Only Took M4/3 Gear On A Road Trip; Test #4, Landscape Photography

Ice Textures (click to enlarge)
All images with the Olympus E-M1 Mark II and Olympus 12-100mm f/4 PRO lens
25mm; 1/40th sec. @ f/5.6; ISO 200

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This is the fifth 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 performed.  In this post, my photography consisted of landscapes.

From Winter Garden, Florida, we had planned to drive over to the Florida Panhandle to visit Panama City, Destin, the sugar white beaches along the Gulf of Mexico and I wanted to visit the Gulf Islands National Seashore.  Unfortunately.....  The weekend we planned to travel was the first weekend of college spring break and there would be thousands of college kids partying really hard all over that area.  I decided we would pass on that!  So, plan B was to drive north to visit a friend in north Georgia.

Ice, vegetation and budding pseudo stalagmites! (click to enlarge)

The drive from Winter Garden north was unremarkable except trying to skirt around Atlanta without getting caught in a 6-lane traffic jam is a real trick.  Thanks again to Waze (my Garmin GPS had us going right into all of them—yes, multiple traffic jams in all directions!).  We were able to avoid them.  I swear Atlanta traffic is the worst in the entire country.  Worse than Los Angeles, New York and even Washington D.C.  I will never go near Atlanta again.

20mm; 1/30th sec. @ f/5.6; ISO 200 (click to enlarge)

We visited our friend then headed up into the mountains of far southwestern North Carolina.  Unfortunately, the sky was blue with no clouds (I'll tell you why that is unfortunate in a minute) and the temperature was hovering between 28 F and 30 F (-2 to -1 C).  It was a penetrating cold, if you know what I mean.

We drove east on North Carolina Route 64, which is a very scenic two-lane highway with narrow lanes, switchbacks, adjacent cliffs.  We had been told this was a great scenic highway to drive.  I believe there are 4 large waterfalls along a 40 mile stretch that parallels the Cullasaja River.  This is where the blue sky comes in.  Because there were no leaves on the trees as it was too early in the spring, the sun shone through the trees and produced dappled sunlight on the falls.  No good for photography, especially very white waterfalls water and dark river banks and shadows or the surrounding gorge.  I was a bit disappointed but that is okay.

I was attempting to catch the melting icicles drip but it turned out that can only be seen if you scroll through several
images in sequence.  It really didn't show up in individual images.  But this was a good test of the camera and lens
combination IBIS/IS as, I noted, I was shivering in the 28 F cold, wind blowing and I wasn't using a tripod! (click to enlarge)
28mm; 1/3 sec. @ f/16; ISO 200

I did photograph a wall of ice and some of the winter vegetation.  The ice was melting just a bit so there was water dripping.  I wanted to try to capture some of the dripping water so I set the Olympus at f/16 to slow the shutter speed.  No tripod, freezing cold, wind blowing and I'm out on the side of the road shivering and trying to make some images!  But these kind of experiences is what photography is all about.

I did make some images, nothing spectacular, but my Olympus E-M1 Mark II and the 12-100mm f/4 PRO lens came through like a champ.  I've posted a couple here.  Again, nothing to write home about, but again I was trying to test M4/3 gear under a variety of conditions and I feel as though it passed once again.  Without the IBIS and no tripod, none of my images would have been successful.

I'm sorry I didn't get an opportunity to make more landscape images, but since I do a lot of that, there will be plenty of opportunities to do so in the near future.  Since it, again, was supposed to rain all across North Carolina the next day, we decided to make the long drive home.  In the way I like to travel, if we saw something or decided to go somewhere else while making the drive, we would make a detour.  I like no itinerary and no timeline when I travel.  I call it "no stress" traveling.  You don't have to be anywhere particular at any particular time.  I practice that as much as possible.

In the final post in this series, I'll let you know what I found that I didn't think the Olympus did well as well as summarize these experiences and tests.

Thanks for looking. Enjoy! 

Dennis A. Mook 

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