The X100 Cameras Go Out For The Day...

And the evening, too. Not everything happens in a studio, so you have to go out to where they store the landscapes. You might be able to make convincing copies on a tabletop or in Photoshop, but if you use the original scenes it is a lot cheaper and quicker.

Jandakot, again, and boiling hot. It can't be too much fun to do circuits and bumps in the heat and I daresay there is quite a lot of turbulence coming up off the tarmac. Nevertheless, I balanced one X 100 in one hand and one X100F in the other and tried to track the same planes in the same phase of takeoff.

The settings are as before - ProNeg Hi for the X100F and Provia for the X100. See the difference that it makes with the grass colour? As before the X100F is on Large/Fine JPEG and the X 100 is running RAW.

The picture sizes are adjusted in the final result to show the resolution. The tail registration numbers on the aircraft prove that the X100F JPEG is better than the X100 RAW...but by just a little bit.

Note as well in the uncropped versions that the vignetting the X100 is prone to is easily seen against the mid-blue sky. Not there in the X100F file. As an effect in portraiture or reportage - very helpful. In landscapes, not so much.

Later in the day the good old South Perth foreshore at dusk delivered the goods. It also delivered the ants - watch yourselves when you set up for landscape shots - some of the landscape regards you as food.

The fact that the X100F could be run at much higher ISO before electronic noise crept in - a function of the newer processor in the camera - meant that the motion of the water was easier to stop. In the case of these shots I relented and shifted both cameras to Velvia and both AE systems to Average.

I reviewed the images and found a number of them unusable:

a. The panorama pictures that you can do at 120º or 180º looked fine on the back of the LCD but as they were taken at a slow shutter speed and too high a rotation rate, there was a lot of motion blur. The cure would have been to set the shutter speed to 1/60 to 1/180 of a second and raise the ISO accordingly.

b. Some of the still shots had a surprising amount of blur. This is my fault for trusting a lightweight tripod and no cable release - even the pressure of me jabbing down on the camera was enough to displace it slightly. The studio Gitzo Studex 5 on a concrete floor is one thing - a spindly tripod on grass is another. Lesson learned for next time.

 

Note the thunderhead seen earlier in the day down the length of our street. I took it as much to test the dynamic range of the camera, as to admire the beauty of nature. The lightning show was great at South Perth as well, though no-one did as well with the lightning pictures as our friend Duncan Dodd. He may have arranged for the thunderstorm just to get some good pictures down at Rockingham.

The Wind's Under Your Wings With Olympus

A sunny morning, Jandakot Aerodrome, and the new Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mk II camera. And the 300mm f:4 IS PRO lens buckled on...it's my own local air show for free.

All I have to do is brave the traffic on Karel Avenue ( and I get the easy part of it - the poor people who have to join the roundabouts from the side can be waiting for ages... ) and the grassy space in front of the Aviator's Cafe is open to all.

Light planes are an amazing variety of shapes, but unfortunately they can have a sameness about their colour schemes - white is used for most of them with a little trim. You can see them against the sky to some extent, but I find myself wanting a different hue. Fortunately this last Saturday saw several aerobatic aircraft working the runways.

The Olympus camera features stabilisation in a variety of planes ( not a pun ) to a degree that other manufacturers do not match. You can roll, tilt, yaw, and displace the camera and lens to a remarkable degree while the IS systems  - in the camera and in the lenses  - iron it out. The Olympus Pro lenses talk electronically to the computer in the camera to figure out which system does which correction.

Experiment one was to set the camera to give a continuous autofocus and to shoot with it doing a low rate of shots. I took a couple of passes at the taxi strip but found that it was just wasting frames with no real movement between the aircraft. So I took it off the continuous and selected single AF shooting.

This proved just as good, as the Olympus responds extremely quickly to the first pressure on the shutter button. When you hit it, the IS starts up instantly and the bounce or jitter of the viewfinder smooths out like a calm sea. It is much easier to find and follow the subject with the IS on. There was no perceptible lag as I pressed the button for the final exposure - I was able to freeze the selected airplane as it passed through the belts of colour in the backdrop.

Shutter speed was left at 1/1000 or 1/2000 for most in-air shots. The stopping power is awesome, though viewers will note the heat shimmer on the tarmac spoiling some shots - it was the same on the car race day out at Barbagallo Raceway. For the close liftoffs or passes the detail in the shot is phenomenal.

Two tricks with this lens: Select the 4 metre to infinity limiter on the side of the lens barrel - saves the lens hunting and losing time. Any aircraft closer than 4 metres will be engaging your attention in ways other than focus. Also unlock and rotate the tripod foot up over the top of the lens as you hand-hold it. It is a weighty combination - you do not want that metal bracket digging into your palm for hours as you stand waiting for the takeoff.

The Game's Nearly Afoot, Watson - With The Olympus Long Lens

 

NOTE TO READERS: THE ELECTRICITY HAS BEEN OFF ALL DAY DUE TO SHORTS OVER THE LINE. IF IT IS STILL OUT IN YOUR SUBURB, DON'T BOTHER TO READ THIS MESSAGE...ALL BACK ON HERE AT THE EDITORIAL OFFICE...

Well nearly a foot. 11.81 inches to be precise...

That's the focal length of this Olympus 300mm f:4 IS PRO lens - I didn't actually measure the thing from front to back. It is one of the longer choices that one can make for the Micro 4/3 system. Olympus and Panasonic users with a desire to pull in long distance images are the market.

 

You? Do you shoot sports? Cars? Surfing? Aircraft? Large wildlife? Birds? Well step up to professional qaulity and take this lens away.

 

But wait - there's more. As I found out a week ago in the dim reaches of the Fly By Night theatre in Fremantle, theatre shooting can also be done with this sort of camer and lens. Boost your ISO, put the thing on a monopod, and blaze away. The 300mm is more than long enough for most theatres.

 

But wait - there's more. As I discovered when I pulled the focusing ring backwards on the mount, this is a long lens with a rearkably short minimum focuss distance - just under 1.4 metres. Any object seen at this close distance under the magnification that his focal length gives will be pretty large on the sensor. Remember that in terms of the old 35mm film geometry, this is a 600mm lens!

Depth of field will be shallow under these criteria, but that is optics.

The heading image is just bcause it is a lovely piece of glass to look at. The lens hood is attached to the lens and just slides forward into position.

Note the feature of a " industry-standard " profiled mount on the tripod support foot. I used a similar idea for mounting a zoom lens on a monopod and it is the height of convenience and elegance.

We Finally Get To It - With The Big Fujifilm Lens

I have been experimenting for the last few months with long lenses attached to my Fujifilm X cameras by means of adapters. The tests were encouraging as long as there were suitable subjects some distance away. Yet I had never gotten to grips with the long zoom made by Fujifilm themselves - now was the time.

Each manufacturer presents their material in a different way - some go for simple cases to protect their lenses and some go for quite elaborate hard cases. Fujifilm has packed the XF 100-400mm  f:4.5-5.6 RLM OIS WR lens in a sturdy box, a cardboard cradle, and a cloth wrapping...I should advise investigating a Lowepro or Promaster Lens case before venturing out into the field - the lens is superbly finished and it would be a shame to nick it up unnecessarily.

Well, it is certainly big in comparison to the other Fujifilm lenses, but small when you consider the optics of full-frame DSLRs. This would be a great deal easier to haul on long wildlife trips - even with the substantial lens hood attached it is manageable. That's a standard-sized business card there in the zoom picture.

The lens is fitted with the usual controls - dealing with the stabilising system, zoom ring, zoom ring lock, and Automatic or manual aperture. There is one additional control switch that limits the focusing travel if you are only going to play with distant subjects.

The tripod foot is quite neat but substantial.

The surprises on the lens hood come in two forms; there is a button to release the hood gently, and there is s sliding panel on the underside. This is not the cover for the waist-gunner's position, though it looks like it - it is hatch to let you reach inside and turn polarising filters to best effect. Note from the shot of the inside of the lens hood that Fujifilm have even gone to the effort of ribbing it for flare reduction - a neat finishing touch.

But what of the operations? No more fumbling with a manual focus ring with this one - and no more hastily turning a manual aperture ring to stop down just before exposure. Oh sure, you can do it...but you lessen your chances of getting a really sharp shot, really fast. Adapters are all very well, but they are still adapters. It was a sheer pleasure to point and shoot in single-frame and watch it snap into focus.

Here are some shots taken in the open air - no polariser to darken skies. The camera body was the Fujifilm X-E2 with the latest firmware update and I can honestly say the autofocus speed was as good as I could expect. There is always a fuss about this function in sports shooting from the point of view that it is not as fast as a DSLR. Well, it's a lot faster than winding it manually, and not noisy while in operation.

I should still resort to focus trapping at a motor race to ensure that I was giving the mechanism the best opportunity to perform sharply on high-speed vehicles like this one...

Oh, how I wish The RAAF would save enough money to buy jet fuel and have an air show at PEARCE. I would be willing to sponsor a gallon of avgas myself.

Riding To The Rescue - With the RFDS

Australians can get themselves into trouble in lots of places - financial, legal, moral, and otherwise. When they do it overseas they have to rely on the DFAT and the consulates to help them get out of it - sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. It is a worry.

But when they are here at home they can breathe a sigh of relief in one respect - if they get into medical trouble anywhere out in the vast reaches of the continent, they have a thoroughly reliable rescue service that can come and get them.

No, it isn't the 7th Cavalry - it is the Royal Flying Doctor Service. Their planes are the best sight to see when trouble strikes out in the bush because they are bringing professional help in the form of medical practitioners, nurses, and the emergency equipment they need. The planes are flown by the best pilots in Australia* and they are especially selected and equipped for transporting the patients back to the major medical facilities.

I see them daily, and sometimes nightly - we live under the flight path for Jandakot airport as they come in from the North. By the time we see them they have their flaps and wheels down and are looking for the smoothest line into the airport. The turboprop engines have a sound very distinctive from that of other light aircraft - and as an engine enthusiast I would love to see one close up with the cowling removed.

Okay - enough aeronautics - this is an advertisement for a concert that you can go to to support the RFDS.

It is to be held at St. Luke's Church, Monument Street, Mosman Park on Sunday, September 4th at 4:00 to 6:30 PM. The concert is entitled Chords For Angels. It will be some of the best-loved songs from the 60's through to the 80's.

Featured musicians are Nick Melidonis, Anne Rowe, Keith McDonald, Garry Baverstock, Steve Warner-Jones, Nigel Shaw,Mayo Merga, and Sam Paolino.

RSVP booking is essential : lesleyhawkings@bigpond.com

Get your booking in before August 29th - there'll be drinks and canapés supplied.

Here is a poster made by someone who is really grateful to the RFDS...I won't say who or why but perhaps he'll tell you on the night. Go-on fly to your computer and book for this event - we all benefit.

Note: the RFDS Pilatus PC-12 turboprops are going to be joined by new Pilatus PC-24 long range jets next year. As a plane spotter I could not be happier... and the patients will get a faster, smoother ride to safety.

* Yep, the best. And the wingies of the RAAF and Qantas can aspire...