Today’s Post by Joe Farace
“The best thing about a picture is that it never changes, even when the people in it do.”– Andy Warhol
The weather forecast called for Cars & Coffee was for a sunny, somewhat chilly day. The event event is usually held rain or shine but when I arrived at the venue there less than the normal number of cars assembled. Shortly thereafter a few other cars arrived, including a new Land Rover Defender. This was a beautifully finished vehicle but, to me, seemed rather large as it was a 110 model. It appears like nobody at LR had access to an original Defender to compare it with and this new version appeared—again to me— to lack a sense of scale. The current four-door Defender is nine-inches longer than a Range Rover Velar, itself a large vehicle. But I digress…
My idea for that day was to take my refurb Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 60mm f/2.8 Macro lens to Cars and Coffee and shoot some close-ups of the car’s details but more than that to see how the lens behaved as a regular 60mm lens on a Micro Four-thirds camera (i.e, 120mm equivalent.)
How I made this photograph: It was slim pickens at the event but the first shot I made was the hood ornament (above) that was found on a 1931 (I think) Chevrolet hot rod. The camera used was my Olympus E-M5 Mark I with Oly’s HLD-6G grip. The Program mode exposure was 1/640 sec at f/6.3 and ISO 320. This exposure method turned out to not be the best choice for this lens, something I didn’t realize until looking at the images later in Photoshop Bridge. Because of changing lighting and typical dynamics at car shows, I usually shoot in Program mode but I believe that shooting in Av mode with this lens would have given me better control over depth-of-field. Nevertheless I like this shot and the lens’s bokeh.
How I made the next photograph: This photograph demonstrates why shooting at car shows in Av mode with this lens would be preferable to my standard choice of Program mode. This close-up (at right) of a 2020 Land River Defender (locking?) lug nut shows the wafer-thin depth-of-field when letting the camera pick both aperture and shutter speed. After all, the OlympusE-M5 has pretty good built-in IBIS, so shooting this at 1/300 sec at f/4.5 and ISO could do with more depth-of-field.
How I made this photograph: This Jaguar XK-8 looks similar to one that Mary and I almost bought; she didn’t like it because it had too many miles on it but my guess it would have been less brain damaging that our X-JS was, although that was a pretty car in it’s own right. The Program mode exposure was 1/600 sec at f/7.1 and ISO 320 with a plus one-third stop of exposure compensation.
After much too short of a time at the show, high winds blew in covering me and the camera with blowing dirt; the lens has a splash proof and dust-proof construction. Cars started heading out and I beat feet out of there too.
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