Puffin 2017 reworked in Capture One pro

I was looking back through some of my old photos and decided this one from my trip Skomer in 2017 was worth reworking in Capture One Pro.
It was a very bright afternoon, not ideal for Puffin photos, but the Capture One Pro raw converter seems to do a better job than Lightroom when working with the extreme contrast like this photo has, or maybe it's just my post processing that has improved.
Whatever the reason I think it was worth the 10 mins processing time, it's a photo that nearly went in the trash.

Plumpton Tree early morning

Here's another one from my early morning stroll around Plumpton lanes.
I've taken this tree many times but usually have it framing Hoad monument in the distance. Again I like the way the early morning light was illuminating the tree and tried a different composition without Hoad in the background so making the tree and light the main subject. I used my Panasonic 100-400mm lens at 150mm for this shot, handheld with the help of the legendary Olympus IBIS.

Olympus EM1 MKII with Panasonic 100-400mm, ISO 250, F4.2, 1/320th sec, 150mm, handheld.

A different view

When I was out walking the other morning I noticed the nice morning light on Hoad Monument and the devils armchair.
Amazing how the light can make scenes look different, I must of seen this composition a thousand times but have never thought it worth capturing until that morning.

Olympus EM1 MKII with Panasonic Leica 100-400mm at 100mm ISO500, F4, 1/640th sec

Barn Owl in flight close-up

I finally managed a close-up of the Barn Owl in flight.
Not the easiest of shot to get, the owl doesn't usually appear until the sun has dipped below the horizon so the light isn't the best. The Panasonic is isn't the fastest focussing lens in poor light but I did manage to get it to find the focus for a few frames.

Olympus EM1 MKII with Panasonic Leica 100-400mm ISO 1600, F6.3, 1/640th sec

Silver Howe with the Olympus 12-100mm Pro lens

Recently my wife and I had our first post-lockdown stop-over in the lake district. Staying in Grasmere we decided to do a walk up Silver Howe, a short walk but hopefully with nice views.
Silver Howe is quite a steep ascent so I decided to travel light taking just my Olympus EM1 MKII and 12-100mm Pro lens which would give me a 24-200mm F4 full-frame equivalent. I wasn't worried about not taking a tripod because I knew the light would be good and the dual image stabiliser in the camera and lens would make it easy to handhold even at longer focal lengths.
I wasn't disappointed with the views it's definitely a walk we will be doing again this Autumn when the colours and light will make it a landscape photographers dream location.

ISO 200, 1/320th sec, F7.1, 54mm

Better to ETTR with Olympus EM1 MKII

One of the things I like about photography is you never stop learning. It's over 12 months since I swapped camera systems from Pentax to Olympus and I thought I'd pretty much learnt nuances of my Olympus EM1 MII. However the other night I found out something by making what I thought was a mistake.
Usually when photographing Barn Owls if the owl flies in front of a dark background I use -0.7 to -1 exposure compensation so stop the owls light plummage overexposing. Recently I was too slow and just took the photos at the cameras exposure, this gave me what looked like on the camera LCD an over exposed image which normally I'd delete (see bottom image below). This time I thought I'd keep the image and see what I could do in post processing in Capture One Pro.
To my surprise after decreasing the exposure my -1.2 in Capture One all the details in the owl plummage were there (see top image).
This has got me thinking on my next outing I'm going to try leaving the camera to control the exposure and see how many spoiled images I do actually get.
Watch this space ! 

 

Barn Owl with Olympus 40-150mm Pro lens

My latest photography project has been some local Barn Owls. This is the first ime I've tried the Olympus system for Barn Owls and decided my usual go-to wildlife lens the Panasonic 100-400mm wouldn't be fast enough for the low light Barn Owl shots so thought I'd try with the Olympus 40-150mm Pro lens.

Early in the evening I started with the Olympus MC-1.4x teleconverter fitted to the lens so taking the 40-150mm to 56-210mm F4 or a 112-420mm F4 full frame equivalent. As the evening grew darker I removed the teleconverter and relied on field craft to get a close enough to the Owl for acceptable shots. The settings I used were manual at F4 and 1/1000th sec with auto ISO up to 3200 with the teleconverter fitted and the same but at F2.8 without the teleconverter.
The EM1 MKII and 40-150mm Pro coped admirably with the gloomy condition, the autofocus locked on and kept focus and the the High Iso photos showed plenty of detail.