An American Bison (a.k.a. Buffalo) keeps a watchful eye on me while hunting for grass under snowfall.
Seen at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge just outside of Denver, Colorado.
EXIF:
OM System OM-1 camera, M.Zuiko 100-400mm f/5.0-6.3 lens
100mm, ISO 200, 1/1600 sec, f/5.6
Floor tiles showing foxes dressed as pilgrims (with hats, walking sticks, and back packs) in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, Ireland.
This tile design is unique to Christ Church, but the tiles are not original to either the first church on the site (built around 1030), or to its 12th and 13th century rebuilds. Due to insufficient foundations, the cathedral roof collapsed in 1562 — shattering most of the medieval tiles, so what you see today are copies of the originals, installed in the 1870s.
EXIF:
OM System OM-1 camera, 12-40mm f/2.8 II lens
ISO 10000, 38mm, f/2.8, 1/60 sec
The Flatirons, just west of Boulder, Colorado. But seen in infrared, and with some color tweaks in post-processing.
I love the Flatirons, but they’re one of those subjects that is exhaustively photographed here in Colorado. So, how to make a shot of them that doesn’t look like a million others? Oh, and I went hiking on kind of a “blah” sort of morning — light overcast, some snow on the ground (but not enough to really set off the rock). My regular color photos taken with a regular digital camera were… underwhelming.
Fortunately, I also took along my E-PM2 camera body (which I’d had converted to full spectrum imaging), and a 720 nm infrared filter. Do a little color channel swapping, fiddle a bit with levels to separate the rock from the trees, and presto — you’re on a distant world.
EXIF:
Olympus E-PM2 camera (full spectrum conversion), M.Zuiko 14-42mm F3.5-5.6 EZ lens, 720nm filter
ISO 200, 19mm, f/8.0, 1/250 sec
A pair of American Bison (Buffalo), taking a break from grazing through snowfall.
Seen at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge near Denver, Colorado.
EXIF:
OM Digital OM-1 camera, M.Zuiko 100-400mm f/5.0-6.3 lens
f/5.9, 186 mm, 1/1000 sec, ISO 200
As mentioned in a previous post, I’ve been mulling over battery options — partially because OEM batteries are fairly expensive, and partially because some 3rd party options have potentially attractive additional features.
I’d gotten busy with regular life activities, and almost forgotten about my promise to do some testing, when I ran across this interesting video on YouTube. In the video, a Finnish gent tests an OEM BLH-1 battery and some 3rd-party replacements for it, using an OM-D E-M1 camera. I liked his approach, with a few provisos — namely, that I think using the internal intervalometer was causing him some of his issues (camera stops recording before the battery is fully discharged, residual charge level varies from battery to battery).
A snow sculpture of Ullr, norse god of skiing, on display at the 2023 Breckenridge International Snow Sculpture Championships.
As luck (good? bad?) would have it, our drive up to Breckenridge for the 1st public day of sculpture viewing coincided with the arrival of another storm front. Appropriate, I suppose, for a bunch of sculptures made from snow.
When the folks at OM System (formerly Olympus Imaging) released their new flagship camera, the OM-1, it came with its own new high-capacity battery — the BLX-1. As is usually the case with new battery designs, supply was tight at first. But pandemic supply chain issues (and maybe other problems) have helped keep supply tight since then, and prices for BLX-1 batteries have only gone up in the meantime.
So what’s an OM-1-loving / cost-conscious photographer to do? Plenty of 3rd-party batteries are available on various websites, with varying price, performance, reliability, and safety. I’ve seen good results from ProMaster accessories in the past, so I thought I’d give their batteries a try, particularly since they’ve recently introduced BLX-1 “equivalents” with a twist — built-in USB charging. What follows is a “first impressions” view of the situation (more details will follow in a later post).
Let’s start visually. Here’s a bottom view of three batteries that I’ll be comparing — an OM System BLX-1, a ProMaster replacement, and a ProMaster battery with built-in charging. If you were curious, I purchased all of them — no vendor-provided stuff here.
A younger rider in the 2023 National Western Stock Show parade; Denver, Colorado.
EXIF:
OM System OM-1, M.Zuiko 40-150mm f/2.8 lens
62mm, ISO 250, f/5.6, 1/125 sec
A simple scene, of a male Wood Duck enjoying a peaceful morning in Sterne Park; Littleton, Colorado.
EXIF:
OM System OM-1 camera, M.Zuiko 100-400mm lens
ISO 8000, 400mm, f/6.3, 1/800 sec