Today’s Post by Joe Farace
“Only bugs can truly appreciate the beauty of flowers”— Dov Davidoff
Here are a few images of Volkswagen Bugs that I made with my Olympus EM-10 Mark I mirrorless camera.
How I made this photograph: These days, one of the most popular styling trends for classic Beetles, like the one at left, is a two-tone look. This image is kind of a reverse Hail Mary shot (the Olympus EM-10 Mark I doesn’t have a fully-articulated screen) with a Tamron 14-150mm f/3.5-5.8 Di III lens set at 14mm and an exposure of 1/500 sec at f/11 and ISO 500.
Tamron’s 14-150mm f/3.5-5.8 Di III lens was designed specifically for Micro Four-thirds system cameras. It has a metal barrel and is built to a high standard with top notch fit and finish. The lens has a 52mm filter size and has the equivalent angle-of-view of a 28-300mm lens.
Tamron’s lens design uses one LD (Low Dispersion) glass element, two AD (Anomalous Dispersion) elements, two molded-glass aspherical elements and one hybrid aspherical element to reduce chromatic aberrations and improve image sharpness, clarity and color. Its autofocus uses a stepping motor that’s optimized for this lens and produces quick, precise AF and because it’s quiet. the lens is well suited for capturing video too. The lens has a lock to keep the zoom from drooping when extended to 150mm but the example I tested had enough friction this was never a problem.
I was never a guy to shoot lens tests using a resolution chart but prefer to make brick wall tests (so you don’t have to) and found at 40mm the 14-150mm was crisp in the center when wide open and slightly less so on the edges, which was identical to what I discovered at 150mm. As is typical for most lens designs the sharpness sweet spot is around f/8 and I was pleased with the crispness of my shots around this aperture.
How I made this photograph: Two things to keep in mind when looking at this image: It was one image from a seven-shot panned series that was shot in continuous mode from the stands at the (now closed) Bandimere Speedway. The image is uncropped just as it came from the camera. So it turns out that this “little lens that could” proved itself worthy of working in this kind of active environment. Shot at 150mm with an exposure of 1/160 sec at f/6.3 and ISO 320.
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