Visiting the past in Virginia (Olympus/Panasonic m4/3 gear)

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bakubo
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Visiting the past in Virginia (Olympus/Panasonic m4/3 gear)

Unread post by bakubo »

We have been on a road trip for the last couple of weeks generally heading east and now heading west. We just finished a week in Williamsburg, Virginia which is the heart of the Historic Triangle: Colonial Williamsburg (colonial capital of Virginia established in 1632), Jamestown (first English settlement in the New World in 1607), and Yorktown where English General Lord Cornwallis surrendered to American General George Washington and French General Comte de Rochambeau in 1781 which led to the end of the Revolutionary War. It was all pretty cool.

I have taken some photos using some of the new gear that I bought recently:

Olympus E-M5 body
Panasonic G3 body
Olympus 14-150mm f4-5.6
Olympus 9-18mm f4-5.6
Panasonic 20mm f1.7
Panasonic 14mm f2.5
Panasonic 45-200mm f4-5.6
Panasonic 14-42mm f3.5-5.6

In Virginia I was using the E-M5 + 14-150mm although I have the other stuff along on the road trip.

The following photo is at the Appomattox Court House National Historical Park. For those who don't know American history this small country community was where the Civil War (aka the War Between the States) ended in 1865. Union General Ulysses S. Grant accepted the surrender of Confederate General Robert E. Lee here inside the McLean house.

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Here is a blacksmith at the Jamestown Settlement.

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And a woman cooking in a traditional country colonial farm kitchen.

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Last edited by bakubo on Sat Dec 03, 2016 4:37 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Greg Beetham
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Re: Visiting the past in Virginia

Unread post by Greg Beetham »

What’s your impression of the Olympus and Panasonic gear Henry; can all that produce as good a job as say your D60 and a super zoom? You certainly bought a few lenses, is the 14-150 (28-300) a slight overkill when that range is already covered by others?
I’m probably similar to others when it comes too American history, I’m quite familiar with the names of those Generals from various movies I’ve seen but I didn’t know the details of the surrender and where it was till now. I like the historical flavour of those photos very much, where is the light coming from in those interior shots?
Greg
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bakubo
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Re: Visiting the past in Virginia

Unread post by bakubo »

Greg Beetham wrote:What’s your impression of the Olympus and Panasonic gear Henry; can all that produce as good a job as say your D60 and a super zoom? You certainly bought a few lenses, is the 14-150 (28-300) a slight overkill when that range is already covered by others?
I wrote some about the new gear in this thread:

http://www.photoclubalpha.com/forum/vie ... =49&t=6740

I still have the Canon 60D and Sony A700. I expect to sell the 60D, but since the A700 has been a defective lemon almost since purchase and Sony wasn't able to fix it, I guess, I am stuck with it. While in Tokyo I sold one of the lenses for Canon, two of the lenses for Sony, and my Sony flash.

I bought the gear in two batches. I bought this in April for my wife and for me to try out (although I am the only one to have used it so far :lol: ):

Panasonic G3 body
Panasonic 14-42mm f3.5-5.6 (ILIS)
Panasonic 45-200mm f4-5.6 (ILIS)

Then in May I bought this for travel:

Olympus E-M5 body (IBIS)
Olympus 14-150mm f4-5.6
Olympus 9-18mm f4-5.6
Panasonic 20mm f1.7
Panasonic 14mm f2.5

The kit I bought in May has smaller lenses since they don't have ILIS. I also have an Olympus flash on order and was told on Friday they expect to get it in next week and ship it to me.
Greg Beetham wrote: I’m probably similar to others when it comes too American history, I’m quite familiar with the names of those Generals from various movies I’ve seen but I didn’t know the details of the surrender and where it was till now. I like the historical flavour of those photos very much, where is the light coming from in those interior shots?
The blacksmith is working in a traditional structure with 2 sides open so quite a bit of light was entering. The woman is in a cooking house. The door is open and there is also light coming in the window behind her.
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Birma
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Re: Visiting the past in Virginia

Unread post by Birma »

Nice pictures Henry, very interesting locations, and nice poses.
Nex 5, Nex 6 (IR), A7M2, A99 and a bunch of lenses.
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Re: Visiting the past in Virginia

Unread post by bakubo »

Birma wrote:Nice pictures Henry, very interesting locations, and nice poses.
Thanks, Birma. At Appomattox Courthouse I was walking along one of the dirt roads in the community and I saw this couple approaching. I asked them if I could take their photo and they posed. In the case of the blacksmith and the cook they weren't posing. The blacksmith was explaining something about how he did his work. I was alone with the cook and we talked for quite awhile. I took about 3 photos of her.

Colonial Williamsburg

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Shopkeeper at Colonial Williamsburg

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Yorktown Continental Army camp at the "doctor's tent" with medical implements

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bfitzgerald
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Re: Visiting the past in Virginia

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Cornwallis was useless which is a shame as the average British soldier was damn good usually. Good troops, terrible commanders (and that applies over a long time period too)..shame really if things we different I could visit the states and not bother with all that passport stuff :lol:
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Re: Visiting the past in Virginia

Unread post by Dr. Harout »

Wonderful thread. Don't stop, Henry.
A99 + a7rII + Sony, Zeiss, Minolta, Rokinon and M42 lenses

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bakubo
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Re: Visiting the past in Virginia

Unread post by bakubo »

Greg Beetham wrote:What’s your impression of the Olympus and Panasonic gear Henry; can all that produce as good a job as say your D60 and a super zoom? You certainly bought a few lenses, is the 14-150 (28-300) a slight overkill when that range is already covered by others?
Greg, just to give you an idea of the size difference (not to mention weight difference) you can see a few comparison photos below. I had to use the A77 rather than the A700 since the A700 photos weren't there. I could have used the Canon 60D, but the A700, A77, and 60D are very close in size and this is a Sony forum so comparing to a current Sony camera is more interesting, I think. Both the E-M5 and A77 have IBIS. I also had to use a Sigma and Tamron lens instead of more or less equivalent Sony lenses since there weren't photos for those lenses. I owned the Sony versions and also the Sigma/Tamron lenses here so I know the sizes are almost exactly the same. For taking photos when I am not traveling with my backpack the larger size is not so much of a problem, of course. Smaller size/weight would really help a lot with a lot of my travel though.

E-M5 + 14-150mm vs. A77 + Tamron 18-270mm (Sony 18-200mm, 18-250mm is same size, Sigma 18-250mm is much bigger):
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E-M5 + 9-18mm vs. A77 + Sigma 10-20mm:
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E-M5 + 20mm f1.7 vs. A77 + 35mm f1.8:
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(79.27 KiB) Downloaded 7583 times
E-M5 + 14mm f2.5 vs. A77 + 20mm f2.8:
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(79.18 KiB) Downloaded 7583 times
Last edited by bakubo on Tue Jun 26, 2012 12:24 am, edited 1 time in total.
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UrsaMajor
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Re: Visiting the past in Virginia

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bakubo wrote:The following photo is at the Appomattox Court House National Historical Park. For those who don't know American history this small country community was where the Civil War (aka the War Between the States) ended in 1865. Union General Ulysses S. Grant accepted the surrender of Confederate General Robert E. Lee here inside the McLean house.
As a bit of trivia, Lee surrendered to Grant in the McLean house, which effectively ended the US Civil War - although the actual end came sometime later, after Joe Johnston surrendered his army to William T. Sherman in South Carolina, thus removing the last Confederate force of any size from the conflict.

The effective beginning of the Civil War was The First Battle of Bull Run. Although there had been earlier fighting, Bull Run (called The First Battle of Manassas by the Confederates) was the first really large battlefield encounter, and some people think that it should be considered the beginning of the real war, even though that is generally considered to be when the Confederacy fired upon Fort Sumpter.

The trivia to which I referred above is that Bull Run was fought on the farm of the same Wilmer McLean in whose house Lee surrendered to Grant four years later. After First Bull Run, he moved from his farm to the city of Appomattox Court House to get away from the fighting.

(As you might guess from the name, a second battle was fought at Bull Run (Manassas) later in the war, so Wilmer McLean did achieve his goal of getting away from the actual fighting.)

With best wishes,
- Tom -
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Re: Visiting the past in Virginia

Unread post by Greg Beetham »

Yes thanks Henry it’s quite apparent that there is a great advantage in size and weight for sure, I just thought you might have already formed a preliminary opinion about any functionality and/or IQ trade offs, and if the extra lenses are necessary on a trip to offset the smaller format possible IQ disadvantage as compared to the larger format with perhaps just one good universal lens. (I remember some of those high quality Hawaiian 60D images for example). And on the basis of the less time fussing with, securing, and carrying lenses (that most likely don’t get used much) the better, I’m thinking along the lines of carrying extra lenses for the reasons of being able to get a better shot than the universal lens can do occasionally but still end up not getting that ‘better’ shot anyway because of the inconvenience/time lag of having to swap lenses at that moment…maybe.
Greg

Ps I bet Wilmer McLean wished they would’ve taken their war somewhere else…at the time. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_eK9ERN ... re=related
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Re: Visiting the past in Virginia

Unread post by bakubo »

Greg Beetham wrote:Yes thanks Henry it’s quite apparent that there is a great advantage in size and weight for sure, I just thought you might have already formed a preliminary opinion about any functionality and/or IQ trade offs, and if the extra lenses are necessary on a trip to offset the smaller format possible IQ disadvantage as compared to the larger format with perhaps just one good universal lens. (I remember some of those high quality Hawaiian 60D images for example). And on the basis of the less time fussing with, securing, and carrying lenses (that most likely don’t get used much) the better, I’m thinking along the lines of carrying extra lenses for the reasons of being able to get a better shot than the universal lens can do occasionally but still end up not getting that ‘better’ shot anyway because of the inconvenience/time lag of having to swap lenses at that moment…maybe.
I would say that I see no disadvantage with regards to IQ compared to my 60D or A700. Actually, it seems better than both. Lenses seem better too and focus is very accurate (advantage of CDAF, I guess). High ISO is very good and dynamic range also is good. It seems that m4/3 sensors have arrived. If you look around at reviews you will see what I mean. If you are interested you can compare raw with up to 4 cameras here:

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/olympusem5/21

I compared the E-M5, A57, NEX 5N, and Nikon D7000 (all 16mp) using that tool. Shooting raw and using the good conversion available in LR 4.1 (great highlight recovery and auto CA correction too) also helps a lot. See the Imagining Resource link below. Down near the bottom in the Output Quality section there is a table that shows the quality of various print sizes/ISOs for the E-M5, Nikon D7000, Canon 7D, etc. The E-M5 matches those two cameras:

http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/o ... -em5A5.HTM

I have never been overly obsessed about IQ since it just isn't the most important aspect of a QI most of the time. The IQ is so good these days that it is just not much of an issue most of the time. I find the 14-150mm to be quite good. Probably even better than the Sony 18-250mm that I used with the A700.

Functionality is much like what you would expect from an A77 level DSLR. The E-M5 has tons and tons of options to configure and customize. There are so many that it takes time to figure them all out and decide on what you want. Some of them I have tried various settings and I seem to be honing in on how I want to use mine.

Remember though that the E-M5 has an EVF. I am okay with that generally since I appreciate some of the advantages, but there are also real disadvantages to an EVF also.

The biggest issue for me (to be fair, other people have different opinions) are that the ergonomics are compromised in order to look like an even smaller version of a 40 year old film SLR that was the smallest film SLR you could buy (the Pentax MX was about the same size so I am not sure the OM-1 was absolutely the smallest). See the thread on this forum that I linked to earlier to read more.
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Re: Visiting the past in Virginia

Unread post by bakubo »

Dr. Harout wrote:Wonderful thread. Don't stop, Henry.
Thanks, Doc. Here are a few more.

Fence in Colonial Williamsburg.

Image

A Powhatan Native American village near the Jamestown Settlement. The Powhatan were there before the English. They are gone now.

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Inside a Powhatan Native American home.

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Re: Visiting the past in Virginia

Unread post by bakubo »

bfitzgerald wrote:Cornwallis was useless which is a shame as the average British soldier was damn good usually. Good troops, terrible commanders (and that applies over a long time period too)..shame really if things we different I could visit the states and not bother with all that passport stuff :lol:
If only King George III and the English Parliament had not been so obstinate and greedy history would likely have been quite different. Actually, I didn't realize that Brits don't need a passport to visit Canada and Australia.
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Re: Visiting the past in Virginia

Unread post by bakubo »

UrsaMajor wrote:As a bit of trivia, Lee surrendered to Grant in the McLean house, which effectively ended the US Civil War - although the actual end came sometime later, after Joe Johnston surrendered his army to William T. Sherman in South Carolina, thus removing the last Confederate force of any size from the conflict.

The effective beginning of the Civil War was The First Battle of Bull Run. Although there had been earlier fighting, Bull Run (called The First Battle of Manassas by the Confederates) was the first really large battlefield encounter, and some people think that it should be considered the beginning of the real war, even though that is generally considered to be when the Confederacy fired upon Fort Sumpter.

The trivia to which I referred above is that Bull Run was fought on the farm of the same Wilmer McLean in whose house Lee surrendered to Grant four years later. After First Bull Run, he moved from his farm to the city of Appomattox Court House to get away from the fighting.

(As you might guess from the name, a second battle was fought at Bull Run (Manassas) later in the war, so Wilmer McLean did achieve his goal of getting away from the actual fighting.)
Thanks, Tom. Cool info!
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Re: Visiting the past in Virginia

Unread post by Birma »

Very interesting trivia Tom :)

Very interesting pictures and equipment reviews Henry - you may have hit on the perfect thread - pictures and equipment at the same time! :)
Nex 5, Nex 6 (IR), A7M2, A99 and a bunch of lenses.
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