Photographers are perpetually upgrading their gear. Better camera body, better lenses, better tripod, better lighting, better post-processing software, better computer, etc.
Category Archive: Gear
Most of the time, in the world of bird and wildlife photography, you want the longest telephoto lens you can find. The new Olympus 100-400mm f/5.0-6.3 IS lens has an effective focal length of 200-800mm in a relatively compact, affordable form factor. If you add the M.Zuiko Digital 1.4X Teleconverter MC-14 to the Olympus 100-400mm f/5.0-6.3 IS lens, you get a lens with an EFL of 1120mm. If you add the M.Zuiko Digital 2X Teleconverter MC-20 you get all the way to 1600mm EFL.
During the pandemic lockdown, I am photographing my guitar collection. I started a guitar podcast and blog and I also decided to write a book about how to photograph guitars. Because of those things, I have been testing various products that might make photographing guitars (and other subjects a little bit easier.) Whether it’s guitars, or other products that you want to document with your camera, you’re going to constantly be dealing with how to light things and how to deal with reflections and/or specular highlights. If you are a portrait photographer and need to be able to photograph people in a controlled environment, and you have very little space to work with, then a photo booth also comes to mind.
About 10 days ago, Olympus announced the fact that it is in talks to sell the camera division to JIP. This prompted some nonsense about that being the end of Olympus. Nothing could be further from the truth. As I said on the day of that announcement, it’s gonna be business as usual.
Many photographers have interacted with Olympus over the years. After all, the company recently celebrated its 100th birthday. That long, rich, history has led people like me to really embrace the brand. For me, it started with the OM-1 in the early 1970s.
In the early 1970s, I was in college and bought my first real camera. (I had been gifted a few cameras before that, but the Olympus was the first one I bought with my own money.)
I don’t promote every sale that Olympus has just because I happen to be an Olympus Visionary, but this is the biggest sale in their history and if you’ve been on the fence about switching or adding to your collection, now is the time.
This update includes the new masking/selective adjustments feature where users will be able to selectively apply or remove noise reduction to certain areas in images. This feature can be found by clicking the “Masking” brush icon near the top of the screen beside the view options. This update also includes the “Low Light Mode” toggle option under the DeNoise AI model to treat severe or difficult-to-remove noise created in low lighting.
With fast, sharp, prime lenses that are this small and compact, not to mention lightweight (you can carry one in your shirt pocket) there’s no need for zooms. Olympus makes the best zoom lenses on the planet, and for the last three years I have been using these zooms. This is uncharacteristic of me since I have always believed that prime lenses offered the best image quality. My use of zooms is mostly tied to bird photography. BUT! If I were not a bird photographer I’d switch to all of Olympus’ prime glass. There’s just something very freeing about knowing you have a lens in your shirt pocket that can produce world-class, super sharp, beautiful bokeh-filled, images, for just a little money.
The Olympus wireless flash system is made up of three components.
The Olympus FC-WR Wireless Radiowave Commander
The Olympus FR-WR Wireless Radiowave Flash Receiver
A compatible Olympus flash. In this case, I use the following:
The Olympus FL-900R Electronic Flash
