this is not a print: Up close with the Panasonic 14mm f2.5

Olympus OM-D + Panasonic 14mm f2.5 @ f5.6

I still remember the moment I realised how close you can get with wide angle lenses. This may sound silly but previously my wide angle train of thought was 'stand back, zoom out, align the horizon and put everything and lots of sky in the frame.'

I was out walking my dog one evening and I only had my Olympus OM-D and Panasonic 14mm f2.5. This is the smallest configuration that I can make and I love it because it is so tiny and inconspicuous and with the wide lens I don't have to focus too hard on composing, I can always crop later. But this day I walked past some grasses that were all orange from the fading sun and in the fading light, subtle tonal changes were appearing. And all I had was a wide angle lens. So I stuck the lens as close as I could to the grasses and got this:

Olympus OM-D + Panasonic 14mm f2.5 @ f2.5

And it opened up a new world of composition.

By bringing the foreground much closer to my lens or by placing the camera close to the ground, more striking and dynamic scenes were appearing. I now run around with my little wide angle lens just thrusting it into things or lifting it up high or really low to see what happens. It helps having a tilt screen which I now can't live without. And even considering how wide this lens is, you can still get surprisingly creative depth of field, depending on the distance between the foreground and background.

Olympus OM-D + Panasonic 14mm f2.5 @ f5.6

Olympus OM-D + Panasonic 14mm f2.5 @ f8

Even with a small aperture of f8, because the foreground is so close, there is still creative blurring to isolate the subject. It always pays to keep in mind what is happening in the background though as there will always be a lot included unless you crop later.

My normal thought process is: isolate the scene with a longer lens. But now I am hankering for a wider lens to throw something into. I wish I could afford the Panasonic 7-14mm f4 lens but $1000 doesn't seem right. If only they made a 9mm or 10mm f2.8 that wasn't a fish eye so I could run around some more and find even more dynamic compostions. I couldn't find a review of the Panasonic 14mm f2.5 before I bought it but it was so cheap ($200) so I jumped to buy one and it is one of my favourite lenses.

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