One of my favorite parts of the movie Jurassic Park is when everything starts to fail and they talk about having all the problems of a major theme park and a zoo combined. This is how the builders of Animal Kingdom must have felt. The eclectic nature of this park makes it a lot of fun and it is a "photographically rich" environment. Not only do you get to use a wide perspective to take photos of the great scenery/architecture, you also get to utilize longer focal lengths to capture some "easy wildlife". Below, the two bird photos (parrots and Roseate spoonbill) were taken with the MZD 45mm portrait lens at enclosures near the entrance of the park. The two after were taken with my 40-150mm "kit zoom" while on the Kilimanjaro Safari ride. I bet the MZD 75mm f/1.8 would yeild some extraordinary photos of Animal Kingdom's wildlife... and it may be reason enough to purchase the beast.

Of course all the parks are filled with people so you have plenty of subject matter to hone in on your street and environmental portrait photography skills. I usually try to get some candid shots and of course photograph my partner when he consents ;)  There are also many "street performers" and getting shots of the parades are a blast as long as you get a good spot.

Another thing I found fun to photograph is the "park landscape" in addition to the "wait in line" areas that you frequent in order to ride attractions. When a ride is busy, you can spend up to 45-1 hr waiting so theres plenty of time observe your surroundings and find something interesting to photograph. Disney has done a really good job of making sure that you are at least mildly entertained while waiting and taking photos is a good way to pass the time.

Finally, I wanted to share some photos of one of my favorite attractions at Animal Kingom. The first time my partner and I saw it we were AMAZED and we have even seen people in tears after the show. If it all possible, try not to miss... "Finding Nemo - The Musical". When you consider the talent of the actors, their use of acrobatics, and the crazy amount of work put into the stage production and costuming, it is just so good on multiple levels. Also, try to get there 30-45 minutes before the show starts. Even with a fast past to one of the times, getting there 10 minutes before the show did not cut it and we were not sat "center stage". Olympus' 45mm f1.8 proved very useful here as it allowed a bunch of light in wide open and I was able to use a fast shutter speed to freeze the action. Also from the height and distance I was sitting it was a perfect focal length allowing me to photograph most of what was happening onstage.

Really the photos I presented here are maybe 10% of the visually awesome things you can encounter in this park. One disclaimer is that I do not to Disney with the sole purpose of photography. It is also important to me to have fun and I try not ignore my partner by having my face glued to the viewfinder. Its hard though because at all the parks there is so much to photograph. Luckily we went three times in 2013 so I had plenty of chances for photography. Next up is EPCOT, which is like travelling to space and 11 different countries in one day. Hope you enjoyed at lest a few of these photos, happy shooting =)

Sam D.

Walt Disney World Series:

Part I: Introduction
Part II: Animal Kingdom
Part III: EPCOT
Part IV: Post Processing in China
Part V: Hollywood Studios

I came across the BCLmacro during the last few days of the Olympus Art Filter Challenge and composing the last three posts on this blog have distracted me from following up on it. Isolation and a bottleneck in subject matter on board the vessel I am on was the initiator of this project which you can read about here. In the aforementioned post I talk of a personal goal to be revealed once the challenge was complete. Each day after shooting and uploading 4-5 of my keepers to Flickr, I submitted them to Ming Thein's reader pool. The ultimate "test" was to have my photos admitted. Ming is quite critical (which is a good thing) and judges the photos submitted based on light, subject, composition and idea; anything with a 2.5/4 rating or higher is let in. I ended up submitting 54 photos and of those... three made it:

Dramatic tone

Light tone

Cross process

I fell a little behind the average 10:1 rejection rate but considering these had absolutely no out of camera processing done to them, I was thrilled when I saw these make it in!!! During the challenge it was very difficult for me to find subjects that would bring out the best of each of the filters. I also felt that they hindered me in a way because I felt there was strong subject matter and good light but the filter compromised the shot. Luckily I was shooting RAW+JPEG and below are examples which have processed to my liking. One thing I learned throughout the duration of this challenge was that I really enjoy the post processing part of my workflow. Skipping it was like being sent to bed without dinner...

I think most of all I missed processing in black and white! The only B&W filter on the EM5 is grainy film and one day certainly did not cut it!!! Examples of photographs rendered using the art filters can be found here: Soft Focus, Pop Art, Dramatic Tone, Light Tone, Diorama, Pinhole, Cross Process, Key Line, Gentle Sepia, Grainy Film, Pale and Light Color. My favorites were "pop art" and "grainy film" and I was not very fond of the "soft focus" and "gentle sepia" modes. Overall I think I got better at a couple of things including using my kit flash (I forced myself to leave it on the camera and use it everyday), composing, especially when it came to horizons, and exposure. I still think that I rely heavily on post processing but I think that processing is necessary for a photographer to develop his or her own style. I really learned a lot from doing this and it did help the time pass by forcing me to partake in photography on a daily basis!! Thanks for dropping by, as always hope you enjoyed a couple of these photos =)

Sam D

Part I: Conversion from wide angle gem to macro with a twist

Part II: Testing

Eventhough its been less than a week since the BCLmacros discovery, I have enjoyed using this lens so far and I hope it attracts a following. Therefore, I put together a short list of tips to "jump start" those planning on converting their body cap lens to the BLCmacro. I think that this dedicated macro alternative will interest people for the same reasons that they enjoy using the body cap lens in its native wide angle mode. Its extremely cheap, weighs next to nothing and makes your camera super portable. Also it delivers pretty good results considering this was in no way shape or form designed to be used as a macro lens. Because practice make perfect, I am sure there is still much to be learned about maximizing the BCLmacro's performance and I am a very excited guinea pig. 

I. Focus using the "rocking" method

I am a fan and follower of Robin Wong's photography blog and through his impressive macro reviews he has introduced me to the "rocking method" he uses for macro work. Here, even with the 12-50mm EM5 kit zoom or Olympus' glorious 60mm macro, he switches to manual focus mode after auto focusing before hitting the shutter button. After he switches modes he rocks back and forth and watches the in focus area change along the depth of his subject. Since the DOF in macro photography is very shallow (and less than 1cm when using the BCLmacro) this method ensures that you achieve critical focus where you want it. If you rely on auto focusing there is chance that the camera will focus on the eye of a butterfly vs it's brilliant wing pattern which you had the intention of showcasing. Auto focusing is not even an option for the BCLmacro and I have adopted this rocking method described by Robin to ensure that I am in focus before depressing my shutter button. Since the EM5-BCLmacro is extremely handheld, I usually do not necessarily have to rock my entire body back and forth, but simply move the camera in the same fashion. The concept Robin introduced still applies and when doing this it is best to be in magnify mode as you can see the changes is focus a lot easier. If you have practice manually focusing using legacy lenses I assume this will come naturally to you and focusing the BCLmacro will be easy as pie. 

II. Frame with cropping in mind

If you are like me then you will embrace all the quirks that the BCLmacro has to offer. As you can see in the photo above, these include a heavy-moderate vignette (depending on degree of modification), color fringing along the edges of the frame, and distortion. The "effects" make for a unique photo, but I am sure there will some that wish to use the BCLmacro to present a more traditional macro shot. 

If you are one of these people, it is important that you frame with cropping in mind. I have found the easiest way to do this is to enable your digital teleconverter. As discussed in "Part II" of this series, this renders the vignette, color fringing, and distortion negligible and increases your magnification to 1:1.44. Using this method you can frame your subject, toggle your magnification box to the area which you want to achieve critical focus, enable magnification mode, "rock to focus", and then depress the shutter button when you hit that sweet spot. If you shoot JPEG+RAW then you will have to crop the RAW version in Lightroom or other photo editing software. The JPEG will retain the 2x crop so you can use it as a guide.   

III. Use your kit flash

If you are like me and do not have an off camera flash (although one is on the way using guidance from the wonderful Phoblographer) the modified body cap lens is a great macro option. When using a dedicated macro lens that protrudes far from your camera body (especially true with legacy glass) one cannot use their on camera flash because of shading caused by the lens itself. To counter this you can buy a macro lighting equipment which attaches to the base of your lens or turns your camera into something out of a sci-fi movie, come up with a contraption to direct your kit flash past the camera lens or buy an off camera flash. This problem simply does not exist with the BLCmacro because the lens just barely protrudes from your camera's body. In general there are many benefits to using a flash in photography. For the BCLmacro, using a flash is important because it allows for faster shutter speeds. This in turn reduces the amount of blur and maximizes the sharpness of photos taken with this lens.  An example of this can be found in the "Money Shot" section in "Part II" of this series. Being able to use a faster shutter speed also means you can freeze motion.

For all practical purposes, you may also want to plan on using your kit flash during macro sessions with the BCLmacro because you may find something that you want to photograph which becomes shaded by your own camera because of the 7mm working distance. If you have no experience with using the kit flash or flash photography at all then do a little bit of research on the fundamentals and then canon ball into that cold swimming pool. Using the BLCmacro will certainly be a great introduction. The way I learned was to set the flash to manual and adjust the intensity depending on the exposure of your resulting photo (blown highlights = reduce flash level, everything is dark = increase flash level). If everything except your subject is black and you want more of its surroundings showing, then reduce the shutter speed (and probably the flash level too). This sort of experimentation results in a lot of chimping and trashed photos, but trial and error has pointed me in the right direction and applying it to photographs taken with the BCLmacro has been a ton of fun! 

IV. Diffuse your flash

Diffusion is important because it reduces the "harshness" of your flash. Studio photographers have come up with all sorts of flash diffusion techniques and one of the simplest is to bounce your light off of an umbrella or white wall. This effectively smooths the light and gives it a more natural look. Since my kit flash is the only thing available to me offshore and cannot be aimed at a wall or umbrella for diffusion I spent a good while contemplating how to soften it's output. By complete accident I stumbled upon the solution of diffusing using latex gloves. I had a pair left over from a while back when I had to deal with a mold issue so I cut two fingers off (thumbs-largest) and fitted them over the small flash head. If you do this make sure the glove is stretched taught across the "bulb area". Below are examples of photos taken with (right) and without (left) the latex diffuser.

FULL power

1/2 power

1/4 power

1/8 power

1/16 power

1/32 power

1/64 power

Besides me needing to badly clean my keyboard, you can see that the light in all the photos on the right is more natural looking and evenly distributed than the photos on the left. All it takes to accomplish this is a small amount of latex and I think it can really help maximize results coming from the BCLmacro. There will be some instances when you do not want a softer flash and removal of the latex is quick and easy. As soon as I can I am going to look for a box of latex finger cots to reduce the amount of waste from tearing up a latex glove.

V. Experiment during post processing

***UPDATE (11/17/2013) 

The color fringing and vignette can be excluded by cropping, but there are also other options to embrace the quirks exhibited by the BCLmacro. Besides the suggestions below, check out The Phoblographers article on color sliders and get your creative juices flowing.

1. Convert to black and white

The outcome of this will depend on how you modified your original BCL. I filed down the sides of my front lens plate and internal mount so the vignette in the above example is almost non existent. Direct conversion to black and white however gets rid of the color fringing and leaves you with a more natural looking photo.

2. Add color fringing

If you aren't into the natural look and really want to embrace this lens then add some graduated filters around your subject and create color casts that accentuate the existing color fringe. This is indeed something to save for special occasions tho as the novelty will wear off after you turn all your photos into circus performers :)

3. Add a heavy vignette  

The last option I am going to present involves creating a vignette that is larger than the area that is effected by color fringing. Of course this will only work with a certain type of photo and in my morbid example above my subject not only isolated using the vignette, but all focus is directed to the birds skull because it was highlighted using the kit flash. This overall look mimics what a flash snoot would do for a portrait photographer. As with the addition of color fringing, I can see myself using this sparingly.  

VI. Have FUN!

By all means the BCLmacro is probably not the best to use on a professional assignment due to an array of limitations. BUT using this lens can be a good way to inject some creativity into your workflow. The photos it produces are insanely unique and if you have never owned a macro lens but own a BCL this is a perfect opportunity for you to experiment with this type of photography! Just make sure to order a backup ;) I myself still have much to learn regarding macro photography and the use of the BCLmacro has made me want to dive deeper into this field. I hope this has inspired someone out there to grab their body cap lens and tiny electronics screwdriver kit and that you enjoyed the photos I have come up with so far. Thank you very much for dropping by, check back periodically for updates and additional tips =)

Sam D.