Day 5

Wow. This is a very nice street portrait.

Additional notes: This may well have been better in b&w, but I wanted to test the theory I've seen that b&w is a bit of a fad when street shooting, so set the camera to auto enhance. Would probably have looked better as a Fuji jpeg I guess. Contrary to my earlier observation wth the telephone shot, it seems you san still capture raindrops at 1/640. Also, I think I'm going to have to crank up the sharpness in camera for jpeg shots, I was hoping for something sharper than this.

@stratokaster Thanks

The image works very well because of the equally interesting and telling background.

re: Sharpness: The 17mm is generally a little on the mellow side of things - it's one of its strong points, actually; I somehow doubt it can be outwitted by sharpening up the JPEGs, though.

@MoonMind Thanks. I've certainly found it on the mellow side of things, in fact I've always had a bit of a love hate relationship with this lens, unlike, say, the Panasonic 20mm/14mm lenses and I've found it hard to accept that, to my eyes, it only seems to want to perform in perfect daylight. (I even "punished" the lens by deciding it was the only one of my numerous lenses that I wouldn't take overseas on holiday last year, lol). My SIJ challenge is designed to try and get the best out of it and overcome this prejudice. Your comment about outwitting the lens sounds like a challenge though so I'll definitely be testing that out!

Same reason, I couldn't love the 45mm for nature photography. Though it's great for portraiture. You've set yourself a tough challenge, But, this one really works, even with the need for some PP.

@rayvonn By all means, keep at it - it'll be most interesting. I've used this lens with good results in low light, by the way - within the limits of my chosen settings, that is. It's possible to get impressive results, but they're just a bit less sharp than from most other lenses. The 20mm is actually one of the crispiest, but the Olympus 25mm beats it. I chose the 12mm because I had this ambivalent feeling about it - most of the time, I just use the 12-40mm, and frankly, the optical advantages of the primes seem minimal in this case. But the journey has been quite interesting enough so far - I hope that at least in the end, you'll experience the same.

Lots for the eye to take in - I like that you chose a colour version on such a drab day.