Downtown Melbourne

[enricosavazzi]

A few pictures from my recent trip to Victoria, Australia. Converted Panasonic Lumix G3 with Olympus G.Zuiko 20 mm f/3.5 and Baader U. There is no excessive flare of this lens, even shooting against the sun, but there are indications that the field is not flat and/or that resolution in the corners is significantly lower than in the center. However, overall quite acceptable, especially considering that there aren't many UV alternatives for Micro 4/3 in the 20 mm FL range.

 

 

 

 

 

[nfoto]

Seems to work pretty well indeed, Enrico. I assume all of these are done with a hand-held camera?

[enricosavazzi]

Yes, all hand-held while walking around the center. The time was late afternoon and I had to push ISO quite up in some cases, which shows in the original pictures. This is one of the reasons why I ordered a converted Olympus E-PM2 after my return, mainly because of the sensor-based image stabilization which could have been handy even in the Australian sun.

 

These pictures were post-processed by manually increasing gamma and/or contrast and adjusting luminosity to give visually pleasing results. I left in all picture metadata, but I don't know whether it was stripped away by the UVP site. Automatic exposure often did not quite get the right results, especially with high-contrast subjects. Nonetheless, I shot JPG and the results were not so off as to really require shooting raw.

[colinbm]

I hope you liked your trip down-under. I hope you wore your broad brim hat & dark glasses & plenty of sunscreen.

So you reckon the Oly would have handled this better ?

Col

[OlDoinyo]

I read ISO 1600 on the last image but shutter speed seems not to have been retained. Any memory of what it was?

[enricosavazzi]

Shutter speed was probably as low as about 1/15 s. Some of the other shots were at higher speeds, probably around 1/125.

 

Yes, SPF 50 plastered all over my face and arms first thing in the morning, and the same hat as in my thumb photo. I did manage through two weeks without getting the slightest suntan. I think the only real advantage of the Olympus is image stabilization. With a 20 mm and image stabilization I can probably go as low as 1/4 s with non-moving subjects.

 

The weather was very variable, and I have plenty of pictures of wet birds, wet wallabies, wet koalas etc. I did manage trips to Healesville wildlife sanctuary, Ocean Road with Surf Coast, Apollo Bay (this one not so impressive) and the 12 Apostles, rainforest (the greenest environment I have ever seen, helped by both sunshine over the canopy and rain earlier the same day), Botanical Gardens Cranbourne (apparently impossible to reach with public transportation but I got help from friends living in Melbourne), plus easier-to-reach destinations like Royal Botanical Gardens, zoo, aquarium and obligatory tourist spots like the Sky Deck and two tours on the double-decker tourist bus. All in all quite successful, and now I have some 40-50 GB of pictures (only a small portion UV) to sort.