Just some more testing with the 40-150. B&W conversion in C1, grain added there as well. Trying to see if I can get the same results from C1 as I can from Silver Efex Pro 2.
I'm consistently impressed with my E-P5 and E-PM2 cameras, regardless of lighting conditions. These were all shot on a Sunday afternoon trip to the historic town of Warwick, New York. All are E-PM2:
The train runs right through the center of town
Bakery and sweet treats shop
Seen in a terrific Warwick village antique shop
Fancy cover-up for a garbage bin stashed right next to a restaurant
Nice morning today - cool, low humidity and clear. No dramatic clouds for sunrise, but still nice. First and last with the 7-14, second with the little Oly 40-150/4-5.6:
I've been obsessively trying to find a RAW converter that approaches the original color response of the Olympus jpegs and offers modern flexibility (unlike OV3) Tried C1, DXO, Aperture, settled for LR with some heavy color tweaks, but I still felt it was a compromise. Photo Ninja seemed very very good and I was on the brink of buying it when I decided to revisit Darktable, which I tried a couple of years ago and felt it was very primitive.
Well, the out of the box rendering with minor curve tweaks is fabulous, BY FAR the best of all converters I tried, but the shock came from the depth and power of this free open source program. It's probably the most advanced converter, with features approaching Photoshop capabilities, advanced masking (this opens phenomenal possibilities), LAB edits, extended camera support, tethering, you name it. The interface still feels a bit "open source" and would look more at home in a Linux OS rather than on a Mac OS, but you soon realize all features are there and after spending some time customizing the default modules and setting up some default presets for your camera all it takes is loading a RAW file to have an almost finished out of the box rendering that beats all other converters, at least for my Oly files.
Weak points, compared to LR: Noise reduction (it's there but LR is better) and Highlight/Shadows recovery - this works pretty well as it is in Darktable, but as soon as you go advanced and work with luminosity masks instead of two sliders the possible results exceed LR's capabilities.
I'm impressed, for people wanting a (much) better rendering then LR's and willing to go a bit deeper, go ahead and give it a try, you won't be dissapointed.
I took this while on a month long motorcycle trip through the Northwest last month. Going to the Sun Road, Glacier National Park. Nine shot pano (assembled in Lightroom CC) w/ M-5 Mk II, 14-150 f/4.0-5.6.
Have been away from the forums a bit. Really enjoy seeing all the great images and the comments about the m43 format.
These are from a walk to downtown San Jose a few months ago on a lovely afternoon. Both with E-M5 & Oly 45mm.
GSteve wrote:
I took this while on a month long motorcycle trip through the Northwest last month. Going to the Sun Road, Glacier National Park. Nine shot pano (assembled in Lightroom CC) w/ M-5 Mk II, 14-150 f/4.0-5.6.
Thank you. The micro 4/3rds gear has been great with the limited space available for gear when touring by motorcycle. I'm looking forward to using some of the "Pro" lenses with the M5 MKII.
Once again contemplating upgrading from the Em-5 to either the Em-1 (in a kit with the 12-40) or the Em-5 Mk II without the 12-40.
The kit with the Em-1 and 12-40 would be quite a bit better price then the Em-5 Mkii stand alone and the Em-5 Mk ii isn't available with the 12-40.
Considering if I really do need better foucs tracking (I created another thread about this in the alt forum asking about the Em-1 tracking abilites).
I did shoot a horse event this past weekend and I had to pre-focus everything in order to get good shots using the Em-5. Now, I don't shoot these kind of events often so I am not really sure wether I would actually need focus tracking at all.
Having a really hard time chosing. The Em-1 + 12-40 is of course more expensive, around 400 USD but I am getting an 800 USD lens with that.
Em-5 Mk II adds the high res shot mode which I would find usefull for scanning negatives but so far that's about what I would use that for.
Of course, just adding the 12-40 instead would be an option but I really want the better EVF...
Anyone with both cameras? How do you find them? Which one do you use most?
The yearly festival in Malmö. A week a completely free shows and entertainment combined with a bunch of exotic and fresh and not so exotic and not so fresh food stands
Lots of people, lots of movement, lots of photo opportunities to at least try and capture and try and learn some street shooting.
