Olympus OM4 + Olympus OM Zuiko 55mm f/1.2, Kodak Ektar 100

River in Lassen Forest. Olympus OM1 + Olympus OM Zuiko 21mm f2, Fujifilm Neopan 100 Acros

Olympus OM1 + Olympus OM Zuiko 21mm f2, Fujifilm Neopan 100 Acros

Pointing upwards again… close focusing with the 21mm. Olympus OM-1 + Olympus OM Zuiko 21mm f/2, Fujifilm Neopan 100 Acros

V nice colours from Ektar. Olympus OM4 + Olympus OM Zuiko 55mm f/1.2, Kodak Ektar 100

Nothing very exciting in this shot but just about worth including. Olympus OM-4, Olympus Zuiko 21mm f/2, Kodak Ektar 100

I screwed this shot up – was a beautiful scene / light but didn’t quite focus right. Still, I like it and am including it anyway. Olympus OM-1 + Olympus OM Zuiko 21mm, Fujifilm Neopan 100 Acros

OK that’s all folks. Thanks for following. Olympus OM4 + Olympus OM Zuiko 55mm f/1.2, Kodak Ektar 100

I’m a big fan of the old Olympus Zuiko lenses which have a few interesting characteristics:

1. They are very compact
2. They can be cheap second hand (compared to many other brands e.g. Leica, modern lenses, etc)
3. They have great out of focus characteristics (with beautiful, creamy Bokeh)
4. Many have very close minimum focusing distance
5. Optically, they’ve very impressive

I’ll give a quick overview of each of these characteristics with respect to the 135mm f/2.8

Compact / Size

The 135mm f/2.8 measures a relatively small 3,2″ (80mm) max length x 2.4″ (61mm) max diameter. Given it’s all metal / glass construction it weighs 0.8lbs (360g) which while light, is enough to make it feel solid and hefty for its size. A clever feature is that it contains a built in hood which can slide out / retract easily whenever you need it. The shape of the lens itself is cylindrical and doesn’t enlarge as you move away from the base towards the lens. This makes it very portable  – I am often able to carry it in a jacket pocket for example without much fuss.

To provide some perspective, the faster AF Canon L 135mm f2 is approx 112 mm (4.4 inches) max length x 83mm (3.2 inches) max width. Weight is 1.7lbs (750  grams). While these dimensions reflect some of the difference, in the real world, it’s even greater. Pointing the Canon 135mm L at people in the street (particularly when the hood is attached) is an easy way to get noticed. Although not entirely inconspicuous, the Olympus OM Zuiko 135mm f/2.8 is not as obvious.

One downside here is that while the build quality of the lens is superb, on my Zuiko -> EOS mount, it doesn’t feel as rigid or secure as some other lenses. I suspect it’s my adapter at fault here. While it doesn’t affect anything in terms of image quality / safety / performance, it is noticeable. My only other criticism is that when mounted to a 5D, it looks… well, kinda ugly.

Price

I love this – I bought my Olympus OM Zuiko 135mm f/2.8 lens for $99 on ebay for a buy it now. I’d consider the quality to be somewhere between Excellent and Mint. There aren’t hundreds for sale on ebay but wait and a while and it’s pretty easy to pick one up. In contrast, the superb Canon 135mm f/2 L goes for a grand on Amazon (and this is the best value L lens). Alternatively a Canon 135mm f/2.8 with soft focus will still set you back nearly $500.

Bokeh

The bokeh of the Olympus OM Zuiko 135mm f/2.8, like many Zuiko’s, is gorgeous. When there are elements of the image that are very out-of-focus, it takes on that swirly effect – but it’s not as apparent as in some of the shorter focal lengths. Here’s a shot when mounted onto a Olympus OM-1 film camera which illustrates that effect:

Olympus OM-1 + Olympus OM Zuiko 135mm f/2.8 on Fujifilm Neopan 100 Acros

With more typical scenes, it’s what you’d expect from a high quality lens – a beautiful, smooth, drop off in depth of field which gives pleasing subject isolation. It’s not as a dramatic effect as with an F2 at this focal length, but it still looks great. Here’s a shot from this afternoon that illustrates this:

Canon 5D Mark II + Olympus OM Zuiko 135mm f/2.8

Minimum Focusing Distance

A lot of the Zuiko’s have impressive minimum focusing distances. Not so with the 135mm f/2.8 which actually has a fairly long min focusing distance of 1.5m (nearly 5 feet). What does this mean in real terms? Well, head shot portraits are fine but you can’t get a lot closer and you certainly don’t get any macro effect. Here’s an example of what a min focusing distance gets you with a portrait (shot on a Olympus OM-4 film camera):

Olympus OM-4 + Olympus OM Zuiko 135mm f/2.8 on Kodak Ektar 100

Optics

I’ll be honest, I wasn’t expecting that much when I bought this lens originally. I just figured I’d get something cheap, fairly portable and would be useful in a pinch for the film work I’ve been doing. However, after shooting with it for a while, this little telephoto is turning out to be quite a performer with excellent sharpness, great colour and as I mentioned already, wonderful out of focus characteristics. For resolution freaks, here’s a couple of examples with 100% crops which show the resolving power when mounted to a Canon 5D Mark II:

Canon 5D Mark II + Olympus OM Zuiko 135mm f/2.8 (original image)

Canon 5D Mark II + Olympus OM Zuiko 135mm f/2.8 (100% crop)

If you click on the 100% crop, you’ll see what is actually extremely impressive sharpness at the center. I will add that this was shot wide open at f2.8 and I’ve done no photoshop to the original or cropped image – it was already way sharp enough. Pretty cool. You can see a little vignetting but nothing particularly concerning.

Now, if staring at lines one pixel in width doesn’t do it for you – here’s a shot of the same scene but taken at a time and with lighting that actually produces a real image:

This version was taken at 7am on a beautiful morning. Shot with an Olympus OM-4 + Olympus OM Zuiko 135mm f/2.8 on Fujichrome Velvia 100

Coming back to pixel peeping for a moment, here’s another example:

Canon 5D Mark II + Olympus OM Zuiko 135mm f/2.8 (original image)

Canon 5D Mark II + Olympus OM Zuiko 135mm f/2.8 (100% crop)

This one I’ve applied a minor unsharp mask to. It suffers a little from relying on my manual focusing skills which can be subject to minor misses once in a while. Again though – looks v good.

If 100% crops doesn’t get you going, here are a few real images. I shot these this afternoon in the space of an hour or so while wandering around. Again, all when mounted to a Canon 5D Mark II:

Canon 5D Mark II + Olympus OM Zuiko 135mm f/2.8

Canon 5D Mark II + Olympus OM Zuiko 135mm f/2.8

Canon 5D Mark II + Olympus OM Zuiko 135mm f/2.8

Canon 5D Mark II + Olympus OM Zuiko 135mm f/2.8

Verdict

I normally don’t get too excited about a lens with a maximum aperture smaller than f2, but this little old telephoto has definitely impressed me. After all – what’s not to like. Lets summarise… It’s a small compact telephoto that produces ultra sharp images with beautiful out of focus and a max aperture of f/2.8. It can be used on the legendary Olympus OM line or mounted to Canon’s EOS sytem for a cheap adapter available on ebay. An excellent to mint copy costs a hundred bucks (cheaper than the cheapest plastic lens Canon makes or about the same as a month of latte’s).

Again, seriously, what’s not to like.

All images are with Olympus OM-1 + Olympus OM Zuiko 50mm f/1.4, shot on Kodak T-MAX 100.

Sora, our newest family member

Our boy Rio

Yup, that’s me

Making use of that famous Zuiko bokeh

This is my first serious attempt so bear with me. You’ll see more of this in coming weeks – along with some tips / guidance once I get proficient. In particular, I want to try this with film and may reopen a new narrative photography project. First things first though – here are a couple of examples from last night’s shoot. Shutter speeds for the images below range in the 8s – 30s range.

The conversation is not always an easy one. In the early days when I was just starting out with photography, and I was asked mostly just due to the fact that I had a DSLR, it was easy to agree to and I’d just do it for free. These days, photography is much more than just a hobby to me and I’m cautious about taking on new projects for other people. With only a finite supply of energy and motivation, I’m careful to spend it wisely, so to speak.

One idea that has been offered – charging friends professional rates – hasn’t been the solution. While I think it’s fair (and people I know are comfortable with it), almost every paid-for shoot I do leaves me not feeling like picking up the camera for days due to the time / effort it consumes. My solution has been to come up with the following:

- I now agree to these shoots with friends but they are kept ultra short. They’re arranged during lunch, catch up’s or something similar. The expectation is set so that only 5 images are expected to be received, no more. Not dozens of processed images, not a CD of raw shots – but a handful of high quality images that they can expect to frame / keep.

- I do charge a nominal fee – equivalent to perhaps a moderately expensive lunch that might have normally been offered as the alternative form of payment :). The money is kept on the low side to reflect the very short time I spend shooting (< 20 minutes).

- All money collected goes to the dog charity I support here.

This idea was put to the test with friends of mine a couple of weekends ago who had been asking me for some time to photograph their beautiful baby boy. It was a big success for all of us. The results were that the parents got 11 photos they’re very happy with (it was a productive shoot – my expected 5 shots ended up being a round dozen), I found my enthusiasm / energy intact (to the contrary, I enjoyed myself fully) and a handful of lucky mutts ended up with a hundred bucks worth of doggie bones to chew on :).

Last Sunday I did a private photoshoot with two Singaporean photographers, Alec Ee and Bilal Zaheer. Bilal also brought along two models – Carol and Jessica (pictures below).

The shoot started during the afternoon and went on for three hours. Rain persisted throughout although it didn’t get in the way too much. If you know my style of photography, you’ll know I tend to try to shoot almost exclusively with natural light so was fun working with the small that were remaining in the house on a heavily overcast day. The models worked hard and posed admirably. Definitely a great experience for me working with them, Alec and Bilal – also very fun.

Although a tripod would have been good, I didn’t use one as for shoots like this, I tend to move around a lot (and fairly quickly) and I find a tripod too restrictive. So occasionally ISO got bumped to 800, but as you know with the 5D this is not a particularly big deal. All shots were taken with the 5D and 24-105.

I was very pleased that I managed go to get two shots for my Fragments gallery – the rest were portrait shots in a more classical sense (although as usual, my interpretation of "classical"). I’ve attached a couple of shots below. The rest you can see at my Pbase gallery – The Old Mansion.

Carol, 105mm, 1/25s, F/4, ISO-800 (click for larger)

Jessica, 75mm, 1/15s, F/4, ISO-200 (click for larger)

Jessica, 58mm, 1/32s, F/4, ISO-320 (click for larger)

Carol, 105mm, 1/30s, F/4, ISO-200 (click for larger)

Alec / Bilal / Carol / Jessica – thank you and look forward to next time!