Last thursday, my brother (ty Crikou !) brought me a very exciting present: 3 CCTV "toy" lenses (25mm f1.4, 35mm f1.7, 50mm f1.4), coming together with a m43 mount adapter and some macro rings.

As you probably know, such very cheap C-mount lenses are initially intended to be used as security cameras, and even if they are pretty fast, their optical qualities are obviously quite poor. They are nevertheless known as very fun to use, and after a few tests, I have to say that I completely agree with this statement !

I first tried to compare the 25mm lens with my Panasonic 25mm f1.4 lens to have an idea of how "bad" it was. As you can see here below, the CCTV lens has indeed very high optical defaults: the picture centre is quite sharp but as soon you go off centre, a lot of distortion appears, vignetting is very high, and - worse point probably - the picture becomes more and more soft if not totally blurred. Stopping down clearly improves the situation as far as softness is concerned, and a good compromise might be to shoot around f/4 to try to reach something that approaches standard-quality lenses.

       
Comparison at 25mm f1.4 (1/40, ISO200) using the Panasonic lens (left) & the CCTV one (right) & same OMD settings

But the point is probably exactely here: this lens can't clearly compete at all with standard high-quality lenses, but if you use its defaults in a creative way, it can doubtless give you a lot of fun while producing very characteristics & appealing pictures. Especially as the produced bokeh, distorted & blured, is quite unusual & therefore interesting from my point of view. I'm sure it can be very charming for portraits... if the face is centered ;)

Bokeh test in my home studio - Shot at 25mm f1.4 - Focus is made on the bass first fret

But where I became even more enthusiastic testing this 25mm CCTV lens was when I started to play with the macro rings to try to transform my camera into a kind of hand-made microscope ;)

    
My OMD-EM5 equipped with the CCTV 25mm lens (pictures from my phone):
normal mode (left) and "microscope" mode using 9 macro rings (right). Funny isn't it?^^

With this configuration, it have to confess that doing some macro shots was not very easy because the subject needs to be very close to the lens and that you need to step down near to the fully-closed diaphragm position to be able to recover a decent depth of field.

But with an adequate lighting, the results you can get are really amazing as you can see in the pictures below !! And the obtained true reproduction ratio exceeds 2:1 (i.e. a 35mm equivalent magnification factor of more than 4:1). For comparison, the macro capability of the Olympus 12-50mm kit zoom is 0.36:1 (0.72:1 equivalent 35mm). My home-made microscope is doing 5 times better !

I think I already love this toy lens \o/ 

Full-size (uncropped) shots of a 20€ bill (JPEG straight from the camera); the width of the real subject is 8mm, and the m4/3 sensor is 17.3mm long, leading to a more than 2:1 actual magnification factor (4:1 35mm equivalent)  

Same bill shot with the 12-50mm Olympus lens in macro mode; the actual magnification factor is here "only" 0.36:1 (0.72:1 35mm equivalent)

The good news is that...
...we spent a terrific vacation week in Presles, with great weather, plenty of snow and not a soul out there. Ideal for a winter break ! This was also my first tests using the OMD panorama mode as you can see here below.

Presles, March 04th 4PM (12mm f8, stitched w/ 4 pictures)

Presles, March 08th 7PM (12mm f5.6, stitched w/ 2 pictures)

The bad news is that...
...coming back to Paris, we realized that spring was not yet willing to arrive here: it has been snowing all day long last Tuesday... Unbelievable ! Come on sun, we are coooold !!

Kremlin Bicêtre, March 13th 1AM (7.5mm fisheye f3.5)

Since a couple of weeks I've been discovering the excellent Dxo Optics Pro 8 software (trial version). This piece of code has clearly very big pros, especially:

• Very simple & nice interface with only useful tools (in clear: better than LightRoom on this point)
• Automatic lens optical corrections (like in Olympus Viewer actually)
• Very efficient engines to enhance sharpness and correct noise & aberrations (better than OV in most of the situations)
• Nice integrated tools for defishing and restoring perspectives
• Enhanced capabilities for lighting management compared to OV

Nevertheless, I'm still willing to use Olympus Viewer in most of the situations, especially because the process is faster: I can start with the exact presets I shot with - not from the basic RAW file - which is quite convenient. Another reason is that I still find the Jpeg engine better in terms of color rendering with OV. And finally, I'm still addictive to a couple of gorgeous Olympus filters like the Dramatic Tone or the Pin Hole, as you already noticed ;)

But besides Dxo Optics, I also tried the associated Dxo Film Pack 3, which is really a nice and useful tool able to excite your creativity on the long run. And it's fair: no layers capabilty i.e. no cheating !^^ Unfortunately, it is a bit expensive, and I will wait a bit before getting it: other similar tools exist like the new Perfect Photo Suite and I need to compare... 

Anyway, no more rhetoric... Here are a few pictures from my week-end, most of them post-processed with Dxo Film Pack. Welcome in the Snake year !

Tired angel - Olympus 45mm f1.8 1/100 ISO2500

The smoking kitchen - PanaLeica 25mm f1.4 1/80 ISO640

To be or not to be... - Olympus 45mm f1.8 1/100 ISO2500

Pink room - Samyang 7.5mm f3.5 1.3 ISO200

Welcome to the Snake - Panasonic 100mm f4 1/2000 ISO200

The green circle - Samyang 7.5mm f16 1/400 ISO200

Following my brother's addiction to the NEX-7 and his continuously growing lens collection, I also decided - again...! - to buy a new toy for my OMD... This is the Samyang 7.5mm f\3.5 fish-eye, a very solid-built manual lens that fits sooo nicely with the OMD camera :)

My firts shots with this combo were made last week-end in Paris at the Bibliothèque square. This was at twilight after my Sunday movie. First thing to underline: it was not easy to shoot there, not because of the lens (actually, it is very easy to use, especially in M mode), but because I have been disturbed by a guard telling me that I was not allowed to take pictures... To make the long story short, I hopefully convinced him to let me shoot, arguing that my camera was small (!) and that the pictures were only for personal use, which is actually totally true (even if I'm showing a couple of ones in the present post). I discovered afterwards that this was a well known issue for photographers... What a crazy world we are livin'in...

 Shot at f\3.5 1/40 ISO 3200,  w/ pin-hole Olympus filter. Great colors aren't they ?

During this first try, I was especially curious to test how wide the angle of view can be with this fish-eye lens. I therefore decided to shoot a test-picture and compare it to a classical 12mm wide angle picture. You can see above the two photos, shot from the same location (sorry, no tripod inside...).

To accurately assess the ultra-wide angle capability of this lens, I performed a de-fish process of the .jpeg using the Hugin software (the Samyang lens is unfortunately not recognized as a fish-eye in the Olympus Viewer tool). This freeware is actually very powerful and simple to use. You fist select your picture, then set your lens characteristics: fish-eye type, focal length, focal length multiplier (2 for m43's). And finally you choose the projection type, the rectilinear one in our de-fishing case, and process. This is practically done ! I also manually slightly corrected the remaining trapezoidal distortion with Olympus Viewer to fully recover a similar perspective compared to the 12mm shot.      

Result obtained after de-fishing. The white rectangles corresponds to what you obtain shooting from the same location with a 7mm, 12mm and 25mm lens (keep in mind that for m43's systems, this corresponds to 14mm, 24mm & 50mm equivalent lengths for 24*36)

As you can see, the results is pretty satisfying. The covered angle of view clearly exceeds what you can do with available ultra-wide angle lenses (e.g. the Pana 7-14mm). The full-size cropped widest picture you can produce here is equivalent to a shot at about 5 to 5.5mm focal length (10 to 11mm equivalent in 24*36) !!! Of course, the resolution in the corners is extremely degraded by the de-fish process, and the distortions & chromatic aberrations visible, so that in the end, you can hardly claim that this lens is comparable to a 5mm lens... But with a reasonable crop (typically from 6.5mm), you can keep an excellent image quality on the whole area.

Well, all in all, I'm really convinced by the image quality and the super-wide angle capabilities of this lens... For the price it costs (250€, 4 times less than the Pana 7-14mm), this lens is REALLY a must-have from my point of view !!!

Since the end of the world has miserably failed (hopefully !), one can move on & explore more deeply life's enjoyments...

This is what I did using the Olympus Viewer software, trying to re-work extensively a couple of landscapes pictures with the Dramatic tone filter. I like this filter that can give very interesting artistic rendering, especially when your picture has very high contrasts.

You can find below my favourite results. The first one shows the small Loch Gamhna in Scotland, and the second one is a shoot of the beacon in Le Croisic, Britain, at sunset...

Do U feel the Celtic spirit !?!

Every year, my institute offers a Xmas show to our kids.

We were this time in Paris, Pelouse de Rueuilly, to see the last show from the Arlette Gruss company. Quite impressive ! And this was a good opportunity to test again my OMD in low light conditions, but using my new Olympus 45mm f1.8 this time.

Verdict: I DO like this focal length for shows...!
As expected I would say, given my last similar experience with my 25mm.

You can see below a few samples showing flying men. Shots w/aperture wide open, 1/100s ISO-320 for the first one, 1/640s ISO-2000 for the second one (he was going so fast^^).

Time to practice at 300mm !

Here are a couple of shots taken in Brudieux, Corrèze, under heavy rain. Not so bad :)

Too much work = no more pictures... Damned, I need to focus !!!

Here is Gran'Pa, 88 years old, @45mm f1.8. Still so sparkling !

I think I now have a pretty fair lens collection to feed my OMD.

• The very good kit lens Olympus 12-50mm f 3.5-6.3 for landscapes & macros.
• The fabulous Panasonic Leica 25mm f 1.4 for... basically everything!
• The excellent Olympus 45mm f 1.8 for portraits.
• And now the surprisingly sharp (but heavy!) Panasonic 100-300mm f 4.0-5.6 for tele range.

And I'm sure I have to stop here for a while... In my case, having too much possibilities gives generally rise to some difficulties in enjoying the heart of the field and in finding new exciting ideas. I had some bad experience in the past on this point, especially with music, and I don't want to reproduce this.

"Be reasonable, guy, don't try to get the moon !" Oups... I did it !^^

Original JPEG at 300mm, f5.6, 1/250, Iso320, with additional digital zoom *2
(recompressed as usual by the crappy CanalBlog engine, sorry for this)

Coming back from Scotland, we spent some good time - as every summer - with family & friends in the South-West of France first and then in Brittany near Guérande and Loctudy.

This was a very lovely & refreshing time. Except the fact that we celebrated my (already 40th) birthday^^ But guess what ? I was offered a brand new lens,  the one I was dreaming of, the Oly 45mm f1.8 ! THANK YOU so much folks !!! 

SO ! I can now confirm that this one is really an amazing lens... It is extremely light and so small that you have the impression that your OMD has become a small compact camera. It focuses very fast (faster than the Pana 25mm to my point of view) and produces amazing sharp images with very nice bokeh. Just look here above at my very first shot using it ! 

I think this lens is presently becoming my favorite... And this was to be expected, given that I love so much this focal length ;)  

We spent one week in Scotland in July. We first stayed in Edinburgh and then went North through the Highlands. We spent some time in particular in the Inverness area (we haven't found Nessie unfortunately) and in the Isle of Skye near Portree, where you feel like you are at a the very end of the world... 

Scotland is definitively gray and green. And soooo rainy and windy ! This has been a really exciting experience, but really uncomfurtable as far as shooting was concerned, even with my weather sealed OMD. Here are anyway some shoots from this trip. A few portraits (I love shooting portraits^^) and many landscapes mainly - here I have still to practice, I know...!  

It has been raining all the week-end long, it has been cold, most of us are now in our fourties... And guess what ? This week-end was amazing :p

Some photos here, all using the "Pin hole" Olympus filter, that I really find attractive for portraits.

Only one picture has been shot using the "Dramatic tone" filter: will you find it ?^^