ROBIN WONG

Moving into the mirrorless interchangeable lens system world, Olympus has poured dedication into advancing the Micro Four Thirds camera and lenses. The highly successful Olympus OM-D E-M5 and the multiple award winning OM-D E-M1 have made it clear that generally the crowd still leans positively toward DSLR-styled camera with a good viewfinder and ergonomics (not being too small, and still handling well in hand). We know well that the E-M5 was a mid-range enthusiast camera, and the E-M1 was targetted towards professional and serious enthusiasts. Therefore, today Olympus announced a new OM-D camera, the OM-D E-M10 which is slotted into the "premium compact" category. To accompany the OM-D E-M10, there are several new lenses announced together, namely the new M.Zuiko 14-42mm EZ Pancake Zoom, the M.Zuiko 25mm F1.8 prime lens (FINALLY!!!) and a new body cap lens, which is also a Fisheye 9mm F8. 

In this blog entry I shall be writing a brief introduction to these new products, as well as my first impression and quick thoughts. A more thorough review will follow very, very soon. 

OLYMPUS OM-D E-M10

Here is a collection of some photos I have taken with the Olympus M.Zuiko 17mm F1.8 lens. Shot with my OM-D E-M5 of course.

I have often been told by people who liked my series of street photographs that, the one thing that stood out for them was the way the people looked at me, or at my camera. To be entirely honest, I have never really given that much of a thought to how people looked at me. The only tip I can give, or share, is to smile, and be nice. After all, how people looked at you is actually their spontaneous response to how you looked at them in the first place. I fully understand that this perhaps can only apply to people here in Malaysian streets. Now that I am starting to pay more attention to my street portraits, there really is something about the way people looked at me. My favourite photos that I took almost always have that bright smile and warm expression. I am drawn to those emotions somehow. Maybe there is something about me that I do not quite know!

High ISO performance of a camera has always been the overrated issue debated by virtually every online photography groups and forums, and it was as if the only thing that mattered in photography. I never overemphasized on the importance of high ISO noise control, but I do acknowledge the importance of being able to push that extra bit of sensor ISO numbers just to gather a bit more light. In the case of last night, I was shooting live performance at The Bee, Publika, a place known for showcasing local talents in a stage setup with rather poor lighting conditions. High ISO was necessary, so how did the now not so new OM-D E-M5 performed?

I had with me only two lenses: M.Zuiko 17mm F1.8 and 45mm F1.8, which I utilized mostly on the 45mm for the longer reach. The shooting of the live performance happened rather spontaneously as I bumped into a friend, Albert Ng (click to check out his awesome blog) who is an avid Sony fan, as well as a local gig frequenter. Should I have known about this event earlier, I would have brought along the amazing M.Zuiko 75mm f1.8 for even better reach. Nevertheless being able to move closer to stage, I was able to utilize the 45mm f1.8 to achieve sufficient reach. 

The OM-D performed very well, and I was pleased. The focusing was extremely fast and I nailed 99% of my shots in focus (can't say about composition, that is something rather unpredictable with the constant movements). The lighting was horrendous, casting a strong cool magenta cast on the performers, which I corrected via post-processing, an advantage I had by shooting everything RAW in the first place. I used mostly ISO3200-6400 for all shots in this entry, mainly to attain adequately fast shutter speed to freeze movements. It was a rather dynamic performance with the lead singer moving really fast, hence I needed shutter speed above 1/250sec. The images turned out still very clean (at least to my eyes) and retaining high level of usable detail. Coming from the 45mm F1.8 lens images were very sharp and I had some control over shallow depth of field, shooting wide open at F1.8. 

If you have not checked out Paperplane Pursuit (click) and Darren Ashley (click), you can find out more about them at their Youtube Pages. 

When shooting on the street, I prefer to deal with available light, mainly for simplicity and easy execution. As abundantly available as the sun light, it is still very crucial to take into considerations lighting aspects in a photograph. The quality of direction and quality of light can significantly affect the outcome of any photographs, and this is especially true for portrait or people photos. It always pays at the end of the day if extra effort and attention were placed in making sure the lighting was right in the first place. It is true that there is not much that can be done about available light, not much control can be done, but if you watch closely how the light hits the subject, how best to position your subject (if you can) and from which angle and side to shoot from to bring the best out of the given light, the results can be rewarding. 

To most people, even lighting can be very boring and flat, appearing mundane especially on portraits. As usual I always go against the norm, and to me even lighting is possibly the easiest to achieve, and you can rarely go wrong with this kind of lighting on people photos. To accomplish this, the best way to shoot is to have the people stand underneath heavy shade. This is the safe approach, and the default for most of my street shooting, as I avoid shooting my subjects directly under the sun. The subject's facial skin tone usually will come out very pleasant, smooth and portraits appearing flattering in this light. The bonus point of shooting subjects under shade besides even light, is the more natural expression, usually because they do not have to squint their eyes under harsh sun. You also can avoid highlight burns such as shiny nose or oily skin. I use even light mostly to emphasize the sense of warmth and friendliness, which I portray a lot in my street portraits of strangers all this time. If the original image appear too flat, a little bit of contrast can be added to boost the depth of the image in post-processing.