Today’s Post by Joe Farace
Lately it seems that every weekend kicks off with Mary scanning her smartphone for a list of car shows that we can attend, especially me, to overcome COVID-related depression that has me down in the dumps lately. When I purchased the M.Zuiko Digital 25mm f/1.8 lens I had plans to shoot Cars & Coffee using it with my Pen F but other stuff including getting Sigma’s lenses for full-frame mirrorless L mount got in the way.
When Mary found the NCCC Sanctioned People’s Choice Corvette Car Show at Daniels Long Chevrolet in Colorado Springs last Saturday, I agreed to go along specifically to shoot my Olympus Pen F with the 25mm, 50mm equivalent lens. When I told my friend Jamie Zartman about this he said, “A Pen F with a 25mm lens sounds about perfect.”
I was hoping to see a 2020 mid-engined C8 Corvette and there was one in red, of course, but there was also a driver quality 1954 C1 in black. The C8 was very nice, especially the interior. It was parked next to a blue C7 (I confess that I like its looks better than the newer car) but the striking difference in the style and execution of C8’s interior made me wonder why it took GM so long to make a quality interior. I’m sure the designers have seen an Audi at one time or another. Other than those few C1 and C8 models, there was plenty of C2 through C7 models, especially the C3 and earlier models that I really like. Mary is a big fan of the C5’s and the top image is her pick for “People’s Choice.”
How did it go Two things we got to the show later in the morning than I would have liked, partially because we got a late start and partially because the drive from the Denver Metro Area, when you got to Castle Pines on I-25 and headed south to Colorado Springs was horrible. Lots of slow bumper-to-bumper traffic and some of the worse road surfaces that Mary, even with the newish Pirelli tires on her Beetle Convertible had recently encountered. Arriving a bit later meant that the light was horrible too. The First Friday car shows in Colorado Springs have this same problem too but if you get there early, the first hour of that show produces some excellent lighting conditions.
And then there was the lens. With it’s 50mm equivalent focal length and 47 degree angle-of-view, it seemed too tight for what I was trying to do—photograph cars. I was sure that it would have been perfect in this kind of environment and because I am a bullheaded sort I am going to try to shoot this same combo at next month’s Parker, Colorado’s Cars and Coffee and you, know, see what happens.
The show was delightful, the cars were beautiful and the car’s owners could not have been nicer to two people who drive up in a Beetle and were obviously not Corvette people.