Today’s Post by Joe Farace
The Ides of March Cars & Coffee at the Vehicle Vault in Parker, Colorado this past Saturday was the biggest and best since this series of impromptu car shows kicked off last year. The weather was cool and just a bit overcast but that didn’t dampen the attendance or the enthusiasm of those who came to show off their cars or people like Mary and I who came to gawk at the vehicles. Tip: As always at a crowded car show, like this, get in close.
One of my goals in attending the show was to shoot my old (in Internet years) Olympus Pen E-P3 with the so called “worthless” 15mm f/8.0 Body Cap lens that turned out to be anything but worthless. The big question you might be asking: How did the lens do?
First of all, the lens is far from worthless. In fact for less than fifty bucks it’s a good deal.
Second, is it the perfect car show lens? Here, as the Magic 8 Ball once said, “the results are less than clear.” It gets top grades for convenience. Unlike Oly’s 9mm f/8.0 Fisheye Body Cap lens it’s not as focus sensitive and has three manual (notched) distance settings: Close up, normal and infinity, the latter two being so close that when I did some testing in the days before the show, I could see no difference in sharpness between the latter two focus settings. And using it is fast! There’s no waiting for the camera to focus, it’s just BANG! Make the shot.
As far as flexibility goes, I’m on the fence here too. There is no doubt a real AF zoom (I’m looking at you Pany’s 12-32mm lens) might be a better choice and so at next month’s Cars & Coffee. So I’ll give the Lumix G Vario 12-32mm f/3.5-5.6 ASPH a try but at the same time there’s no doubt that the convenience of a prime focal length, wide-angle (30mm equivalent) lens that turns your camera into a simple point-and shoot and in the fun environment of a Cars & Coffee event, maybe that’s all a photographer needs.
My apologies for being late. Last week’s post said “I’ll be there close to 9:00…” but it turned out to be closer to 9:30 when we arrived.