A New Camera!

Today’s Post by Mildred Alpern

What a difference a day makes

Twenty four little hours ~ Music Maria Grever and Lyrics Stanley Adams

Kaboom, it happened. After my recent post (To Buy or not To Buy), I bought.

My Olympus E-M5 conked out while on a shooting spree. I heard a whoosh and that was that. After five years of heavy-duty use, some component failed. The camera is now in repair and is probably destined for infrared conversion after its fix-up.

Deliberating, I decided to buy a Olympus E-M5 Mark II. The upgrade made sense for me: Familiarity with the Olympus system breeds respect for the changes, like the bright electronic viewfinder and the super control panel by default. These new features can only increase my enjoyment in using this small, light camera with the prime and zoom lenses in my arsenal.

My first tryout was with the M. Zuiko 12-40mm f/2.8 Pro lens along the Hudson River. Small boats bobbed on the waves under a cloud-filled sky. A brand new 370-foot timber-decking pier stretched over the river toward New Jersey’s opposite shoreline replacing the previous pier destroyed during Hurricane Sandy in 2012. A gull took off in sudden flight, its wings outstretched.

The new camera did not disappoint. It was easy to handle, had fast silent shutter speed, and produced sharpness of image edge to edge. Now I am on to trying features like Live Time, High Resolution multi-shot mode, and mastering this camera’s many capabilities.

The small boats bobbing was shot at 40mm with an exposure of 1/4000 sec at f/5.6, ISO 400; the pier at 32mm with an exposure of 1/2500 sec at f/7.1, ISO 400; the gull at 40mm with an exposure of i1500 sec at f/7.1, ISO 400, +1/3EV