Author: Peter Forsgard

Olympus OM-system 180mm f2 lens – A Stunning lens from the 80s.

I had a chance to test a very rare lens. An Olympus super-telephoto lens from the early 80s. The lens is Zuiko Auto-T 180mm f2 ED-IF. Back then the OM-system bodies that Olympus had were OM-3 and OM-4. Olympus had a very nice line up of Zuiko lenses for those cameras and other OM-system bodies. The one line-up they did not have, was pro-grade fast telephoto lenses.
Olympus made several fast telephoto lenses. One of them was the 180mm f2 lens that I had the chance to test. Other lenses were 100mm f2.0, 250mm f2.0 and a 350mm f2.8. This way Olympus was able to offer fast telephoto lenses to pros. All these lenses are very rare and cost quite a lot of money.

You can still find them on eBay. The prices are from several thousand all the way up to 10K. That is a lot of money for a lens. Some of them were sold in Japan. That will add up to costs.
Olympus OM-D E-M1 MKIII, Zuiko 180mm f2, 1/2500s f2, ISO64, © Peter Forsgard
As I said on the video that I made about the 180mm f2 lens, the image quality is stunning. Not much to complain.
OIympus M-1, Zuiko 180mm f2, film Ilford X"2© Peter Forsgard
Of course, the lenses are full manual. The lens has an aperture ring and it is manual focus. I tried with two cameras. One of them was my Olympus M-1. The first SLR from Olympus. Unfortunately, the shutter was not very consistent and the images did no come out the way I wanted.
I was able to use it also with the E-M1 MKIII. I had an adapter from Novoflex. With that, it worked very well. The focusing was quite easy, thanks to focus peaking and magnify features that help a lot. I am not very experienced using manual focus for moving subjects so I concentrated on more easy subjects.

Of course, I needed to try it for bird photography. That is the most likely genre that this lens would be used for.
Olympus OM-D E-M1 MKIII, Zuiko 180mm f2, 1/1250s f2 ISO200, © Peter Forsgard
Olympus OM-D E-M1 MKIII, Zuiko 180mm f2, 1/250s f2, ISO200, © Peter Forsgard
All in all, it was a very exciting experience. Thanks so much, Olympus Finland for lending the lens for this test.
Below is the video where I share my experience on the lens.

July 19, 2020
What is in My Camera bag in 2020?

As a professional photographer I need quite a lot gear. Everythinmg also needs to have a backup. In the video below I will talk about the three different gigs that I usually have and what i pack for those different gigs.

Link to all there gear that I have in my bags (Amazon Affiliate links):
👉The camera gear I use
👉Studio Lights I use
👉Audio Gear
👉My Camera Bags

May 29, 2020
Vivian Maier – The selfie queen?

The Finnish Museum of Photography just opened Vivian Maier exhibition last week. I visited the exhibition yesterday. The exhibition concentrated on Vivian Maiers selfies. The name of the exhibition was The Self-Portrait and its double.

The exhibition consisted of 83 photographs and cine films from the period 1953 to 1986.

The whole collection of 120.000 negatives were found from a storage house in 2007. Maier herself lived in total privacy. She was a nanny and photography was her hobby. It was a sensation when the negatives were found. Her story can be read from the website that was made to honor her work. It is a fascinating story and worth reading.

When Vivian Maier was photographing selfies it was not a big thing like it is now. Most of the photos exhibited were reflections from mirrors and other reflective objects. One of my favorite images was the reflection from a wheel capsule of a Beetle.
A collection of her self-portraits can be seen on the already mentioned website.
Taking selfies is an interesting genre of photography. It has a long also in painting. The first known selfie was taken by Robert Cornelius in 1829. It was a daguerrotype. Another early selfie was by Hippolyte Bayard. The photograph is known as Self Portrait as a Drowned Man.
Image: Hippolyte Bayard, 1840, photo from Wikipedia, Public Domain
It was a reaction to the injustice he felt. Hippolyte Bayard had a photo exhibition 24th of June 1839. It was the worlds first photo exhibition. Bayard also claimed that he had invented photography before Lois Daguerre and William Henry Fox Talbot. The invention was credited to the two and Hippolyte Bayard was totally ignored at the time. Very understandable that he felt miss treated.
It would interesting to hear what Vivian Maier would say if she knew how famous her photographs are? As the story of her life says she was very private. Maybe she would not have liked the fame?

Most likely she enjoyed the process of making photographs more than showing them to others. Was she just too modest and did not realise how gifted she was as a photographer. Was she a victim of her time when women did not had nearly as good opportunities that they have today at least in the western world? We will never know.

January 20, 2020