No touchy! Noooo touchy!
Find yourself a tattoo artist who is as good in front of the camera as she is behind a device that is stabbing you in the arm thousands of times an hour. Kimberly is the proprietress of Golden Falcon Tattoo, in Chapel Hill, NC.
Here are two other hella experimental handheld test shots I took, just to see what the Olympus/OM System was capable of.
Six muther-fudgin’ seconds, y’all:
This was high up in the Swiss Family Robinson Tree House at Walt Disney World, at 8:15 PM, with a gentle rain starting to fall. Sure, it took several tries to nail the shot, but six muther-fudgin’ seconds, handheld! Take that, any other camera system!
Could I have gotten it some other way? Yup – by raising the ISO to 1600 and shooting wide open at f/2.8 I could have easily captured the same scene with less hassle, but the object of the exercise was to see how long I could handhold the camera.
Here’s another at a modest 2.5 seconds:
Once again using a low ISO and a high F stop to keep the shutter speed as slow as possible, but once again a tack-sharp image, handheld. The irony is not lost on me that I had the shutter open for the 2.5 seconds of the fireworks display where almost nothing happened. Timing is a harsh mistress.
This IS system is indeed bonkers. Forget fractions of a second: if you’re looking for a travel camera that will shoot at “nigh impossible” shutter speeds, an old Olympus E-M1/E-M5 or new OM-1/OM-5 needs to be in your travel kit.
About a year ago a question was posted to the Fujifilm X System / SLR Talk forum of the now-defunct DP Review (which is to the shock and amusement of the camera world is still kicking). I’m not much of a forum posting/responding kind of guy, but this question was right in my wheelhouse and so I gave my $.02. Since DP Review is apparently going to cease existence some day, I decided to save the post and reply for posterity, in case it helps other aspiring photographers figure their stuff out. Here is the question and my response:
Has anyone used an xt-4 vs the om-1 or x-hs2 or indeed vs a second-hand full-frame system?
I have been a Fuji shooter since 2015 and since March [2022] have switched my kit almost entirely over to Olympus/OM System. I have owned both the X-T4 and the OM-1 and I also shoot travel, so some of our experience overlap.
I’ve loved my Fuji gear, but there are two reasons why Oly makes more and more sense to me.
First is size and weight. Fuji is getting larger and heavier. My first “real” Fuji (I started with the X-T10) was the X-T2, which weighed 507g. I traded it in on the X-T4, which weighed 20% more. That 20% was noticeable, but the X-T4 was also chunkier. Blockier. Ergonomically, less enjoyable to use. With the intro of the X-H1 and now the X-H2S Fuji has been getting away from svelte and small and as a stills shooter I feel I’m losing the reason I moved from full-frame DSLR to mirrorless.
My OM-1 weighs the same as the X-T4, but feels better ergonomically. One can look at the dimensions all day and declare them equal, but the OM-1 just fits better, both in my hand and sliding in and out of a bag. The X-H2S is even chunkier and heavier: 9% heavier than the X-T4.
My biggest reason turned out to be image stabilization. I come from the Canon world and owned the excellent 24-105 L f/4 IS and the 70-200 L f/4 IS. Even 10 years ago that IS worked wonders. NOT so with the X-T4. The X-T4’s stabilization was so poor that I thought that the system wasn’t on or broken, until I read this comparison. I’ve also rented the X-S10 and owned the 18-55 f/2.8-4 IS and the performance of both was also “meh.”
Four months ago on a whim I bought a used E-M1.2 and a 12-40mm f.2.8 PRO for a trip I was taking. The IS is astounding and a week after I got back I traded the E-M1.2 in on an OM-1 and soon after started downsizing my Fuji kit.
How astounding? Here’s how Amateur Photographer describes the X-H2S:
Fujifilm’s in-body stabilisation works well, and I was able to get sharp images hand-held at shutter speeds as slow as 0.6sec when using the 16-55mm f/2.8 zoom at wideangle. This is on a par with cameras like the Sony Alpha 7 IV, although it’s some way off class-leading Micro Four Thirds models such as the Panasonic GH6 and OM System OM-1.
[Management: I didn’t call it out at the time, but “some way off” is doing a lot of heaving lifting in that pull quote, as you’ll see below. I respect and admire Amateur Photographer as a magazine, but I wish camera journalists would report objectively in a way that would allow readers to make informed decisions instead of using language designed not to piss off camera manufacturers. Let’s continue, shall we?]
By comparison, here is a shot from the E-M1.2 at five seconds, handheld:
Here’s another at 4 seconds, handheld:
Both images have plenty of detail, even if they’re lacking in artistry. I was pushing the envelope, not trying to be artistic
In real-world use I just posted three fireworks images on my Flickr feed taken from 1.3 to 2.5 seconds, handheld, all at ISO 200 to keep the shutter speed as slow as possible. When I’m out and about I’ll routinely shoot >1 second shots, just to prove to myself that it is possible.
I’m over 50 and my hands are not as stable as they once were, so IS has turned out to be incredibly important to me, though your mileage may vary. If it’s a priority for you, you’re looking at a system that boasts .6 seconds vs. one that performs at 4+ seconds [Management: “some way off” indeed].
This is an old, though recently active, thread, so if you’re still on the fence see if you can get a long-term test with the E-M1.3. It’ll perform much the same as the OM-1, but it’s easier to get ahold of. I’m still keeping my X-T3 and most of my Fuji glass; my X-T2 was the proverbial one-that-got-away and I’m not making the same mistake twice.
As the sidebar says: “Fine Art Nudes, Erotica, Travel, Portraits, Cats.” Having featured Harrow yesterday, let’s continue vanilla week with this image from last Halloween Eve.
One of the things that I adore about OM System (formerly Olympus) cameras is their class-leading image stabilization (“IS”). In fact, their IS was the thing that sold me on the system. Back in March 2022 I was visiting my favorite local camera store, Southeastern Camera in Carrboro, prior to a trip to Disney World. In the used case was an eight-year-old Olympus OM-D E-M1 MkII for about $650. Every photographer in the world gets GAS (“Gear Acquisition Syndrome”) on a bi-weekly basis and despite being a Fujifilm fanboi, I have been fascinated by Olympus since my film days (circa 1987). But they are Micro Four Thirds cameras, and in this “bigger is better” world their sensors are “too small,” so I’ve always discounted them as an option.
But the GAS was strong and lately I had started eying them again. After all, they were technological monsters, despite the teeny sensor. So when I saw the E-M1 MkII in the case at a “why not?” price point, the GAS became too much to bear.
“Golly,” I said, “it would be really keen if y’all had a used 12-40mm f/2.8 on hand.”
“As a matter of fact, we do!” came the unexpected reply.
Well, shit. I guess I was buying an Olympus kit.
And sweet raisin danish, I’m glad I did! The next week I took both it and my Fujifilm kit to Walt Disney World. Over the next five days I captured 4,200 images and not a single one was with my beloved Fuji. The photo above is a big part of the reason why: I’m hand-holding this SOB and because of the fantastic IS I am shooting firework photos as if the camera is locked down on a tripod. As much as I love Fuji, there was no way in Hades I was going to be able to replicate this on a non-IS body. I may get lucky, but with the E-M1 I was nailing every shot.
And 1/3 sec is nothing for Olympus/OM System. This is hardly pushing the envelope: in my March 2022 tests I was shooting four to five second exposures just to see if I could do it, and sure as shit I could.
But that’s a story for another day.
I came back from that trip a convert and almost immediately upgraded to OM System’s new flagship, the OM-1, which which this shot was captured. I still have my beloved Fuji kit, which I use for about 95% of my studio and portraiture work, but the OM-1 is my go-to one-lens travel kit.
Harrow doesn’t mind if it’s a day late, so why should you?
Many thanks to Ivy for demonstrating that I do have two lights and I know how to use them. I’m such a one-light fanboi that even I will look at the results of a two-light setup and think, “Damn, why don’t I do this more often?”
Oh, and pearls. And jeans! Can’t forget those.
This session had two objectives: show off Claire’s power lifting gains and do one (possibly) last session with a pair of jeans that have featured in many a session over the last half decade. The goal was to have one last hurrah with the jeans, which no longer fit the same way they did 5 years ago due to the aforementioned power lifting, but we may not quite be done with them just yet.
Claire was really pleased with how her nails turned out and with the output of her flower box, so we put a quick shoot together. This is from January, 2020.
When pressed to name their favorite feature, people other than The World’s Best Asexual Erotic Photographer would probably point to any other part of this image than Jo’s hands. But for me, it’s the hands, all the way.
I adore photographing strong hands. Two of my favorite people in the world – my wife and my friend, Erin – are nurses and they have strong, weathered hands full of stories and character. Whenever I share a photo of one with the other the response is invariably “nursing hands!”
Why do I dig hands? Because if you hold to the old adage that “light illuminates, shadow defines,” then hands, with their veins, muscles, nails, fine hairs, tendons, and bones, all in extremely close proximity to each other, are infinitely more fascinating than, say, a thigh. This is the internet, so someone is going to take that as being anti-thigh and that is not the case, but hands have an additional benefit that thighs do not: they are mobile. With hands you can obscure, pinch, pull, squeeze, twist, dangle, make rude gestures, contain, barely contain, stretch, or even create a frame or leading lines. Look again at the image above. Can you do that with a thigh? No, you cannot.
Take that, thighs!
(Why do I get the feeling I’m going to have to pander to the pro-thigh lobby in a future post?)