Olympus 15mm f/8 - Walking the Dog and Having Fun

Olympus 15mm f/8 is a tiny lens, extending only 9 mm from camera body. It has a closing mechanism and when closed it is like a body cap. Olympus even calls it Body Cap Lens. When opened it can be manually focused with the lever under the lens. End points are at infinity and 30 cm. Close to infinity is a hyperfocal setting which gives sharpness starting from 1m upwards. Aperture is set at f/8. The idea is to use hyperfocal setting for general shooting. When close up near to 30 cm you can actually try focusing with the lever.

The lens has three elements. Opitically it is okayish, I would say almost but not as good as kit zoom at the same focal length. I have not tried them head to head but will check that later.

What is it for?  

I have seen several threads in the internet starting with the same message: I don´t understand what´s the point with this lens. Well, it depends what you are after. If you have Zuiko M. 17mm f/2.8 or Lumix 14mm f/2.5, you don´t gain anything with this lens but even better pocketability and instant lens cap. You can use both of those lenses at f/8, with fixed focus and get almost the same field of view plus do a lot more. And they are sharper, too. But then, there is a certain effect with some equipment. An effect which shapes how you shoot with it. This lens is one of those. It forces you to play with its terms or suffer. It is kind of a one trick pony with all it´s restrictions, but an interesting one.

Olympus is marketing it to be "ready for capturing wide-angle shots whenever a photo opportunity comes your way". Actually not really. Aperture f/8 is far too dim to be usable (without flash) casually in a traditional P&S style whenever, if you expect normally sharp images. You really have to set your eye and mind to f/8 and work with the consequensies of it, namely blur. Or then use flash as a signature, which also is interesting, but I have not yet been there with this lens.

Walking the dog

That´s what I do every morning. And it gave me a chance to do my first test for an idea for a particular shooting style with this lens. I attached 15mm lens to my old and trusty E-P2. I set E-P2 to shoot B&W jpeg with Auto-ISO up to ISO 1600. These 34 images are a short story from four morning walks:

 

-p-

Fotofinlandia 2011

Fotofinlandia is Finland´s premier photography contest. The jury makes its decisions tomorrow and finalists for 2011 are declared on Wednesday. Below are my two candidate series.

It´s three years since last Fotofinlandia. Fotofinlandia 2011 was started last year and continued this year with preliminary juryings among Finnish photography organizations. These organizatons are members of Finnfoto and there in total some 8000 photographers who are entitled to participate. 35 series have made it into semi-finals to compete for a place in Finalist exhibition. Fotofinlandia is for series, not for single photographs. Two of those 35 are mine and the best 12 are shown in Finalist exhibition later in November. The final winner (and taker of 20.000 €) will be announced on December 4th. 

My two series can be seen below as they would be seen at finalist exhibition. If...

Every nominee had to be designed to be hanged on a wall which is 4,4m wide and 1,9m high. Grey borders show the size of this wall and image sizes relative to wall. My series are printed on Canson Infinity Rag Photographique, which I now use for exhibition purpose for the first time after many tests. Printer is my Epson 9900 pigment printer and prints are mounted on DiBond. All images shot with Olympus E-P2 and D.Zuiko 50mm f/2 Macro.

Update November 2nd:

Moonlight series Cold:Snow - Moon:Light  went into finals!

Finalists can be seen here.

Update November 30th:

Fotofinlandia 2011 was won by Maija Tammi with her series Bingo.

-p-

FAP exhibition 2011

Finnish Advertising Photographers Association has a yearly exhibition which gives always a good opportunity to check the level of what I do among young talents.

This is something I of course should have written earlier but time flies... The yearly exhibition of Finnish Advertising Photographers Association is about to end this weekend in Helsinki. The images in exhibition can be seen also at:

http://www.mainosvalokuvaajat.com/nayttely/smv2011/etusivu.html?show_param=3

I sent four series which ended as gold in Travel, silver in Mobile Images and honour in Architecture and Interior. Mobile Images means of course mobile phone images and mine were taken with iPhone 3G (lost my iPhone 4) and Hipstamatic app. Others were like last year Olympus E-P2 stuff. For me my main effort was Ceature 1-4 in Still Life but jury obviously did not share my enthusiasm above exhibition entry.

-p-

My New Rig

I have used Olympus PEN-system since summer of 2009. With E-P3 and new Olympus 12 and 45mm lenses it has grown into a matured level for me. Image on the left has everything I need for over 90% of my images. 

I have travelled a road from 35mm film system cameras to medium and large format cameras, from there  to best digital backs and 35mm size digital system cameras. As smaller cameras I have tried all kinds of point and shoot cameras (both film and digital) and APS-C size digital system cameras. This does not mean constantly leaping from camera or system to another but owning tools according to needs.

Every camera is a compromise. You get something and lose something. During my professional career sheer quality with the best workflow was the prime qoal. Issues like portability, weight or size were not very important for most of time. 

Now I do photography to express other things and need a tool to suit my way of doing it. I want to be able to print with no compromises in quality in A3 and A2 sizes and high quality up to A1 or A0. But I want also portability. I always want to use a viewfinder, keep looking through it without any need to chimp or because of camera. I need a camera that can be controlled without looking at buttons.

I was very interested in Olympus PEN -system since the beginning in 2009, used it and learned to get every drop of quality out of it. E-P1 and E-P2 felt like my system even though lack of prime lenses and restricted software support (LR2 conversion was horrible) plus slow autofocus have been frustrating at times. But now the pieces have fallen into their places. Olympus E-P3 with high quality, fast prime lenses fills my needs, finally. Now, after a month´s usage I have really grown together with E-P3 and it is now configured just the way I want. E-P3 is the ultimate ETTR (expose to the right) machine. With it and in body stabilisation I can shoot perfectly exposed, sharp RAW images in most available light conditions. Lightroom 3.5 seems to do a very good RAW conversion from E-P3 files.

I have other lenses and equipment for this system of course, actually a lot - and I have full frame 35mm and medium format digital back systems alsoas well as P&S. But the big ones are for specific planned needs. For those 10% of situations.

Of course I am not claiming that my new rig is perfect and final. It never has been. I am happy to get all the improvements that future will bring. But I could just as well keep shooting with this body, viewfinder and those three lenses if this was the final level of optics and engineering.

-p-

A full frame 35mm DSLR is an overkill in size and weight unless there is a specific use where it gives noticeably better final in-use image quality or other benefits compared to E-P3. These uses seem to arise less and less. My two D3xes live mostly a very relaxed life. In contrast my 5D2s with lots of lenses do mostly music videos - by my son. 

I have always used black cameras since metal OM-1s. For a change I wanted to go back to that style. They only call these silver now...

Olympus E-P3 JPG Image Quality

Compared to E-P2 new E-P3 has also a new sensor and new image processor. According to Olympus image quality has improved by one stop.

Above: E-P2, ISO 800, Camera JPG Standard, NR Normal, Extra sharpening in LR3. Below: E-P3, same settings, No extra sharpening. (100% crop, Zuiko D. 50mm 1:2 Macro @ F4.0).

I shot a series of JPG test images with both camera´s ”even” ISO settings. At base sensitivity there is naturally no difference in resolution. When sensitivity goes up, E-P3 becomes gradually better so that at ISO 1600 it corresponds to E-P2 ISO 800 or is slightly better. Actually E-P2 image had to be helped with an extra sharpening to bring it closer to E-P3. Noise or graininess is stronger in dark grays in E-P3 image. From this point of view Olympus claim is true.

As can be seen in these frames  E-P3 image shows a watercolor-like smearing where structure or definition runs out. E-P2 has graininess in those areas. This difference in character is evident through out all ISO settings. Depending on subject smearing may not be seen at all at low settings and E-P3´s images can be very brilliant. Obviously it is sort of brilliance, that´s the best description I know, that Olympus seems to be after here. At higher ISO settings smearing can become disturbing if also reds spread and shadows have blotchiness.

Anyway, personally I do not like this kind of way to render as I already mentioned while writing about M.Zuiko 12mm images. I think also that this effect removes E-P3´s superiority starting from ISO 3200. I hope Olympus will  change rendering to be more like before. Now Olympus has been too much after clean, smooth and sharp look. A prompt firmware update, please!

My result and opinions here are strictly true only for camera JPGs at default settings. You can tweak the settings but still the same trend stays. Resuts could have been very different for E-P3 if I had swithced NR off and sharpening to minimum and tweaked those in post processing. But doing so would only make JPG shooting pointless. JPG´s whole idea is to produce as ready images as possible.

There was no RAW converter profiled for E-P3 and that prevents us from going any closer to the real capabilities of E-P3 sensor. Below, as an example, the same E-P2 exposure as camera JPG and converted from RAW in Lightroom 3. It is possible to squeeze out even some more resolution with Lightroom. And then you can get more out of tonality, dynamic range and colors, which I have left out of this blog. I will come back to this subject when I get an E-P3 profiled RAW converter

-p-   

Above: E-P2, ISO 800, Camera JPG Standard, NR normal. Below: Same picture, RAW conversion in Lightroom 3. (100% crop, Zuiko D. 50mm 1:2.0 Macro @ F4.0)