the editman.com

As the sun sat down I whipped my GH1 and Leica 45 and captured the beauty of a sky painted by the sun as it settled down in the west.

I just love this tiny lens as it feels like made for that GH1.

My first macro lens - Leica Elmarit 45/2.8 for my AF101/GH1 cameras.



I will use this lens as a counterpart to the excellent Canon 100L macro on my 5DmkII to have about the same field of view and sensitivity on my AF101.

It's a tiny lens but I kinda like the focus ring despite focusing works by wire.

I've updated this article with some sample images using my Panasonic DMC-GH1. It's really a lovely lens for micro four third cameras. A portrait lens with image stabilization and on the GH1 it feels really nice balanced.

Having it on the GH1 it might not be the fastest lens in terms of focusing speed but I guess the newer GH2 and G3 makes this lens faster.

Everytime Eric Gadd performs it's a joy to be in the audience. He's one of the greatest talents in Sweden and his showcase is wide and deep. This evening he was relaxed and only had a guitar by his side. I enjoyed it very much and still had time to take a few snapshots with my 5DmkII and the excellent Canon 70-200/2.8 IS II lens.







I had goosebumps when he even did a cover song by Prince - I wanna be your lover. Eric, you're the greatest!

Summertime is beach time and a camera like the FT3 is perfect for sandy and wet environments. Two years ago I got Panasonics first rugged camera the FT1. A fun camera to bring everywhere. This year their third version, FT3, came and since I've sold my FT1 half a year ago it was time to get another one. It's very similar in features but one added thing is full HD video and GPS. You can geotag places in both stills and video.

When you're used to shoot with a full frame DSLR any compact camera will look like rubbish. So does this camera. Often it's just a cold, flat and noisy image when compared to a DSLR. Even my AF101 takes nicer stills but in much lower resolution. This camera isn't about image quality. No, it's a camera you put in the pocket or in your swim trunks and snap away anywhere.

You can bring it as deep as 12m or drop it from 2m onto concrete and it will survive. It even has a compass, height about sea level and a GPS function that can be a fun gadget. I imagine this camera can be used in production also to be mounted i.e outside a car with a suction cup to get some extreme shots, or go underwater where it really belongs.

In the extensive array of scene settings I'm glad they kept the "anamorphic" mode. It's not a pure anamorphic function but works just like one.

When you shoot video there's full auto focus, auto exposure and auto pretty much anything. 1080i50 so you have to de-interlace to get 25p. Since it has a CCD sensor no rolling shutter but you do get streaks of lights pointed directly into the lens. This does not show in stills only in video. Audio is in 48khz/192kbps and in mono. Bitrate for video is 17mbps in full HD mode. You can even record in motion JPEG.

Compared to FT1 there's only one door (two on the FT1) to access the SDHC/SDXC card, battery and USB/video ports. Much less risk to get any water inside then. To zoom there's two round buttons on the back, FT1 had a slider on top of the camera and time will tell if the backside is better or worse. The screen has the same low resolution but scaling is better so it looks sharp even when scaled down.

Despite having bad image quality compared to my 5DmkII you can get decent pictures if you tweak them in something like Lightroom. There's no RAW only JPEG images are stored. Pixel peepers better forget to peep because on a pixel level it looks awful but zoom out and it's okay. I find images straight of the camera to lack any sort of contrast and colours so you have to do something afterwards to make them look good. Shallow DOF? Forget it, this small sensor makes everything in focus even when you zoom in. But if you use the excellent macro and go near there's some shallowness at least...

Half a year ago I got a small 150W fresnel light. This was just after I got my first LED light panel so it wasn't that interesting at the time. A month ago I got another fresnel, this time a 300W with softbox. The quality of light one gets with these small lights is unbeatable for the price. Okay, the lamp only lasts about 200 hours but they are small and so easy to work with.

I use my Canon 5DmkII mainly to take stills these days and let my AF101 do video. I've been looking for some time now for a wind machine to take stills and found this one in a local store in Stockholm. Three speeds and I like that vintage look all in metal.



I rigged a black muslin backdrop and used the 300W fresnel as key and the little 150W as hair light and took some stills. I guess rigging was only ten minutes and it's one portable kit. I'll get another fresnel because I like what I see!


Canon 5DmkII with Zeiss 85/1.4 lens.

I've spent two weekends in a row away from home. Last weekend I was in Rome-Italy and this weekend in the Stockholm archipelago in Sweden. I highly recommend this vast area with thousands of small islands. While I sat on the cliff side and did timelapse with my Canon 5D mkII and 16-35L lens I capture this beautiful scenery. Nature is an extraordinary thing to behold.

This combination of camera and lens gives such a wide angle and you start to be able to capture what you actually see. A hard thing to match how an eye perceive the world. Since I got the 5D mkII both my 7D's has stayed in the bag. Now, I do like the longer lenses more on the 7D but the 16-35L seams to be a very good match for the 5D mkII.

What about Rome then? There are so many breathtaking places in Rome that even trying to do any justice to any of them is just futile. One of my favourite buildings is the Pantheon and despite my wide 16mm and the 5D mkII it was hard to capture the size of the Pantheon dome. It's the biggest in Europe at least and some 43m across. The hole is 8 meters wide!



I think the 7D is an excellent camera but the full frame chip in the 5D mkII gives the images you capture a whole new dimension.

I attended the Swedish Bartenders Guild yearly competition. A very exciting day since my cousin was one of the competitors in the advanced classic group.
He won the whole thing! Brought both my Canon 7D camera and 135L and 100L lenses to cover this event.

His drink Chili-Vanilli and his cool and professional performance took him to the final where he crushed the other competitors.
One thing that become apparent was how much alike we are in certain facial expressions and features.

We were many family members cheering and celebrating his victory this day. So great to be apart of this experience.
They also had "flaring" were they juggle while making a drink to the beat of some tunes.



I tasted his winning drink and it was a very good mixture that in the end gave him a first place. He's now off to Singapore for the world championship later this year and I wish him all the best of luck!

I took this picture this fall with my GH1 and Lumix 20/1.7. This lens is excellent both when filming and for stills.
The lens was at F4 and is really super sharp without CA or other nasty artefacts. Used lightroom to develop from the RAW-file.

Me and my girlfriend went to Färna mansion in Sweden to celebrate the new year.
I captured some fireworks with my 7D and the 50/1.2 lens.
The location of Färna is beautiful and it was a peaceful stay relaxing in their spa.
During the five minute fireworks I manage to get some interesting images when I had a pair of naked threes in the foreground.
This is one example.

 

The last month I had the Nikon D90 I managed to get this shoot of a grasshopp outside one of Swedens many castles.
I used a Nikon AF 85/1.8D and got a great shoot. A real beauty!