Portraits, ice hockey and some urban landscapes with micro 4/3s.

I’ll warn you now, this is going to be a longer post.  This past week I haven’t had the time to really do anything photography related.  Just when I thought it was hopeless, comes a flurry of photographic activity!  We had family over for my Dad’s birthday so I got some portraits done and my brother had an ice hockey game, so I did some sports shooting in as well.

As an experiment and test of the micro 4/3’s gear that I’ve been packing lately, I opted to leave the big Nikon gear on the shelf.  Don’t get me wrong, the full frame Nikon and fast glass produces some of the nicest work I’ve ever done and is way more camera than I need (or can even make use of).  I benched it today because I wanted to see what I could do with the mirrorless system I have.  I mounted up the G3 with the Oly 45mm f/1.8 lens, set up the backdrop and off I went.  I threw on a Nissin Di-466 flash on the G3 and used TTL bounced off the ceiling.  Not an ideal solution, but given the time constraint, it was the best I could do.  It worked out surprisingly well I think.

The only downsides I can see with the small G3 is the handling.  Switching various settings isn’t nearly as intuitive as on the D700, which is what I expected since the two camera’s are targeted towards opposite ends of the user spectrum.  Overall though, I was quite happy with what turned out.  I still am anxious to test it out once the replacement battery gets here for my flash triggers.

Right after the portraits, I drove to the local ice rink to watch my little brother play ice hockey.  This is normally reserved for only the big guns and fast glass, but I wanted to really see what the G3 can do in this challenging situation.  The light levels are low (it is not a pro rink) and the players are fast.

I was quite surprised at the continuous autofocus on the small camera.  It did fairly well, considering the conditions.  The AF performed very well when the players were moving laterally across the frame.  I did notice that it struggled when the players were moving directly toward me.  The percentage of shots in focus dropped drastically to probably around 30-40%.  While not the best low-light sports camera and lens combo, it did admirably well.

For the past few months I have been harping on this small mirrorless system, but I do believe that is a great solution for many people.  Below is a picture of my entire micro 4/3 kit, and behind the gear is the small bag (man-purse according to my lovely wife) that I carry it all in (Domke F-5XB).

Now we come to today.  The weather has done yet another 180 and the temperature rose to above 50 and the sun was shining, the snow and ice melted and the wind blowing.  So over lunch, I once again grabbed the camera bag, hopped on the bike and went off for a 45 minute ride.  I rolled down to the local trail which runs alongside a portion of Jacob’s Creek.  Below are a few shots from the ride.

 

And we finally come to the close of this post.  It just all hit me at once, in the future I’ll try and spread things out a bit more.  Hope you enjoyed.