This happened a lot. My photo opportunity window with these things were about 5-10 seconds, 15 at max if I was really lucky. Not much time to manual focus (because of the tiny size of the critters) and snap the picture but I managed it, somehow.

A nice touch to these photos, which was completely unintentional, is the dark background. This happened because the sun was beaming directly on them and they were showing up as little white pellets so after I turn the exposure down and speed the shutter speed up, that was the result. This was using the 14-150mm M.ZUIKO lens with the Olympus E-PL1

As always, click the image for a larger version. (opens Flickr in a new window)

I’ve recently got my hands on the Olympus 14-150mm M.ZUIKO Micro 4/3 camera lens for the Olympus PEN series of cameras. The lens is being used on the Olympus E-PL1 and so all video/photo content will have been produced using this badass camera & lens unless otherwise stated.

To start, I’d like to point out that I’m not a professional photographer (as many of you will know), but I am picking it up quickly as a hobby. With that in mind, I’m not going to get into all the nitty gritty details that only a camera/photography expert will understand but I will talk about it as the general consumer and technology lover.

Here we go! This lens is a 14-150mm zoom lens, however, as the camera it’s being applied to is of the Micro 4/3 system and is not a full frame (35mm) sensor, we can effectively double the focal length on each lens, making this lens the equivalent to a 28-300mm zoom lens.

Size?

It’s tiny. Compared to an actual 300mm zoom lens, Olympus has done a cracking job of fitting it all into such a nice package. Obviously it is bigger than their compactable 14-42mm kit lens that comes with the camera, in fact, it’s almost double the size when closed, but still not too big at all. Here’s a couple of photos I took on my phone.

It’s a good size and it’s firmly made. It does have a slight plastic feel to it, but it still feels very solid, even at full zoom there is very little give on the tube. The zoom ring itself is quite firm. I personally like it like that so it doesn’t accidentally move if slightly knocked or shook. It also means that there is no zoom creep (when the lens unexpectedly starts to “fall” out of itself when you’re walking around with it on a strap or such. This tends to happen to larger zoom lenses).

A con on the lens being as big as it is in comparison to the camera, and more importantly, the positioning of the cameras flash is that when the lens is closed, it can cause a shadow. Allow me to show you with a photo taken just under 2 meters away from the wall.

This is really only  a minor flaw and it only occurs when no zoom at all is applied, but it’s seemingly unavoidable in the design of the lens and an external flash with use of the E-PL1′s hot-shoe should rectify the problem if you’re into flash photography.

Lens Performance.

This lens is advertised as a good video lens for this camera due to the highly reduced auto focus noise (which is very noticeable on videos with the 14-42mm kit lens). It has a very nice 10.7x optical zoom, but it doesn’t have in-built image stabilisation and though the PEN bodies do (in-built), Panasonic owners will have to use a tripod.

To give a direct comparison between the 14-42mm and 14-150mm lens, I’ve prepared a couple of videos that will (hopefully) show you the difference in zoom length/noise, autofocus noise and the autofocus speed between the two lenses [First Video]. The second video shows focusing from a close object to afar and back with the lens at full extension.

As for image quality; it’s very good. It copes better in low light conditions over the 14-42mm and I think it looks better at a higher ISO. I’ve compiled a set on Flickr here where you can see eight test images ranging from ISO100-3200. It’s important to point out that these were taken in fairly low light conditions indoors with only natural light on a very cloudy day.

Now, due to the lens being a “compact” super zoom, it makes a great lens for street photography or just catching candid photos in general. The left image is outdoors so the light was a lot better than the image on the right, which was taken indoors from another room with a small hallway between.

You can start to see it’s versatility for indoor, badly lit, fun shots as well as in well lit areas.

The next photos are 100% crops. They are taken of the same subject at close range using both ends of the zoom with no use of tripod and using manual focus to obtain the lens’ closest point to the subject.

Firstly; a mouldy pear being eaten by red ants. Here are thumbnails of the original images so you can get a rough idea of the distance.

Pear – No Zoom:

Pear – Full Zoom:

Now for the relaxingly scented flower known as Lavender:

Flower – No Zoom:

Flower – Full Zoom:

The close up image quality is good. It’s not macro good, but for a zoom lens, this is not disappointing at all, especially for quick snaps in the garden. Studio based photography would likely come out a hella lot crisp.

General Usage & Overall Thoughts

Because of the lens’ size, people who buy into the PEN’s for their compact design may not consider it, however, the 14-150mm (28-300mm equivalent) is very small for the type of lens it is and I’ve had no problems going out and about shooting with it. The significant zoom on this lens makes framing shots and close ups extremely easy and would be perfect for the street photographer to the family man or the guy that just wants a do-it-all camera to hand at all times.

The manual focus ring on the lens rotates very, very smoothly and using it is easy to get your focus just right quickly, though saying that, a viewfinder may shave a few seconds off the job with it’s added precision and stability.

Overall, it feels good to hold and to use. If you had to choose one lens for your camera, this should definitely be it as it’s convenient and highly versatile. Of course you may need to upgrade your carry case to accommodate the lens and if size isn’t an issue whatsoever it makes the perfect upgrade to the 14-42mm lens. No doubt there will be more photos, videos and artwork from me produced with this lens so I’ll post them up as and when they happen. If you want to be the first to see the photos that I take you can add me as a contact on Flickr or you can follow my Tweets.

I hope this has cleared a lot of stuff up for anyone thinking of purchasing this lens. I very much recommend it to anyone with an Olympus PEN body, but not so much to the Panasonic users PURELY because of the IS.

If you have any questions or feel I have skipped over an area of importance in this review – feel free to comment below.

UPDATE: Now for the FUN STUFF!

Check out a moon shot with this lens here.

Check out a little nature video I made here.

Check out some Hoverfly action shots with full zoom and a fast shutter speed here. (These are my favorite ones so far)

EDIT: As you may have noticed (or not), I messed up and spelt “Unusual”, “Unusal”. Never mind. Cheers, Photoshop.

I love Photoshop and I’m getting into this Photography lark quite a bit so I may take try to make some pieces like this. It doesn’t compare, but my Self Portrait attempt, it seems (due to the cutting out of elements and heavy post processing photo manipulation) is a very small scale version of this manipulative photography. I have tried this before for a few things, but half the techniques I know now, I didn’t back then. All I need is some more equipment and an idea for a shoot, then maybe people will be blogging about my photography too!

Check out more of his work here, or click the images above.

An amazingly shot and edited piece of film/art. Directed by Dan and features a cameo of “Boy Meets World” actor Rider Strong. Everything about this is pretty intense and the calming music only adds to it.

Of course, with no natural or studio lights, I could only hope to learn technique rather than be left with a kick-ass final image. I had a tripod, a chair, a blank wall, a standard lamp (which you can see in my glasses) and the room’s ordinary ceiling light. I also had my trusty Olympus PEN.

This is the image I captured with manual focus and the 2 second timer:

This is what using some basic and intermediate photoshopping techniques achieved:

But then I got bored of being on the computer so I went and hung out with some girls. I was excluded.

I’m pretty happy with my results so I’m going to publish my scores here.

After exporting it as a GIF file, thus the lack of photo quality, here is the end product. It’s not the best attempt, but i’m planning on doing some better ones soon.

You may have recently seen a Stop Motion I made with the Olympus PEN E-PL1 of the Monopoly Car driving around the game board. Well so did Olympus and in turn have asked me to write a “How-To” guide to making a stop motion video.

The video above was my second attempt at making a stop motion with my PEN. My inspiration came from Patrick Boivin, who, to me, is the master of epic stop motions. However, apart from his general skill and awesome film direction, he uses green screens, die-hard equipment set ups, expensive software and extensive post video processing (such as adding camera shake, focal blur, shadows and reflection etc.

I didn’t have the time or budget to compete with this. In fact, I was bored and just wanted to have a bit of fun with my camera.

It was about 2am when I decided to make the stop motion in my bedroom; I didn’t have many toys to feature but I came across my Monopoly set and started to play around.

Here is a list of the equipment I used:

• Monopoly Board
• Monopoly Car
• Bedside Lamp
• Budget Mini Tripod
• Olympus PEN E-PL1 (14-42mm kit lens)
• Stop Motion Software (iStopMotion; to compile photos)
• Video Editing Software
• Laptop
• Spare Time & Creativity

To get started, there are a few technical things to get out of the way. The main difference between an OK stop motion and a GREAT one is the FPS (Frames Per Second). You want to have at least 25-30 FPS i.e 25-30 photos for each second of your final video. This sounds like a lot of photos, and it is, but it’s worth it for a smooth video flow and not a jolty slideshow of consecutive photographs.

Secondly, due to the amount of photos you’re going to take, you may want to reduce the size of your photos on your camera. For a 1080p video, it only has to be 1080 pixels wide. I learned the hard way, uploading 292 photos at 5-6MB each. Not only does this leave you waiting around on the first upload from camera to computer, but then from computer to software and from software to video export.

This is easily achievable on the E-PL1, make sure you’re using the [P]rogram, [M]anual, [S]hutter or [A]perture setting – anything other than iAuto: Press OK > Then scroll up/down to picture size/quality (It should have the letter L, M or S in a white square with F or N next to that) > Press Left or Right to something like MF (Medium Size / Fine Quality) and press OK.

Lastly, a quick word about lighting. I used only a small positionable lamp with the main light in the room on. This wasn’t ideal but it was all I had so if viable you should sort out the best possible lighting without having to rely on daylight. The Sun moves across the sky making objects cast differently positioned shadows throughout the day – this could make your finished stop motion look inconsistent.

OKAY! Now we have that out of the way, here’s the fun part! Once you’ve set up your scene and your main character/moving object try setting the camera up to shoot some really cool, abstract and unconventional angles; this is a good time to play around with the Live View and some of the settings like the Aperture, Shutter Speed and ISO.

When that’s sorted and you have everything where you want it and you know what’s going to happen in your scene, it’s time to start snapping pictures. The concept is very simple:

Take a picture > slightly move the object(s) > take another picture > slightly move the object(s) again > repeat.

REMEMBER: We’re taking 30 photos for 1 second of video footage; think where you want your object(s) to be in the video in 1 second and move object(s) accordingly.

If you want to step it up a notch, like myself; set the camera to MF (Manual Focus), and start to blur the scene and then focus again by slowly turning the focal ring on the lens while taking pictures and moving the object(s). This adds a subtle effect of a video camera focusing on the subject. It looks more professional and adds added detail to your video that other stop motions lack. You could also move the camera with the object (like I did with the side view of the car) to make the background move making your object seem like it’s going really fast. You can even pan the camera around an object while it’s moving. Play about with different film techniques and apply it to your stop motion. Keep in mind that EVERYTHING is done with small movements, everything.

Move the object(s) > move the camera > focus a tiny bit more > take a picture > repeat.

At first it will seem tedious and slow. You will get the hang of it and you will get faster. I took 360 photos for 12 seconds of video footage in roughly 15 minutes and on one battery charge.

Set yourself up a few scenes so it gives you a chance to change camera position – this will give add camera cuts keeping peoples attention and making the video look really nice. If you’re using a certain toy that may fall over, you can use plaster-scene or other moldable clay to keep it’s balance and hold difficult positions, but you will have to edit that out with photo-manipulation software afterwards, before you compile the images together.

When you’ve got a substantial amount of quality photos, you’re going to want to put them together. Go ahead and upload them into an easily accessible folder on you computer, then once they’re up there, set up your image compiling software (iStopMotion) to match your FPS and drag and drop the photos into iStopMotion.

You can use an array of software to do this for you, but I found the most lightweight and easiest to use was iStopMotion. You have to pay for it, but you can get a trial (shareware) version for free. If not, then use a search engine to track down any free (open-source) software laying about. Search for something like “Free Stop Motion Software” and any variations on that.

Do that and then export them into a video format of your choice and voila! You have made a basic stop motion video. If you wish to add sound effects and/or music to your video (which I highly suggest you do as it adds impact and emotion), open up your favorite video-editing software, import the video and match music and sound effects to your video.

There are plenty of “Free FX/Sounds” websites with, you guessed it, free downloadable sounds and effects, so search for them on a search engine as well. You may even find royalty free music to put in the background of your video for ambience.

Before you export it from the video-editing software, now would be a good time to change the screen size, if you want to, to widescreen, or make it smaller in size and more suitable for YouTube or mobile devices. This would normally be found in the document set up, settings or preferences. There are so many other things you can tweak too to make your movie visually perfect in the video-editing software but I’m not even going to try and mention them all. But as long as your photography now moves, then I’m happy.

To conclude, the art to a good stop motion is high FPS (25-30), a lot of TINY movements with the camera, character, object(s) [and depth of field] before every photo and of course, well lit and good photography. But more importantly than all of that:

A GOOD STORY!

Now go out there and experiment. It doesn’t matter if it’s bad the first few times. If you don’t fail, you won’t learn and the more you practice, the better you will be. It’s common sense!

If this has inspired you to make a stop motion, please share it with me, I would love to see it and I’ll post a link to it on this very post!

They also sent me a few photo’s of Jacqui Ainsley (the girl in the video) from the shoot looking pretty damn fine. It would be a shame to waste them so here they are below.

Check out more info over on The Cheese Grater’s post!