A bit of background, I moved up from Bridge to mirrorless (Olympus OMD 10 Mark II) and have never owned a DSLR. I don't own any PRO lenses just some kits and some zooms - and I am happy with this (I cannot justify the price of the PROs for my hobby/enthusiast). I met up with 5 other like minded enthusiast photographers at Whitby. Whitby is great for landscape, seascape and as there was a steampunk event on - is one of the friendliest street photgraphy places going. We met in a cafe and admired each others cameras - the others had brought a mix of APSC, Full Frame and medium Format, Canon, Nikon and a Pentax. Most were mirrorless except for my Olympus and a Nikon Z. I am totally cool with whatever people shoot and as you would expect we all had a curiosity about the other cameras that we knew little about. For me I wanted to see the Sony backup but it was never used, for every one else had a curiosity about the Nikon Z and my Olympus. Appreciate that 6 is not a large sample but what became clear was that I knew very little of DSLRs and that they knew little of micro 4/3rds (and truth be told all my comments on the Olly could well apply to the Panys).
We all bought our best lenses - but what I could not get my head round was that all the lenses (except mine) had a handle - they were 12inches/30cm beasts with quite a thick girth. We were sat in cafe and the organiser (all decent people I hasten to add, no criticism of individuals) came out with this behemoth of a white F4 lens on his Canon and explained how well balanced it was. The rest handled the camera and lens and agreed. I looked at my little Olly with a 12-50 lens, absolutely dwarfed by this lens and honestly just wondered whether they were on a different planet. I still dont know why such huge lenses were necessary.
With 5 other photograhers and large cameras in tow, we set out and looked quite initimidating. I found myself disappearing away from the crowd to take the photos of the steam punks. It was the first use of the 45mm f1.8 lens and it is an immense lens - I need lots more practice. Taking photos of the steampunks with a small camera is highly recommended as it was far less intimidating and I could get a smile/laugh out of them.
Lens 45mm; f1.8 ; Face Detect
At dinnertime, traditional fish and chips (most places at Whitby have great fish and chips), our leader pulled out his laptop and showed us Luminar Photo Editor as a post processing tool. It looked very impressive. I wanted to know what I was doing wrong post processing and so took out the SD card and he loaded up my photos. He took the RAW photo of a Turn Stone that I had photographed in the morning and made adjustments. They looked really good after processing but there was little improvement to the JPEG version straight out of camera - which is exactly what I was finding.
TurnStone JPEG - Straight out of Camera SOOC (138mm) - Lens: 40-150mm f7.1:
The next question came "So why do you shoot in RAW and JPEG?". I then showed them the photo of the boat below (SOOC) - the morning was grey and so I go to the art filters for creative inspiration. The RAW holds the original colour photo while the JPEG holds the art filter equivalent and so I can rescue the original if I dont like the art filter. I showed them the bright yellow boat that stood out on the grey sea again taken in the morning. That moment was precious as they gazed open mouthed at the JPEG on the laptop. Curiosity had turned to admiration for the little camera.
Commercial Boat JPEG - Straight out of Camera SOOC - Lens: 12-50mm f10 , Art Filter: Partial Colour: (I know wonky horizon .. but this has no post processing)
For the rest of the day, the light got better and better and I got my best photos of Whitby Abbey. It was defintiely worth doing a group photo finding some new angles and there was some real learning/understanding from the different interpretations of exactly the same scene (amazing how post processing can change so much). I would definitely go again.
Lens: 12-50; SCN: Panorama (x2 stitched via HUGIN); I find that panorama sets as VIVID - which I prefer for dusk pictures
Graveyard next to Whitby Abbey; Lens 12-50
We all bought our best lenses - but what I could not get my head round was that all the lenses (except mine) had a handle - they were 12inches/30cm beasts with quite a thick girth. We were sat in cafe and the organiser (all decent people I hasten to add, no criticism of individuals) came out with this behemoth of a white F4 lens on his Canon and explained how well balanced it was. The rest handled the camera and lens and agreed. I looked at my little Olly with a 12-50 lens, absolutely dwarfed by this lens and honestly just wondered whether they were on a different planet. I still dont know why such huge lenses were necessary.
With 5 other photograhers and large cameras in tow, we set out and looked quite initimidating. I found myself disappearing away from the crowd to take the photos of the steam punks. It was the first use of the 45mm f1.8 lens and it is an immense lens - I need lots more practice. Taking photos of the steampunks with a small camera is highly recommended as it was far less intimidating and I could get a smile/laugh out of them.
Lens 45mm; f1.8 ; Face Detect
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At dinnertime, traditional fish and chips (most places at Whitby have great fish and chips), our leader pulled out his laptop and showed us Luminar Photo Editor as a post processing tool. It looked very impressive. I wanted to know what I was doing wrong post processing and so took out the SD card and he loaded up my photos. He took the RAW photo of a Turn Stone that I had photographed in the morning and made adjustments. They looked really good after processing but there was little improvement to the JPEG version straight out of camera - which is exactly what I was finding.
TurnStone JPEG - Straight out of Camera SOOC (138mm) - Lens: 40-150mm f7.1:
Subscribe to see EXIF info for this image (if available)
The next question came "So why do you shoot in RAW and JPEG?". I then showed them the photo of the boat below (SOOC) - the morning was grey and so I go to the art filters for creative inspiration. The RAW holds the original colour photo while the JPEG holds the art filter equivalent and so I can rescue the original if I dont like the art filter. I showed them the bright yellow boat that stood out on the grey sea again taken in the morning. That moment was precious as they gazed open mouthed at the JPEG on the laptop. Curiosity had turned to admiration for the little camera.
Commercial Boat JPEG - Straight out of Camera SOOC - Lens: 12-50mm f10 , Art Filter: Partial Colour: (I know wonky horizon .. but this has no post processing)
Subscribe to see EXIF info for this image (if available)
For the rest of the day, the light got better and better and I got my best photos of Whitby Abbey. It was defintiely worth doing a group photo finding some new angles and there was some real learning/understanding from the different interpretations of exactly the same scene (amazing how post processing can change so much). I would definitely go again.
Lens: 12-50; SCN: Panorama (x2 stitched via HUGIN); I find that panorama sets as VIVID - which I prefer for dusk pictures
Subscribe to see EXIF info for this image (if available)
Graveyard next to Whitby Abbey; Lens 12-50
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