Traveled with a Prime Lens in Ireland

June 8, 2011

I recently took a two-week trip to Ireland.  I took the tour “Enchanting Ireland” with Odysseys Unlimited.   We started in Dublin and then made a circle staying in Galway, Killarney, and Kilkenny with lots of stops and side trips to see the country.  I’ll tell you more about the trip and show you some of the pictures in later postings.  For now, I would like to tell you about some of my experiences using the cameras and lenses I took.  My goal was to travel relatively light but still get some good pictures.

First off, I’ll say the environment was a good test for travel photography.  The weather varied quite a bit with lots of wind, rain, dark overcast skies, and even a few days of bright sun, blue skies, and large white clouds.  We even had some hail one day but it happened while we were on the coach and I wasn’t out taking pictures.  The biggest, unexpected challenge photographically was the extreme wind.  At times it blew so strong that it was hard to stand upright, made it very difficult to try to hold a camera steady, and blew the rain horizontally.  I was also taking a lot of pictures inside dark churches and old buildings as well as dark pubs.

My cameras consisted of two Olympus micro four-thirds cameras:  the E-P1 and the E-PL2.  I took the E-P1 as a backup camera.  Fortunately I didn’t really need the backup camera but two other tour members suffered damage to their DSLRs, in one case making the camera inoperable … so it really pays to always have a backup.  The lenses that I used were the Panasonic 14 mm and 20 mm prime lenses, and the Olympus 14 – 150 mm zoom.  My intent was to see how well I could do with just a prime lens, but I used the 14 – 150 mm zoom one day so I could evaluate the differences.  For the rest of the time I generally used the 20mm as much as I could … especially inside pubs, churches, etc. when the light was really low; but I also used the 14mm when I thought that I needed the wider view … usually while walking in the towns.

Result:  shooting with a prime lens in that environment worked great!  I hung the E-PL2 with a prime lens from a Domke neck strap and kept it hanging from my neck all the time.  Since it was quite cool, windy and raining most of the time … or at least raining on and off at unpredictable times, I always wore a Gore-Tex rain coat and kept the camera under it except for when shooting.  This kept the camera dry and kept the camera out of sight when I wasn’t shooting.  If I had used a large DSLR, this wouldn’t have been as easy.  With the E-PL2 and a prime lens I never noticed the weight of having it around my neck all day and evening.  In addition, I was able to take it out and quickly take a shot holding the camera in one hand … a technique that I used a lot!

I’m still working on the pictures, but my initial response is that the image quality was great with the 20 mm lens, slightly less with the 14 mm, and even less with the 14 – 150 mm zoom.  After shooting with the zoom one day and evaluating the IQ from the LCD (the differences in sharpness were noticeable), I decided to put it away in my bag and not use it for the rest of the trip.  This decision was based on the facts that some of the pictures didn’t seem to be as sharp, that I really didn’t need the zoom, and that it was a lot more cumbersome to carry.

The range of lighting extremes did prove to be a challenge for micro four-thirds.  But, I shot all of my pictures as raw files and have been using LightRoom to develop them, and so far the pictures have been acceptable.  There have been times that I have noticed that I would have been better off, image wise, if I had been shooting with a Pentax K-5 which has a greater dynamic range, a much higher ISO capability, and good weather resistance … qualities much appreciated for Irish weather and lighting conditions.

I’ll let you decide about the quality of the images, many of which I plan to be posting through-out the summer.  I hope to get to more postings with them later in July since I have a lot of other chores, etc. associated with coming surgery next week, taking up my time for the rest of June.  For now, I’ll leave you with the following scene that tends to represent the environmental conditions … raining and windy, and cool.  It was taken from the Cliffs of Moher on the Island of Inismor which is one of the Aran Islands.

Written by John Holmes Posted in Ireland, Photography, Travel Tagged with micro 4/3, Olympus 14 - 150 mm lens, Olympus E-P1, Olympus E-PL2, Panasonic 14 mm, Panasonic 20mm lens, photography, Prime lens, Travel