The Light Fantastic - with Olympus and Lee

Looks as though someone is determined to get out and about - and bring back good landscape pictures - without throwing out a cervical disc.

Okay - all this is to introduce three ideas - the Olympus E-P5 camera, the Olympus 9-18mm lens, and the Lee Sev5n filter system - and to suggest them as a viable alternative for keen landscape photographers.

Landscapes are rarely encountered in a studio, unless you are prepared to make your own. ( I do, but I am odd...) Most people go to where the landscapes are stored - up the sides of mountains or down by the seashore or out in the woods. Some of the best landscapes are kept way out yonder and the roads department doesn't even bother to make a decent path to them. People are forced to walk to them and carry their photo gear with them on their backs. Burke and Wills were probably looking for a good vantage point for a seascape, and didn't that work out well...

This partially explains why very few people these days use 10" x 20" glass plate negative cameras for landscape work. They are heavy and hard to carry. And glass is expensive. Most people settle for DSLR cameras that are hard and heavy to carry, with...expensive glass. Sometimes these digital cameras are lighter than the 10 x 20 bellows camera and sometimes they are not. This sort of burden leads to a lot of landscape work being done from a car park.

Well Olympus have a good answer to that - their series of micro 4/3 cameras with wonderful lenses like the 9-18mm and first-rate stabilisation systems. Light, small, precise, detailed, great colouration, easy to use.

Now that we have some of the Lee Sev5n filter holders and graduated filters in to assist with the light control in bright skies there is no reason that the landscapist cannot cope as well as with a larger system. If there is a lightweight tripod like a Cullmann 625T, all the better. No need to destroy the back or knees while trying to haul your own weight in lenses and camera bodies up the side of Bluff Knoll.

Note: Would the marketing teams who dream up the names of products please refrain from mixing letters and numbers together...it mucks up the computer systems something chronic if the bar code is missing.