Broadway - a photo on Flickriver

Broadway

            From a small set of snapshots made at the Sydney Photography Expo, staged by Camera House at aMBUSH Gallery in Broadway, Sydney. 

I need more lenses. And a Fujifilm X-Pro2 camera for that matter. Although I have a couple of zoom lenses that I use for stills and video – I had three but the Canon L-series lens failed me badly last week, and is no longer usable – I much prefer fast prime lenses for stills photography. They also come in handy for B and C cameras when making movies. 

The Camera House photography event where I made this photograph was a good opportunity to try out some prime and zoom lenses, though it was a pity that some of the Panasonic lenses I have on my tryout list were not there. 

I borrowed an M.Zuiko 17mm f/1.8 prime lens from the Olympus guy and made some hasty snapshots. This lens' 35mm analog film focal length equivalent is 35mm and it makes for an excellent everyday lens for environmental portraiture, street and documentary photography. 

In my analog days, I carried two Leica M-series rangefinder cameras and three or four wide to normal lenses – 28mm, 35mm, 50mm and 90mm. My on-location lens choices for other film formats were a little different, often just two lenses for each format – a medium wide and a medium long. 

At the moment I am working out which prime lenses I want for my GX8, GH4 and possibly the coming GH5. The choices are no longer as straightforward as they were in the analog era. 

Each camera is capable of several different image dimension ratios, whether shooting stills or video. Each ratio demands a slightly different lens set, I have found. My most commonly-used lens for the 2:3 ratio would be wider than my preferred most commonly-used lens for 1:1. 

More Micro Four Thirds prime lenses need to available, so one can assemble a matched set of lenses from within each brand, whether Olympus, Panasonic, Veydra or Voigtlaender. 

For video, I want to have a matched set of manually-focussed primes – in 35mm equivalents, choosing from 21mm, 24mm or 25mm, 28mm, 35mm, 50mm and 85mm. The combination depends on the frame ratio. 

For documentary photography in the 2:3 frame ratio, I might need the 35mm equivalents of 28mm, 35mm, 50mm and 85mm. Lenses equally adept at focussing manually and automatically are my preference. 

For environmental and close-up portraiture, mixing landscape (horizontal) with portrait (vertical) orientation, a choice of two lenses, one medium wide and the other medium long. 

I would love it if the Panasonic Leica prime lens selection was wider than it is right now – 15mm, 25mm and 42.5mm. A 12mm, 14mm and 17.5mm needs to be added. 

The Panasonic Leica Summilux 15mm f/1.7 is an interesting lens, good for those times when I want to carry just one lens and a 28mm is too wide while a 35mm is too long. But that is relatively rare. 

I formed my stills photography vision with a 35mm equivalent set consisting of 24mm through 28mm, 35mm and 50mm to 85mm and I want to be able to choose from their equivalents in one brand of M43 or APS-C lenses, with the possible addition of an equivalent to 21mm.

Documentary video is perfectly served with a small set of fast zooms – in M43, for example, a 7-14mm f/2.8, a 12-40mm f/2.8 and a 40-150mm f/2.8 with the option of a teleconverter for the odd really distant scene-setting shot. 

I would much prefer avoiding mixing and matching from amongst two or three different brands of lenses, with their very different colour renditions, looks and feels. Colour grading is demanding enough without having to colour match two or three different brands of lenses.

Taken on: April 30, 2016

Tags:

Olympus

M.Zuiko

17mm

f/1.8

Panasonic

DMC-GX8

GX8

DxO

OpticsPro

FilmPack

Lumix

M43

MFT

MicroFourThirds « less

Sets appears in: • Sydney

Groups appears in: • Olympus OM • DxO Optics Pro more » • DxO Film Pack • Panasonic GX8 | DMC-GX8 « less

Camera: Panasonic DMC-GX8, f/2.5, 1/250 sec, 17mm, ISO 800 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Panasonic DMC-GX8
Aperture:	f/2.5
Exposure Time:	0.004 sec (1/250)
Focal Length:	17mm
ISO:	800
Exposure Bias:	-0.33 EV
Flash:	Off, Did not fire
Exposure Program:	Aperture-priority AE
Metering Mode:	Multi-segment
Color Space:	Uncalibrated
Software:	Adobe Photoshop CC 2015 (Macintosh)
Show full info

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