A short Gear History

Quite a number of photography amateurs spend quite some energy in discussing the gear they use and others don’t. There is so much choice in camera systems and lenses (for some systems this also means “third party lenses). I’m not an exception myself and am a vigilant user of the DP Review Forum.

My first digital camera was an easy choice, there weren’t too many digital consumer cameras available in 1999. But from there on, so many more brands stepped in to this market (mind you, for quite a long time, professional photographers had no faith in a commercial future for the digital photography). Upgrading from that first camera, I got heaps of information from a website called “Steves Digicams.com”.
This was my journey through Digital Camera Land (buckle up!): Olympus D-340L (1280×960 pixels!), Olympus C-2040 Zoom (1600×1200 pixels), Canon Digital Rebel EOS 300D Compact SLR (3072×2048 pixels) despite being a “Compact” SLR, I found it too big to put it in my flight bag so, along side I got myself an Olympus D595 Zoom (2560×1920 pixels), Sony Alpha DSLR-A100 (3872×2592 pixels and it had image stabilization! Revolutionary!).

A break point in that journey was 2015. The Micro Four Thirds system came to my attention. It had the advantage of flexibility in focal length (various lenses) from my Sony Alpha 100 but at a much smaller size and weight (body as well as the lenses).
I got an Olympus OM-D E-M10, I bought it with an Olympus ED 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 EZ Pancake lens, an ultra compact system with surprisingly good specs.

I also had an Olympus 40-150mm f/4.0-5.6 R, a zoom lens at the size of a soda can. It might be worth mentioning that the smaller sensor size of the Micro Four Thirds also means one crops (compared to Full Frame), so the reach is equivalent to 80-300mm in FF terms. This set easily fit my flight bag. As I commuted to and from Schiphol Airport on a motor cycle and found my camera to be “in the wrong place at the wrong time” (in my flight bag in the locker at the Airport when I wanted to use it at home and at home when I had been called out of reserve and got to fly to an interesting place), I traded in my first E-M10 for two E-M10 Mark III’s (one used and one demo model).

In 2023, my wife and myself celebrated our 30th anniversary. For that occasion we went to a Safari in Tanzania. As I had learned my 40-150mm was not always giving me the reach that I desired, I managed to purchase a used Olympus 300mm f.4.0 IS Pro. My first pro lens ever. Obviously, I had both my E-M10 bodies with me at that trip, one fitted with that fresh tele prime and the other with the “Magic Plastic” compact 40-150mm lens.

Once back home and editing the photos I took, I started to pixel peep more and more. I noticed that the Pro lens was very very sharp, all the way to the edges, my other two lenses were not. And once I saw how good the IQ could be with some good glass, I traded in that glass for the Olympus ED 12-40mm f/2.8 Pro and the ED 40-150mm f/2.8 Pro.

That probably got me in to the rabbit hole: my two E-M10 bodies had a 16MP sensor. Olympus had higher end bodies with more pixels (20MP) on the market. In fact, it had just introduced the first OM System body at that time, the OM-1 Mark II. Olympus had discontinued their consumer camera line, that had been taken over by the “new” brand OM System. This had put the Olympus OM-1 on sale and I traded in both my E-M10 mark III bodies for just one Olympus OM-1 (as, at that point in time, that body was already quite an upgrade and I saw no need to invest more in a mark II).

The subsequent holiday went to Canada, so there I was, one body, three lenses. Now that swapping of lenses has caused me to miss quite some shots. Apart from the fact that swapping lenses “out in the open” is something that can be tricky: dust could penetrate the body and settle on the vulnerable sensor. So, she allowed me to try and find an affordable second body. To my big surprise, by that time (roughly half a year after I had bought the OM-1 ‘Mark I’), I saw that OneStop Digital had the OM System OM-1 Mark II on sale for roughly the same price as I bought the OM-1 Mark I. So, I bought that one.

Having two bodies does help, but I still missed range at one end. Either on the long end or at the wide angle. So to solve that, I had two options: either buy a third body (I was thinking about an OM-5) or get the Olympus 12-100mm f/4.0 IS Pro. I really could not decide, so it did not result in to a purchase.

April 2024 I got the shocking news that my dad was diagnosed with colon cancer. I spend as much of my spare time as I could. He had always enjoyed my photography, I had sent him my best shots and he would comment on them. Now, at the time that I bought the 300mm f/4.0 IS Pro, the introduction of the Olympus ED 150-400mm f/4.5 TC1.25 IS Pro had not escaped my attention. I sometimes discussed this lens with my dad. It was a dream of a lens, tack sharp, good range, amazing Image Stabilization (IS) that could operate in conjunction with the IS of the camera bodies that I had (called “Sync IS”), despite the long range, it still was portable, it had an absurd Minimum Focus Distance of 1.3 meters, so that lens had kept me awake for quite a number of nights. And so had its price: €7.000,- on an occasional sale, €7.500 regular retail price.

On my visits to my dad, we discussed family history, backed-up by dozens of old photographs, going back to 1887. I learned quite a lot about our family.

As the inevitable end of the live of my dad came nearer and nearer, we started to discuss things like how he would want to have his funeral arranged, financial stuff etc. My mother had passed away almost 20 years before that time, some of the inheritance of my mother was at my dad’s disposal. That part would become available after he would pass away. “Son, don’t think you can buy a fancy house from it!”, he said (and I had not thought that for a second). “But it would probably get me that lens, wouldn’t it?”. My dad grinned and said: “That would be money well spent.”. I told him I would get that lens than and name it after him and mother, so it would always bring back memories to the both of them every time I would pick it up. And so, a few months later, coincidentally at my 56th Birthday, “Alma” was delivered at my house.

Ten days after that, I had a breathtaking trip to Murchison Falls National Park in Uganda. On the OM-1.1 I had the 40-150mm f/2.8 and on the OM-1.2 I had Alma. I reckoned my iPhone could do the wide angle photography. But, for the sake of comparison, I had also brought the 12-40mm f/2.8. I decided to look for a good comparison subject that was in a as dust free environment as theoretically possible and do only 1 lens swap, take some shots with both camera and iPhone and compare those shots later. Perhaps Samsung can compete with a genuine camera, my iPhone 14 Pro does take nice piccies, but they can’t beat those of the genuine camera fitted with Pro grade lenses. And that makes perfect sense of course.

So, once back home, I found that for a next Safari trip, I had 3 options:
1. Swap 12-40mm and 40-150mm lenses
2. Get a third body
3. Get the 12-100mm f/4.0 IS Pro lens

I discussed those three options on the DP Review Forum. I got different types of feedback. As I had already learned that the Image Quality (IQ) of Alma was so darn close to that of my beloved 300mm f/4.0 IS Pro prime lens, I came to the conclusion that, however good that prime lens is, it would very likely spend the rest of its time on my shelf. So, I traded in the prime for the 12-100mm f/4.0 IS Pro.

Now that is a nice travel companion. In daylight. Yes, it’s Sync IS does allow slower shutter speeds to compensate for its higher f value, but it could not beat the 12-40mm f/2.8 without lens IS in musea. That got me to rethink option 2. And as I got on that path, I asked myself the question: “Should getting a Full Frame body and comparable 12-40mm f/2.8 lens be worth considering?”. Why one might ask. Well, mainly because meanwhile the Full Frame (FF) bodies had shrunken quite a bit on one hand. And gathered quite a number of extra pixels on the other. All that talk about the superiority of FF sensors over MFT sensors had not gone unnoticed to me. So when a colleague of mine got his hands on a Sony A7R V and decided that he would not use two bodies, he put his Sony A7R IV on sale at a very fair price. I got the Sony FE 24-70mm GM II brand spanking new at OneStop Digital at the same price as they were going for in Europe second hand. I reasoned: “If I can’t see too much of a difference between shots taken with the OM-1 and the Sony, I can put the Sony kit on for sale and barely lose money on it”.

The next Safari trip, I carried three bodies. They all fit in my camera back pack. And I can carry that around all day. I will admit, this set-up has reached the maximum volume and weight that I’m willing to carry. I got myself a harness that hooks up both my OM-1 bodies with the Tele Zooms on them and I have the Sony around my neck. This set-up could very well prove to be The Ideal Safari Set Up. The Sony delivers amazing wide angle shots with a high Dynamic Range at an insane 60 Mega Pixels. Without swapping lenses, the 3 body set-up provides a range from 24mm FF equivalent to 1400mm FF equivalent! Almost seamlessly: on the 150-400mm I have the MC14 1.4x TC pretty much glued on. So the range goes from 24-70, 80-300 (FF equivalent of 40-150), 420-1400mm. The gap between 70 and 80 is very easily fixed by switching to APS-C mode on the Sony (produces 24 MP images with a focal length multiplication of 1.5, so 24-70mm becomes 36-105mm, yes, post production cropping does the same, however, cropping this way “in the field” dramatically reduces image file size, so saves disc space, and increases post production time). The gap between 300mm and 420mm remains, however, for some reason I rarely find myself in situations that it bugs me. Most of the time it boils down to: “large animal at mid range versus long range” and the gap is no issue or: “small animal near by or at mid/long range” and the gap is no issue either. Basically, when the 40-150mm MFT (80-300mm FF equivalent) is too short, the starting point of 210mm MFT (420 mm FF equivalent) looks fine.