I got a little bit Christmassy for a flat lay I created for a recent Olympus event where I had to talk about the new Olympus Pen E-PL7… Full disclosure: I covertly borrowed the sparkles from a little display in the hotel lobby, ahem…
And when I went to return them the display was gone. So now I’m shedding little silver stars and crotchets everywhere I go! I set up custom white balance for the first time for the top shot – something I totally recommend when you’re shooting against a white background; saves on the post-processing time. You can see the difference compared to the more detailed shots, which I took first and aren’t quite as white… So the whole theme was a bit wintry, cosy and sparkly, getting ready for a crisp night’s ice skating… Somerset House soon please!
Like many people in this modern age of digital photography, I shoot colour first and then convert to black & white on the rare occasion. Recently, I got some top tips from fashion photographer and Olympus ambassador Jay McLaughlin on how to do it right…
1. Shoot in black and white, not colour – Jay shoots in RAW so has all the colour data if he wants it. Back in the days of film, photography students had to master black and white film before colour. This was quite an eye-opener for me, because, although I occasionally switch to black and white to shoot, the majority of the time I shoot in colour and then wait for a picture that I think will look good in black and white, which is a bit topsy turvy I guess!
2. Learn to see in light and dark. There are so many tones of grey, think about them and how they figure in your composition. Play around with the highlight and shadow settings on your camera to see how this affects the image. A good exercise is to ask yourself whether a tone is lighter or darker than a photographic grey card (a middle grey reference used in photography to determine exposure). Also google Ansel Adams’s Zone System; originally developed in 1939-40 to help determine exposure when developing film, the system defines ten tones between white and black.
3. Focus on texture and shape. Removing colour can bring out textures you wouldn’t normally see – like in the dress shot below. Jay says “This Peter Pilotto dress was really bright; no one would shoot it in black and white. But I did, and there’s texture in the fabric you wouldn’t have seen otherwise.”
4. The subject is key. Shooting in black and white allows for more emotion in your subjects to come through as distracting elements, like background, are removed.
5. Some things don’t work in black and white – like food and sunsets!
6. When post processing, use Tone Curve in Lightroom to play around with the shades; Jay likes his whites white but his blacks are often are a very dark shade of grey. To strengthen the emotion of a portrait don’t be afraid to lose detailing, eg. on fabrics or in backgrounds.
The top images, of model Rebecca Pearson (check out her blog Model Typeface), are ones I took on Jay’s camera (on this occasion he was using the new Olympus Pen E-PL7 with 45mm 1.8 lens) after he had set up the scene for a strong black and white image – stripes, white tablecloth, perfectly laid cafe table. He shot from a low position to catch the blurry glow of the fairy lights in the background (believe it or not, we were in a John Lewis top floor cafe!). The rest of the images are all Jay’s – see more of his work at www.jaymclaughlin.co.uk and follow on Twitter @JayMcLaughlin.
I hope this post was of interest and let do me know if you have any tips for shooting black and white, I would love to hear them!
General hilarity ensued when I posed with this beautiful little scooter for the just launched Olympus Twitter Christmas competition – “Keira Knightley in the Chanel ad! Marlon Brando!” photographer Jay hopefully yelled out to me. Ahem, I did my best…
Anyway, impressive off-the-cuff photography refs aside, the point is both camera (the new Pen E-PL7, £499) and customised Vespa scooter (worth more than £6000 – and how cool is the helmet?!) are up for grabs over at Olympus. And since I’ve probably bored you to death with my overview of the E-PL7, here’s a brilliantly in-depth write-up just posted by male beauty blogger Manface – I would love to be a fly on his wall when he’s editing his photos, his whites are amazing!
Enter here to show off your photography and styling skills and submit a festive inspired flat lay featuring a cut-out of the camera – closing date Sunday 21 December. You can see the other entries and latest news at #olympuspengeneration and #winolympus. Not bad booty for under the Christmas tree – good luck!
Real-life or digital, either way, a Christmas card brings that little moment of magic so here’s one I made earlier… Hope you’re enjoying a lovely festive day with friends & family wherever you are in the world!
So apparently tights under ripped denim is one step too far into the nineties – although bare knees is bang on, obvs. Precariously close to the verge I am, just as the Edinburgh merry-go-high swung by the Scott monument… but hey, it’s cold up here in Skye this Christmas!
Walking the line with a picture perfect Christmas which has encompassed traversing quite some distance by both train and car with lots of good food and family fun along the way. Right now we are keeping cosy by the fire while taking in the momentous sunshine with brisk walks while it lasts…
Christmas dinner was truly a feast and now we are lunching and supping on leftovers, while I contemplate, as always, the possibility of implementing new year’s resolutions before the end of the year. Where’s that 20 minutes of yoga a day gone this 2014 I ask you? Really, it’s not that much to fit in, is it? *Doable*. Add to that a daily two teaspoons of apple cider vinegar (various unproven health benefits, if you must ask) and that’s the full sum of my new health & wellbeing regime for the next 365 days to come.
What a whirlwind of a year it’s been! And on the photography front even more so. Crazy to think, this time last year I was tweeting my very first photo with an Olympus camera…
A quince in my mother-in-law’s garden on Skye. As I tweeted the pic – I was on a tech high, as I was using the Stylus 1 which also has the brilliant wifi app – not in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that a year later I would be working as an Olympus ambassador alongside some of Europe’s best bloggers.
Aside from discovering the life-changing Pen E-P5 and its little brothers & sisters, one of the most exciting things has been pushing myself to learn more and produce better photography. And it’s so lovely to hear from readers and friends how they’ve seen my photography progress. For me, this year’s real highpoint was selling one of my photographs to a lovely lady who got in touch having stumbled across my portfolio. I’ve since had a couple of requests to shoot for brands which although I’m nervous about is something I’d like to step into.
Trips abroad with Olympus have been great fun, as has meeting their team – full of camera knowledge! – and photographer ambassadors and visionaries. The more I talk to people about the cameras they use and how they use them, the more I realise people are after smaller cameras that can do what the big DSLRs do. Well, the micro-four-thirds system, as pioneered by Olympus, do exactly that and I think we’ll see more and more photographers, amateurs and professionals moving to smaller equipment and not just for a second camera.
This year I hope to bring you better photography, beautiful and inspiring, on all the things I love about life – clothes, travelling, eating and home life. As blogs become more like mini-magazines, showcasing some of the best digital publishing out there, I want to take mine forward as best I can. I’m starting to think about a redesign to reflect the diversity of topics I like to cover but to keep up with the spontaneity of daily blogging (almost daily!).
Blogging as a job is one of the best out there. Dare I say, it’s the job I’ve been waiting for, encompassing all the different things I like to do – write, communicate, create, curate, photograph, shop and share. I’ve met so many incredible people through blogging, people who have become real friends, loving and supportive. The only fault I can find is how consuming it can be, but that’s slightly down to my obsessive, all-or-nothing nature and a balancing act I need to improve on.
Going forward, as the blog enters its third year and I can seriously say this is my full-time job, I plan to take things a little slower, be more considered and more focussed. I am such a magpie that the blog will always be a crazy mix of this, that and everything and I hope that’s what you enjoy about it! Anyway, back to the photography which is very much the engine of what makes this blog work… Please let me know if I can help with any advice on the equipment I’m using, I love talking cameras!
Photo heavy, because I sure do love the materials that make things. The leather, the hardware (hello snaps, hooks and tubular rivets) and then, of course, the tools; awls, punches, blades, nippers and hafts…
Suffice to say, a personal fetish of mine… Before Christmas, Olympus put on a little camera strap workshop for the Pen E-PL7 run by shoe and accessories designer Elizabeth Dunn. We got to choose our materials and decide on design and then were patiently shown how to make our straps. I used to be more of a DIY whizz, but these days seem to have lost the skilzz. Definitely struggled slicing a skinny leather strip in a straight line with a super sharp blade…! Although I did like banging in the rivets, I won’t lie.
Elizabeth is a saint and excellent teacher as we all thumb-fistedly tried our hand at cutting leather in straight lines, glueing neatly, punching holes and hammering in rivets – not the easiest thing to do accurately! We also customised our straps by stamping in our names. I find names a bit boring and next personalisation plan to go for something like moon child, mermaid, maneater or maniac. Despite concentrating hard on making my strap, I managed to get a few (hundred) shots in…
Laura from Fab Tips looking super cute hard at work
I’ve been meaning to do a lens post for a while now. This is quite a geeky little look (but by no means hi-level profesh!) at a range of micro four third lenses to show that you can get just as good blur and bokeh as on bigger frame DSLRs…
Let’s face it, in the world of blogs it’s all about the blur, right? Or bokeh, if you prefer (bokeh is a Japanese word that refers to the quality of the blur – often down to personal preference.) This is one of my favourite creative aspects of photography, isolating a subject with shallow depth of field to such an extent the background is a dreamy hazy blur and one of the main reasons I use only prime lenses (the other being I like how you’re forced to work harder with a prime, having to move about to get your shot).
Also, I know there are super duper zooms out there that can produce great blur, but I just don’t know which ones as I haven’t used them, so sorry I can’t help you on that! From my understanding and experience so far, to get great blur ideally you need a prime lens of 1.8 aperture or lower – most of the top personal style bloggers work with a 50mm 1.4 or even 1.2 lens – and to get close in to your subject and allow lots of space behind.
A POTTED HISTORY OF MY LENS JOURNEY
When I was deciding to switch from my old DSLR to micro four thirds one of my main concerns was whether I could get the same results as I was getting with the much-loved Canon 50mm 1.4 lens. After a little online research, I realised it was not only possible, but there were all sorts of options to explore in addition to the Olympus range, including the mind-blowing dreamy haze of old Olympus manual 50mm lenses, 1.4 apertures from Panasonic and heavy-weight, ground-breaking lenses like the Voigtlanders with apertures stopping down to 0.95. Micro four thirds lenses made by other companies like Panasonic and Voigtlander will fit straight onto an Olympus, whereas the older OM lenses need an adapter.
My day to day arsenal of lenses include the Olympus 75mm 1.8 which I like to use for outfit posts as well as more detailed work – but it’s such a long lens you need to back away loads to get your subject in shot – the Panasonic 25mm 1.4 (which I haven’t featured here as my test shot was on the wrong settings – sorry!) and the very neat Olympus 17mm 1.8, which is great for travel and city shots as you can get so much in frame. The Olympus 45mm 1.8 is a beauty too and great value for money in the world of lenses, which is an expensive ones unfortunately. I say, go cheap on the body and spend on the lenses!
THIS POST…
All my test shots were taken on the brilliant little PEN E-PL7, the new little sister camera to the E-P5 which is my main camera. I actually often take both out with me with a different lens on each to save changing lenses! In this post, I wanted to show you what a range of micro four thirds lenses opened to their widest aperture can do… I sort of tried to set up ‘test conditions’ but being an inconsistent type haven’t really kept each shot exactly the same, so it’s only really for general demonstration to show the amount of blurring of each lens. In terms of editing, I did a small amount of brightening & contrast in Lightroom on each shot, all exactly the same…
WHAT TO BUY?
If you’re looking to buy your first prime lens, out of the lenses I’ve used, I would definitely go for the Olympus 45mm 1.8. It’s a great blogger lens as you can get gorgeous blur, lovely detail shots but also use for outfit shots (if you have enough room). It’s also the cheapest lens here coming in about £220. Alternatively, you could go for an old OM 50mm 1.8 or 1.4 lens on eBay which are less than £100 and you can pick up a cheap converter (OM – M4/3) for under a tenner. Next step would depend on what you do the most of – for travel, street style and city shots I’d go for the 17mm 1.8, but if you are getting very serious about detail shots, blur and portrait you might want to consider saving up for the 75mm 1.8. I also find myself using the Panasonic 25mm 1.4 practically everyday. Not cheap, but then lenses ain’t a cheap game I’m sorry to say.
Disclaimer: As an ambassador for Olympus, the Oly lenses I use are on loan and the others I have paid for myself or borrowed from a friend!
SAY HELLO TO CUBEBOT!
Also before we start, a special shout out to the Cubebot I use as a prop throughout! A beautiful traditional wooden toy sent to me for Gus by the lovely Molly & The Wolf (for those of you with kids, check out the site and get 10% off with Stylo10). While I’m on the subject, I should mention that Molly & The Wolf run a lovely monthly crafts club for kids which you can sign up to for £15 a month for which you receive a surprise craft project – this month it’s a fun little guitar which Gus and I have been hard at work on!
OK, NOW FOR THE LENSES AND ‘TEST’ SHOTS…
OLYMPUS 17mm 1.8
The 17mm is a great all rounder – a ‘shorter’ lens it offers less depth of field blur (see below) than the rest of the lenses but is a perfect street and travel shooting lens. I also think it’s one of the nicest looking lenses on the Pens sizewise…
The 45mm really is a gorgeous bright portrait lens, with lovely blur. Like all Olympus lenses its widest aperture is 1.8 but you do get a really nice result. And look how lovely and bright the shot is… You can also augment your 45mm with a fun little macro adapter which allows you to get super close to your subject and get some great detail and blur, this is about £70 so won’t break the bank.
The Olympus 75mm is an absolute dream of a lens, just incredibly bright and beautiful blur but you have to have room to get your shot. It also costs a bomb and it quite a big lens on the Pen, but with my experience of this lens I would definitely save up to buy it…
When I was researching M4/3 lenses that would do a good bokeh job, this OM 50mm 1.2 came up again and again as a bit of a holy grail lens for the beautifully dreamy shots it could create. I tracked one down on eBay for about £250, swiping it from under the nose of quite a few other bidders – I have quite a brutal eBayer bid technique! I bought a cheap adapter and got completely obsessed with the lens – you can see some of the shots here, very soft and dreamy.
It also got me comfortable using manual and I figured out how to use focus peaking on the Pen. Focus peaking highlights the area of your shot in focus even with a manual, so very useful as sometimes it can be hard to judge with your eye. Turn on you focus peaking on the Pen E-P5 and E-PL7 by going to Menu, Custom Menu, Button/Dial and then assign a button (I use the Fn button for this) to Peaking.
Above test shot on Olympus OM 50mm 1.2 – used with adapter – you can see how much more of a softer shot this takes. I think I could have got in a bit closer with this, and wish I had to compare more accurately to the shot below!
35mm 1.7
I discovered this fun little $15 CCTV lens while geeking out on You Tube. This cheapie is identical or practically identical to the real SLR Magic lens which is a bit more expensive – it’s a manual lens that comes with an adapter (I bought it from here, took a few weeks to arrive) but as you can see you can get a great shot… Actually really impressed by the test shot, I should use this more! (In fact, I was so surprised at how well this shot came out, I’ve just done a re-test against the other manual lenses which confirms it’s amazingness; it definitely seems sharper close up on the needles than the Voigtlander which seems crazy – but as a I mention below this Voigtlander wide open is considered to be quite soft. The 35mm also seems to excel in brightness, although I think it aberrates more but this can just add to the arty look which I like!
Above test shot on 35mm 1.7 – see how close it allowed me to get in!
VOIGTLANDER 25mm 0.95
Equivalent to using 35mm film, I find 25mm micro four thirds lenses extremely useful – it’s a great size to cover off a variety of situations, shooting outfit posts, snapping food in restaurants and getting good detail shots! This is a super luxe manual-only Voigtlander 25mm 0.95 lens I borrowed from a friend. With a 0.95 aperture it’s as wide open as you can get for a lens that fits straight onto a M4/3 camera. I’m not sure I’ve entirely done this lens justice with this shot, but you can see the blur of the cubebot is extreme! However, as you can see it is quite soft wide open, apparently this lens is at its sharpest at f/2.8. The other lens I have my eye on is the Voigtlander 42.5mm 0.95…
Phew, this has been a whopper of a post! I’m not sure how useful it has been, but it’s been quite fun to put together and got me thinking more about lenses. Do let me know any questions in the comments below and I’ll do my best to help. Also would love to hear your experiences with any of the older manual lenses… Peace out, bokeh buddies.
Although the Jonathan Saunders show is running a close second with its stripadelic gym wear and Careless Whisper soundtrack… More of what I’ve been up to with my Olympus Pens here.
I must say, I’m enjoying life back to normal after LFW, but it was a total blast and I’m so excited to have 20 of my images, documenting fashion week through my lens in on a photography exhibition in Paris with Olympus this week…
I won’t lie, whittling down the probably of 1000s images I took during five full days of backstage, at the shows and street style, was no easy task. I tried to choose the ones that I was most proud of and also ones that would draw the viewer in, like the one above, where you have Yasmin Le Bon front row at Jonathan Saunders chin up in intense concentration or below a favourite model shot from Marques’Almeida, Made in Chelsea’s Lucy Watson getting super papped at Eudon Choi, incredible brushed denim detail at Faustine and a street style pap scrum. All my photos were taken on the Pen E-P5 and Pen E-PL7 which I used interchangeably with the 17mm and 45mm lenses.
So if you happen to be in Paris for fashion week, or any other reason, head on down to the gallery to check out the rest of my pictures along with other fashion week bloggers wielding the little Olympus Pen…
Where: 25 Boulevard de Sébastopol, 5th Floor, Paris, 75001
