Next step of the Olympus era: The OM-D EM-5 Mark II

As you know I am quite happy with my Olympus OM-D EM-5. I used it for about one and a half year. But in February this year Olympus presented its successor the OM-D EM-5 Mark II. At a first glance it looks just similar, but reading the reviews everyone was very enthusiastic about it. So I couldn’t resist it and bought the EM-5 Mark II. It feels more solid and autofocus is even faster than the original EM-5. I loved the silver version. So for me this the next step of the Olympus era. And I kept my EM-5 as a second body.

My lenses

In this post I will tell you something about my lenses. One of the advantages of Olympus cameras is they use the Micro Four Thirds (MFT) system. MFT is used by Panasonic also, so you can choose lenses from Olympus and Panasonic either.

The lenses I own today:

I now own these lenses:

Olympus 17mm f/1.8

This is my absolute favorite lens, compact and lightweight. Ideal for street photography and a quick autofocus. I really love this lens.

Olympus 12-40mm f2.8 Pro

Recently I bought this lens together with my new EM5 Mark II. This is one of the best lenses on the market for Olympus. The only disadvantage is that it is heavier than most other lenses.

Olympus 9-18mm f/4.0-5.6

With the crop factor of 2 for micro four third camera's this is the equivalent of a 18-36 mm lens. I love this lens, especially for taking pictures in cities. Last year I used it a lot in London and New York.

Panasonic 14-140mm f3.5-5.6

On holidays I found out that changing lenses can be complicated. So I searched for a good travel zoom. When I bought it, this Panasonic lens had the best reviews (the new Olympus f/4.0-5.6 14-150 II was not on the market at that time). I am quite happy with the Panasonic and it is a very useful lens when I am travelling with a good picture quality. The only disadvantage is that focusing is sometimes a bit slow on an Olympus camera.

Olympus 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 II R

When I bought my first Olympus E-PL5 I could only buy it with kit lenses. So I bought it with this lens. Although it is nog a bad lens, I don’t use it anymore, because my other lenses are better.

Lenses I owned before:

I also had some other lenses that I sold already:

The Olympus 40-150mm f/4-5.6. It came also as a kit with my first E-PL5. I traded it in when buying the Panasonic 14-140mm.

The Panasonic 20mm f/1.7 lens. It had a very good quality and I have shot some great pictures in the dark also. In fact I loved using this lens! As I found out later, for me, it only has one disadvantage when using it on my Olympus OM-D EM-5: focus speed is a bit (too) slow for street photography. So that’s why I bought the Olympus 17 mm.

The Olympus 45mm f/1.8. It makes excellent and sharp pictures, but to be honest I didn't use this lens very often. Somehow 45 mm is not my lens. So I traded it in when buying the Olympus 12-40mm.

The old harbors of Dordrecht

In May friends of us celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary. They organized a boat tour through the old harbors of our hometown Dordrecht. It rained almost all week, but on that particular day we were so lucky: a beautiful day with sunshine. I hope you like these photos!

Old Maya city Uxmal in Mexico

In this post some photos of the old Maya city Uxmal in Mexico. During our vacation we visited several Maya temples and cities and in this city was the one I liked the most.

Xunantunich Belize

In January 2015 we booked a vacation to Mexico, Belize and Guatemala. The next weeks I will publish some photos of Maya tempels, cities and the magnificent nature. I shot a lot of pictures in the streets also, these are published on my streetphotoblog.

All photos in this post are shot at the Maya temple of Xunantunich, which means Stone Lady, in Belize.

Raindrops

One of our projects was to take some photos in the rain. Since we live in The Netherlands we have a lot of rain, so we have enough opportunities to take rain pictures. So on a rainy day in November I took my car and made some photos in Rotterdam in my car with raindrops on my windows. It was the first time I took rain pictures and I was really surprised by the dramatic effect these raindrops have on your pictures. So see for yourself if you like them.

Geometric shapes

We also had a project called geometric shapes and the goal was to make pictures with geometric shapes in a realistic way. 

So I went to Rotterdam and shot some pictures of the new "Central Station", "The Cubic Houses" and the "Blaak" trainstation. The last one is a new overpass for cyclists on the A15 Highway South of Rotterdam. 

All photos are in black and white.