All posts by Gregg

I am an Electrical Engineer, having graduated from The University of Texas in Austin with a B.S.E.E. degree in 1986, while specializing in Computer Engineering. This is my career, and this is how I pay the bills, but hey, this is a web site about my photography, not electrical engineering! I have a deep passion for photography, and have recently registered myself with the state of Texas as a small business doing photography. I am still exploring the many different types of photography, and getting a feeling for which type(s) I want to specialize in after I retire from my engineering career. I love to photograph a wide variety of items, including nature, landscapes, architecture, cityscapes, and large panoramics. Lately I have become excited about making portraits of people, both posed and natural. I have been using using multiple portable Canon Speedlite flash units for quite a while, and find them fun to play with. I have recently purchased a full set of studio lighting equipment, as I believe that I will also really enjoy corporate product and still life photography.
Cityscapes, Photography, Travel

Exploring Beatrice, Nebraska

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During the week of September 2 – 7, Barb and I drove up to be with my Dad, his brother, and his four sisters – and we all met in the little town of Beatrice, Nebraska (which they grew up near). My previous post showed my favorite photos that I took on Labor Day, which was on Monday, Sept. 3rd. When we got to the motel that evening, Dad asked if I would like to go out with him and take some photos of the town. Of course, I jumped at the chance!. This post just shows about a dozen of my favorite photos that I took on the morning of September 4, 2012 in Beatrice, Nebraska.

We met in the breakfast area of the Holiday Inn Express just before 9:00 AM, and we didn’t have to go very far to take our first photo. The “Welcome to Beatrice” sign shown above was just outside, between us and the highway, US 77.

Turning around, I thought that the morning light looked really nice as it sort of wrapped around the curved base of the sign for the motel.

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Walking over to the base of the sign, I took the obligatory travel photo showing our “home away from home” for the week. That’s my Dad in the yellow “Wife Beater” T-shirt that seems to be his usual attire lately.

We got into my Honda CR-V and drove south on US 77 a few miles until we got to the Gage County Courthouse, which is located on the east side of US 77 (named North 6th Street) and north of Grant St. I took this photo from the west, looking east into the low morning sun, at 9:20 AM.

Walking east on Grant Street about 30 yards, gets you a nice view of the front of the courthouse building.

At the end of the front sidewalk, near where it meets the street, is a memorial to the veterans that have served our country in the armed forces.

I took the photo above (and all of the photos that morning) with my Olympus OM-D E-M5 camera mounted on top of my Gitzo GT1542T tripod. Whenever I use a tripod, I slow way down. I make sure that the camera is level, I study what is in the viewfinder, paying more attention to what is visible around the perimeter of the photo, and finally get the exposure settings the way that I want. I probably even rotated the circular polarizer on the front of the 12-50mm f/3.5-6.3 lens to get the reflections of the windows to what looked best at the time. I probably took 2 minutes to take this one photo.

After I pressed the button on the remote cable release, I stood up straight, and noticed the couple right behind me. I do not know how long they had been patiently waiting for me, but I was in their way. I said “excuse me”, and they replied in a very friendly “no problem”, and I immediately got out of their path on the sidewalk. They seemed somewhat interested in what I was doing.

I was struck by how differently this was than how it probably would have played out back home in Austin. 9 times out of 10, they would have simply walked around me, up the sidewalk – into my shot – and I’d simply have to wait a minute or two for them to vanish – and hope no one else would wander into my photo. Sometimes I wait a long time to get the photo that I want.

As we walked back to North 6th St., I saw what appeared to be a very large black bird sitting on top of a church spire a couple of blocks away. It had spread its wings out wide, and was warming them in the morning sun.

That was as “telephoto” as my 12-50mm lens would get, and this was one time that I wished I had my Canon camera and lenses with me.

We wanted to walk south one block on North 6th Street to get to High Street. Halfway through that block, as I looked west across the street, I noticed the moon was setting above the Post Office building. It was 9:36 AM.

Just south of High Street, I caught up with Dad in a parking lot. He was getting setup to photograph St. Joseph’s Catholic Church. Dad shoots a Canon 7D on a Manfrotto tripod. He is a fairly decent photographer!

Here are a couple of photos that I took of St. Joseph’s Catholic Church. This church is where all my relatives that live in Beatrice attend, and it is significant to me in that I have attended both of my grandparents (on my father’s side) in this church.

We didn’t think about it at the time but we probably should have gone inside and photographed the beautiful stained glass windows.

We walked back to our car in the Burger King parking lot, across from the county courthouse. We then drove 7 blocks south on North 6th Street, turned west on Court Street, and drove 4 blocks to North 2nd Street. We parked on North 2nd Street, directly across from the Gage County Historical Society and Museum.

The building is the former Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad Passenger Station. While riding around in the car later that week, my Aunt Virginia told a story of how she had boarded a train here sometime in the 1940’s to go the 40 miles to the “big city” of Lincoln, Nebraska. Evidently, it took a large portion of your day back then, if you drove to Lincoln in your car.

Just to the left (south) of the building is a nice looking red caboose, sitting under a windmill.

Across Court Street is a working grain elevator. It is between the railroad tracks and the Big Blue River.

The sun was getting rather harsh, and higher in the sky by 10:15 AM, but I still wanted to get an isolated photo of just the caboose. That is the shadow of the windmill cast upon the side of the caboose.

Although it is pretty “cliche”, I setup my tripod in the center of the railroad tracks, and took this photo looking north.

Walking back toward the front of the museum, I passed this decorative ironwork fence. I do not think that they have a problem with people just hanging around and sitting on their fence…

I have always thought it rather strange to see the Statue of Liberty out in the middle of the heart of America’s farmland, but here she is.

This copy of the Statue of Liberty was dedicated by the Boy Scouts of America in 1951.

I took 5 or 6 photos of this scene, and chose the one that had the American Flag outstretched best, the way I wanted it to be.

Across North 2nd Street, under a shaded structure, there are 4 different information signs that tell a lot about the heritage of Beatrice, Nebraska. Here is the one sign that told about the importance of the railroads to this area.

It was now 10:30 AM, the temperature was getting close to 90 degrees (32 C), and we needed to get back to the motel and get cleaned up so that we could get over to Aunt Jeanette’s for lunch before noon.

I realize that these are pretty much just “touristy” types of snapshots, but they do have a special meaning to me. I hope that you enjoyed seeing them.

Family, Flash, Photography, Travel

Welcome to Beatrice, Nebraska

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On Sunday, September 2, 2012, Barb and I drove to northern Oklahoma to spend the week with my Dad, his brother, and his four sisters that all met in the little town of Beatrice, Nebraska (which they grew up near). It was on Monday, which was the Labor Day holiday here in the U.S. when we finally made it to Nebraska. This short post just shows only 8 of my favorite photos from that day.

The Mid-West of the United States has experienced a severe drought this year, and we passed through several regions that looked like the entire crops were a failure, but when we stopped to take the photo above at the state line, it was sprinkling lightly.

The vast majority of the photos that I took on this trip were of my family members, but I will keep those to an absolute minimum here on my blog.

Beatrice, Nebraska is right at 780 miles (1255 km) from our home in Austin, Texas and the drive took us just under 13 hours total.

Here is a photo of my Aunt Jeanette and Uncle Jerry’s back yard. The lush, soft, green grass seems so much nicer than what is grown in yards back home in Texas. Love those tall trees, too!

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Aunt Jeanette seemed awfully proud and amused that they had brought the old outhouse from their previous home to their new home, which they moved into about a year and a half ago. I just had to get a few photos of that old outhouse…

I was just trying to get an semi-interesting composition of the wagon wheel with the outhouse, when this little squirrel decided that he needed to check out what I was up to!

I’m not sure when Aunt Jeanette acquired an old outhouse to be used as a yard decoration, but it had to have been at least 40 years ago, because they had it in their old yard when we used to visit them when I was just a kid in school.

Aunt Jeanette does a nice job of keeping the old outhouse decorated. And no, it has never been used for its original purpose (at least not for 50 years).

After my Dad’s brother, Uncle Jack, took us to dinner at a local restaurant, we went by to visit his new home at the Assisted Living Center.

Uncle Jack had moved there in the last couple of years, and so none of us had seen it yet. I took more than a dozen photos inside, and it is a very nice place. I have decided to only show this one of my Dad, Robert (on the left) and his only brother, Jack (on the right). Jack is 88 years old now!

For the photo above, I used my Olympus FL-600R flash unit on top of my Olympus OM-D E-M5 camera, and pivoted the head upward so that the light would bounce off of the relatively low white ceiling.

As we were leaving Uncle Jack’s place, and still standing around in the parking lot, I noticed that the sun was setting. I jogged across the parking lot to hastily snap this Sunflower Sunset photo. It seemed to symbolize the American Midwest as a very fitting close to a fun day of travelling.

Austin, Downtown, Events, Lighting, Photography, Sports, Univerisity of Texas

Texas Longhorns vs. Wyoming Cowboys Football Game

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On Sunday, September 2, 2012, Barb and I drove to northern Oklahoma to spend the week with my Dad, his brother, and his four sisters that all met in the little town of Beatrice, Nebraska (which they grew up near). I will probably make a post of that trip in a week or so. This is my explanation for why I didn’t have a new blog post last week.

The day before we left on our 780 mile (1255 km) drive, was the day of the first Texas Longhorn football game of the 2012 season. The University of Wyoming Cowboys were the visiting team.

I have had Longhorn football season tickets every year since 1984.  Every Saturday when the Texas Longhorns will be playing a football game, I go out to our front lawn to put out our spinner. Barb and I truly believe that the faster it spins, the more points the Longhorns will score in their game. 🙂

The University of Texas athletic department has a policy of “no professional cameras with interchangeable lenses”, which has always prevented me from taking a “real camera” – especially a DSLR. I have taken a camera to only a handful of games over the years. The last time I took a camera to a Texas football game, it was when Ohio State University came calling on September 9, 2006 for a night game (OSU won 24-7). The camera was a 4 Megapixel Olympus C-770 Ultra Zoom, and the auto white balance needed lots of color corrections later in Photoshop – due to the color of the stadium lights.

Now that I have the Olympus OM-D E-M5 camera, I thought that I would see if I could get into the stadium with it and a single 12-50mm f/3.5-6.3 “kit” lens. I did, and here’s my story.

We usually meet our friend Greg Ringer about 1hour and 40 minutes before the game at the UT intramural fields where we get on the bus that will take us to the University of Texas campus.

The bus lets us off about 4 blocks north of the stadium, where we have to walk past all of the tailgaters.

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Playing with my camera, I ran a few yards ahead, and waited to snap this photo of Greg Ringer and my wife, Barb, as they caught up with me.

The Darrell K. Royal – Texas Memorial Stadium is just ahead, to the south. Our seats are in the upper deck on the west side. That is at the top of the white concrete portion on the right side in this photo.

Before we go into the stadium, we go to the alumni center, which is directly across the street from the stadium.

I rarely drink beer, but I almost always have a Shiner Bock before a home football game.

While drinking our beers, I raised my camera to take a photo of the west side of the stadium, and Greg decided that the silhouette of his hand needed to be in the photo….

After a beer (or two), we cross the street to enter the stadium. They inspect every single bag that people carry in (no backpacks are allowed). I decided that I might look more innocent if I simply wore my camera around my neck, rather that appear to trying to hide it in Barb’s bag with our seat cushions. The kid at the gate did give this camera and the rather long lens a very thorough look, but he never said anything to me. I acted as if I didn’t realize that he might not allow me to enter with it. I didn’t linger around while they inspected Barb’s bag. I kept moving, and didn’t give the inspector any extra time to think about my camera. (If he didn’t let me in, I would miss at least the 1st quarter of the game while I took the round-trip bus ride back our car at the intramural fields.)

We take the escalators up to the 11th floor.

When we got to the 11th floor, we walked over the wall that overlooks the campus. The sun will be setting just to the left of this photo.

We are about 15 minutes earlier than our normal arrival time – as I wanted to allocate a little time to walk around to take a few photos. We walk to the south of the upper deck (which is on the right side of this photo), and look down onto the field from the northwest corner of the stadium.

The field, and our seats (in the upper deck to the right) are already in the shade, but the seats on the east side of the stadium are still in direct sunlight – a very high contrast scene, which is difficult to photograph nicely.

I zoom my kit lens out as far as it will go, just to see how large the players will look. I don’t expect Sports Illustrated will be calling me anytime soon….

Looking across, I take a photo of the seats on the east side, and make sure that I get the part that lists the years that the Longhorns were the National Champions. The shadow of the west side stadium lights are beginning to crawl up the seats on the east side.

Since it is still nearly 100 degrees Fahrenheit  (37.8 Celsius), we purchase 3 bottles of water. If you come down to the concession stand during the game, you can still see the game on the TV screen while you wait in line.

We head into the stadium, and walk up the 12 rows to our seats, where my crazy cousin Mike is already there. Mike is always early. Really early.

We are halfway up the upper deck, on the north 10 yard line. We never miss seeing a play, and even if we do, we can watch the replay on the giant TV in the south end zone. The clock under the TV is counting down the time until the game starts (26 minutes from now). The person in the center of the TV picture is Darrell Royal, who was the Longhorn football coach when they won the National Championship in 1963, 1969, and 1970. He was on a golf cart, waiting to be taken to the center of the field for the coin toss right before the start of the game.

Up until two photos ago, I had the ISO setting on the camera at 200, but now that everything of interest was in the shade, I changed it to 400 to gather one more stop of light.

I knew that the lighting was going to be changing on me a lot – from sunshine, to shade, to twilight, to stadium lights. Here is a look to the south from my seat that shows the evil stadium lights that I would have to deal with later.

Looking across the stadium, the shadow of the upper deck that I was seated in was quickly climbing up the seats on the east side.

People wear all sorts of strange items to show their support for the team.

Twenty minutes before the kick-off, the Longhorn Marching Band enters the stadium through the opening near the north end zone. Here they completely fill the end zone.

They begin to march, and quickly spread out and cover 50 yards of the field.

And then they get into the “UT emblem” formation.

When the band plays the Star Spangled Banner, our national anthem, we always sing out loud – and everyone else around us does too.

After the nation, the focus of attention changes to our state of Texas. We’ve got a huge state flag that they bring out and spin around before each and every game.

Next comes the school song, which is entitled “The Eyes of Texas”. The fans who are loyal to the school raise their arm and give the “Hook ’em Horns” sign while they sing the words to the song!

With less than 6 minutes before the game begins, the TV screen shows a live feed of the team as they exit the locker room area and prepare to enter the field. All of the players and the coaches swipe their fingers across the tip of one of the longhorns mounted on the wall near the door. (Does this look familiar?)

At the end of a rousing video on the giant TV, the team enters the stadium through a cloud of smoke. The first 3 players always carry the American and Texas flags.

At this point, the stadium is really rocking with excitement and the loud cheers!

The players run all the way to the north (opposite) end zone, where they kneel for a moment in prayer, if they choose to (and the vast majority of them do).

Time for the coin toss to determine which team will get the ball first, and which team will kick-off. They help Darrell Royal shuffle from the golf cart to the center of the field for the coin toss.

Play ball!  The football season is finally under way. Life is good!

As you can see, our seats are on the northern 10 yard line, but we see the entire field just fine.

Cousin Mike sits on the aisle. People walking up and down the stairs in the aisle only block our view of the extreme corner of the south end zone, but only when we are sitting down.

(Honey, Greg Ringer wanted me to take that photo. No, he double-dared me to. Really…)

Half way up the seats in the seats above the northern end zone, they list the years that Texas won the old Southwest Conference, which was dissolved when the Big 12 Conference was formed in 1996.

By now the shadow of the upper deck has climbed almost to the top of the seats on the east side.

Since the light is diminishing in intensity, I change the ISO setting on the camera to 640.

There is still some indirect sunlight coming from the sky, but the evil stadium lights are contributing a larger percentage of the light available.

I cannot see the sunset occurring behind me, but the view to the east is rather pretty, so I take a photo of it.

And again.

Twenty minutes later, the sun had pretty much set, and only the evil stadium lights were providing the illumination needed by the players, and my camera. I performed a custom white balance in the camera, and then took a photo of my ColorChecker Passport.

Here is a photo of Texas kicking an extra point after a touchdown.

At this point, I had increased the ISO setting to 800.

Across the way, I noticed that the moon was rising above the seats on the east side, but it was hiding behind the clouds. Here it finally poked out for just a little while.

Half time. The first band onto the field during half time is from the visiting school – if they bring one. The University of Wyoming marching band made the 1044 mile trip (1680 km).

Then comes “The Showband of the Southwest” – The Texas Longhorn Band.

Here they are, in the center of the field.

The next three photos are a sequence from the same original formation, where they write a cursive “Texas” on the field.

When the half time show is over, it’s time for the players to return from the locker room, which of course is done to great fanfare.

After half time, I changed the ISO setting to 1000.

Here was a play where the ball was on the field directly in front of us. Two players later, the Longhorns scored another touchdown.

By 9:18 PM, the moon had made it above the clouds on the horizon. I used the electronic viewfinder to know that an Exposure Compensation of -1 1/3 stops was needed.

Here’s a photo from sometime early in the 4th quarter, when Wyoming was on offense.

After the game, which Texas won by a score of 37 – 17, the players meet at the middle of the field to shake hands.

Moments later, the players head over to the north end zone, directly in front of the students and the band, and the band proceeds to play the school song, “The Eyes of Texas” for the last time of the evening.

Whenever the Longhorns win by more than 10 points or so, many of the fans leave before the end of the game (to avoid the traffic). We almost always stay until the very end – no matter what the score. (I can only remember leaving early twice in 28 years.)

I played with my camera while on the elevator ride down, and decided that I needed to bump up the ISO to 1600, so that I could keep the shutter speed at 1/25 th of a second. I hoped that the in-body image stabilization would do its magic – and it did.

After walking the 4 blocks back to where the bus let us off, we get into the short line to board the bus for the ride back to the intramural fields. This next photo was hand held with the shutter open for 1/5 th of a second.

This last photo, of the bus before our bus, was taken with the shutter open for 1/8 th of a second. That is still remarkable to me, as I could never do that with my Canon 5D Mark II camera!

I know that this story was very long, with a LOT of photos, so I tried to keep the number of words to a minimum. I thought about splitting it into 2 or 3 separate blog posts, but decided this was a story that would be hurt by doing so. I doubt that very many people have actually made it this far, but for those of you who did, I thank you for reading my blog!

Austin, CowParade Austin, Photography, Uncategorized

CowParade Austin Calendar – September – Partying with Pi-COW-sso

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If you have my 2012 CowParade Austin calendar, you probably flipped over to September, saw a very colorful cow, and headed on over to my blog site to see what the story is with the cow named Partying with Pi-COW-sso, which was painted by Allison Gregory.

I count 14 artists that painted 2 cows, no artist painted 3 cows, and Allison Gregory was the only artist to paint 4 cows! I thought I’d use this opportunity to show all 4 of her beautiful cows in this one post. As you will soon see, Allison not only produced in quantity, she also excelled in quality!

You can visit Allison’s web site here, and you can see what she has to say about her herd of cows here.

Besides at the Preview Party in late July 2011, the first time that Dad and I found one of Allison’s cows on public display, it was on the very hot morning of August 20, 2011. It was a cow named Partying with Pi-COW-sso, and it was on display of the front lawn of the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum.

Obviously this cow’s name involves a play on words involving the famous artist Pablo Picasso (1881 – 1973).

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This was the same bright, direct sunlight that I talked about in my previous post about the cow named Cowmaro.

I really liked the bright colors of this cow, but didn’t like how the harsh mid-day Texas sun was washing out those colors.

The next time we found one of Allison’s cows was 2 weeks later, on September 3, 2011. We found 2 of them that morning. The first one was named A MOO-sical MOO-saic.

This was one of only a handful of cows in the entire herd that were in the laying down position.

This colorful cow was located on the west side of Congress Avenue, just south of 6th Street, and at the front entrance of One American Center

Even at 9:35 AM, the Texas sun was wreaking havoc with my attempts to photograph the left side of this cow. When I went around to the cow’s right side, it was in the shadows, so I put on my external speedlite and took this photo.

I would have loved to had the opportunity that Kirk Tuck had to photograph a cow such as this using studio strobes and white seamless background. All of the specular highlights from the reflections on this cow really do an injustice to Allison’s work of art.

About 40 minutes later, we found Allison’s cow named “A Psy-COW-delic COW-ssword Puzzle”.

There is a discrepancy in how this cow’s name appears on the plaque underneath the cow, and how Allison spells it on her web site. The plaque uses the word “Crossword”, but her web spells it “COW-ssword”. I’ll assume that the plaque is incorrect.

This cow was located at 419 Colorado St. – at Emmis Radio (KBPA).

Wedging myself right up against the corner of the building, and looking at the cow from the other side, the bright background was incredibly bright. I dialed down the exposure compensation by 1 full stop, and took the next photo. I still had to use some Highlight Recovery (+20 in Lightroom 3) to somewhat tame the very bright background.

The next Saturday morning, September 10, 2011, about 10:30 AM, we found Allison’s cow named “MOO-sy In the Sky with Diamonds”. (I’m sure that’s a play on words from the title of a Beatles song from their psychedelic era.)

This cow was located at East 1st Street & San Jacinto Blvd. – at front entrance to The Four Seasons Hotel. There were a lot of cars, patrons, and bell hops between this cow and the front entrance, which made it difficult to get a photo of this cow without distracting cars or people behind it. I sort of got out in the drive between 2 cars and took this photo with a very bright background. I did use the Adjustment Brush to bring down the exposure by ¾ of a stop on the white car and pavement to the right of the cow.

After the car in front of me moved on, I was able to move a few feet to my right to get this photo with a somewhat more pleasing background. I still had to resort to using the Adjustment Brush to reduce the exposure of much of the bright pavement behind the cow by 4/5 of a stop.

After standing in the direct, hot Texas sun for about 4 minutes, I finally had a very brief moment where there were no people, and only the front of one car protruding into the background. This was my only shot from this side of the cow that was worth keeping.

It was a week later, on September 17, 2011 when we once again ran into Partying with Pi-COW-sso at the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum.

This time the light was much more favorable. Even though it was 11:05 AM, it was overcast, and so the sunlight was very diffused. Here you can see the base of the large Texas Star behind the cow. This is the photo that I used for “Miss September” in my CowParade Austin 2012 calendar.

As you can see, Allison Gregory uses bright, bold colors. Her use of pseudo-psycheledic patterns and colors really seem to draw me in – about like a moth attracted to a porch light. I personally thought that all 4 of her cows were outstanding works of art!

Thank you for reading my blog. While I know that I am bouncing randomly from subject-to-subject in what my blog posts are about, I would really appreciate hearing from you to find out what you think works well for me, and what you think I should do less of. Just click in the “Leave a Reply” link immediately below (or on the cartoonish “word bubble” way back up at the top of the post – if there is a number in that “word bubble” it indicates how many readers have already left a comment).

Equipment, Photography

Size Comparison: Olympus OM-D E-M5 vs. Canon 5D Mark II

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My last several posts, except for the CowParade Austin cows, have shown photographs that I have taken with my Olympus OM-D E-M5 camera that I acquired in late May, right before Barb and I went to Ruidoso, NM for a week vacation.

This past Saturday morning I went to the Austin Shutterbug Club workshop on macro photography, and we were told to bring a camera, tripod, flash, and a macro lens (if you had one). I decided to bring my new little Olympus system with me.

Right before the workshop was to start, one of the other members, Jane, walked over and asked me if that was the Olympus camera that I had written about in my blog. I said well yes it was, and I took the camera off of my tripod and handed it to her to look at.

Jane had previously commented on Facebook how sharp the images from this camera had been, and she asked about that. I said that the amount of sharpening that I had done in post processing was basically just the default amount that Adobe Lightroom gives to this camera model.

Other than the sharpening, Jane was completely taken by surprise by the size of this camera. It was much, much smaller than she had anticipated, and I believe that she said “but it’s so small” at least three times during our brief conversation.

That’s when it hit me that most Nikon and Canon DSLR shooters hadn’t yet realized what these new mirrorless interchangeble cameras were all about. I know that I personally hadn’t given them even a glancing look before I had read Kirk Tuck’s blog about a year ago, when he made me aware of the Olympus PEN cameras, but he also stressed that the Electronic View Finder (EVF) was a big part of the “magic” that these cameras provided.

I have been firmly entrenched in the Canon 5D system for 6 years now (first the 5D, then the 5D Mark II). I have slowly acquired a collection of 8 lenses, 5 Speedlites, and all sorts of other accessories that go along with it. I have always liked these full-frame cameras in every respect, except for when Barb and I travel on vacation. Taking the camera, just a couple of lenses, and a tripod was still a significant amount of gear to pack and haul around.

In an effort to “lighten up”, I bought a Canon PowerShot G11 in the spring of 2010, and was going to see how well it could deliver on a vacation to Niagara Falls. Unfortunately, that camera never made it to Niagara Falls. It was stolen at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago. Good thing that I had also brought my Canon 5D Mark II, three zoom lenses, and my tripod.

We later went to a friend’s 50th birthday party in Las Vegas in November 2010, and I knew that the casinos wouldn’t allow a big DSLR inside (even if I promised that I wasn’t going to take any photos), so I went without any camera at all. I saw so many fascinating photographic subjects while I was there that I vowed never to leave town without a camera again. When I got home, I ordered a replacement for the stolen camera; a Canon PowerShot G12.

I never have liked that camera. I don’t really know why. There are several reasons, but they all seem to distill down to the fact that it is inferior in every respect to the 5D Mark II. I used it only when I went somewhere that I didn’t think a big DSLR would be allowed (like on the tour of the Monrcrief-Neuhaus  Athletic Center).

Anyway, I finally solved my travel camera problem this past May, when I bought my Olympus OM-D E-M5 camera, four lenses, an external flash, and a small Gitzo GT1542T Traveller tripod.

Now here’s the big surprise – to me, anyway. This little camera system has quickly become my camera of choice. It’s because of the size and weight. The Canon 5D Mark II takes a slightly better photo, but you could never tell that by the size (resolution) of the photos that I post here on the web.

I do still use the Canon 5D Mark II for all of my commercial work. (But admittedly that is only about once a month). But for everything else, the Olympus OM-D E-M5 is “good enough” in image quality at 16 Megapixels. It is smaller, lighter weight, and quite frankly, more fun to use.

Now I have deviated somewhat from my original purpose of writing this blog post. Like Jane, and myself until recently, I don’t think a lot of “serious amateur” photographers, fully realize what’s going on with these physically small, mirrorless interchangeable lens cameras popping up everywhere.

I am not going to try to convince anyone of anything in this post, but I do want to clearly show the difference in size between a full-frame DSLR camera and lenses to a “functionally equivalent” mirrorless interchangebale lens camera, specifically my Olympus OM-D E-M5.

Before anyone leaves flaming comments, yes I realize the DSLR can produce a higher resolution photo – but not by a huge margin. And yes, the full-frame Canon can produce a shallower depth-of-field at the same aperture setting. But if you’ve looked at the photos in my previous blog posts, you will clearly see that the Olympus can easily blur the background due to depth-of-field.

Other than that, the lens comparisons that I will show are indeed very, very close to each other. All that I am trying to show is the difference in the physical size, and you can infer the weight difference.

I have already written way too many words about this! Here are a few more photos that show the difference in size between the camera bodies themselves.

Reminder: You can always view any photo at a larger size by just clicking on it. You will then need to use your browser’s “Back Button” to return to my story.

Note that in the next photo that I placed the Olympus slightly in front of the Canon, which make it appear larger, due to the perspective of the lens on the camera taking this photo.

In the next photo you can see the buttons on the back of the camera. Many reviewers on the internet feel that they are too small and too close together. I don’t feel that way at all. It is a bit awkward to get my thumb to hit the Play button, to the left of the Fn1 button, but I don’t need to press it very often. I do think that the buttons have a squishy or spongy feel, that I am not crazy about, but I do not have any trouble using any of them.

You can see just how much thinner the little Olympus is.

And here’s a nice feature that the Olympus has over the Canon – the OLED screen on the back tilts up about 75 degrees, as shown here, and it can also be tilted 45 degrees downward (handy when you want to hold the camera way above your head to shoot over the crowd).

In the next photo, I show the two “kit lenses”. For all practical purposes, they give me equivalent results. The Olympus lens is a 12-50mm f/3.5-6.3, which is equivalent to a 24-100mm f/3.5-6.3 on a full-frame camera. The Canon lens is a 24-105mm f/4.0, and of course I use it on a full-frame 5D Mark II. The Olympus has a wider aperture when the lens is zoomed to wide-angle, but it has a smaller aperture (f/6.3) when zoomed out to 50mm. I prefer the Canon’s constant aperture, but have always wished it were f/2.8 instead of f/4.0 – but to do that, the lens would have an even larger diameter!

And here you can see the difference in length and diameter between these two functionally equivalent lenses.

Here are the same two lenses mounted onto the cameras.

Remember that the object in front will appear larger than the object behind it in the photo.

And finally, here they are as I normally would use them: complete with lens hoods, and plates attached to the cameras for mounting them on tripods. The Canon has an L-plate, so that I can mount it in either landscape or portrait orientation without having to reposition my tripod ball head. The Olympus just has a base plate that runs the entire length of the camera. I like the ones made by a company named Really Right Stuff.

Here are a couple of prime (non-zoom) wide-angle lenses. The Canon lens is a 24mm f/1.4, while the Olympus is a 12mm f/2.0 (which is 24mm equivalent on full-frame).

Here I just stand them up, with the camera mount end facing up.

Put on the lens hoods, and mount them on the cameras.

By the way, here is my Behind the Scenes (BTS) photo. I used the Olympus with the 12-50mm lens to take this photo of the Canon G12 camera that I used to take all of the other photos in this post. I was using all natural light coming in from a large window to my right. I did use the G12 in Manual mode, and used my Sekonic light meter to tell me what to set the aperture, shutter, and ISO to on the little G12. I still had to add +1 stop of exposure to ALL of the photos in Lightroom for this post. Just another reason why that G12 and I don’t get along very well…

Now here are a couple of “identical” lenses. The Canon is a 50mm f/1.4, while the Panasonic is a 25mm f/1.4 (which is exactly equivalent). Yes, the Panasonic and Olympus Micro-Four Thirds lenses are completely interchangeable between their cameras. Both of these lenses are very sharp and produce excellent photos. Canon does have a 50mm f/1.2 lens, but it costs a fortune, and this one leaves nothing for me to desire!

Here they are with lens hoods and mounted on the camera bodies.

Now if I have ever taken your portrait, there is a very good chance that I used the lens on the left in this next photo. It is the Canon 85mm f/1.8 lens. On the right is the Olympus 45mm f/1.8 lens (which is equivalent to 90mm f/1.8). Like the previous two lenses, these lenses are extremely sharp and give great results!

Here they are mounted to the cameras. Note that I have removed the Really Right Stuff plates from the two cameras.

Let’s add the lens hoods.

Speaking of lens hoods, this is an area where Canon is definitely better than either Olympus or Panasonic. The Canon lens hoods are much deeper, so they function better. The Canon lens hoods can all be “reverse mounted” (turned around), while none of the Olympus or Panasonic lens hoods can do that. This makes them much easier to store in your camera bag. Finally, Canon provides the lens hood with the L-series of lenses (those with the red ring around them near the end), but even on the non-L lenses they are not terrible expensive. Panasonic did include the lens hood with the 25mm f/1.4 lens. But Olympus doesn’t include a lens hood with any of the 3 lenses of theirs that I have, and they are very expensive. On top of that, I ordered two of my lens hoods directly from Olympus, and they took 9 weeks to deliver them to me.

While I had those two lens hoods, that could keep the camera supported upright, I added the external flash units to both cameras.

Neither of these two cameras have a built-in pop-up flash, although the Olympus does come with a very weak removable “pop-up equivalent”. The Canon 580 EX II flash unit is significantly more powerful, in terms of the amount of light that it can produce, over the Olympus FL-600R flash unit. In all other respects, they both seem to have pretty much the same amount of functionality and features.

In the next photo, I show the macro lenses that I have. The Canon is a 100mm f/2.8, while the Olympus is the same 12-50mm f/3.5-6.3 that I showed earlier. Huh? What’s up with that?

Well, the Olympus lens also includes a very ingenious mechanism, where you push the button on the side of the lens, and then slide the zoom ring forward until it “clicks”. That puts it into a 43mm macro (86mm equivalent). The Canon is capable of capturing a life size, 1x magnification image, while the Olympus only states that it can then focus down to 0.66 foot (7.92 inches, or 20.1 cm), and does not state its maximum magnification capability.

I thought it interesting that the Canon 100mm macro lens seemed to be about equal in three dimensional volume as the Olympus lens WITH the camera attached.

And here are both macro lenses, with lens hoods and cameras attached.

Here are 6 of the 9 lenses that I have shown earlier (I forgot to include the 45mm Olympus and the 85mm Canon – I never intended to put the Canon 100 macro in). The Micro-Four Thirds lenses are in the front, while the Canon EF lenses are in the back.

It is pretty easy to see that when you drop in 3 or 4 lenses into a camera bag, and carry it around on your shoulder for several hours, the difference in weight quickly becomes significant. It forces you to pare down the full size lenses, while there is very little penalty to “bring the whole set” of the Micro-Four Thirds lenses…

And also worth noting is that I usually also carry a tripod when I go out shooting. Now that I have a smaller, lighter camera, with lighter lenses, I can use a much lighter tripod too!

Here the Canon 5D Mark II, with 24-105mm f/4.0 lens is perched atop a Gitzo G1327 Studex carbon fiber tripod, with a Really Right Stuff BH-55 ball head with B2-AS II lever release clamp holding the B5D2-L plate screwed into the base of the camera.

The Olympus OM-D E-M5, with 12-50mm f/3.5-6.3 lens is perched atop a Gitzo GT1542T Series 1 carbon fiber tripod, with a Really Right Stuff BH-30 ball head with LR clamp holding the BOEM5 plate screwed into the base of the camera.

This little Gitzo GT1542T tripod is sturdy enough to comfortably hold the Canon camera and lens, it folds up to only 16.7 inches (42.4 cm), and only weighs 2.2 lb (1 kg). Now THAT will easily fit into my suitcase.

So it took me a few years to come up with my “travel camera system”, but as you can see, I finally found something that I am very happy with!

Thank you for reading my blog.