Only Took M4/3 Gear On A Road Trip; Test #1, Taking A Photo Walk

Say Cheese! I thought the body language of these two was extraordinary. I wish I could have been closer. (click to enlarge)
All Photos made with the Olympus E-M1 Mark II and Olympus 12-100mm f/4 PRO lens.
100mm; 1/640th sec. @ f/11; ISO 200; About 1/3 of the full image shown here.

NEW! As of January 1st, I've started an Instagram feed. I'll be posting photos daily so please follow at dennisamook. Thank you. 

NOTE: This is the second of a series of posts about my wife's and my recent southern U.S. road trip taken earlier this month (March 2018).   These posts are equally about how well M4/3 format can fully meet my photographic needs.  For each post, I've written about a different type of photography and how well the Olympus gear passed these tests.  

The drive south along Interstate 95 was, how should I put it, less than optimum.  We actually left Virginia a day early to avoid 650 miles (1046 km) of rain.  What we did find was very heavy truck traffic—more trucks and (most) exceeding the speed limit than I've ever experienced in driving that route.  Additionally, there was quite a bit of construction in South Carolina, which means slow downs and backups.  I am a user of the Waze App (it has saved me a lot of time over the past few years; I highly recommend it) and Waze actually took us off the I-95 for about 10 miles, then back on.  What we avoided was about a 7-mile backup. Now, add 4 periods of rain to all of this and you can understand why I said the drive was "less than optimum."  In fact, this particular drive was worse than any I've experienced on that road and I've driven on I-95 to and from Florida a few dozen times.  That being said, our plan was to NOT return on the same route!

Jacksonville was out first destination as we have family there.  While the family member was at work, my wife and I decided to drive to Jacksonville Beach just to get out and walk around, view the ocean and enjoy the day.  Compared to our winter weather, it was a beautiful day.  I felt this would be a good opportunity to use the Olympus M4/3 gear for a "photo walk" and see how it performed.  A photo walk is  not a huge test for just about any camera but in the spirit of my experiment I wanted to find out how well the M4/3 gear handled a variety of situations.

If you are just joining me on this journey, one of the aspects of this road trip was to test out if only M4/3 gear could fully serve my photographic purposes now and in the future.  I consider myself an "Opportunist" photographer, meaning anything I see of interest, whether people, street, landscape, wildlife, etc., I photograph.  If it is visually interesting, I will stop and make some images.  Being an Opportunist photographer requires a wide ranging skill set and gear that is multi-purpose.  You can read about the why and how of the experiment here and here.  In the second post, I described what gear and bags I took on this trip.

For this "photo walk" I only took the Mark II, the 12-100mm f/4 PRO lens and the 17mm f/1.8 lens.  I also grabbed the polarizing filter and put all of this in the old Domke canvas bag previously described.  This choice turned out to be somewhat of a mistake.  Read on.

It was a beautiful day.  The sky was blue with cumulus clouds, mostly ideal for photography and there were quite a few people out on the beach walking, sun bathing and playing games.  We walked for a couple of miles on the beach as well as on the adjacent sidewalk and I made images as I happened upon interesting scenes.  Additionally, over the next couple of days, we went on another photo walk in the small town of Fernandina Beach.  I am including a few of the images I made on the two photo walks in this post.

Returning the favor! Again, I was pretty far away and there wasn't time to get closer to capture this before it was over.
(click to enlarge) This is about 1/4 of the full image.

Lifesaving facility at Jacksonville Beach (click to enlarge)
61mm; 1/400th sec. @ f/11; ISO 200

Same image but cropped for a different composition and different effect (click to enlarge)
All of these cropped images held up very well under this much enlargement.

A black and white composite.  I added a different sky and removed an adjacent hotel that
was merged behind and to the right side of the tower. I included this on a whimsy. (click to enlarge)

Jacksonville Beach. Really a nice day. (click to enlarge)
15mm; 1/1250th sec. @ f/5.6; ISO 200; full image

Brown pelican on old pilings at Ferdanina Beach, Fl. (click to enlarge)
100mm; 1/1250th sec. @ f/5.6; ISO 200; this represents about 1/4 of the full frame

Old anchor and chain (click to enlarge)
34mm; 1/64oth sec. @ f/8; ISO 200

I would say the Olympus camera and lens met all of my expectations.  The Olympus gear is a small, lightweight combination, fast, unobtrusive, versatile and the image quality of the 12-100mm f/4 PRO lens is excellent.  The lens is amazing, really.  

The camera and lens combination focused very fast and accurately.  The colors were pleasing.  Some of the images were pretty high contrast but the shadow and highlight detail was not lost.  IBIS wasn't really needed for these outdoor shots but it was nice to know it was there when using the longest focal lengths and knowing I would have to substantially crop later.  Additionally, I found that the images stand up very well to the extreme cropping that was necessary.

On the other side of the coin, the 12-100mm lens did not have enough reach for some of the images.  For the images that are extensively cropped, I physically wasn't able to get closer or by the time I would have gotten closer, the subject would have changed substantially.  I counted on the quality of the images to be high enough to withstand extensive cropping and that assumption was valid.  It is my fault for not bringing the 40-150mm f/2.8 lens along with me.  Lessons learned!

This test was relatively easy as the days were bright, sunny and the subjects were relatively still.  Most cameras can handle these situations well.  This test really didn't stretch this camera's capabilities much.

(Also, I wanted to mention that this road trip and series of photographs was made without the latest firmware update Olympus released on February 28, 2018.  In the update, Olympus made several significant improvements in the camera's ability to focus faster in the C-AF mode, allowed the focus points to be about 1/2 the size of what they were, added more capability to the Pro Capture feature and added more lenses to the ones that allow focus stacking in-camera.  Also, image stability was improved in a couple of the latest Olympus PRO lenses.  I did upgrade when I returned home.)

On Monday, I'll post the results from my street photography test.

Thanks for looking. Enjoy! 

Dennis A. Mook 

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