Plaza Blanca, thoughts on ultralight

SpinOne wrote:

Klarno wrote:

I'm currently in the process of revamping my kit to be a little friendlier for ultralight landscape photography....

Yeah, I go fairly light, but I prefer EVF and weather sealing, and ditch the tripod. At the moment that means an E-M1, 12-40, a few filters, and a backup body (Pen-F or LX100). I plan to test the 12-100 one of these days. I suspect that, aside from adding the 2nd body, it isn't much heavier than your setup.

I'm not blown away by the 12-32, though it is ridiculously light and small.

IMO going truly ultralight would require something like a single Sony RX100. At low ISOs, I don't think you'd lose a lot of image quality.

Overall though, the stuff you posted looks pretty good. Keep it up

For myself, I need the tripod because a lot of my photography ends up being at dusk and at night. Lots of long exposures. I did consider one of those 1"-format travel zoom cameras, but I like having a true backup body available that can take all my lenses. (Also, has Olympus' Live Time feature been duplicated by any other manufacturers? That's the best feature in the entire system for landscape photography, IMO.) Really, I didn't just want ultralight, but also frugality and to repurpose gear I already own, to get more efficient use out of it. I find the E-PM2 with the VF-4 to be a great balance of smallness and versatility, and I can even put in in a jacket pocket with the 12-32 attached.

The 35-100 helps my kit in other ways as well. My first purpose for the E-PM2 was just as a secondary camera, to keep my telephoto lens on usually while a weather sealed wide zoom was attached to the E-M1 (The E-PM2 was also being sold on a fire sale and I actually came out ahead selling my GH2, and later picked up the VF-4 and I was still ahead). But it was never really able to fulfill that goal because of the 40-150 f/4.0-5.6 sensitivity to shutter shock, and the E-PM2's poor IS performance. The 35-100 solves this problem through its competent IS. It handles really nicely with the E-PM2 as well.

The 12-100 would be perfect for me, though it is out of my price range. I've had my eye on the 12-40 for a long time, or possibly the smaller and less expensive 12-35, but no matter which way I go I'll have to spend money, and frankly what I have is working for me. Maybe they just have inertia, but the Four Thirds lenses are doing their job more than adequately. What I really need is a weather sealed telephoto option before I consider changing anything in the wides.

Thanks for looking!