The sun she shine, the day she bright

January in Plymouth is often bleak and sunless.  Never is the local aphorism 'if you can see the hills, it's going to rain; if you can't see the hills it's raining' more apt.  But we do get spells when the sun shines and the softer winter light illuminates the city.  Never more so than where the land meets the sea as Plymouth foreshore meets Plymouth sound and the Hamoaze section of the Tamar estuary leading to Devonport dockyard.

I've had a couple of days recently when I've been able to get down to the front and take advantage.  Here's some results:

The Cremyll (Cornwall) passenger ferry on it's way across the Hamoaze to Plymouth.  And, yes, the sea really was that blue.  By January the plankton has largely disappeared as the sea gets colder and, on bright sunny days, the light penetrates deeply to turn it almost tropical in intensity.  40-150mm f4 Pro +1.4 x teleconverter at 210mm for this shot..

Firestone Bay on the west end of the Sound.  12-40 f2.8 Pro.  A very popular all year round swimming spot. As demonstrated by the bathers on the steps leading down to the sea.

No set of images of Plymouth could exclude Smeaton's Tower, the red and white lighthouse rescued from The Eddystone rocks and re-erected in honour of the architect responsible for it's original building in 1759. This shot was taken from close to the sea with the 12-40mm.

Close up, against the deep blue of the winter sky, it's certainly impressive.  40-150mm for this shot.

Round the corner from Plymouth Hoe is the Barbican and Sutton Harbour.  I wanted to show three landmarks of the outer harbour wall in this shot.  From front to back the Mayflower steps, the Barbican 'Prawn', and the National Marine Aquarium are prominent.  

Endlessly photogenic, this area is capable of yielding innumerable shots over time.  I'll no doubt highlight a good number in the future but, in the meantime, here's a closer view of the 'Prawn' shining in the winter sun.

Just south of the Dockyard is the old Royal Navy victualling centre, the Royal William Yard.  This has now been turned into a complex of shops, offices and residential flats within the impressive old buildings.  Again, an area much photographed, but always worth another shot.  This is a shot of the buildings round the small harbour.  Once occupied by warships and lighters, it's now the province of pleasure boats - some of which seem to be worth more than my house!

9mm Panasonic Leica for this shot - and on this occasion very little chromatic aberation.

The three lenses used on my Em1 Mkii all fit in my small camera bag and the excellent IBIS allows me to handhold even the 40-150 + telecoverter.  Even with Pro level gear the weight savings over my previous Canon APS-C gear are significant.  I may end up a little footsore from the walking but at 73 I can stll enjoy my photography!

Photographing birds with the Olympus 40-150mm f2.8 Pro - Part 1

I am not a bird photographer.  To be honest I've never been that interested in them and I've never had the budget to afford the long, fast telephoto lenses required to do the job properly.  But, like any wildlife / nature photographer I'll take the opportunity to get a shot should chance permit.

Stover Park, near Newton Abbot in Devon, is a 114 acre nature reserve centred around a large lake that attracts large numbers of migratory birds in winter,  Because there is a flat road running round the lake it's ideal for Maria's mobility scooter and we can enjoy a day out together.

Now the Olympus 40-150mm f2.8, even with the 1.4x teleconverter fitted, is not, by birding standards, a long lens.  420mm ff equivelent, though great for picking out flower details at the back of borders or capturing butterflies feeding without spooking them, is not really long enough for small, shy birds in distant treetops.

But it's just long enough and fast enough for waterfowl aclimated to human presence.  Water fowl such as this flock of coots...

...or a red billed moorhen.

Of course, bigger birds are even easier, as exemplified by this mute swan juvenile enjoying a wing stretch.

But all too often the bird is just a dot in the viewfinder and even the sharpness of the lens isn't enough to produce useable images.

But there are circumstances when even shy birds will tolerate human closeness.  During my regular days at The Garden House I'm often followed around by one of the resident robins.  They're quite happy to get close and even pose.

Of course, they're looking for food, hoping the human will turn up a tasty morsel at ground level. It's what gardeners do, after all.  Mind you, the need to search for food can certainly overcome caution, as with this song thrush hunting for snails amidst a hard early winter freeze.

Hopefully it found something worthwhile.

Regular feeding, as anyone who's put up feeders or bird tables knows, will always attract birds and some of my better shots have been taken on the feeders in my own back garden.  But that's the subject for my next post...

Some thoughts on the Panasonic Leica Summilux 9mm f1.7 lens

Since I switched over to M43 the one area I'd been missing was wide angle.  On my Canon gear one of my favourite lenses was the Tokina 12-24mm (18-36mm full frame - ff - equivelent).  It did, I admit, have some pretty horrendous chromatic aberation but I loved its field of view range and clarity.  I broke it and it was replaced with a Canon 10-18mm EFS.  Despite being even wider it wasn't the same and, although I generated some saleable shots, I tended not to use it.  

At 24mm ff equivelent the wide end of my Olympus 12-40mm f2.8 gave me a very reasonable wide angle perspective but I still hankered for a bit more.  Looking at the options towards the end of 2023 I narrowed it down to two M43 lenses.  Optimal choice would have been the Olympus 8-25mm f4 Pro.  Weather sealed, an excellent range from wide angle to normal, Pro quality glass and build, the ability to take the same filters as my 40-150mm f2.8 Pro; it had everything except for two factors.  Weight and price.  Even used it was more than I could realistically afford and a bit heavier than I would have liked.

So I looked at the second choice, the Panasonic Leica Summilux 9mm f1.7 lens.  Lightweight, sharp, half the cost of the Olympus and with some degree of weather sealing on Olympus bodies I thought I could add it to the kit as an addition to the 12-40mm.  So, at the end of 2023, I bought one.

First thoughts were positive.  It's certainly sharp, with good colour and clarity.  And then I noticed the downside and it took me back to Tokina 12-24mm days.  Purple fringing in high contrast situations.  Take this example:

Cropped from the top right corner of this image:

Yes, it's fixable in post using the Defringe sliders in Lightroom, but it's an additional step in the workflow and defringing is far from perfect.  It's tempting to say it doesn't really matter - but I doubt that Alamy QC would see it that way should I submit images with that amount of noticeable chromatic aberration.

Here's another example (click to embiggen):

All of which means I have to pick and choose which shots I take with the lens to avoid the sort of high contrast situations - bare branches against a winter sky is just one example - where purple fringing is most likely to be induced.

Apart from that it's a lovely lens, as these recent shots of Plymouth basking in January sunshine can attest.

I do have to admit that, perhaps, I should have saved up a little more and bought the Olympus 8-25mm Pro.  Unfortunately the tax man always wants his share of my Alamy earnings and that, I'm afraid, had to take priority.