amipal photography

I fell in love with the Voigtlander f/0.95 17.5mm prime as soon as I mounted it on my GH4 a few years back. It properly sprang to life once I moved over to the Lumix G9 - the higher-resolution viewfinder made it much, much easier to check focus, and I feel that the sensor was able to benefit from the lens more than the GH4's was. Due to coronavirus in the UK, I've left the area where I live on very few occasions. I am lucky in that I have the South Downs to the north, and the English Channel to the south - and both are only a five minute walk away for me. Despite coronavirus, I've ensured that I've kept my Photo 52 challenge up to date. This forces me to get out with my camera so that I at least have one image, no matter how rubbish it is, to show for my week. As the nights have grown longer, the Voigtlander 17.5mm and its 42.5mm brother have both joined me on my evening walks, so I thought I'd show you a few shots I grabbed the other evening whilst traipsing ...

After I waxed lyrically about it , readers may well have expected a review from me by now of my "recently"-purchased Panasonic Leica f/2.8-4 50-200mm telephoto lens, and I do indeed plan to write one in time. However, I don't seem to be able to find the time to get in front of the keyboard for an extended period. So rather than leave you with nothing, instead I'll provide you with some example shots which I hope provide you with some insight into just how well the lens performs. Some of the images are with the 1.4 teleconverter, which I'll note in the information. I'm heading to Duxford for Flying Legends in a week's time, so will be able to show some images other than nature. Hopefully I'll be able to provide you with a more comprehensive delve into the lens next time I update the site. In the meantime, feast your eyes on these... Panasonic Leica DG Vario-Elmarit 50-200mm f/2.8-4 ISO200, f/4.5, 1/1600 sec, 200mm ISO200, f/4, 1/250 sec...

Around this time of year, a sometimes get a nice bonus. This typically goes on camera equipment, as I rarely buy anything for myself the rest of the year.  I am fully aware how lucky I am to get this money in the first place. Last year when it hit my account, I rushed myself up to Park Cameras and bought the Lumix G9 . This year wasn't going to be a new body, after all the G9 is still a lot of camera, even after a year since its launch. No, this year was a lens-spend year, and I had many an idea formulate... Number one on my mind was that my Olympus M.Zuiko 9-18mm no longer provided the image quality that I've come to expect (I blame that with walking around with a clutch of primes these days). It had to go to a better home. But what to replace it with? Well, I had aspirations for the Panasonic Leica f/2.8-4.0 8-18mm ultra-wide zoom. I'd hired the lens when I headed up to Canary Wharf , and I couldn't fault it. Excellent build quality, fast focusing, brilliant ...

In January, I traveled up to London with my erstwhile friend for an evening's shoot around Canary Wharf. I've walked around there a couple of times during the day, and captured a few architectural shots (as well as processing a bunch in a science fiction aesthetic ). The purpose of our visit? The Canary Wharf Winter Lights festival. My friend had previously want to head up for this, but for various reasons it never happened. When he announced that he was booking a day off work and going up regardless, I jumped at the opportunity to join him. I didn't really know what to expect. I'd been told that there would be a variety of art installations which had the creative use of light as their medium. How well would this translate to photography? And what compositions could one shoot without the photo ultimately being a record of the artist's work? The works were colourful and varied. Some featured audio background to them, which lent some of them a very eerie atmosph...

I had the luck of getting a ticket to the uk.shooters Halloween Meet in London on 20th October this year. Me and one hundred and ninety nine other photographers (I'm assuming they all attended) descended on London's Leake Street tunnel to shoot a plethora of models who had all been made up by professional make-up artists. Now, previously when I've shot portraits, I've relied on the G9's face-detect auto-focus to acquire perfect focus on the eyes. This has worked very well in the past, and I've had little reason to doubt the capability of the body as a result. But this shoot was different. Not only was the available light low (and I mean really low), but many of the models had make-up the skewed the human face. Or hair that covered large chunks of the face. Ordinarily, if I notice something going wrong, then I'll try to work out what is going wrong, and above all, why it is going wrong. In this case, the camera was struggling to find a face in the co...

Hello all! Despite the long period of inactivity, this blog is still active. I've just been a bit busy. But back to this post. Today I'll be talking about a trip I made up to London for an evening shoot at St. Paul's cathedral. I knew before traveling that I'd need an ultra wide angle lens to do the architecture any sort of justice. I've owned the Olympus M.Zuiko 9-18mm lens for many years (checks LR metadata - April 2012!), and it is a compact and light UWA whose performance isn't too shabby. Saying that, I've definitely noticed a diminishing in its capabilities over the years - whether this is down to use or something else, I cannot say. I'm simply not happy with the sharpness of the corners from it anymore. I've looked into replacing the M.Zuiko previously. I can't really justify the ~£1000 GBP price-tag of the Olympus f/2.8 7-14mm, nor the similar price for the Panasonic Leica 8-18mm, as I rarely shoot UWA these days. I shoot manual l...

In a prior post, I mentioned trying to find the perfect lens for flower photography . And how I was going to do some tests with the lenses mentioned within said post. Well, this isn't that test. It's another test. A test with very similar focal-length lenses, and with similar apertures. This is the Battle of the 50mm or Thereabouts Lenses for Photographing Clematis ! What are the contenders in today's test? Well, we have a trio of legacy 50mm lenses from a variety of mounts. And also an auto-focus lens specifically designed for Micro Four Thirds. Jupiter-8 f/2 50mm - m39-mount Helios-44 f/1.8 50mm - m42-mount Voigtlander Color-Ultron f/1.8 50mm - Q-mount Lumix f/1.7 42.5mm - Micro Four Thirds mount All lenses were shot wide-open, and all from the "same" distance from the flower. This distance was calculated based on the closest focusing distance of the lenses with the longest closest focusing distance, the Jupiter-8. Jupiter-8 f/2 50mm Helios-44...

A couple of years ago, I was on the hunt for bluebells to photograph. Native bluebells, not the invasive Spanish species which are threatening British woodland. Although the Olympus f/1.8 45mm was very good for getting a nice blurred background, the close-focus distance of the lens was a disappointment. In addition, shooting wide-open usually meant focusing issues: either mis-focus or not enough of the subject in focus. Picture info: Lumix GH4, Olympus f/1.8 45mm, ISO200, f/1.8, 1/1600 sec I soon found that the Lumix 14-140mm Mk2 at 140mm was very good for these types of shot. A minimum aperture of f/5.6 means that you're getting a large chunk of the plant in-focus, and the extra focal-length usually produces a relatively pleasing bokeh despite the slow-aperture and zoom. Picture info: Lumix GH4, Lumix G VARIO 14-140mm @ 130mm, ISO800, f/5.6, 1/200 sec The travel-zoom has effective in-lens stabilisation, yet despite this it can still be tricky to get sharp hand-held ...