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 ...

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 ...

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...