First Excursion

I bought the Oly because a gentleman that I occasionally correspond with in Austria, Andreas Manessinger, had one and I was very impressed with the photographs he posts. I bought it with the least expensive lens available because I was not entirely convinced that I was going to like going from the full frame sensor on the Nikon to one half the size. Andreas did a lot of testing—something I do not often do—and also had some complimentary comments about the Panasonic 35-100mm lens. His comments combined with the experience of using the Nikkor 70-200mm for head shots at festivals in November and December persuaded me to bite the bullet and make the purchase. The Panasonic on the Oly is the equivalent to the Nikkor in both equivalent focal length and aperture. I thought it would be less intimidating than sticking the Nikkor in a persons face.

Today was the first time to give it a try. Shot my first ‘in your face’ head shot (which I may be in trouble for posting) and was pleased. I had seen a rental photography studio listed in Old Town Spring so we drove over to see if we could locate it. Didn’t. But in wandering around stopped in Asian Antiques. The young lady working, Amy, said it was okay to take photographs and then walked around with us and shared much of the history and origin of many of the pieces. It was an extremely pleasant shoot as well as being very educational. As usual I gravitated to anything that looked like a person. All the shots are ambient light, hand held. I am pleased with the results for the first time out. 

I do have something to work out. Both the lens and the camera have image stabilization. Not sure right now whether I need to turn off the stabilization on the lens or whether they will work well together.

Tomorrow I am shooting the wreath retrieval at the National Cemetery in the morning and a Glow Run tomorrow evening. That should give it a pretty good work out. The Glow Run will give me an opportunity to work on my current kick, ICM (Intentional Camera Movement). Maybe that’s not the best test for a new lens but that can come later.