony cameras and high-quality lenses for some time. So, maybe the issue isn’t with the equipment, but rather with my own adjustment or expectations.

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Originally Posted by billtils

Dan, one of my buddies from the local camera club recently traded all her high-end Nikon gear for an OM-1 and loves it. She shoots mainly landscape and architecture

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I know enough people who have gone a step farther and only shoot with their phones...

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one of my buddies from the local camera club recently traded all her high-end Nikon gear for an OM-1 and loves it.

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That's encouraging. Yesterday, I shipped my three least used FF lenses, a teleconverter, and an old APS-C body to KEH, but I haven't yet sold my R6 II or my three most used lenses. I want experience with the OM-1 first in all of the main types of photography I do first.

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I know enough people who have gone a step farther and only shoot with their phones...

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That's a fine choice for many people, but it's different. In switching from a Nikon or Canon FF body to an OM-1, you lose the advantages of a larger sensor but retain all of the control you had before. In fact, the OM-1 can do a few things that my R6 can't. Switching to a phone is more analogous to trading for a smaller camera and then vowing to leave it in Program mode. You give up control over most things. There's nothing wrong with that, and for certain kinds of photography, it works well enough. However, it's a qualitatively different decision.

Driven by curiosity about this topic, I went to check the differences between the Olympus 5 MK II and the OM-D E-M1 Mark III. After reading a few things here and there, I realised that perhaps I wasn’t entirely right when I mentioned the supposed inconsistency of results when using the same lens. After all, there are always technical details that escape us at first glance — and these cameras have more tricks than they might seem.

It’s interesting how, even with the same lens attached, the camera body can give the photograph its own particular character. Small differences in the processor, the way stabilisation works, or even how the software interprets the image can significantly change the final result. That’s quite fascinating, because it shows that photography isn’t just about the lens or just about the camera, but rather a balance between several elements where the photographer is main one.

In any case, what matters is that Dan is excited about his new equipment. :)
I truly hope you make the most out of the camera and that the results turn out to be positively surprising.
At the end of the day, what really counts is photographing, experimenting, and enjoying the pleasure of capturing the moment. :)

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Had my first real experiment yesterday. I took the OM-1 Mk II with the 12-40 walk-around on a long walk along a river north of here. The weight reduction relative to my similar old setup is about 1/3. I found the new gear no real nuisance at all to carry.

Tried a few shots in a high-contrast setting: open sunshine, cloudless sky, a river with reflections. My subjective impression was that the reduction in DR relative to the R6 was noticeable for a few shots, but most had nothing clipped or blown out. So all in all, a success.

One thing I didn't realize, which makes perfect sense now that I've read it, is that the computational ND filters in the OM-1 don't extend dynamic range because they don't affect the light hitting the sensor. So they are useful when the DR is manageable but aren't a substitute for a physical filter in all circumstances. I tried the computational grad ND, and it works well and is very easy to control while using the EVF rather than the LCD.

Dan, I will be interested to read of your opinions once you get to the stage of printing images captured with the OM kit.
In the meantime it looks as though there are a "few bells and whistles" to master...

Len,

I did print one today, but only a 5 x 7 from a cropped image on matte paper (to stop my printer from clogging), so not a real test. Once I have a few larger prints, I'll post.

Re bells and whistles: indeed. This is the first time I have switched brands since starting with digital years ago. The menus on my Canon cameras were an evolutionary, incremental change, so it was not that hard to adapt to a new camera. Not so with a different brand. The OM-1 has a very logically organized menu system (apparently, earlier Olympus cameras didn't), but it's quite different from my Canon, so I am spending a lot of time learning how to do things I knew how to do with the other camera. And the manual is over 500 pages long!

Dan, a new system learning curve would be one of my concerns.
I have been a Canon user since the 30D (8MP) was introduced 2 decades ago. As you say the incremental changes since then were not difficult to master.

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Originally Posted by LenR

Dan, a new system learning curve would be one of my concerns.
I have been a Canon user since the 30D (8MP) was introduced 2 decades ago. As you say the incremental changes since then were not difficult to master.

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I was in the same boat. I had an embarrassingly large number of Canon bodies over the years: XTi, 50D, 7D (for macro), 5D III, 5D IV, and R6 II.

The OM menus are now organized somewhat like Canon's: 2 pages of camera settings, one of AF settings, one of movie settings, one of playback settings, one of general settings, a "tools" page, and customizable personal menus at the end. However, a lot of things are controlled differently. For example, I use back button focusing a lot. On the Canon, you go to the button customization list and turn AF off for the shutter button. On the OM-1, you can do this separately for single-shot AF and continuous AF (their name for servo), and you go to the regular menu to turn AF off for each of these separately. It's not included on the button customization list. Also, the physical controls are somewhat different. The OM has a dedicated ISO button (I think customizable). It has two buttons recessed into the off/on switch that are a shortcut to five major functions. On the other hand, some things are the same. E.g., the info button allows you to cycle between views in the viewfinder and on the LCD.

And then, of course, there are all the new functions, a number of which I will probably end up using. For example, it has a high-res mode that the Canon doesn't have.

The bottom line is that it didn't take me all that long to get to the point where I could shoot using simple settings, e.g., in aperture priority mode when all I was doing was occasionally changing ISO. However, to get to the point where (1) I really know what I should know, and (2) I actually remember it all and can recall it quickly is going to take quite a while.

Dan

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Originally Posted by DanK

.Switching to a phone is more analogous to trading for a smaller camera and then vowing to leave it in Program mode. You give up control over most things. There's nothing wrong with that, and for certain kinds of photography, it works well enough. However, it's a qualitatively different decision.

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Agree ... but there comes a time ...

I'll be going to western Massachusetts in a few days and will take only my new camera, so I will finally get a chance to do some serious testing. If I get anything worth keeping, I'll post a few.

Meantime I have just been learning how to use the OM-1. It has a remarkable array of computational photography tools, and I think I will end up using more of them than I had expected. It has both focus stacking (with a composite) and focus bracketing (without one). The R6 has the latter too. It has ersatz ND and graduated ND filters which seem to work fine (I've tried both) as long as the scene doesn't exceed the DR of the sensor. (Since the computational ND doesn't reduce the light falling on the sensor, you need a real ND if the DR is too large.) For night photography with long exposures, it has a 'live bulb' mode where the shutter stays open until you press it a second time, and while it's open, the image appears on the screen, so you can stop it when you like the exposure. It has a "live composite" mode that takes multiple captures but only adds brighter pixels, for star trails, light trails, fireworks, lightning, etc. It has a high-resolution mode, 50 MPX hand-held and 80 MPX on a tripod. I had mostly been thinking about weight when I splurged and bought it, but the more I play with these features, the more of them I think I'll use.

Oddly, the manual still tells you to turn off IS when the camera is on a tripod. That hasn't been necessary with new Canon gear for quite some time.

I sincerely hope you capture some truly beautiful images and share them with us when the time feels right.

Exploring the features of a new camera is always an exciting pleasure, a blend of curiosity and discovery where each shot reveals new possibilities and challenges.
That feeling of learning how the equipment behaves, understanding its responses, is almost like a silent conversation between the photographer and the camera.

Cheers ! :)

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Originally Posted by AntonioCorreia

I sincerely hope you capture some truly beautiful images and share them with us when the time feels right.

Exploring the features of a new camera is always an exciting pleasure, a blend of curiosity and discovery where each shot reveals new possibilities and challenges.
That feeling of learning how the equipment behaves, understanding its responses, is almost like a silent conversation between the photographer and the camera.

Cheers ! :)

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Indeed, although this is accompanied by the frustration of forgetting things. The manual for this camera is 569 pages long, in the English version. I frequently have to search for things that I've forgotten. For example, this camera has 7 (!) burst modes, two or three of which I will use. Last night I realized I had forgotten how to set the burst rates and frame count limits for them. It also has a nice feature that you can turn on whenever you are doing something that requires the camera to take multiple shots. It will place a gray square in the viewfinder showing the limits of motion the camera can compensate for, with a little symbol showing where the camera is currently aimed. I think that might be really useful, but I now have no recollection at all of how to turn it on and off. In time, it will become automatic, or nearly so. but on the whole, I'm enjoying learning how to use it.