At Martuni’s
Martuni’s, The Mission, San Francisco, California
Olympus E-P2, M.ZUIKO Digital ED 14-42mm 1:3.5-5.6
1/3sec, iso 160, 14mm (28mm)
After dinner, we walked to Martuni’s which is a piano bar that serves some great martinis. Morgan was already there and after the requisite hugs, I snapped this photo with the lens I had on. You know it’s bad when the candlelight is the brightest thing in the room. At least this lens was able to focus.
If you mouseover the photo, you can see that this photo, despite being pushed to the max, needed to be push-processed another two stops. Since there was no dynamic range to work with here, I finished with a grainy film look (Nik Color Efex Pro film effects). Aggressive denoising was done with Topaz DeNoise which, while the best denoising around, has a nasty tendency to add weird artifacts. Viveza was used to darken some of the background and bright out the shadows from the eyes. I overdid it on one eye, but chalked it up as an “effect.”
Martuni’s, The Mission, San Francisco, California
Olympus E-P2, Cosina-Voigtländer NOKTON Classic 40mm f1.4 S.C.
1/15sec, iso120, 40mm (80mm)
When Melanie’s cupcakes came out, I had my Voigtländer NOKTON Classic 1.4 on my camera. I quickly tried to focus and shoot from the next table over. Because of the rush, the image is slightly back-focused. Not sure where the green flares are coming from so we’ll blame that on the single-coating. 😉
In terms of postprocessing, I tried to keep it very simple: swap out the digital noise for a more classic film one. To do this, I ran a denoise tool on the image, and added the film grain back in with Nik Color Efex Pro.
Martuni’s, The Mission, San Francisco, California
Olympus E-P2, Leica Noctilux-M 50mm f1
1/8sec, iso1200, 50mm (100mm)
Before I returned the Noctilux I wanted to see how it performed on the E-P2. The low depth of field at f1 and the EVF make the setup actually fun to focus—it’s like shooting in the dark. It does however, range way to far than I’d like.
In this case, I shot through someone which caused an interesting effect. While the in-camera B&W filter I use is green to exaggerates the tonality, for portraits it is best to use something that tilts more red. In this case, digitally I applied an orange filter using Silver Efex Pro. Some brighting and structure was added to the eyes.
Great pics sir 🙂
I love Mission Beach Cafe, specially on Pot Pie Tuesdays, but you really should try the Panasonic 20mm f/1.7 on your E-P2 to see what it is capable of.
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@Fazal Majid: Alas, they’ve been on backorder forever. I blame T.O.P. for telling people that about that trick. 🙂
Well, I bought the GF1 for the 20mm f/1.7 and the fast AF, as my Sigma DP2 was just too slow for anything but static subjects. The praise for the prime lens is not hype (tack sharp wide open, and fairly pleasing bokeh) and it is well worth the wait. I also have the Voigtländer adapter for M-mount lenses, but found it less than practical in real-world use.
The only minus point is the fact it doesn't have an orientation sensor (the GF1 doesn't have an orientation sensor in the body and requires the lens to have one to auto-rotate the pictures, which is quite bizarre). On a E-P2, that should not be an issue.
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