It’s been a while…

Lot’s of work and trying not to post for the sake of posting.

Just back from a job in St Petersburg, Russia, documenting the town’s homeless population. 30,000 people and temperatures down to -20°c in the winter.

Note: the story won’t be published until this autumn which is why I can’t share now any of the work that was the real reason for my trip. The photographs used as illustrations here were made on the periphery of my main activity.

The pictures delivered to my client were about half from my EPL1 and half from my Canon 5D MKII. The Canon was used in situations where I needed to be able to focus rapidly and shoot people in dark environments at ISO 3200, 1/20 sec at f2.8. I assumed the EPL1 would have had trouble focusing rapidly in those conditions although now, with hindsight, and having processed the few shots like that I did take with it, I’m not so sure. End of note.

I knew from the start that the cold was going to be a problem, especially moving my cameras from a outside at night to a warm environment. The correct way to do this (and avoid water damage from condensation) is to wrap the camera in a bag while still in the cold and then let it slowly warm up once you get inside, unpacking it only when it gets to room temperature. This takes time and I knew it wouldn’t be an option for me in this case. I absentmindedly brought an unprotected camera indoors once during the trip and spent the next twenty minutes frantically mopping of the water that condensed on it. A mistake you try not to make more than once.

The only solution I could think of was to have a cold-weather camera for outside and another one for indoors and quick shots that I would constantly keep inside my parka when not in use.

The problem was finding something small enough to fit comfortably under the coat. In the past I’ve used compact cameras for professional jobs but, knowing that there wasn’t going to be too much light so far north in winter, this time I wanted something with better low light performance than  a tiny sensor could offer. As this was something of an experiment and I don’t work in the cold that often, I didn’t want to invest a great deal of money either.

So I ended up buying an Olympus EPL1 with the 14-42mm kit lens and a Panasonic 20mm f1.7 lens. I added a mounting frame for my Zacuto Z-Finder, in the same way as I had done for my Canon S90 in the past. This worked well but I would have liked the option of using the Olympus EVF. Apart from being adaptable to any camera with an LCD of the right size, the Z-Finder has the advantage of not taking up the camera’s hot-shoe, meaning that I can use it and, for example, a PocketWizard to trigger an off-camera flash. It also makes holding the camera steadier although at the price of considerable bulkiness.

Now I like Olympus cameras and if I had sufficient funds I would definitely have an Oly SLR kit for when I want to travel light. I like the 4:3 image size and the out of camera JPEGs are excellent. In the past I have owned a C7070WZ and a C8080. There is an ancient OM1 on my bookshelf.

The first thing I thought when I got the EPL1 was just how good value it is: if you take the time to learn how to get the most out of it, you get a great deal of camera for your money. The key to using any equipment is to take the time to master it and, as I’ve said before, small cameras can take more mastering than large ones.

To avoid confusion, let’s get clear what the EPL1 won’t do for you: autofocus is a little slow and high ISO performance is not as good as with, say, my Canon 5D MKII. Given the size of the sensor and the difference in price between the two cameras, that’s hardly surprising. The kit lens is surprisingly good but a little slow. Again, considering the price, it’s exceptionally good value.

But here’s something important to consider: the EPL1′s sensor is smaller than that of my 5D MKII and, consequently, the depth of field at any given aperture is greater. To obtain the same depth of field with the 5D MKII as the EPL1 (or any other camera with a sensor of the same size) you need to stop the lens down two stops more. This means that ISO 1600 1/60 sec f4 on the Canon is the same as ISO 400 1/60 sec f2 on the EPL1. Yes, the small sensor may not perform as well in low light as a larger one but the increased depth of field lets you keep the ISO two stops lower. To a large extent this offsets the “probelm” of the apparently noisier smaller Oly sensor.

The EPL1 has in-camera image stabilization. This means that I can mount (with the appropriate adaptor) a forty year-old Nikkor lens and suddenly use it with IS.  Magic!

I shot everything in RAW on the EPL1 and processed it in Lightroom. At first I was disappointed with the results, especially when I compared them to sample JPEGs I had found on the web. In fact, there were two problems: the EPL1 copes very well with over-exposed RAW files but under-exposure rapidly adds noise to the image. In fact (and this is a purely un-scientific observation) when processing my files it seemed to me that a shot made at ISO 200 and under-exposed one stop and pused one stop in Lightroom looked better than the same shot made with the correct in-camera ISO 400 setting. This may be nonsense and needs some more experimenting with… The default Lightroom sharpening and noise reduction settings do not bring the best out of the EPL1 files. You need to experiment and there is a very good little online tutorial available here. I found that reducing the “detail” value and adding a little luminance noise reduction worked wonders.

All in all, I’m very happy with my EPL1. I’ve got a trip coming up soon to a remote area of China and I’m thinking hard about adding another EP or EPL Olympus to my bag and leaving the Canon gear at home. I forgot to mention the other big advantage of these Micro Four-Thirds cameras: they’re light. I simply can’t cope with carrying a huge bag with two DSLRs all day. Too heavy and far too conspicuous. And, increasingly often these days, far too big to be taken as carry-on baggage when flying.

The black and white photographs below are general walking around street shots made, for the most part, on my way to official appointments. The colour ones are from the annual commemoration ceremony for the end of the 900 days siege of Leningrad.

.