Musings on the new Olympus Pen-F

Advertising for the new Olympus Pen F

The new Olympus Pen-F starts shipping this month (here in New Zealand) and, not surprisingly, it's creating a lot of internet buzz. Breaking away from the more consumer oriented Pen series cameras, Olympus have created the Pen-F to appeal to the more 'enthusiast' end of the camera market. Yeah - you and me :-)

As someone who loves the early Olympus Pen film cameras (aesthetically speaking at least), this new 'digital' Pen is indeed very enticing. I'll admit that if a large bucket of cash landed in my lap this month, the first thing I'd do (after paying off the mortgage and all that other boring stuff), is go out and get the Pen-F. In a heartbeat. Why?

Well, for a start, the internet buzz and early reviews of this camera coming in from the USA has been overwhelmingly positive. It's a superbly made, fantastic looking (let's not deny it) Olympus Pen with a built-in OLED electronic viewfinder (finally for a Pen camera), 20 megapixel sensor with the amazing 5 axis image stabilisation that we've come to know and love.

Top View of the new Pen-F

As you can see from the top-down view, the new Pen also places many of the cameras more important functions (like exposure correction) on the outside of the camera for quick access. All advertising for the camera so far has centred around street shooting, and the Pen-F certainly gives off a strong street-shooters vibe (a-la Fuji's cameras).

I'm not a street shooter though, so why else would I be interested in the Pen-F? Well, for a start, I am looking for a back-up camera for my EM-5 MkII, and so a small, light, and fully featured camera like the Pen-F would be just the ticket as a second body. I'm writing this blog post while off work for a week with a torn disc in my back. While not camera related, this nevertheless makes me ever more aware of my ageing body (I'm approaching 50!) and desire to cut down on the gear that I carry. Just a year ago I was a firm believer in the 'bigger is better' (heavier is better) approach to photography. But that was before the EM-5 MkII changed all that. Now I'm even loathed to put an external grip on my cameras, whereas when I was a DSLR shooter it was the first accessory I purchased.

So a small, light (relatively) and fully-featured compact Pen body like the Pen-F would be just the ticket as a back-up/second body combination with the EM-5 MkII. In reality, I'll probably end up getting a second hand Panasonic G 'something' or earlier consumer line Pen, since the bucket full of cash probably won't eventuate :-(

Olympus Pen-F in all black

Why bang-on about the Pen-F at all then, since I'm not likely to get one? Well, one feature excites me above all others on the new Pen-F, that I'm hoping I will get to have eventually on the EM-5 MkII. And that's the new colour modes, controlled on the Pen-F by that funky dial on the front of the camera.

With this new dial on the Pen-F, you can get to some very cool new monochrome and colour presets. There are three in each, with a 'normal, Tri-X style and infrared mode' in the monochrome set (each with varying levels of grain selectable) - while the colour sets give a 'chrome' look to jpegs (again similar to the Fuji film simulations that people love). This is VERY cool, and very exciting. And I hope that it's just a firmware tweak so that these settings will eventually be available as an upgrade for the EM-5 MkII? Please Olympus.....

Olympus look to have another stellar product in the Pen-F. A recent interview with Japanese executives from the camera division seemed to indicate that the Pen-F is a 'test' camera for them. A toe-in-the-water for a higher class of enthusiast-level Pen cameras. If it sells well (and I think that it will, despite it's initial high asking price), then we may well see more of this style of fully-featured Pen down the track. I certainly hope so.

Olympus OMD EM5 MkII Abstract Landscapes

A photographer friend of mine (Hi Stew) and I went out shooting last evening to grab a sunset along the Coast Road.

Unfortunately, it didn't really eventuate - even though the night before (and the one after) were fantastic! Murphey's Law in practise once again :-(

17 Mile Beach Sunset. Olympus OMD EM5 MkII with Zuiko 12-50mm f3.5/6.3. F4.5 @ 80th sec. ISO 500

It never got better than the image above, with fairly flat lighting, but still some elements of colour. Whenever I'm presented with these conditions I think of two things; black & white and ICM (Intentional Camera Movement).

Olympus OMD EM5 MkII with 9mm Fisheye bodycap lens. F8 125th sec at ISO 1600

So I tried the black and white first, although there isn't a lot of contrast in the scene to really make black and white work. It's OK, but not great.

The light, what there was of it, was fading fast - perfect conditions for the long shutter speeds required for ICM photographs. But if you want to 'intentionally' blur your images with an Olympus mirrorless, then you need to turn the Image Stabilisation OFF first - it really is that good.

Olympus OMD EM5 MkII with 12-50mm EZ lens. F16 @  0.8secs, ISO 200

I aslo turned Auto ISO to OFF, setting the camera at its lowest ISO of 200 (for longer exposures). I then began to move the camera around as I exposed - effectivley 'painting with light' with the camera as the paintbrush. There are an infinite number of ways of moving the camera, so the results are practicaly limitless - and a whole lot of fun.

Olympus OMD EM5 MkII with 12-50mm EZ lens. F16 @ 2.5secs, ISO 200

With some colour still in the sky, the exposures weren't too long - only about 2 to 3 seconds. This is long enough to get some movement, but short enough to still retain a lot of the detail in the image. The result is a mysterious lansdcape that is obviously blurred, but still very readable as a landscape picture.

Olympus OMD Em5 MkII with 12-500mm EZ lens. F11 @ 3.5secs, ISO 200

The longer the exposure, the less landscapy the images are - and the more abstract they become. I'm a huge art  lover, and one of my favourite artists is Turner. His abstract expressionist paintings have always inspired me, and I strive for that look and feel in my ICM images.

Olympus OMD EM5 MkII with 12-50mm EZ. F16 @ 5secs. ISO 200.

ICM is a lot of fun and can really create some strikingly beautiful images. Granted, they may be more like paintings than traditional photographs - but therein lies the joy of experimentation.

Olympus OM-D EM-5 MkII with Zuiko 12-50mm EZ. F11 @ 8secs, ISO 200

Next time you're faced with a landscape that isn't quite doing it for you in terms of light and drama, think about slowing down your camera and trying some ICM (Intentional Camera Movement). It can be very counter-intuative at first - especially if you're used to shooting landscapes on a tripod. But once you start seeing the results on the lcd screen, and realise how liberating it can be to intentionally shoot for blur, then I think you'll be hooked on the technique. Enjoy!

The Making of an Image

One of my favourite outings from last year would have to be the Greymouth Street Races. It was the shoot that convinced me that I had made the right decision moving to mirrorless. Up until then, I had been nervous about using the Olympus OM-D E-M5 MkII to photograph fast-moving subjects. But rather than being disappointed, I was blown away with the images that I got that day. It’s been a few months since then, and I have lived with the images for a while before deciding how to process them (there were over 2000 images!).

In the Lead. OM-D E-M5 MkII with 40-150mm f4/5.6 lens. 1/4000th sec @ f5.6, ISO 1600

As I said, I was thrilled with the quality of the images I captured – especially with the ‘cheap’ Olympus 40-150mm f4/5.6 consumer zoom. Cheap and plasticky it may be, but boy-oh-boy is it one sharp lens for the price. Even wide open, it’s as sharp, if not even sharper, than the Canon 400mm f5.6 and 70-200mm f2.8 pro zooms. And that’s not just anecdotal. That’s from actually comparing images taken with these lenses from previous years capturing the same event.

Cutting it Close. Olympus E-M5 MkII with 40-150mm f4/5.6 lens. 1/2000th sec @ f5.4, ISO 800

Yet as sharp as it may be, the one slightly limiting factor for the lens, and to a certain extent mirrorless itself, is the larger depth-of-field exhibited due to the smaller sensor size. F5.6 on the EM-5 MkII is equivalent to F11 on a full frame sensor (and probably around f8 on an APS-C sized DLSR). This is great for landscapes when you want everything in focus. Not so great for sports where you want a decent separation from the action and the background.

So, with the editing of the images, I set out to give more background blur, for a greater 3D quality and subject ‘pop’. I also wanted to simplify the backgrounds as much as possible, to really focus attention on the bikes themselves. I had tried to achieve this on the day by positioning myself somewhere on the track with fairly clean backgrounds. But even then, I wanted to make it cleaner still by cloning out a few problem areas.

Catch Me If You Can. E-M5 MkII with 40-150mm f4/5.6 lens. 1/2000th @ f5.6. ISO 640

What follows is my post-processing steps to create the final images included in this post. I will cover what and why I did what I did at each stage of the process, without going in to too great a detail about the actual how-to’s of the individual processes themselves. I’m very happy with the results, although that doesn’t mean I wouldn't do it slightly differently six months or a year from now. That’s the great thing about post-processing an image. You can take it in many different directions – as long as you keep the original!

First step is cropping. I don’t crop all that often, preferring to ‘crop’ in-camera as I shoot. But sometimes the action is fast and frenetic and you don’t have time to crop perfectly. So in this instance, and again, to help simplify the composition and distractions, I cropped afterwards.

Complete Concentration. E-M5 MkII with 40-150mm f4/5.6. 1/2000th @ f5.6. ISO 1000

Second step was actually sharpening. Yes, the images were already sharp, but I wanted to give them even more crispy sharpness. I achieved this with ‘high pass’ sharpening (my favourite way to sharpen), and then added a layer mask to mask out the areas I didn’t want sharp (like the asphalt on the road and the background).
 

Third step, cloning out the unwanted distractions. Cropping got rid of some of them, but many of the plastic barriers had dark holes and branding on them that were very distracting – even out of focus. So I cloned them out using a combination of 'content aware' fill and the clone brush.

Next was some dodging & burning and levels adjustments to get the exposure looking exactly how I wanted it. This usually meant some light dodging on the faces, and some opening up of the shadows with the highlight/shadow setting on +10 for the shadows. Then a simple levels ‘S’ curve finished things off.

Layers Palete in Photoshop for Blur

Having achieved all that, I was then ready to create the background separation. I wanted the final images to look like they were shot with an f2.8 aperture rather than the f5.6 (f11) they were actually taken with. To do this, I cut around the bike and rider using the pen tool (make sure you use a good graphics tablet if you’re going to be doing a lot of pen tool work) and selected this with a 0.5 feather on the selection. I pasted this on a new layer (Ctrl + J), and then went back to the original layer and duplicated this as well (Ctrl + J again). I re-selected the selection (found in the Path palate), this time with no feather, and hit Delete (Backspace) on the keyboard to cut it out of the layer. To this layer I applied a 15% Gaussian Blur, then added a layer mask. Using the gradient tool I masked out the lower third of the image, graduating towards the top where I wanted the most blur. And hey-presto, an f2.8 background!

This is the most time-consuming element to the image, but still only took me about 10 minutes to achieve. And I’m more than happy with the results. I wanted the bikes to really ‘pop’ out from the background, without making it look too unnatural. Hopefully I’ve achieved that?

All the changes made in post process to get the images looking how I wanted.

To finish it all off, I flatten the layers into one final image, and then darkened the top and bottom a little, before adding a 10% black feathered vignette to the image. Subtle, but just something to again help draw the eye to the action in the image.

It sounds like a lot, bit it really isn't when you sit down and get into the flow of processing. Each image probably took about 15 minutes, and it certainly helps if you have a good graphics tablet (Wacom Intuos).

And the finished image after all that processing.

Admittedly, I could have saved myself a few hours of post processing work by just shooting with an f2.8 lens in the first place. Agreed. Except, I don't have an f2.8 150mm lens on me, and am probably never likely to. So you make do with what you have, and just know you're up for some computer work afterwards. I don't think that 10 to 15 minutes is overly excessive in terms of post production anyway. I certainly wouldn't want to spend that time working on every shot I take - and I don't. My average is probably only a minute or two. But for images that I want to take the time to elevate to a higher standard, then 10 minutes is totally worth it (IMHO).

Out in Front. E-M5 MkII with 40-150mm f4/5.6 lens. 1/4000th sec @ f5.6. ISO 2000

There may be some photographers out there who still believe any use of Photoshop in an image is a crutch. Hard to believe maybe, but I'm old enough to remember back to Photoshop version 1 and the hot debates held by 'purist' photographers and those crazy early digital adopters. For a long time, Photoshop was a dirty word in camera club circles and while that may have changed, I know that many photographers still believe that you shouldn't spend longer than 1 minute 'working' on a photo on the computer.

I can sympathise. But sometimes, I also think that you've gotta do what you gotta do to help create your vision. You can't use Photoshop to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, but you can (and should) use Photoshop to help you achieve the end result you envisaged when you took the photo. And that's exactly what I've done with the images in this post. Hope you like them?