Micro 4/3 Micro 4/3 samples

A real torture test for bokeh quality..

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The brave pancake does very nice job 90%+ of the time if you ask me. Its bokeh remains filmlike, whereas some m4/3 lenses turn defocused areas into ugly haziness.

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Couldn't agree with you more about the many superb qualities of the tiny 12-32 zoom. It's truly an underrated lens - except among those who have used it.
 
Just for fun, three different versions of the same shot taken with my Pen E-P3...

The first uses one of my favorites among the built-in Olympus jpeg 'Art Filters' - in this case, the PinHole filter - which seems to give this image the kind of brooding pre-Halloween darkness it deserves--

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The second began with the RAW version, processed lightly in Nik's Color Efex for enhanced contrast, and then with an old Lightroom plug-in by X-Equals (Xel) that mimics an old Kodachrome with an interesting warmish tint--

EP3_Oct2_ZombieHalloweenBride(KodachrMem).jpg
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The third and last was processed in Nik's Silver Efex--

EP3_Oct2_ZombieHalloweenBride(SilverEfex).jpg
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Taken with the ridiculously inexpensive Pergear 25mm manual focus lens, at f/4.
 
A century or two ago, I bought the tiny 9mm Olympus 'body cap' fisheye lens - an inexpensive and ridiculously thin/tiny little piece of glass which has a fixed aperture (f/8) and a tiny plastic lever giving 3 choices of focus - infinity (for distant landscapes) - close up (less than .2 meter) - and a third choice for everything else. For this picture I used the 'for everything else' setting, as well as the E-P3's in camera PinHole 'art filter' setting. And---

And while this tiny little bit of plastic is not truly the equal of some of the much, much pricier fisheyes I've owned and used - it's surprising me with its image quality...

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...not to mention the 'fun factor' ;)
 
The combination of an inexpensive 'toy' lens (the Olympus 9mm fixed f/8 fisheye) and an old (2011) camera with a seemingly antiquated ('only' 12mp) sensor ... is nonetheless a fun one for me: it keeps challenging me to see my world differently. Or maybe just to look at objects I take for granted in a different way. This is an old (late 1980's) pickup truck, that is still useful for carting loads of rubbish or fertilizer or whatnot--

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Almost every review of the lens that I read, before buying it, seemed to concur that it was pitifully un-sharp. Another reason why it's good to make up one's own mind.

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Cameras, like trucks or wheelbarrows, are just tools, after all.

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Working with a distorted rectilinear fisheye is also a constant reminder of the quote supposedly attributed to the great Robert Capa: "If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough."

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The other nice thing about some older mu43 camera bodies is: they're really small. Not quite as pocketable as a Ricoh GR - but some of them - like my E-P3 - and like the tiny Lumix GM1 and GM5 I used to own - still seem to have been beautifully built and finished.

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This series all started out as RAW Olympus DNG's, and were lightly processed in the old, free Nik Silver Efex (which is still rather fun to play around with).
 
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