I’ve apprehended a Leica

There’s a secret sauce. The images are sharper than they should be. It doesn’t make any sense. They’re almost pixel level sharp, like a Foveon sensor. Look at this.

Load it up at full resolution. It’s sharper than science says it should be.

Now, regarding manual focusing: I have always maintained that as long as there is a split prism or rangefinder, I don’t mind it. I have issues when there isn’t. The Leica, of couse, has a rangefinder. And, remarkably, it has one of the best manual focus live view systems I’ve seen. You put it on live view, and then you move the focus ring, and it punches in so you can get perfect focus. Then it zooms out again. You don’t press any buttons or anything. It’s not focus by wire either, so you actually are focusing where you’re focusing. That’s totally usable.

Focusing at 1.4 is very difficult, at least on a 50. At 2, it’s pretty easy, so I’m limiting myself to F/2 and slower until I get an electronic viewfinder to take out.

Full frame cameras are still substantially larger than mirrorless ones, so I’m still on Micro 4/3rds. But, the M10 and M11 are the smallest full frame cameras out there, and they have the smallest lenses. Hence, I’m still good for size.

Limited depth of field with full frame cameras is very easily achievable, even on wide angle lenses.

With the relatively limited f/2 I’m using with both the 50 and the 35, it’s about equivalent to what I was able to do with the manual focus micro 4/3rds lenses I had, which were very difficult to use. I do think that in most photos of people, f/2 is unwieldy, so made a good choice in keeping the 25mm and 17mm 1.2s on micro 4/3rds. Now, here’s the thing. Those are good lenses. They’re excellent in the dark. But they’re big. This was fine when I had no alternative system, but now I can have a smaller system with similar bokeh levels. And, in terms of performance at night, the 25mm 1.4 has a similar light transmittance. Do I need the 1.2? Probably not. Those lenses are good though. I think I can probably get by with the 20mm 1.7 and the 25 1.4 frankly.

We’ll see how the kit changes during the trip to Peru.

In the mean time, I’m going to keep shooting with the Leica since it’s different and sometimes that’s all you need.

The kit has solidified: Photo trip (Part 1)

As we’ve seen, I’ve been slowly exploring lenses and cameras within the micro four thirds system, and, to a lesser extent, without. I now have a big official camera kit I basically take when it matters, and a variation on one or two when it doesn’t. Let’s take a look at the photo trip kit.

That’s the E-M1 Mark 3 which I picked up during the nadir of its prices post OM-1 launch. I like the camera, but one of the screws on the folding screen fell off while I was doing waterfalls and I had to fix it with an eyeglass repair kit.

Attached to the E-M1 Mark 3 is the Olympus 12-40 f/2.8 Pro lens. I use it virtually all the time when shooting nature and architecture and stuff.

On the right with the lenscap facing us is the Olympus 9-18 ultrawide. I have used it for a couple photos of waterfalls so far and it’s pretty solid! Similar optically to the 9-18 I had before.

It’s not weather sealed, but I’ve kept it with me for the last few trips so it looks like it will stay in the kit.

If we continue counter clockwise, there’s the 17mm f/1.2 lens which I’ll put on if there are people around and I’m doing the walk around system and don’t need to get ultra wide. We’ve seen that before.

The one at the top is the tiny Panasonic 35-100 lens, which is a classic 70-200 equivalent. I don’t do much telephoto, so I picked this up because it’s the smallest one available.

I got some pictures of Corbin Burnes doing warmups on Opening day in Chicago with it, and it has image stabilization so it’s usable on the GM1, the camera body packed in on the left. We know about the GM1.

The lens on it is the 9mm fisheye. We know about that one too.

You may be wondering now, “hey where’s the 20mm 1.7?” Very simple. This is a kit in a single bag, mostly to stay in the car or something, and I will not be caught dead without a camera in my pocket. The 20mm 1.7 is on my pocket camera. Or, if not that, the 17mm 2.8 as seen in the image above.

The bag itself is very 1970s, and it works well. In the back, there is another zipper where I have filters and a couple more spare batteries and SD cards. The strap is short though. I wish it were longer. Not that big of an issue, as I have a walking around bag as well, which is the only bag I bring for non photo trips. I’ll cover that in the next post.

How to change GM1 and GM5 settings to English

DPreview is shutting down, so I just copied and pasted one of the best pieces of information shared on that website for future googlers.

This is the post URL: https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/66493752

This is the original title: Changing displayed language on JPN ver. Lumix cameras (GM5/GX8…) By altruistic 123

This method was told on Chinese forums many years ago (I guess 2015).

Surprised that I couldn’t find any solution in English.

It might be less important now but in case someone still finds it useful.

This is for G6:

https://kknews.cc/photography/q9al9po.html

The ways to make the yellow exclamation mark appear vary from camera to camera.

It’s more like a constant service mode instead of the one-off service mode for checking the shutter count.

For GM5:

1. Turn off the camera + SD card inserted.
2. Press Right + Trash + Playback at the same time.
3. Camera on
4. Press Playback.
5. Press Trash + Up at the same time.
6. Turn it off.
7. Turn it back on.
8. Select Spanner > ROM BACKUP > DSC-SD > SD card ejected.
9. Open the file ended with U (i.e.GM5U) on the computer.
10. Search 270f that appears first in the result from the top.

Japanese 0000,0000,270f,6363,270f,6363 (shown originally)
English 0100,0000,270f,6363,270f,6363
Simplified Chinese 0600,0000,270f,6363,270f,6363
Traditional Chinese 0700,0000,270f,6363,270f,6363

(Other hidden languages should be there and yet to be discovered.)

(Don’t edit any subsequent strings of numbers you found below except the first string.)

11. Change the first 4 digits in this string of numbers (regardless of which row(s) they are on) > Save.
12. SD card inserted.
13. Select Spanner > ROM BACKUP > SDALL-DSC(FORCE) > Turn it off > Done.

Take the risk of turning it into a bricked one. (I haven’t failed so far.^^)

Image Stabilization on Micro Four Thirds: 15 seconds handheld

I remember when I first got a stabilized lens trying to get down to 1/10th of a second shutter speed to keep the sensitivity down. I couldn’t do it reliably.

Since then, cameras have gotten substantially better, or at least small sensor cameras have. The photo above was taken about a year ago in Colorado. You may recognize the Spanish Peaks. That was taken with my phone with a 15 second exposure.

A lot of people talk about great image stabilization like it’s fifteen years ago. I see it all the time, that the Ricoh GR3 can go down to 1/10th of a second. THAT’S NOT GOOD!

My E-M10.2 could do half a second reliably!

The E-M10.4 could do 4 seconds!

And the EM1.3 can do 15. I’ll admit, it’s hard, but doable. Here’s two.

It’s much more reliably to get 10 seconds. 10 seconds is easy. Here’s one of my hotel room in Virginia Beach.

So next time someone says image stabilization is good on whatever camera they have, ask them if they can handhold 15 seconds.

Quick update: I like night photos during the winter.

Not a great photo, but I walked to the store at night to get a pop. I brought the E-P7 and the Panasonic 20mm 1.7, which, notably in the 16 megapixel sensors, would cause issues with low light. But also would be difficult to take in low light. I find that the E-P7 has substantially worse image stabilization than the E-M10.4, maybe in line with the 10.2. I find it difficult to take photos with the E-P7 slower than about 1/5th of a second. Now, mathing that out, that’s about 3 stops of stabilization. Not great, but better than the E-PM2, which would struggle at about 1/8th.

The snow provides a few extra stops of light, though. For example, tonight, I took this, in my normal testing spot.

E-P7 20mm f/1.7 1/8 s ISO 6400

This has an EV of around -1.5

E-M10.4 17mm f/1.2 1/15s ISO 25600

I normally get about -3 to -4 EV in that spot, meaning the snow gives at least a few stops of light.

E-P7 20mm f/1.7 1/6 s ISO 400 (!)

And here it was quite bright in fact. I’m going to try to develop some tricks to get down to a half second. I really intend to use the 20, 17, and 25 with this lens, so I need it to work a bit better than I’ve got it so I can take photos in darkness. In the mean time, 1/6 seconds is quite easy. So easy I didn’t really try.

Quick update: two new telephoto lenses – that’ll be it for a long time

E-M1.3 Zuiko 70-300, 300mm f/5.6 1/500s ISO 2500

I picked up this 70-300 for $130, doubling my focal range. 300mm is approximately a 20x zoom from base focal length. Now, take the 50 megapixel handheld high res shot into account, we’re looking at 40x. Oh baby. I can also use a teleconverter, but I don’t think those actually work too well. They don’t on telescopes, and they don’t on camera lenses. Anyway, I picked up the 70-300 because it isn’t a lot bigger than the 40-150, which it turns out I don’t hate, but I do hate how it works on contrast detect AF bodies. Works fine on the E-M1.

The issue is, I’m, for most intents, done with telephoto for the time being. There’s no doubt in my mind that I will bring the lens on my trip in a few weeks, I want to see things close up when I’m far away, but I’m not walking around much with it right now. There’s not a lot to see. We’ll see how I think on my next trip. They _are_ quite big. I just don’t like walking around with a big camera and lenses.

E-M1.3 Zuiko 70-300, 300, f/5.6 1/3s Yes. 1/3s. 7.5 stops.

I’ve done some fooling around with the lenses. I’ve run into some issues with my primary photography methods, and I’m not sure what the technical issue is. The E-M1 Mark 3 autofocuses at ISO 25600 in the dark with native lenses, but won’t do it with the adapted lenses or in handheld high res. That means I have to manual focus these bad lads, and with the handholding and magnification and low refresh rate of the viewfinder, it’s very difficult. I think it’s remarkable I got the one I got here mostly in focus.

I went and got the big boy lens because shooting the coatrack there on my 25 was allowing the background too into the shot. What I should have done was go get the big boy.

Yes, I have also apprehended the 50-200 f/2.8-3.5. It’s 2.8 up to 100, so it’s about the level of those pro zooms with a little extra reach at the cost of a small amount of aperture. I should have gotten that for the night shot. I have played around with it a little bit, but not too much. Yes that’s a Panasonic GM1. More on that in the future. And I’ll probably come up with some more pictures from the 50-200 at some point in the near future too.

But why get the fast lens? Well here’s why.

E-M10.4 Yi 42.5 f/1.8 1/8s ISO 25600

This is a photo of some deer. I wanted to take a photo of these guys in the neighbours’ yard and I had to get quite close to do it. No problem, I did, but it would have been convenient to get them from afar and shoot for longer with a slower shutter speed. But you know, I could get the 45 1.2… no just kidding no fucking way.

Lately, I have been resorting to, essentially, this, if I need a photo that would normally be done with a long lens.

E-M1.3 25mm 1.2 1/5s ISO 6400

I just get closer. I know, it’s zooming with your feet as the kids say. There have only been a few times, like the situation with the dog at the top of the post, where I’ve needed a telephoto for the shot I wanted. Not like these are keepers or anything, they’re just nothing snapshots I’m putting up while I’m playing around but still.

Okay well that was a fun quick update.

I have purchased a macro lens.

Olympus Zuiko 50mm 1:2 f/2.8 1/15th s ISO 1000 Olympus E-M1.3 HHHR

Hello internet. I have done something I have acquired a beige whale. What is a beige whale? I believe it was coined by Cathode Ray Dude in a video a year back. The idea is that it’s something about which you’ve known, have always thought would be cool to own, but are not sufficiently interested enough to seek one out or pay fair market value for. Kind of like, you think if you see one at a garage sale you might pick it up. For me, for 15 years or so, it’s been a macro lens. So I bought the old Olympus 50mm macro from 2003. Here it is next to a couple lenses you may know the size of.

Yeah, it’s an F/2 lens and it’s not much bigger than the Panaleica at half its focal length and the Yi 42.5 f/1.8. This is a nice little lens. And it’s fast. This is my new portrait lens. It does extend a bit when focusing, though, though I prefer that frequently if it can keep the size down in my pocket.

Yes there have been some hints, I did get a new camera. Neither my E-M10.4 or 10.2 are any more. Essentially the 10.4 got rid of for the exact same price I paid for it, and the 10.2 I’m just mad at due to low light performance, and no longer need a camera witn an optical viewfinder if I have the E-M1. It’s bigger, which sucks, but it’s very fancy and the viewfinder is actually larger. Not commonly advertised.

Anyway, I picked up this lens because it was cheap and because it was fast. I had heard tell this lens was the reference lens for 4/3rds. It was literally the sharpest lens available, and you know what? It outresolves even the E-M1.3 at 80 megapixels. Just to be clear, that’s saying this lens can handle a 320 megapixel full frame camera (if it had the coverage). Look.

These things look rather close, but how close are they really? What’s the difference from one lens to another in this focusing business? Can we not just use minimum focus distance on our other lenses and just crop? Eh. Sometimes. Look at this screw.

E-M10.2 25mm f/1.2 ISO 200 1/320 s heavily cropped.

Uncropped E-M1.3 Zuiko 50mm f/2 ISO 2000 1/100s

Pretty big difference there. You can definitely see detail you never could with your eye. This is the copper windchime we have out back.

E-M1.3 Zuiko 50mm f/2 ISO 500 1/100 s

It’s also been cool to try it with the high resolution modes that Olympus has put in their high end cameras. Here take a look at the following image full size.

Go ahead. Click on it. It opens up as a 50 megapixel JPG!

100%. The handheld high resolution mode is not as sharp as the 80 megapixel mode, which actually uses subpixel shifts to essentially demosaic the image itself, like a Foveon sensor, so it’s inherently even more sharp than a normal 80 megapixel image.

The raw files for the 80 megapixel high res mode, whence came the extremely close shot of the watch, are TWO HUNDRED SEVENTY megabytes. And the resolution is TEN THOUSAND BY EIGHT THOUSAND (or thereabouts). 10368 x 7776. What the hell man.

More updates to come. I also picked up a 70-300 and a…you know. Camera.

You can absolutely shoot other galaxies handheld. They just don’t look good.

OutsideTheMatrix wrote:

whumber wrote:

OutsideTheMatrix wrote:

Maybe you shot a few galaxies handheld?

It’s probably doable but it would be a pain in the butt as you’d need to shoot a very large number of relatively short exposures with a long focal length lens. Star movement would actually end up being the limiting factor rather than stabilization at the focal length needed to resolve even the largest galaxies. Much easier to use a cheap tracking mount like a Skyguider or a Skywatcher and save yourself the headache.

You’re right lol. I’ve done that– 3.2 sec exposures, 50-100 of them and then stacked them later. I bought a mount just a few months ago and the whole process is much easier now.

OutsideTheMatrix and Whumber had this conversation on the DPReview forums and I want to dispel some ideas here about astronomy. I used to run an observatory and people think that certain things are difficult to see, and they’re not.

Galaxies are neither small nor particularly dim. I went outside under bright suburban skies tonight, with a near as makes no difference full moon so the sky is about as bad as it’s going to get. I shot wide angle lenses on my E-M10.4, then cranked up the dehaze to show you guys. These are not good photos, they’re just easy grabs to prove astrophotography can be easy. It won’t be good but you can do it for yourself with anything.

The following photos link to photos I put on those forums. Best to open in a new tab.

Andromeda. Also clearly visible is the double cluster and myriad open clusters in Cassiopeia

There she is.

“Andromeda is easy,” I hear you say, “you can see it with your naked eye if you’re looking in the right spot.” Yes. You can. Let’s go hard mode. How about M81 and M82?

This is Bode’s galaxy at 17mm.

I process images with dxo sometimes, and I did here but I think dxo lost a bit of the galaxy so here’s a screenshot of the ORF and the dxo dng.

Here we have Bode’s galaxy…actually we also have the Cigar Galaxy.

I can tell. You don’t believe me that those bits of noise are galaxies. Take a look here.

Left is a good photo. Right is my handheld photo with a 17mm lens. Yes, they’re both there.

So, as we can see, you don’t need long focal lengths or exposures to resolve the galaxies. I could get them to a decent resolution, theoretically, on a 40mm lens in the case of M81 as long as we’re doing a wide field in dark enough sky, and Andromeda is actually 6 full moons wide in a dark sky, so you can fill the frame with the damn thing on a relatively modest telephoto lens. It’s clearly visible on the viewfinder with live boost on, even.

It happens that I know where these objects are so I was able to point the camera at them, but as you can see, with the 25 and 17mm lenses, you can get huge swaths of the sky to accidentally get an object if you don’t know it’s there.

Buy used lenses for your cameras.

Not a good photo, but a summary. These are my lenses I have for my Micro 4/3rds cameras. I still have some Canon lenses, but ignore that for the moment. I just want to say that new, these are the prices (I’m substituting new prices for the Micro 4/3rds versions of my 4/3rds lenses and taking away the cost of the MMF-2 adapter). I’m taking the prices from Adorama, which are frequently discounted. The lenses are as follows, left to right.

$599 9-18
$299 25 1.8
$899 12-40 2.8
$399 17 1.8
$138 42.5 1.8 (actually a Yi, not a Yongnuo, but it’s the cheapest similar lens)
$267 Panasonic 20mm 1.7
$697 Panaleica 25mm 1.4
$1199 17mm 1.2
$99 body cap
$129 40-150
$1199 25mm 1.2

That’s about $5900 in lenses. I paid

$200 9-18
$150 25 1.8
$410 12-40 2.8
$240 17 1.8
$60 42.5 1.8
$180 20mm 1.7
$257 25mm 1.4
$664 17mm 1.2
$99 body cap (I bought it new)
$30 40-150
$665 25mm 1.2

That’s about $2950 in lenses. In otherwords, straight up half price. And what happens when you order a lens and it’s gasp not on sale?

I paid full ass price for the second version of the 20mm f/1.7 back in 2013. At the time, the damn things were nowhere to be found and they cost an arm and a leg. I picked up a used E-P3 that year for like no money, and it became my travel camera. It got stolen. 😦

How do you make sure you get good lenses? Only buy from good guys on eBay with lots of orders and a high rating, or buy from sellers you meet personally. If you want to take some chances, you can get much cheaper gear than I got, but if you don’t, just buy on eBay from good sellers. Look at the pictures. If the glass looks clean, buy it.

More mild adventures in telephoto – I decided I hate this lens

Olympus E-PM2 with 40-150 Zuiko V1 at 74mm, f/4.5 ISO 2000 1/160s

Okay this adapted 4/3rds lens is soft as hell and half the time doesn’t even focus right. I might get the classic travel zoom, the 14-150. It’s about $200 used, so I reckon that ain’t bad, and then I don’t have to carry around a telephoto zoom in addition to normal stuff. Fast telephoto zooms are expensive so there’s no way in hell I’m doing that. For fast apertures, I’m just sticking to the primes. Here was my kit for the walk. The E-PM2 was the main camera (and it has functioning image stabilization), so that’s what the big boy lens went on. The E-PM1 was the backup, and so I brought along the still not that likable 17mm 1.8.

Both the E-PM1 and 2 were shoved into pockets. In hindsight, I could have definitely brought along an E-M10 with a pro lens, but I was concerned about size and I did want to do some telephoto stuff. In the future it’ll be the 12-40 f/2.8 and a prime.

E-PM2 ISO 10000 f/4.5 150mm, “Velvia 50” preset in DxO Filmpack

I had problems all day with the lens front focusing. It did it in the example above, but I think the image is cool enough that I kept it. I also used some film presets from DxO Filmpack. I like to make everything look like Velvia anyway, might as well actually make it look like Velvia.

Same stuff, 150mm f/4.5, ISO 2500

I spotted some ducks, which are standard camera testing fodder for any photographer, and I noticed a few issues. 1. The lens is soft. Really soft. These ducks you see above you went through a round of Topaz Sharpen AI. 2. There’s heavy heavy color fringing. 3. It can’t focus for shit.

AHHHH

That’s off by at least 2 feet.

Not even Topaz Sharpen AI can save these things. They’re hella soft, and I had to correct for color fringing manually then can’t even get a usable image out of it because AI sharpening software can’t do anything!

Same camera and lens 150mm f/4.5 ISO 12800

I did see this muskrat, and the AI sharpening software helped a little bit. Actually I think this image is really a great example of what software can do. That’s an unusable ISO for a 10 year old camera and I missed focus here, or really, the camera did, and here it is. Perfectly tolerable for internet sharing. If you zoom in and look at it at full resolution you’ll see the artifacts from the software cleaning up what it could.

E-PM1 Olympus 17mm f/1.8 at 1.8, ISO 200 1/200s. I don’t remember which film preset this was. Ektachrome? But I adjusted the colors so whatever.

Back to wide angle for me! It’s remarkable how sharp these Olympus primes are at 1.8.