equipment

After coming back from Europe this past summer and lugging more photo equipment than I ever have in the past, I started to give some serious thought to the emerging world of mirrorless interchangeable lens cameras. After a few days of research I settled on the Olympus OM-D E-M5 and initially paired it with the 12mm f/2.0 lens. Since I shoot mostly landscapes, I thought a nice wide prime would be the best to start with. What I didn’t expect was that 5 months later the OM-D would be my go to camera, and I would only grab the DSLR a handful of times (mostly out of feeling bad for it).

Around the internet you’ll hear people saying different things about mirrorless — electronic viewfinders stink, you can’t get shallow depth of field, the quality/speed/focusing just isn’t there. While all of that may have been true over the past couple of years while the technology was improving, I seemed to have lucked out, entering the market when a lot of those problems have been solved.

That said, there are definite pros and cons of the OMD as opposed to my DSLR. There’s also a bit of a technology curve to be overcome with the OM-D (this FAQ helps) Since I know how to operate a camera I thought I’d pop the lens on there and shoot away, but it did take me a week or two to really become familiar with the menu system and how to move around properly.

Things I love about the OM-D —

In body 5 axis image stabilization. Can’t say enough about this one. I can easily take pictures down to 1/20 of a second handheld.
Electronic viewfinder. Seeing what your picture is going to look like before you take it is nothing new to someone who uses the screen on the back of a point and shoot, but there’s something about framing your image in the viewfinder (like you’re used to coming from a DSLR world) but being able to see the exposure of the image change when you change parameters or dial in some exposure compensation. In tricky lighting situations I don’t miss a shot anymore. I don’t have to take one shot, check it, and realize it was way underexposed due to strong backlighting.
Tilting OLED touchscreen. A couple of things I thought I would never really care about on a camera — a tilting screen and the ability to swipe through photos. I have to say I enjoy both of these features a lot. When I’m using a tripod I use the screen to compose my shot most of the time now. The tilting is especially nice if I’m taking something at a lower angle.
Seamless use of the screen on the back and the viewfinder. Olympus put a little sensor up by the viewfinder to 1. turn it on/off when you raise the camera to your eye (this saves power and makes it really feel like a DSLR) and 2. to turn off the live display on the back as you raise the camera to your eye and move the display to the viewfinder. I find this to be a slick little feature, even though I only really use it in the first way mentioned. There’s also a nice button right next to the viewfinder to manually push the display to the back screen. I use this all the time when I hand someone else my camera to take a picture since people are more used to framing on a large screen. That said, I’ve handed this camera to more friends than I’ve ever handed my DSLR to, and even had them use the viewfinder to frame shots, and I haven’t heard a complaint yet (and I have more keepers than ever with other people taking a picture).
Face detect. I know some of the newer DSLRs have this kind of stuff if you use a live view mode, but to me, the live view on DSLRs is always a bit clunky, something thought about much after the the fact and not built from the ground up.
Live view long exposure – This is such a cool feature! I can literally start the camera on a long exposure (imagine some kind of night time scene with cars coming through and a sky that might take about 30 seconds to expose) and watch the scene being built up, then stop it when I think it looks good. Check this video out for this feature in action. Another cool thing about the long exposures, if I’m taking a night scene and I don’t know how long the exposure will be to get a nice sky, I can dial in my exposure, say f/8 at 10 sec and then keep increasing my exposure time until the camera reads a “proper” exposure, and it will actually show me what a sky will look like with a 30 second exposure. That’s pretty amazing to me (and was a bit of a shock the first time I noticed it).
The size! I can’t stress this one enough. This camera doesn’t intimidate people. It doesn’t break your back carrying it around all day (even with a wide array of lenses). I’m able to carry this camera and a couple lenses in a small old DSLR shoulder bag that fits in my backpack that I bring to work with me every day. That means I always have my camera without having to think about it.
Awesome SMALL lenses. I admit that when I started down this road I told myself I’d just get one lens to start out with. I don’t think it took more than a week or two and I had bought my second. At the time of this writing I have four with my eye on a fifth. The crazy thing is that the majority of them are extremely high quality FAST lenses that all fit in the palm of your hand.
It’s quiet. Compared to the mirror slap in a DSLR, all you hear in the OM-D is the shutter. While it’s still a very noticeable sound, it’s nowhere near how loud the mirror slap sounds in a semi quiet church during a wedding.

Things I miss about using my DSLR —

Scrolling through images on the DSLR was lighting fast. I can’t say the same with the OM-D. When you’re taking lots of images and sometimes time lapses, the ability to scroll from image 1 to 376 in a flash is very nice.
On the DSLR I was able to physically separate my focus/metering button and my shutter. I haven’t found such a way to do that on the OM-D.
Even though the DSLR was big, it had a nice hefty grip on it. I always felt that I had a good hold on the camera. I actually like using the OM-D without a strap a lot, since it’s so small, but the potential to drop it seems high since it doesn’t have a big chunky grip (some of the newer models have added a grip).

As you can see, there isn’t much that I really miss. This was even a surprise to me as I went on this mirrorless journey. I still use my DSLR for a few things, but I will for sure never travel with it again. I also outfitted the OM-D with a Lance Camera strap (I honestly wish I had changed to something like this for my DSLR years ago). I mentioned that I added a few lenses since the beginning, here’s the entire list.

Ok. Enough talk! Here are a handful of shots from the OM-D in the past 5 months. Some are my favorites, some are just snapshots that I think really reflect the quality the micro 4/3 system.

Panasonic 25mm at f/1.4 | 1/25 sec | ISO 3200

Olympus 12mm at f/6.3 | 3.2 sec | ISO 200

Panasonic 25mm at f/1.4 | 1/20 sec | ISO 200

Olympus 12mm at f/2.2 | 1/100 sec | ISO 200

Olympus 40-150 at 45mm | f/7.1 | 25 sec | ISO 200

Olympus 45mm at f/2.0 | 1/400 sec | ISO 200

Olympus 45mm at f/2.0 | 1/320 sec | ISO 200

Olympus 12mm at f/10 | 5 sec | ISO 200

Olympus 45mm at f/1.8 | 1/125 sec | ISO 500

I recently wrote about a time lapse that I shot while travelling through Europe. I wanted to talk a little about the gear I use on a day to day basis, and more specifically, the gear and tools I used to make this time lapse happen. If you’re a gear head, you’ll want to read the next few bits.

Tripods. Camera stabilization is essential. My first time in Paris I didn’t have any kind of stabilization. I remember being down at Concorde and trying to place my camera on top of my backpack and remembering how cool I thought it was to get the big ferris wheel spinning at night. But, none of the shots were usable because I didn’t have any real stabilization. Fast forward a couple of years and I get a Gorilla Pod SLR Zoom. This was an excellent entry into the world of “I have some kind of tripod thing that I can take with me on trips and isn’t too big and can let me take some kind of long exposure or let me get into my own shot”. Fast forward another couple years and I’ve gone through a heavy aluminum tripod and a pan/tilt head and arrived at a lighter carbon fiber model and a ball head. Here’s the tripod I currently use, the Manfrotto 190CXPRO4.

This tripod is super light, has a center column that can readjust to horizontal on the fly, and paired with the right ball head is very portable. I’m not much a fan of pan/tilt heads for photography and tripods. I owned and used a nice Manfrotto one for a while, but it never felt right. Since then I’ve always used ball heads. A couple years ago I got the Manfrotto 488RC2. This was and is an excellent ball head, albeit a little heavy.

So, I’m headed to Paris. I know I want to take a tripod, or Gorilla Pod, or both. Always trying to cut weight and make things more portable, I picked up a new ball head, the Manfrotto 496RC2. For the price, this is a great little ball head.

I also picked up a new Gorilla Pod, the Focus. This Gorilla Pod is much beefier than my old one, and can really handle heavy lenses with no problem. Here it is next to the Manfrotto carbon fiber tripod and also paired with the 496RC2.

From the picture above you should be able to see where this is going. Now I have a very mobile set up. I keep the Manfrotto RC2 plate always attached to my camera, and I switch the light 496RC2 head from Gorilla Pod to tripod depending on need. In this specific case, I carried the tripod all around Paris, since that was my “home base”, and brought the Gorilla Pod with me on the train in order to be more mobile. In each instance I was able to throw the ball head on the “stabilizer of choice” and easily snap my camera on and off.

I picked this bag up about a year ago. It’s the Clik Elite Probody Sport, and, while you can’t like everything about a bag, this one is pretty great. That pocket that you see on the side, right below the Clik logo, if where I can stick the full size tripod or Gorilla Pod and use the bungee up top to secure it tightly to the bag.

I used it to bring a camera (Canon 40D digital SLR), 2 lenses (Canon 17-40mm f/4L and the Canon 50mm f/1.4), the 496RC2 ball head, camera filters, the Gorilla Pod Focus as well as a change of clothes, toiletries, a journal AND a Kindle (Kindles are awesome, get one) along with me on the train for a couple of days. Not bad. I used a lens slot to stash the ball head.

Oh, one more thing. The intervalometer. This is an essential piece of equipment. It allows you to do something like, “in 10 seconds begin taking 1 picture every 3 seconds until you take 77 pictures”. In my case, I generally said, “In 10 seconds begin taking 1 picture every 4 seconds until I tell you to stop”. Yes, the function should be built into the camera, but…well, it’s not :). You can get one here.

So, now all the pieces are in place. Now it’s just a matter of standing/sitting/walking around one spot for 20, 30, 60 minutes while you take a time lapse. A spot where you can sit and drink some wine always helps. 🙂

Just some math, shooting one picture every 5 seconds for 40 minutes will give you 480 pictures. Each of the 12 time lapses in the video was between 20 and 60 minutes. I literally shot thousands of pictures in RAW, edited and cropped to 1920×1080 pixels in Adobe Lightroom 4, put them together in Quicktime 7 and then edited them down to a 3 minute video of my trip using Final Cut Pro 6 (yea, I use old tools).

Leave some comments or feel free to ask questions about the gear or techniques, I would love to help.

Thoughts on the Olympus OM-D E-M5

Tripods and ball heads and intervalometers, oh my!