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OLYMPUS MASTER VIDEO SERIES SHOOT YOUR STORY The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew offer great imaging opportunities all year round, even in the depths of winter. To prove it, Photography News editor Will Cheung took along the new the Olympus OM-D E-M1Mark III for a shoot
K ewGardens to the west of London is a fabulous place to visit any time of year. Naturally, the imaging opportunities vary from season to season, but there’s content to be had at any time, and even if it’s pouring with rain at the time of your visit, there’s no lack of indoor potential. So, with the newOlympus OM-D E-M1 Mark III for company, I grabbed the chance to produce a short video to showcase my visit, as the new camera is richly featured for both still and video shooting. As a stills photographer with limited video experience, I find cameras like the Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark III ideal for producing pro-quality multimedia content. The camera’s many auto features mean I can shoot video without having to stress about the technical side and can concentrate on the creative stuff.
Typically, on the day of my shoot the weather was dismal and damp. Anyway, I had no concerns about the OM-D E-M1 Mark III, because it is weatherproofed – it’s IPX1 tested, so will continue working with water drops falling on to it. I had packed three M.Zuiko Digital ED lenses, the 12-40mm f/2.8 Pro, 9-18mm f/4-5.6 and 60mm f/2.8 Macro. When I say packed, I actually mean pocketed, because they are so compact they just slipped into the pockets of my outdoor jacket. The OM-D E-M1 Mark III has an updated in-body image stabiliser (IBIS) using the same gyro found in the flagship OM-D E-M1X and offers 7EV benefit withMicro Four Third lenses. Setting up for video shooting was simple. The video mode can be accessed either via the main exposure mode dial or by just pushing the record button, which is quicker and means I can shoot stills in aperture-priority AE and start
video shooting without taking the camera down frommy eye. When you have enough footage, hit the red button again to stop filming or, if you want a still, just press the shutter release to take a full-res still image and stop videoing. This camera supports OM-Log400 shooting , which helps deliver footage with detail in shadows and highlights and, even though I was not shooting in bright light, having that editing option was welcome. The camera’s image stabiliser proved a boon for video and the results were smooth, even with footage I shot panning or walking around. The lighting conditions, particularly in the PalmHouse when I was shooting close-up details using the 60mm f/2.8 Macro lens, were nothing to write home about, so the OM-D E-M1 Mark III’s IBIS proved invaluable and so did the camera’s good high ISO performance.
I used ISO 800 and ISO 1600, and checking on screen showed that such speeds yielded impressive image quality. For my still shooting, I had the camera set to give Raw and JPEGs, shooting in aperture-priority autoexposure mode, multi-zone exposure metering and single-shot autofocus using one or five focus zones. I manually adjusted ISO. Whether shooting stills or video, the new camera’s autofocusing system, with its 121 cross-type phase detect sensors, proved very good, even in the poor light indoors. Touch AF and the new multi-selector or AF joystick proved really useful, too, especially when faced with the challenge of shooting details. A couple of hours shooting with the newOM-D E-M1 Mark III showed it to be a lovely, responsive and very capable camera to use, and the results here and on the edited video are testament to that. I hope you’ll agree.
ABOVE Taken using a M.Zuiko ED 60mm f/2.8 Macro on the Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark III. The lens was set at its widest aperture for a limited amount of front-to- back sharpness.With its 19cmminimum focusing distance, this compact macro lens (equivalent to 120mm in 35mm format) lets you shoot at 1:1 magnification and can be used with the camera’s focus bracketing and focus stacking features
14 Photography News | Issue 74
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