More fun with Fungi - Olympus OM-D E-M1

Last weekend I went out with a Sony a-99 and 50mm macro lens and took some fungi photos at a local forest (see last post). I had a lot of fun, and was very happy with the photos once I got the hang of the macro lens. But I also said I didn't enjoy the weight of the kit, and would like to try taking similar photos with my lighter Olympus OM-D E-M1. I was also keen to try out the 'macro' function on my 12-50mm f3.5/6.3 EZ lens.

This weekend I got the chance to go out again for a couple of hours on Saturday morning, so I headed to the same spot, expecting to be able to take the same photos. What a difference a week makes to fungi in the forest!

First setup with OM-D E-M1 & Lumix 45-150mm f4/5.6 lens

Overnight on the Friday we had some very wet and wild weather conditions, but I knew the area I wanted to shoot in was fairly sheltered from the elements. Even so, when I got there I found that practically all of the fungi I had seen the previous weekend were totally destroyed! Bummer.

Luckily, there were one or two in the area remaining, so I choose my first subject and set up the first composition.

Because the E-M1 is a lighter rig than the full-frame a-99, I was able to bring my smaller, lighter tripod and still have a very stable support for the camera. In fact, I brought two tripods along with me on the shoot. My Manfrotto travel tripod (seen in the first setup image) as well as my Manfrotto 'Pixi' tripod that I normally use for vlogging. It's a very small, yet stable table-top style tripod, with a solid ball head and slightly extendable legs, that I hoped I could use to set the camera up closer to the fungi. As it turned out, for my first image I decided to use my longer telephoto lens, the Panasonic Lumix 45-150 f4/5.6, and shoot from a distance using the long telephoto end of the range.

Yellow fungi. Olympus OM-D E-M1 with Lumix 45-150mm lens. 1/13th sec @ f/11, ISO 1600

I had tried to set up the 12-50mm EZ lens in macro mode, on the steep bank that the fungi was growing out of, but I just couldn't get the balance right with the camera attached to the small 'Pixi' tripod. So I opted to pull back instead and use the larger tripod on the track, with the longer lens. The image still has the effect I was after, with the fungi filling the frame and placed in context with its surroundings. 

Second setup with E-M1 & 12-50mm EZ 

For the second fungi, growing out of a drainage ditch on the side of the track, I knew I could get down low and use the macro function on the 12-50mm EZ lens. It also meant that I could use the 'Pixi' tripod, since it fit perfectly into the width of the ditch.

As you can see from the second setup image on the right, the articulating flip-up screen of the E-M1 came in very handy. With the camera on a small tripod, placed into a ditch, getting down to see through a normal viewfinder to take a photo would have meant lying down on the forest floor and getting very dirty. Not to mention extremely uncomfortable.

But with the screen articulation found on most modern cameras, shooting from these crazy low-angles is actually a breeze. When cameras first started appearing with flippy-out screens I honestly thought they were a fad. Now I wouldn't have a camera that didn't have one. Times, they are a changing...

Macro mode on the M Zuiko 12-50mm f3.5/6.3 EZ lens is available only at the 50mm end of the lens (which makes sense) and is accessed by holding down the 'macro' button on the lens and moving the lens barrel forwards to engage macro mode. This then allows a close-focusing distance of 20cms, with a maximum magnification of 4.2X. I'm not a big macro guy, so all the facts and figures start to sound all a bit Greek to me.

OM-D E-M1 on the Pixi-pod, in the drainage ditch

What I care about are results. And the results with the 12-50mm f3.5/6.3 in macro mode are (to me at least) fantastic. For the fungi images I wanted to capture, the M Zuiko lens in macro mode gave me just as good an image as the dedicated 50mm macro gave me using the Sony a-99. I do stress, again, that I'm not a macro shooter, so take all this with a grain of salt. 

But with the lens engaged in macro mode, and placed around 20 cms from the small fungi I was using as my subject, it was easily able to fill the frame and give me a sharp, close-up, fungi photo.

And speaking of sharpness, there were a few settings I changed on the camera from my normal shooting style to help facilitate a nice macro image.

Cute as a button. Olympus OM-D E-M1 with M Zuiko 12-50mm EZ. 1/200th @ f/8, ISO 1600

First, because the camera was on a tripod, I turned image stabilisation off. Not needed when on a tripod. However, since macro requires reasonably small apertures, which in turn gives somewhat slower shutter speeds, I also set the 2 second self-timer on the camera, to give it time to settle before taking the shot. Even though it balanced ok, the Pixi-pod isn't the sturdiest tripod (nor is it meant to be), so I gave it a helping hand with the 2 second timer.

I also switched the camera into manual focus, and turned 'peaking' on - just like I had when using the a-99 the week prior. This made it super easy to see the in-focus areas when manually focusing. It was also a very helpful visual aid to see how deep the depth of field was when changing the aperture. You can see at f8 above, that the in-focus area just covers the fungi. The moss it clings to is sharp just before it, and falls away quickly directly behind it. Stopping down to f/16 or f/22 would have increased the area of sharpness, but by using the peaking function I could choose the exact aperture necessary to just cover the fungi, giving me the result I was after. The fungi head 'pops' as the background blurs out.

Puffball. OM-D E-M1 and Lumix 45-150mm lens. 1/25th @ f/10. ISO 1600

I used the peaking technique on this top-down image of the fungi as well, to ensure that the ball itself was in sharp focus. f/10 did the trick, this time with the Panasonic Lumix 45-150mm lens, zoomed all the way out to 150mm.

I quickly got used to the macro 'manual focusing using peaking' technique. Setting up different shots was quick and easy, and the hour flew by. I did, however, make one rookie mistake - which the observant among you may have already picked up on. I shot everything at ISO 1600!

I only realised this as I was packing up to head home, and was re-setting my camera back to its normal (for me) settings. I kicked myself for making such a stupid mistake. But, then again, have a look at the images in this post, and tell me you would have picked that they were shot at ISO 1600 on micro four thirds if I hadn't 'fessed-up' and told you? Photographers who say that you can't go past ISO 400 with micro four thirds are talking through the proverbial hole in their heads. Yes, of course, I would have preferred to have shot these at ISO 200. But ISO 1600 is far from un-useable as some would have you believe. I certainly wouldn't hesitate to crank the ISO up to 1600 on the E-M1 if I needed to for the lighting conditions. 

 

Stand tall. OM-D E-M1 with Lumix 45-150mm lens. 1/6th sec @ f/16. ISO 1600

I've said at several stages in this post that I'm not a macro photographer. And I'm not. I appreciate that these aren't 'true' macro images, and that a 'real' macro photographer would have made a lot more of these subjects than I have.

But, having said that, for someone who just wants to have the occasional 'play' with some close-focusing, and who has no intention of owning a dedicated macro lens, then the M Zuiko 12-50mm f3.5/6.3 EZ with macro function is the bees knees 😃