Shooting with my hybrid cam

Imagine a forest in the SW of France: oaks, chestnuts, a few pines, birdsongs... Atmosphere is humid, almost rainy despite springtime. Imagine you are standing there with your camera, starting to be cold under the cloudy sky, waiting for some bird to show...

And here comes the miracle: a sudden ray of sunshine and a young spring wasp coming in, probably searching for some warm up. This is the story of this picture, shot with my OMD plus Panasonic 100-300mm. Nice macro shot isn't it?

Manual lenses are very fun to use actually. The more I practice, the more I have fun using them :)

Here below are a few new pictures I like pretty much, 1 from my "home made" Fujian macro lens and 2 from the excellent Samyang fish-eye. Partly processed using Perfect Effects 4 freeware this time. Miam !

Sexy raspberry

Coquelicot

The girl, the player & Godfather

Here is the list of the current 20 best rated micro 4/3 lenses.

To do so, I've picked up and process the data from all the consumers' reviews (& associated yellow stars) I've been able to found on the Amazon websites worldwide, the most relevant ones being US, Germany, Japan, UK & France. This list is therefore made from a total number of 2767 reviewers' rates, that starts to be quite good statistics.

Globally, this ranking is pretty on-line with the known reputation of the different lenses, but you will nevertheless find a few surprises... In any case, and as expected, the winner is...

1. Olympus 75mm f/1.8
        4.96 / 5.0 stars (average from 46 consumers' reviews)
   
2. Panasonic 20mm f/1.7
        4.79 (390)
3. Voigtlander 25mm f/0.95
        4.77 (31)
4. Olympus 45mm f/1.8
        4.77 (216)
5. Panasonic 25mm f/1.4
        4.72 (93)
6. Olympus 60mm f/2.8 macro
        4.71 (31)
7. Panasonic 45mm f/2.8 macro
        4.70 (50)
8. Panasonic 7-14mm f/4.0
        4.69 (70)
9. Panasonic 14-45mm f/3.5-5.6
        4.68 (56)
10. Olympus 12mm f/2.0
         4.61 (54)
11. Samyang 7.5mm f/3.5 fish-eye:
         4.59 (70)
12. Olympus 9-18mm f/4.0-5.6
         4.53 (73)
13. Panasonic 12-35mm f/2.8
         4.53 (75)
14. Olympus 40-150mm f/4.0-5.6 R
         4.50 (48)
15. Olympus 75-300mm f/4.8-6.7
         4.50 (32)
16. Sigma 30mm f/2.8
         4.50 (161)
17. Panasonic 45-200mm f/4.0-5.6
         4.49 (275)
18. Panasonic 100-300mm f/4.0-5.6
         4.44 (84)
19. Olympus 14-150mm f/4.0-5.6
         4.43 (69)
20. Olympus 40-150mm f/4.0-5.6
         4.39 (72)

Lenses with a mark lower than 4.39 or gathering less than 1% of the total reviews (i.e. less than 28 reviews) are not quoted in the list.

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)

I spent a couple of hours trying to list all existing and announced lenses with MFT mounts. Because I'm curious, because it might be useful for some readers, and because I like classifying things since always^^

It turns out that the choice for m43 is already very large as you can see in the graph here below: more than 50 lenses dedicated to Micro Four-Thirds cameras (i.e. without any adapter) will be available by the end of this year !!!

As I speak, my list should be more or less complete, even if a few marginal lenses are missing (e.g. the Panasonic 3D lens, the ultra-cheap SLR Magic "toy" lenses, or the ultra-expensive Zeiss MFT collection). The main suppliers are obviously Olympus and Panasonic but other ones like Sigma, SLR Magic or Voigtlander are also doing a very good job.

Conclusion: the Micro 4/3 system is definitively a significant standard. Full of future promise hopefully :)

Legend

• lines = zoom lenses; circles = motorized prime lenses; triangles = manual prime lenses
• plain/full = available; dashed/blank = foreseen
• BIG = Brenner Import und Großhandels; Jac = Jackar; Ken = Kenko/Tokina; Mit = Mitakon;
  Oly = Olympus; Pan = Panasonic; Sam = Samyang; Sch = Schneider Kreuznach; Sig = Sigma;
  SLR = SLR Magic; Tam = Tamron; Voi = Voigtlander; Yas = Yasahura
• F = Fisheye, M = Macro 1:1; TBA = price To Be Announced

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 !