R
Ranger 9
Guest
Maybe not, but it's my first Micro Four Thirds magazine cover! (see attachment.)
Okay, it's just a regional membership magazine (for Joslyn Art Museum of Omaha, Nebraska) but hey, I'll take any brushes with fame I can get. Besides, it interested me that of the motley assortment of equipment I own, the Pana G1 and 14-45 lens turned out to be the best answer for doing what amounted to a batch of flat-copy photos.
I wrote a post about the process for my blog, but the basic constraints were these:
-- I was photographing about a dozen artworks of varying sizes;
-- We were working in a closed-off gallery, so the setup needed to be simple, portable, and quick to use;
-- The PR director wanted to see each photo after I shot it, so she would know what would be available for the magazine layout.
How the G1/14-45 combo wound up getting chosen:
-- A true macro lens would have been the obvious choice, but I don't own one;
-- The varying sizes of subjects meant a zoom would let me work faster;
-- The G1's articulating viewfinder would make it easy for the PR director to check each shot without my having to remove the camera from the tripod.
So I picked the G1 combo over my only other alternative, my old 24-70/2.8 Sigma on a Nikon D300 body... partly for the G1's articulated LCD and partly because I suspected the Pana 14-45 would do better than the Sigma in terms of sharpness and contrast.
Lacking a comparison test I can't say for sure that was correct, but I certainly didn't have any complaints about the final files. Several of the artworks had strong gridlike design elements, so I was pleasantly surprised at how well the 14-45 and post-processing software controlled linear distortions. I was impressed at the consistency of sharpness, too: in the original version of the attached file, the canvas texture is crisp and uniform from center to corners, which is not what we expected from zoom lenses in the bad old days!
So, I take this experience as yet another example showing that the G1 is a legitimately serious camera, and the 14-45 is several cuts above the typical "kit lens." Of course we already have plenty of evidence of this, but I figure another example never hurts...
Okay, it's just a regional membership magazine (for Joslyn Art Museum of Omaha, Nebraska) but hey, I'll take any brushes with fame I can get. Besides, it interested me that of the motley assortment of equipment I own, the Pana G1 and 14-45 lens turned out to be the best answer for doing what amounted to a batch of flat-copy photos.
I wrote a post about the process for my blog, but the basic constraints were these:
-- I was photographing about a dozen artworks of varying sizes;
-- We were working in a closed-off gallery, so the setup needed to be simple, portable, and quick to use;
-- The PR director wanted to see each photo after I shot it, so she would know what would be available for the magazine layout.
How the G1/14-45 combo wound up getting chosen:
-- A true macro lens would have been the obvious choice, but I don't own one;
-- The varying sizes of subjects meant a zoom would let me work faster;
-- The G1's articulating viewfinder would make it easy for the PR director to check each shot without my having to remove the camera from the tripod.
So I picked the G1 combo over my only other alternative, my old 24-70/2.8 Sigma on a Nikon D300 body... partly for the G1's articulated LCD and partly because I suspected the Pana 14-45 would do better than the Sigma in terms of sharpness and contrast.
Lacking a comparison test I can't say for sure that was correct, but I certainly didn't have any complaints about the final files. Several of the artworks had strong gridlike design elements, so I was pleasantly surprised at how well the 14-45 and post-processing software controlled linear distortions. I was impressed at the consistency of sharpness, too: in the original version of the attached file, the canvas texture is crisp and uniform from center to corners, which is not what we expected from zoom lenses in the bad old days!
So, I take this experience as yet another example showing that the G1 is a legitimately serious camera, and the 14-45 is several cuts above the typical "kit lens." Of course we already have plenty of evidence of this, but I figure another example never hurts...
