Robin preening

Been a bit busy lately, catching up on some much needed work in the garden, but my resident robin redbreast (Erithacus rubecula) decided to interrupt me by going through a preening ritual while perched on the handle to one of my larger shrub pots.  How could I resist.

Poor thing looked rather disheveled. I know a pair are nesting in the garden and this must be one of the adults looking rather worn out with parenting duties.

All shot with the EM1 Mkii and Olympus 40-150mm f2.8 Pro.at ISO 800.  There wasn't a lot of noise but I used the Adobe DeNoise in Lightroom just in case.  The dark backgrond helps to emphasise the bird though it did need -0.7EV in exposure compensation to illuminate the bird correctly.  I never fail to admire the resolving power of the Pro lens and camera combination.

Spring garden butterflies

The local Plymouth weather has been damp and disgusting over the last few weeks but over the weekend we've had a break and the sun shone for a change.  Out at The Garden House on Friday I was down by a little, bank by the North boundary.  We encourage wildlife in the garden and this little area was filled with dandelions, ideal nectar sources for overwintering butterflies emerging from hibernation.

I captured these three within 2 minutes.

Brimstone butterfly, Gonepteryx rhamni

Comma butterfly, Polygonia c-album

Peacock butterfly, Aglais io

All were taken with the 40-150mm f2.8 Pro, at ISO 800 and f4.  I've used Lightroom denoise on the Peacock and Brimstone, though, at ISO 800 on the EM1 Mkii, they produced acceptable noise results without but gave a slightly smoother background and a little detail enhancement on the subjects. With the bright but hazy light on the day I was working between 1/2500 and 1/5000 of a second, more than fast enough to freeze any movement in the slight breeze.  As I've found in the previous couple of years this combination of close focusing Olympus Pro zoom and EM1 Mkii are ideal for handheld photography of larger butterflies.  Add in Denoise and I'm feeling confident that I can go up to 3200 ISO and still get good, publishable results.  

Looking forward to the summer!

High Res Shooting with the EM1 Mkii

The Olympus EM1 Mkii offers a high resolution mode, activated from the shooting modes button on the left side of the top plate.  Although not as sophisticated as with more recent models it offers the opportunity to produce 50MP JPEGs or an 80MP ORF (RAW) file by compositing a series of pixel shifted images in camera.  

Frankly, I haven't found much use for it.  For the system to work without horrible artifacts creeping in from subject movement between the image frames the camera has to be securely tripod mounted and the subject(s) to be absolutely still. Achieving that outdoors in the windy environment of South West England is, to say the least, problematic.

Witness this shot of snowdrops at The Garden House.  This the 80MP version.  Resized for this blog post it looks fine:

But look closer at 100% and the problems start to show:

The slightest trace of wind and the photo becomes blurred.  Even downsizing doesn't help - unless you downsize to the native 20MP resolution of the camera - and where is the point of that.

So, for my garden and nature work, the Hi Res mode doesn't really work for me.

Until I hit a situation where it did.  And, one that, confusingly, involves considerable movement.

At Burrator reservoir, on Dartmoor, there's a man made waterfall that feeds water from Drake's Leat down to the waters of the lake.  I wanted to get a couple of shots using as long an exposure as I could to smooth the water as it cascaded over the rocks.  What I didn't have was a neutral density filter to allow me to get that longer exposure.  The best I could do was 1/15th sec.  Then I remembered that because the Hi Res mode composites a number of shots it also lengthens the exposure time.  Apart from the rushing water the air was still and, being in midwinter, what green existed was hugging the ground so I gave it a try.

Higher resolution files, smoother water, and all without loosing the sharpness in the solid areas.  Here's some 100% crops from the 50MP JPEGs

Not the ideal solution - but it worked

Pro Capture on the Olympus EM1 MkII

I've owned the EM1 MkII for about 18 months and I'm still exploring all the features of this camera. One feature that I've only briefly played with and really need to explore further is Pro Capture.

Essentially, the camera can be set up to buffer a series of shots on a continuous loop when the shutter button is half pressed.  Firing the shutter then writes the shots both prior to and after firing.  The number of shots pre and post press, maximum frames per second (60max), and the frame count limiter (25 max) are set up in the C1 | H settings | Pro cap options in the Custom (*) menu.  There are plenty of 'how to set it up' videos on YouTube so I won't look at it in more detail.  It's the results that count.

Effectively it overcomes some of the limitions of human reaction time.  It's so easy to miss a shot that requires split second reactions to capture.  The sparrow coming in to land on our back garden feeder is an excellent example,  Using Pro Capture I was able to sit in comfort with the 40-150mm Pro set at f2.8 and camera at ISO 1000.  As soon as I saw the bird coming in to land I started the Pro Capture loop and pressed the shutter as it landed, capturing enough buffered shots to give me a few reasonable in flight images.

It works for take off shots as well.  This is an Azure damselfly, Coenagrion puella, taking off from a waterside leaf.

All I had to do was focus on the resting damselfly, start the Pro Capture buffer loop and, as soon as I saw movement, fully press the shutter.

It all sounds easy, and, judging by the number of superb in flight and fast action shots using Pro Capture with this and later cameras in the EM1/OM1 line, it's definitely simplifying the generation of impressive results.  

Of course there are downsides.  It's battery hungry. I'll need to get another one or even two batteries if I'm going to use it more extensively next year.  It also generates a lot of files.  Even with the restricted buffer storage of 25 images per Pro Capture run it's very easy to generate hundreds of files in a short space of time.  Add in the ability to capture in RAW and card space can become an issue.  It also takes goodly amounts of time to go through the resulting files to pick out the best and delete the rest (trust me, you don't want hundreds of almost identical shots sitting on your hard disks).

But it's fun - and that's what really matters.

Thoughts on the Olympus EM1 mkII and 40-150mm f2.8 Pro

By the standards of too many YouTube photographers and critics this combination of an old M43 camera (December 2016) and even older Olympus Pro lens (2014) should long ago have been discarded on the scrap heap in favour of newer and better equipment.  Surely only the latest and best is good enough for professional quality work?

Well no.  For my stock and other photography I don't need super high resolution, incredible high ISO ability or the smaller depth of field of a full frame body and expensive, larger aperture lens.  The 16 and 20Mp sensors of my two Olympus bodies, together with the f2.8 constant aperture of the 12-40mm and 40-150mm Pro and 60mm macro lenses are more than enough for my needs, and, more importantly, the needs of Alamy's client base.

Of all the gear the EM1 mkII and 40-150mm f2.8 Pro has definitely become a favourite.  Consider the following image:

It's actually two shots from a sequence, merged as a panorama in Lightroom, and chosen to show both the tuck and extension phases of the double suspension gallop of my daughter's deerhound / greyhound cross.  Sampson (the dog) was at full speed, around 40mph, on a local field.  I was panning at 142mm, ISO 800, f3.2, 1/2000 sec and using the continuous autofocus of the sequential high shooting mode. There is a little motion blur around the limbs - I could have gone down to f2.8 - but it doesn't detract from the fact that the extremely fast and accurate autofocus, large aperture 40-150 lens, and high speed shooting ability of the EM1 MkII body enabled me to get a sequence of sharp shots of a very fast dog.

Consider another image:

This is a Silver washed fritillary butterfly, taken at 150mm, f6.3, ISO 800. 1/2500 sec, using the close focusing ability of the 40-150 to fill the frame with the butterfly and the Inula flower head it was nectaring on.  Plenty of separation from the background with this shot, something it's often claimed you can't get with m43 gear.

Of course it's possible to get even better separation and even closer focusing with the addition of the tiny 1.4x teleconverter.  Consider this marbled white butterfly shot:

f4 at 1/8000 sec and 210mm.  Wide open at maximum reach with a teleconverter, ideal conditions for a soft photo.  Here's a 100% crop:

The addition of the teleconverter even gets me into small bird territory.  Here's a nuthatch at Stover Park in Devon

Of course my primary need is for my plant and garden photography.  Shots that I would previously have taken with the 180mm macro now come into the province of the 40-150mm  Whether individual plant portraits....

...or wider ranging shots:

Even gardenscapes are not exempt.  Crop this down to portrait format and it's even good enough for a respected magazine front cover:

All from an antiquated lens and camera combination, which, even with the teleconverter, cost me less than £1500.  I rest my case.

Ps.  The last image is focus stacked - but that's a tale for another time.