p5230042
Except for being converted to a jpg format from the original RAW, the photo above is just as it came out of the camera. No adjustments have been made but the faults are obvious. Subject matter notwithstanding, the most noticeable fault is the composition. Let’s assume that the subject is interesting. A huge assumption, I grant you, but it’s suitable for our purpose. That purpose is actually part of a test of the Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark II and the 14-42mm lens. I picked this subject because it had a lot of nice detail and I was hoping the camera could do a good job of resolving it.
With that in mind, I didn’t pay very much attention to the composition (an error on my part) but it is a reasonably good example of the close-focusing capability of the lens. The photo below is the same photo with some Lightroom adjustments. The photo was shot at 42mm, 1/100th sec., f8, ISO 200 handheld:
p5230042
The adjusted photo is cropped somewhat and some of the green color tones are desaturated. Some clarity was added to the seed head as well. I’m happy with this shot overall but it still needed to be cropped even more (close to a 1:1 ratio) to see how well the camera resolved the features of the seed head. Below is the cropped portion of the same photo.
p5230042
There were more adjustments made which included additional sharpening and color control. It’s difficult to see in a 1200 pixel web version but the original looks excellent on my monitor. I’ll have to see what it looks like printed. While I don’t think the kit lens is as capable as a dedicated macro lens, I’m more than happy with its performance. I’ll be doing extended testing on the camera and lens combination in the near future but I will say that my first impressions are very favorable.
2clicksaway 