Olympus mju: II (Stylus Epic) vs XA2- to 40-exp or not to 40-exp?

I've recently got an Olympus mju: II A.K.A Stylus Epic in the rarer champagne (you wish you could fine one of these in your champagne, but I only mean it comes in champagne colour) but had no battery to test it, so I kept it aside until not long later I was gifted a Minolta Riva zoom 140ex with film and batteries in it. I decided to swap the film from a Minolta 140ex into the Olympus mju: II. As I load the film into the Epic in the video above, I discuss the tiny size and why despite the lack of distance between the canister and the frame, you may still be unable to get 40 frames our of a 36-exposure film canister, in comparison to the Olympus XA2, in which you can.

The XA2 is able to let you squeeze 40 exposure out of a 36-exposur canister. The reason is that it does not waste any space between the canister and the film edge, both after the leader and by the end of the roll. This space is usually wasted in other cameras. What helps you get it is that the camera in in fact a manual-film-advance one, so if you are careful enough, you can get an extra two frames at the beginning, and continue to shoot two extra frames in the end.

The mju: II (Stylus Epic) is fully automatic in every regard including loading and rewind. It does not let you decide how much leader goes into the spool before you start shooting, and I suppose it will rewind the thing automatically once the counter reaches 36.

Notice that the mju: II (Stylus Epic) lacks geared sprockets. It does not, like its XA cousins, count the sprockets to know that you have in fact advanced a single frame. Instead, it has an infrared sensor which counts the sprocket wholes in the film. The amount it advances is therefore measured digitally by the infrared sensor. You know what that also means? Partial rewinding or multi-exposures is impossible in this camera. :)

It therefore takes the title point-and-shoot to its ultimate conception, which must appeal to point-and-shooters but less so to more advanced photographers who would like any amount of manual control or hackability, but it is still seen as one of the best 35mm pocket point and shoots out there due to the legendary status of its optical eye.

Canon EOS and EF-M film SLR bodies

I have a new favourite. The Canon EF-M SLR film camera body. Not an EOS. I gotta have it back.

I got a bunch of Canon EOS and EF SLR cameras, and I'm sharing a couple observations about them.

Snail Shoot

I had my first complete shoot out with a model last Sunday, and it was the first time I did the whole process to a satisfactory level in a single day.

In the morning, the wife left to teach in a supplementary school, leaving me and my 2.4-year-old to play around. There was a drawing board left in the garden, in the rain, that I took in to repair and use. I put it in the living room, cleaned it up, and discovered four tiny little creepers having a stroll in the vast space of the drawing table.

So I went up to my room and got these bad boys:

I chose the EOS M for this shoot, featuring my own EOS M DiY grip, because it was light weight (especially couple with that huge M42 russian macro bellows) and uses liveview so I should be able to see precisely where I'm focusing (or so I thought). The two lights are Canon Speedlites 580EX and 430EX II because this is what I currntly have, and thy are all linked with YongNuo's brilliant YN-622c wireless ETTL system. The lens is an enlarger's lens: EL-Nikkor 80mm f5.6 adapted from M39 to M42 with a real cheap adapter from eBay.

Seeing where I'm focusing was not really that easy even with liveview, due to the extremely low amount of light reaching the sensor. I was using an 80mm f5.6 at f11 or f16, with bellows extended the whole 30cm. I think it would have been more than the equivalent of an f64 aperture stop. So I needed both lights, which were firing full power every time (bounced off walls and the ceiling in different directions depending on the shot, and in conjunction with the room light coming from the big window), and also ISO 800. I would have hated to use ISO any higher. Even with all that, I wouldn't see much on my LCD. The photo would only appear when the flashes fired.

All in all I was extremely happy with most of the shots, aside from the fact that they made me realise just how much my sensor needed a clean. A considerable amount of spot-healing to remove the now-apparent dirt (remember how small my aperture in these shots is. This makes the tiniest speck of micro dust visible on the sensor), and some toning and colour edits (I preferred to convert most of them into black and white except where the colour played a role in the making of the shot)

When I was done it was time for the test of horror: seeing the fantastic shots on other monitors. Needless to say, the result was horrific. I definitely need some calibration devices and I have no idea just how well you can see these shots as I intended them to be.

Here are a few other shots. Let me know what you think.

And again, all taken with the following kit:

I Flound Black

18th Century Frigate (fatural light)

Just as my next-door house was being reclaimed, I gave my neighbours a hand removing some of the furniture left. And to my delight, one of the things the landlord did not want was very few boards about 50x70cm of cardboard, left by the architecture students who used to live there, and I was able to take them.

One of those boards was an brand new black acrylic board, still in film, and also a black, very thick cardboard of about the same size.

Immediately, I removed the film off one side of the acrylic, revealing the extremely shiny and beautiful black mirror, and set the black cardboard some distance to the back. I used the EOS M and EF-M 18-55mm STM lens for speed, and the YongNuo YN-622c triggers for two flashes.

And I got me the following shots. Not bad for a first try?

The photo on top was taken in natural light. The two below were taken with two flashguns (one 580ex, and one 430ex II)

 (flashguns)

 Optimus in his Prime (flashguns)

The one drawback is that the surface of the black acrylic is literally a dust magnet. Dust that falls onto it sticks. Probably some static electricity from the removal of the film? Let's hope I can clean it up perfectly for the next item.

Macro Power Up: Enter Stage Focusing

Canon 5DmkII, Tamron 90mm f2.8, 31mm ext.tube, 5"/f8@ISO100, Incandescent light 

I have finally got a stage which I can use for macro photography, not by buying a microscopy stage, which is unlike me because I cannot really spend money, but by getting a custom-made rig which included a customized stage in it, taking it all apart and reassembling for my needs.

Cheaper on the long run as I can replace the camera to retrieve costs, with one drawback being limited to one-axis, but the movement can easily be controlled down to 0.1mm which is good. Also it is fitted on extruded aluminium, amounting to a quite heavy rig, so I'm less worried about movement when I simply lay it flat on a table.

Speaking of laying flat, taking the rig apart was a nightmare because of all the hex bolts which were completely stuck in place. It is those damn ribbed washers grabbing on the softer aluminium, or something, but it took a lot more than brute force to turn some of them, and two were stripped. I had to cause some cosmetic damage by grinding a slit into it with a dremmel tool and a metal cutting disc and then ground a flat head screwdriver's bit to fit into a car's spanner to apply enough torque to remove that stubborn last one.

The rig came with its own custom-made power source to power both a Canon 5Dmk II and a WFT E4 bII from mains, as well as a lightbox filled with surface-mount LED ribbons. The whole thing was great and self-contained, but it was laid out for a particular job where the focusing plane is the table that the rig is put on (to photograph printer samples to inspect ink spillage with a macro lens, which originally was a Schneider Kreuznach Makro-Iris Apo-Componon 45mm f4 mounted on its own routed aluminium mount. See three screw holes right under the camera). It needed taking apart so I could use the stage horizontally.

This photo on top was not "stacked" but at least it was focused using this stage, which allowed me to achieve a really nice plane of focus that could include the edge of the leaf, the pink anther, the tiny/mini flowers under the already-small big flower. I wouldn't be able to focus right where I wanted if it weren't for the stage. Forget handheld.

Info of the shot above:

Diameter of the rim of the biggest flower: approx 4mm
Camera: Canon 5D Mark II
Lens: Tamron 90mm f2.8 1:1 macro
Extension tubes (I think I only used 31mm for this shot?)
Incandescent light
Lightroom

Here are a couple %100 crops:

Stacking the next shot is in progress :D


Word of warning: DO NOT BUY CHEAP ALTERNATIVES. It is a losing investment.

I have bought one cheap macro focusing rail over two years ago. Never used it. This chinese cheap alternative is utterly useless. The gears do not match or hold your rig in position. It will wobble, and will not actually move forward/backward under the weight of the camera. I've been looking for focusing bellows as an alternative. I have bellows, but non-focusing type. A good quality focusing-bellows will be much more firm and will hold things in place better.

Do you need a stage or focusing bellows? The difference is the range and speed of movement. A stage move extremely slowly and is best suited for extreme macro. If you're doing flowers and still-life objects that are slightly larger, and do not need to stack that much (non-extreme macro), then a focusing bellows is the better combination of magnification+focus. A stage will still require some tinkering and extra pieces to get everything mounted appropriately.

Shot in Full Spectrum

Along the lines of infrared photography conversions that I hinted at in my last post, I've researching the possible effects that can be achieved by filtering different wavelenghts of light, I went back to a few shots I have taken on 02/07/2014 without a hotmirror on my Mamiya ZD digital back, and decided to play a little bit with them.

The effect, as you can see in the picture above, achieved entirely in Lightroom via whitebalance and HSL colour shifts, is pretty nice.

Here is another shot taken of the same scene on the same day, with the same camera/lens position, except I had the hotmirror on, and converted it to black and white. The shadows on the leaves is the biggest difference, and the reason why I chose the filtered one for BW, due to the texture on the dry leaves. Infrared reflected from foliage, which gives it its brighter character when captured in an infrared capable camera, also makes it a bit more flat as it loses the visible light's shadows.

IR Flowers

I've been modifying pocket cameras for IR photography since my last post, but I also have a modified Canon 20D, so let me share with you a couple photos taken with an IR camera. This one is taken with my own Canon 20D and 18-135mm EF-S lens.

This is a lovely small bouquet given to me by my lovely wife. The flowers are very striking red and the greens are very green. This is what the picture looked like out of the camera. I like the dreamy, spirit-like feel of the stems in the IR.

Most IR shots are usually converted into black and white to give the impression of whiteness to vegetation while everything else seems normal. Here is a black and white version:

Feels like the stems can almost be transparent. The other very-common treatment of IR shots is to swap the red and blue channels. This can be done in Photoshop. I swapped the channels in Lightroom using a camera profile. Credit is given to this guy for the profiles. Thank you, guy.

Here is the image after some treatment. Profile is for Infrared, and I played around with colours to get it as close as possible to what I want. This is not yet what I want but the closes I could get it to.