Injury!

I have just returned from a week visiting Chang Mai, in Northern Thailand. My last visit was over 30 years ago, so unsurprisingly the city has changed a lot. A recent leg injury from an ill-advised game of football meant I could not explore to the degree I would have liked and required light packing. To keep weight down for this trip I chose my OM-5, mainly paired with my rarely used M. Zuiko 14-42 kit lens. For low light conditions I had the M.Zuiko 17mm, 1.8. One benefit of this setup is that it can be taken on board a plane as carry on, assuming not too much else is pushing the 7kg weight limit. Kit lenses are not known for their sharpness or contrast, so I was looking forward to how my images would look.

The M.Zuiko 14-42mm

This lens is incredibly small and light. It does not match the more pro lenses but holds its weight during day light hours. The full frame equivalent of this lens would be 28 – 84mm, so it works well for landscapes and portraits. The aperture is variable and opens within the ranges of 3.5 – 5.6, so will not capture beautiful creamy bokeh when taking headshots. The flip side of this is that it is easy to make sure everything is in focus! Digital Camera World has gone so far as to name this piece of kit, ‘the best pancake lens ever’.

Projects

Having a new country and home means there are new photography projects, and at the moment old cars are one of my ‘things’. In between visiting the many temples in Chang Mai, I found this rather nifty looking Volkswagen Beetle. The image is plenty sharp enough and helps cement the 14-42’s place in my camera bag. It is worth noting that the lens has an electronic zoom, which is not something I generally love as they tend to be slower to operate than their mechanical alternatives. Having an electronic zoom is one way the weight is kept to a minimum.

Conclusion

This lens will continue to be a favourite travel partner. It weights almost nothing and is one of the smallest lenses I own. It has a wide focal length, meaning it can shoot wide or close up, which in this instance may have saved my damaged leg from too much moving around. It struggles in low light, thus requiring a high ISO which leads to noisy images, admittedly, this is something that can be fixed to some extent in post-production.

So, if you are like me and have held your kit lens in low regard, you may wish to dust if off and give it another try. If you have an unsung hero in your camera bag I would love to hear about it in the comments below.

Take care and keep clicking, Chris