Flight From Callahan County

The Olympus (now OM Digital Solutions) announcement last year of its new M.Zuiko 100-400mm f/5.0-6.3 IS lens immediately grabbed my attention.  As an enthusiast micro four thirds amateur, I have a variety of prime and zoom lenses but none to cover the longest telephone range.  My lens lineup includes an Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 75-300mm F4.8-6.7 II, but I have found it just a bit short on some occasions. In additional to the 400mm reach of the new lens, it can focus very close throughout its zoom range, making it valuable for shooting macro/closeup images of flowers and insects at a distance. Another benefit is compatibility with the standard Olympus MFT teleconverters, the 1.4x MC-14 and the 2x MC-20. However, the large size and its hefty price tag of $1,500 USD have made me rethink the the value this lens would be for me. I used to do a lot of photography on mountain hikes but never pursued birds or wildlife. But as I have gotten older my hikes have become less strenuous w...

 When I was a boy growing up in a rural part of the Big Country of West Texas in the 1950s, our one TV station had no live network programming for several years after it first signed on the air. The reason was the AT&T line (a coaxial cable) carrying network television service extended no farther westward than Dallas-Fort Worth. No football, no basketball, no baseball, no network news. When construction started to expand the service to the Abilene market, the station, KRBC-TV, began running a film promotional announcement with the words "the cable is coming to Abilene." I was reminded of that line yesterday when we had a Google Fiber hanger placed on our front door here in southwest Austin. Google Fiber hanger, promising free installation, unlimited data with no throttling or extra charges, more than enough Wi-Fi with no buffering or interruptions, TV and telephone service. Photo by Thom Milkovic on Unsplash . Door hanger scan . Austin has always been a limited-choice te...

 Here's a black and white image of the legacy Olympus OM-System 50mm f2 Auto-Macro on a modern micro four thirds camera -- the Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark III. Because this prime lens was designed for SLR cameras, it's big and heavy, although the Olympus OM-System was smaller than other SLRs. The grip and the size of the E-M1 III make it work well on this camera. I would not want to use it on my smaller PEN-F without a grip attached. This copy of the lens, which I acquired used on eBay, is in good shape, and looks great on the camera. The wide rubberized focus ring operates smoothly with its wide throw. For manual focus work, I prefer this approach to the focus-range switches used on later model macro and telephoto lenses. The aperture ring with click stops is located at the front of the lens. A focus-distance scale is found at the back of the lens behind the focus ring. A Fotodiox Pro OM-MFT adapter attaches the lens to the micro four thirds camera. This lens and virtually all of t...

I have always been a fan of Olympus cameras. My first was an OM-2, a 35mm film camera that was part of what was known as the OM-System. I owned three the OM-System cameras over the years. In addition to small size, a key factor in the success of the OM-System was the quality and variety of lenses. My favorite lens was the 100mm f2.8, rendering beautiful bokeh perfect for portraits. All of these lenses were manual focus. With the decline of film, I moved to the Olympus 4/3 format camera, a digital SLR that introduced me to auto focus. I had the E-420, then an E-620 before Olympus and Panasonic launched micro four thirds. The technical advancements are marvelous, and I am now shooting with an EM-1 Mark III and an MFT PEN-F with fast autofocus prime and zoom lenses. But I miss some of those OM-System lenses, even though they were only manual focus. I recently found a bargain on an Olympus OM-System Zuiko 50mm f2 Auto-Macro lens. Here's an image shot with that lens adapted for use on a...