Photography

Since launching our blog we’ve received numerous enquiries about the equipment and techniques we use for our photography. This has prompted me to provide this summary.

Why do we do it?

• To record the diversity of life in our forest (and elsewhere)

• To aid species identification - a photo freezes an otherwise fleeting mental image for later comparisons

• To enable a closer look at living things - the detailed structure of an organism provides insights into its identity, its function and its biology

• To capture the beauty of life

  
  

Where do we do it?

• Most of our photography is opportunistic. It’s done as we wander around the forest on our home block looking for life. This reflects our primary interest in understanding the biology and ecology of the organisms that reside in the forest.

• However we also take photographs in a more deliberate way in a controlled setting. For example, we regularly set up lightsheets to photograph moths and other insects attracted to light at night. We often capture an insect or spider, bring it inside and take close-up photos after it has ‘settled down’. Or we might dissect a flower and image its parts under a microscope.

  
  

How do we do it? - needs must

Our kit

We use 4 different Olympus OM-D camera bodies – E-M1 Mk I, Mk II, Mk III and E-M1X – coupled to a range of optics. The latter include Olympus zoom and prime lenses covering a focal length range from 12 to 400mm, a Zeiss Tessovar macro imaging system and a Zeiss Photomicroscope. More about those later.

The particular combination of body and optics we choose is dictated by the nature of the subject - its size, its distance, its activity - as well as how closely we want to look at it.

Why Olympus OM-D cameras?

The Olympus OM-D E-M1 is an interchangeable lens, mirrorless camera body equipped with a ‘four-thirds’ sensor and an electronic viewfinder (EVF).

Why interchangeable lens?
An interchangeable lens body provides the option of combining the same body with different optics. One minute I can be taking photographs of birds in the canopy with my telezoom lens and the next close up macro shots of a small insect on the forest floor. All with the same camera body and without any compromise in image quality.

Why mirrorless and EVF? And why not an SLR?
Mirrorless camera bodies are more compact and lighter than single lens reflex (SLR) bodies because they forgo the mirror that directs light to the optical viewfinder in an SLR, replacing it with an EVF.

The quality of EVFs has improved greatly in recent years and now approaches that of optical viewfinders. In addition, they offer some features not available in an optical viewfinder, such as focus peaking.

We almost always use the EVF rather than the LCD screen on the camera back when shooting. The apparent image seen through the viewfinder is larger, brighter (particularly in bright ambient light) and clearer than that seen on the LCD screen. This makes composition and focussing much more accurate.

Why a four-thirds sensor?
The sensors in digital cameras come in a variety of sizes, from 36x24mm of “full-frame” cameras to ~6x4.5mm of a good quality mobile phone camera. Everything else being equal, the bigger the sensor, the better the image quality. But this comes at a price, because larger sensors require bigger camera bodies and more significantly, larger and heavier lenses.

Olympus cameras have a four-thirds sensor, which measures 17.3x13mm - considerably smaller than a full-frame sensor. In theory, this should result in an reduced dynamic range and less sensitivity. However we haven’t found this to be a particular issue for our type of nature photography. In any event, we can make adjustments to images in software (see image processing below) to correct for most of these deficiencies.

The other advantage of four-thirds sensor cameras and lenses compared to their full-frame equivalents is cost - the latter are considerably more expensive.

The smaller size of a four-thirds compared to a full-frame sensor automatically produces a ‘crop factor’ of 2, which means that images are enlarged 2x. So a 150mm focal length lens on an Olympus body yields the same image magnification as a 300mm lens on a full-frame camera. This is an advantage if you’re looking for as much ‘reach’ as possible for photography of distant or small objects.

Why Olympus?
We chose Olympus cameras when we moved from film to digital photography in 2007 - mainly because of positive experiences with Olympus gear in the past.

Our current camera bodies, the OM-Ds, have a number of features that make them well suited for nature photography in particular.

• autofocus is fast and accurate

• image stabilisation, which is built into the bodies and selected lenses, is excellent. It works so well that sharp images can be made even at long focal lengths when hand-holding the camera. We almost never need to use a tripod. This is a real plus when working in the field.

• the E-M1X body has a ‘bird detection’ feature, which automatically recognises a bird in the field of view and places a frame around it which tracks it as it moves within the field. It works really well - not infallibly, but it’s a powerful assist for bird photography.

Let me hasten to add that I’m not an Olympus evangelist (and our blog is certainly not sponsored by Olympus!). I’m sure there are several other brands of cameras on the market that cover all or most of these bases. But Olympus is what we have and all we know.

Our optics (or ‘glass’ if you want to be cool)

Olympus lenses

Four Olympus M.Zuiko lenses cover the full range of magnifications we use -except for high power macro and microphotography.

12-40mm f2.8 zoom - The wide angle capability of this lens is useful for photos of large objects at a close distance (e.g. trees) and for landscapes. At its longest focal length, the lens gives a magnification of 0.6x (35mm equivalent), which is sufficient for almost all flowers and smallish insects. The fast speed of f2.8 is useful in low light situations and when a shallow depth of field is sought.

60mm f2.8 prime - A very compact, dedicated macro lens with a magnification of 2x (35mm equivalent). This is my ‘go-to’ lens for photographing very small insects or flowers. It has superb image quality. Its only downside for this task is its working distance at that magnification - 19cm - which is too close for comfort for insects like moths and most wasps.

300mm f4.0 prime - Kerri’s ‘baby’. She uses this lens for almost everything - from birds to bugs to flowers. Its long ‘reach’ is critical for getting good quality images of our resident forest birds, which are mostly small, flighty and often hang out in the canopy. She pushes the focal length up to 420mm by using a 1.4 converter lens. We’ve recently purchased a 2x converter lens for ever greater reach.

Kerri’s lens is also great for macrophotography. It gives a magnification of 0.48x when used at its closest working distance of 1.4m. This is far enough away to allow photography of even the most camera-shy insect.

At wide apertures this lens gives very pleasing out-of-focus effects (bokeh) of the background, drawing attention to the object of interest - be that a plant or an insect.

100-400mm f5.0-6.3 zoom - A recent acquisition, this zoom gives me the same ability to photograph small, flighty insects as Kerri’s 300mm. It provides a similar maximum magnification (0.57x) at a distance of 1.3m. At the equivalent focal length of 300mm, it’s a little slower (i.e. admits less light) than Kerri’s lens, so it’s best suited to brighter conditions.

Its zoom function is helpful when trying to home in on a small object, be it a distant bird or a close, well-camouflaged insect in a complex environment. And it is particularly valuable for flying birds or insects - like the dragonfly shown below. Zoom out to find and track the creature, then zoom in to enlarge it and bring it into focus.

Special rig for macrophotography - Zeiss Tessovar

When we need to go beyond the magnification limits of our regular Olympus lenses we use a very special optical rig - a Zeiss Tessovar. This is a macro zoom lens coupled to two additional turret lenses mounted in a focussing rack, which is held in turn in an extraordinarily sturdy stand.

I’ve cobbled together adapters which enable me to mount an Olympus OM-D E-M1 camera body on the rig. I use the camera’s LCD screen to view the live image when composing and focussing.

The Tessovar provides magnifications from 0.8x all the way up to 12.8x. We use it to capture images of fine structural details of animals and plants - information that can help us determine the identity of that organism.

Some invertebrate animals are so small that this level of magnification is necessary just to get a good quality photo of the whole organism. Early developmental stages - eggs, embryos and larvae - of invertebrates are often in the same category. As an example, I used this system to take images and movies of hatching lacewing embryos.

Photomicroscopy - Zeiss Photomicroscope I

On occasion we find ourselves wanting to take photos of microscopic structures, such as fungal spores, which are typically around 10µm (0.010mm) or whole, tiny organisms like copepods, which may be less than 1mm long. (See my images below of these two examples). A compound microscope is required to produce good quality images of subjects like this.

We use an old (1963) Zeiss Photomicroscope, which despite its age has excellent optics. I have a wide range of objectives with this instrument, covering magnifications from 2.5x to 100x.

In place of the inbuilt film camera in the Photomicroscope (housed in the round, grey object on the RHS in the second image), I use an Olympus OM-D E-M1 camera body. This is mounted on a separate stand to prevent camera shutter vibration being transmitted to the microscope. A bit Heath-Robinsonish, but it works!

The object is first centered in the field of view and brought into focus while looking through the microscope eyepieces. Then I direct the light beam from the eyepieces to the camera to allow final composition and focussing while viewing the LCD screen on the camera back.

What about phone cameras?

Without doubt the most popular type of camera in use today is the phone camera. The quality of the inbuilt camera is one of the major selling points used by mobile phone makers and is responsible for a big chunk of the cost of a phone. They’re popular but are they any good? Are they an adequate replacement for a ‘real’ camera? - in particular for nature photography?

I believe not. That’s not so say that they’re useless for nature photography. It’s just that their weaknesses outweigh their strengths - in my opinion. Here is my breakdown of their pluses and minuses. (Caveat - this is based on use of the cameras in our admittedly aged 2016 iPhone SEs. The cameras in the latest and greatest phones are a marked improvement on this, but many of the limitations listed below still hold).

Strengths

• They’re light, small and easy to use

• You’re likely to always have your phone with its camera with you, whereas the same cannot be said for any other type of camera - encapsulated in the saying “the best camera is the one you’ve got at the time”.

• We use them for landscape shots of vegetation when we don’t have an appropriate wide angle lens with us. They can do a good job of this.

• They’re handy for GPS recordings of position - only one of our 4 Olympus camera bodies offers that feature.

Weaknesses

• They allow only a limited control of almost all settings, including focussing, depth of field, exposure adjustment, focal length, shutter speed and sensitivity (ISO). You can make adjustments to some of these parameters, but it’s either a cludgy process or the camera overrides your decision. These limitations are a particular obstacle for good nature photography. They’re much less of a concern for general scenery shots or photography of people. We happily use our phones for this purpose much of the time.

• The very small image sensor size compromises quality (mainly because of lower light sensitivity and reduced dynamic range). The very latest phone cameras circumvent some of these limitations (particularly reduced light sensitivity) with clever software tricks, using the power of their microprocessors.

• With the exception of the latest top end models (e.g. iPhone 12 Pro), mobile phone cameras cannot capture in the RAW image format, limiting the ability to post-process photos effectively.

• They don’t possess a viewfinder. The phone screen is the only option for composition and adjustment of the image - with the attendant problems discussed above.

Image processing, cataloguing and storage

We routinely capture images in RAW format and import them directly from the camera SD card into Adobe Lightroom on an Apple iMac. Lightroom creates a catalogue of the image files in chronological order with thumbnail copies of the originals.

Lightroom is used for most of our image post-processing, including creation of panoramas. We use Adobe Photoshop for merging stacks of images at different focal planes into a single image. Labelling of images (adding arrows, scale bars) is also done in Photoshop. These Photoshop files are imported back into Lightroom.

The original files and the Lightroom catalogues are stored on external RAID hard drives. We’ve recently filled our original G-Technology 12TB Thunderbolt drive and are now using a LaCie 16TB RAID drive. We capture a lot of images! We use the RAID 1 format which automatically creates a copy of each image file on a separate drive as it is imported. This helps to ensure we don’t lose data in the event of a disk crash.

Paul Whitington, 15 May 2021