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.
Category Archive: Gear
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
If I were a portrait photographer on a budget, (or a concert photographer or indoor sports photographer) and wanted a super, duper, sharp lens that was very fast (f/1.8) and at the same time relatively small, compact and light weight, my first choice, every time, would be the M. ZUIKO DIGITAL ED 75MM F1.8!
I bought this lens in 2013. I bought it before I was an Olympus Visionary. I bought it because I rented it for a tutorial I was writing and fell in love with it. Back then I was still a Canon shooter for birds/wildlife because Olympus hadn’t yet come out with the OM-D E-M1 MK II and the 300 f/4 IS Pro Lens.
The Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mark III with M.Zuiko 12-45 mm f/4 Pro Lens is very video capable.
The pair are being sold as a kit in either black or silver. I prefer black since it minimizes the possibility of stray reflections off the silver camera body.
