{"id":3456,"date":"2010-06-15T23:55:17","date_gmt":"2010-06-15T13:55:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/?p=3456"},"modified":"2010-06-16T18:12:03","modified_gmt":"2010-06-16T08:12:03","slug":"architecture-camera-lens-kit-for-travel-to-europe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/?p=3456","title":{"rendered":"Architecture camera-lens kit for travel to Europe"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I am off for a conference trip to Rome, Stockholm, Copenhagen and Amsterdam in October this year, and am deciding on which cameras and lenses to take with me &#8211; after all it s a long way from Australia to change my mind.<\/p>\n<p>I am mainly interested in photography of urban architecture, streetscapes, and cultural activities, and if I can get to more rural settings perhaps some nice landscape work.<\/p>\n<p><strong>I will be wanting to travel as LIGHT as I can but still have high image quality and versatility.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>A clear IN for the trip are the following:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Panasonic GH-1<\/strong> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/?page_id=1510\">Micro Four Thirds<\/a> camera<\/li>\n<li>10x zoom lens (the excellent <strong>Lumix 14-140mm<\/strong>) for general purpose use<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/gary\/JAlbumAll\/ByLens\/PanasonicGH1\/LeicaD25mm\/index.htm\"><strong>Leica-D 25mm f\/1.4 Four Thirds lens<\/strong><\/a> with M43 adapter as my main walk around lens and for low light (unfortunately, I do not have the much smaller and lighter Panasonic 20mm f\/1.7 lens)<\/li>\n<li><strong>OM 135mm f\/2.8<\/strong> with OM adapter for indoor conference use \/ videos from the back of the theatre &#8211; its a nice combo &#8211; just set MF, WB, manual exposure and you are ready to record all that good information you would otherwise forget.<\/li>\n<li>small tripod<\/li>\n<li>no-name inexpensive backpack<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Now what will I do for those tallish buildings in cramped spaces so I don&#8217;t have to angle the camera upwards and create convergence distortion?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I thus <strong>compared my Canon 1D MIII with the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/gary\/JAlbumAll\/ByLens\/Canon1DMIII\/EFTSE17mm\/index.htm\">Canon 17mm tilt-shift lens<\/a> <\/strong>at maximum shift upwards in portrait mode with my GH-1 in 16:9 aspect ratio <strong>with Olympus Four Thirds 7-14mm lens<\/strong> &#8211; <strong>would I miss the tilt shift lens that I love so much?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Interestingly, using both cameras at the same subject distance and parallel to the subject, the 7-14mm lens at 7mm provided almost the same height coverage to the top of the subject, but with much more bottom coverage and a little more width coverage.<\/p>\n<p>Thus, <strong>the GH-1 with 7-14mm lens will give me similar angle of view to top of a building but with a lot more crop options<\/strong> &#8211; for instance,\u00a0 I could crop the bottom 1\/3rd off to match the the same image crop as the Canon on full shift and end up with an 8mp image vs a 10mp image on the Canon &#8211; not a great deal of loss.<\/p>\n<p>The other advantages of the 7-14mm lens is that I can choose 4:3, 3;2 or 16:9 image aspect ratios, use it for video work, or use it on my Olympus E510 and gain autofocus and image stabilisation to allow 1\/2sec-1\/4sec hand held shots for motion effects.<\/p>\n<p>But the obvious main advantage of the GH-1 with 7-14mm lens is that the combination is <strong>1kg lighter<\/strong>, it is smaller, the battery charger is SO much smaller, and the kit is cheaper to replace in the event of a loss or breakage.<\/p>\n<p>Now, my conclusion may well have been different had I owned a Canon 5D MII full frame high resolution body instead of a 1.3x crop 10mp Canon 1D MIII, although the weight and insurance would still be major issues.<\/p>\n<p>So, that settles it very convincingly, <strong>my 2nd camera kit will be the Olympus E510 with 7-14mm lens and 50mm f\/2.0 macro<\/strong> &#8211; these are what I shot with for the far majority of my photos on <strong>my Italy holiday in 2007<\/strong> with and it was an awesome combination &#8211; see <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/gary\/JAlbumAll\/Italy2007\/index.htm\">here<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>That leaves me with one last question, <strong>can I afford to take my beloved Olympus 50-200mm f\/2.8-3.5 SWD lens <\/strong>as well for those special shallow DOF, beautiful bokeh shots (although the 25mm f\/1.4 and 50mm f\/2.0 lens will give some good options for this but without the telephoto reach)?<\/p>\n<p>Note: for an even more compact and lighter, cheaper system, one could use the Panasonic Micro Four Thirds 7-14mm lens instead of the Olympus Four Thirds version but of course, it could not be used on an E510 body &#8211; having said that, if\u00a0 had that lens, I would be wanting to buy an Olympus E-P2 to take instead of the E510!<\/p>\n<p><strong>The acid test is &#8211; can I fit the kit with a 1.3kg laptop in the 5kg carry-on cabin baggage limit?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>This is the beauty of the Micro Four Thirds System<\/strong> &#8211; you get to take more equipment within the weight limit, although my ideal system of currently available gear for travel would be:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Panasonic GH-1 with 10x zoom 14-140mm kit lens<\/li>\n<li>Olympus E-P2 with EVF and Panasonic 20mm f\/1.7 lens<\/li>\n<li>Panasonic 7-14mm lens if doing urban work or Olympus 9-18mm lens if doing landscapes<\/li>\n<li>perhaps the Olympus 50mm f\/2.0 macro for Four Thirds while we wait for Olympus to make a Micro Four Thirds version<\/li>\n<li>Cokin ND gradient filter with adapter for the 14-140mm and 9-18mm lens<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Such a system gives you high quality photos with focal length range in 35mm terms of <strong>14-280mm<\/strong> as well as low light capabilities of an <strong>image stabilised 40mm lens (in 35mm terms) at f\/1.7<\/strong> light capturing capability, plus <strong>you get the BEST quality HD video available on dSLR systems<\/strong> courtesy of the new firmware hack for the GH-1.<\/p>\n<p>Some would add the Lumix 45-200mm lens, but personally, I wish they would make a compact, high quality, Micro Four Thirds 200mm f\/2.8 lens (preferably image stabilised), or if they must do zoom, then a compact 100-200mm f\/2.8-4.0 (please, not another f\/5.6 lens!).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am off for a conference trip to Rome, Stockholm, Copenhagen and Amsterdam in October this year, and am deciding on which cameras and lenses to take with me &#8211; after all it s a long way from Australia to change my mind. I am mainly interested in photography of urban architecture, streetscapes, and cultural [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[181],"tags":[44,17,18,14,123,70,156],"class_list":["post-3456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-travel-photography","tag-canon","tag-four-thirds","tag-four-thirds-micro","tag-olympus","tag-panasonic-gh1","tag-tilt-shift","tag-travel"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3456\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ayton.id.au\/wp02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}