Garden Fest 2012

These photos are taken a few months ago in Singapore Suntec. It is a bi-yearly event of garden art and design. The challenge of shooting in this place is  the dim light. I uses the old G1 and 20mm/45mm to capture this place. The ISO is kept at 800. Hope you enjoy. Without the help of latest model like the OM-D, I am happy to capture the place well and enjoy it too.

New purchase accessories for OM-d

I was sponsored  by my company to shoot photos for their websites. With the amount given, I got myself the battery grip from Olympus to add onto the small body of OM__D. The purpose of this grip was to enhance the grip especially when a larger lens like the 45-200mm lens is mounted. It also serve another purpose, to increase the battery life as it can be mounted with 2 batteries. The last purpose give confidence to my subjects as after the last decade, people are used to seeing big DSLR in professional shoot. Seeing a Pen or OM-D, people may have doubts. Even fellow photographers who are using full frame or APS_C DSLR will have doubts. As many seasoned photographer knows, 4/3 or m4/3 format can produced great professional images too. Other purchases are the 45-200mm from Panasonic and a Nissin Flash. My purpose of the flash is mainly for fill-in purpose, therefore I did not opt for a more sophisticated flash system.


As many may comment, that the grip defeat the purpose of the mirror less format as it will enlarge the small form factor. However do note that I am 100% in this system and I do not have a DSLR anymore. With the grip, I will have a choice of removing it if I am on easy/travel or light weight mode. I need the grip for serious stuff like event and nature shoot. Therefore, I think Olympus design of the OM-D system is a winner.

OM-D with HLD-6 grip

Another configuration. Without the additional battery pack.

Getting ready for event shoot. Mounted with the 45-200mm.

Pulau Ubin on National day

Got up early and brought my family to the island called Pulua Ubin. This island is the last remaining place in Singapore where we can still find villagers and rustic environment.
We reached the jetty around 8am and was glad as there was still no crowd yet as it is a public holiday.
We brought some snack and drinks there. We had a hike and a simple picnic. Overall it is a nice experience. Brought along with me is the Olympus OM-D and it's weather-proof kit lens 12-50mm. It is a versetile lens although it may not be a great lens for indoor use. The macro mode on the lens works.The more I use this camera the more I like it. The art filters are really fun to use. The auto-focus is a breeze with no hesitation. The built-in EVF and it's metal body combo makes it a "complete" camera. The small body size and big image quality output again is the winner

m4/3 group Sunrise Outing

I joined the members from the forum Clubsnap this morning for a sunrise outing. This outing is mainly a gathering of m4/3 or 4/3 camera systems. It was organised by one of the senior member in the forum. It was a great outing and able to meet up the real people is good. We had good discussion the techniques and also about equipment.

Here are some of the shots. All taken by OM-D 12-50mm kit lens or 7.5 mm fisheye.

1) 12-50mm City lights

2) 7.5mm lens, sunrise

3) 7.5mm lens

 4) The new Panasonic G5

5) OM_D

6) All the m4/3 users

OM-D and it's lens

Attached are the photos of my m4/3 system. Taken by Panasonic G1 and 12-50mm. Without the bulk size of DSLR and heavy lens, this small system has change my view point of photography and enjoy photography once again. Capable of rendering serious good images for home and professional use. This new system is a force to reckon in the future.

Olympus OM-D EM-5 sample shots

I brought he OM-D out to the street today. Together with it, I selected the 7.5mm fisheye and the 45mm f1.8 lens. Overall the camera is nice to hold. I like the rubber thumb rest on the camera. It supported my overall grip and I do not felt that the camera is too small to hold like the EPM-1. The dynamic range coming out from the camera is very  good. The older generation of image sensors from Olympus never achieved such level.As seen below,one of the photo where the man was standing under a tree changing his shoe turns out good under different shades.
 I enjoyed  playing with the Art filters available in the camera and there is so much choices now. I still remember the first Art filters Olympus placed was the DSLR E-30. Back then there were only 6 filters to choose. Now with EM-5, I seems to like the dramatic filter in balck & white variant.

above- this man was changing to his newly bought shoes.

OM-D outing shoot

I brought out this brand new toy out to Lower Pierce Reservoir with my family. Attached to it was the kit lens 12-50mm EZ lens. It has replaced the 14-42mm from EPM-1. This lens built quality is good compared to the plastic mount 14-42mm. This 12-50mm is a weather sealed lens and has a macro mode on it. In 35mm terms, it is a 24-100mm lens. The let down is the relatively small aperture and can be a great travel & outdoor lens. As for indoors and low light situations, i will still prefer the 20mm f1.7 and 45mm f1.8.

BTW, the handling of OM-D is familiar to me as it is similar to some Olympus DSLR & Pens I use before since I migrated from Canon to Olympus in 2009. Many serious photographers does the opposite. Why I like Olympus is mainly the colours it can produce in Jpeg. It is very hard to explain but coming from a Canon Professional user, I save many hours of photoshopping after I have switched to Olympus. The issue of smaller sensor like Olympus m4/3 is long gone for me as the sensor they have now can fight or in some case better than the full frame D800 Nikon. These can be found in many web doing the comparison. However full frame is still one level up if one know what he/ she is using to maximise the output. For serious users like me a 16mp or 12mp camera is very good already. I still remember when I was using the pro Canon 1D markii which was only 8mp but the results were brilliant with the right lens.

One thing I wanted to highlight on the OM-D is the new function called shadow/highlight adjustment built-in the camera. These function is usually found in photoshop or for the old school photographers, they play with Neutral density filters to get the result. The below are the result of adjusting the shadow. As it is a back-lilted subject, the ground will be mainly dark. But after adjusting the shadow level, it came out good. Again it will be useful for sunset/sunrise shot and also save time doing photoshop.

Normal shot

After doing the shadow adjustment, the rock detail can be seen,

Final result from the shadow/highlight function