Through The Woods – Road – Photo
Yesterday I posted a picture that was taken about two weeks ago on a snow day. I got off from school so I hit the road and slid around a bit. I went north figuring that there would be more snow, but was intrigued to find that there was less snow up there than here at my house.
Any way – the main reason for the trip was to test out the little Olympus OM-D E-M5.
I had a lot of fun shooting with the little camera. Yesterday’s photograph was at the end of our lane and this one today is north of here somewhere, on some little back road.
Still Not A Review
I was saying a lot of nice things about the little camera yesterday. I was quite impressed by it, but at the end of the day when I put it on my tripod and tried to make some landscape images, while it worked well there were a few things that I really didn’t want to work with.
First off is the image quality. Pretty stinking good – but not without issues, a lot of those issues come from the smaller lenses being harder to make. You can get superb lenses for the micro four thirds system but they tend to be rather expensive. I think I could have made myself be happy with the lenses and system if I hadn’t had previous experience with some Canon L series lenses.
Second off was the way the camera was set up. It just didn’t work the way I work. Mostly because when I shoot landscapes I almost always bracket images. The bracketing is great on the OMD but the little irksome thing was that if I set the camera to timer mode it counts down and takes whichever bracket it is ready to expose, whereas on the Canon cameras it fires off all the bracketed images, again not a deal breaker, just a little irritating thing that wouldn’t bother most other folks.
Third off it just didn’t feel right. I know it’s a matter of my personal emotional feelings towards cameras but a camera on top of a tripod should have a bit of heft to it. While the small size and light weight of the OMD is great for carrying around, it really struggles to feel significant. (Again, this is just me. And it really doesn’t bother me too much :))
Fourth off and I think this is the big thing, the micro four thirds is a great system. But it just isn’t nearly as extendable as DSLR’s are. If I need a 600mm lens for my Canon or Nikon camera I can get one. If there is one for the four thirds system it is just about as expensive as the Canon or Nikon version and is probably at least a stop slower than the Nikon or Canon lenses. It doesn’t end with lenses. It includes almost everything else, DSLRs simply are more common and have more support as far as accessories go.
At the end of the day I decided to send the little OMD back. I think I could have used it well and made great images with it. But something inside of me told me that I wouldn’t be happy with the little guy taking over the place of my DSLR.
I’ll tell you about the camera that I chose to replace the OMD sometime, just not today…
Technically – In Terms of Processing
Fairly straight forward processing here, I merged 5 brackets into an HDR in Photoshop and brought it back into Lightroom.
Once I was in Lightroom I made a few tweaks and took the image into Silver Efex to convert to black and white. The big thing that I like inside of Silver Efex is the ability to convert the color image using color filters. In the old days it was done at the point of capture, or in the dark room, with a real filter. These days I can change it, see it, and then change it again till I get it where I want it.
Finally back in Lightroom I cropped the image and added a bit of a vignette.
Thanks for stopping by!
Eldon
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