Another shot from yesterday morning. Wood storks are just amazing to me. They're huge in the air, and they look almost prehistoric on the ground.

On the last part of my walk when I do the 3.25 mile loop, I'm headed south, so everything in front of me is pretty backlit. I thought it worked for the feathers. This is at 150mm (300mm effective on a full frame body), so I could have tightened up the framing with the 75-300. But I wouldn't have gotten something like this with a normal zoom, like the 12-45. That's an ibis on its right. There were quite a few different wading birds all next to each other.

On my walk yesterday, I was carrying the OM-5 with the 14-150mm/f4-5.6 superzoom. It's not a birding lens, really, but it can give you some reach. And I was in aperture priority because I'd been using shutter priority for Live ND shots. (I could switch from aperture priority into shutter priority and Live ND would still be active.)

Anyway, spotted this egret flying low over the pond and figured I'd give it a try, not expecting much but a lot of blur. Turned out better than I expected, but still an otherwise unremarkable image.

Except, what the hell is going on with that bird's breast? I'm assuming that it has a "crop" and that it's holding a rather large fish.

I have never seen anything like that before. Now I have, and you have too.

Been awake since about 0230, writing blog posts in my head while trying to go back to sleep. Eventually, I gave up and got up. Stuck my head out the door, there was the moon. Took the MC20 teleconverter off the E-M1X and put the MC14 on it. Less reach, but I'm shooting at f9 versus f14. Dropped the ISO to 200 and leaning against the porch pillar I could stay steady enough to successfully get a handheld hi-res shot, even though the moon was pretty high. (It's harder for me to hold the camera/lens steady when I'm pointing it nearly overhead.)

Anyway, the moon "sparks joy." I wish to share it.

Ok, looks like the Automator application works again. It's not optimal, because I'm just pointing it to the Images folder in the 2024 archive. This means that in 2025, I'll have to point it to another Images folder.

There's a "variable" I can use, and I'll be exploring that as I go on. For now, I just wanted the overall automation to work so I can post pics while I continue to update and modify the workflow.

It's perhaps a "nothing" image, but I've been playing with the Live Neutral Density Filter option on the OM-5. I've used it before on my other Olympus/OMDS cameras, so I basically know how it works. But I want to get more familiar with it, so the fountain is just a target of opportunity. We don't have much in the way of dynamic water here in the neighborhood. I could go to the beach, but then I lack any foreground interest.

I feel as though I have to point out that if we had any conception of what was coming, we'd turn all these things off. There are many things we can't turn off, but continuing to consume energy for utterly superfluous reasons ought to be criminal.

One day, it might be.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 12:46 Tuesday, 27 February 2024

Although I'd intended to do some work on the marmot, I got distracted by the moon. I had tried a different method of editing the moon recently, and I liked the result. I'd followed some guidance in a YouTube video, and naturally I can't recall what the process was, or which video I watched. Shame on me! Take notes!

Anyway, I also have to fix the Automator action that moves images after export, so I figured I'd first verify it was broken on the iMac as well. It is.

So, off to play with Automator!

Sorta kinda works.

The problem right now is that the folder the image is moved to is hard-coded in the Automator action. I started futzing with Hazel and then went back to Automator. The AppleScript it ran was just to set the file path for the Images folder by constructing it with the current year from the computer's clock.

If I just select the folder as I'm building the Automator action, there's no problem with it being in iCloud.

I'll figure it out later. For now, it works well enough to demo if I need to tomorrow.

I've been getting the 14" M3 MBP set up, which has taken a bit longer than I expected. Another project today is to collect all the license and registration codes into one repository. Seems like a good job for Tinderbox.

I've been walking 3.25 miles each morning, and adding another walk in the evening. The nice thing about the evening walk is that the sun is on the opposite side. Birds are active in the early morning and early evening. In the morning, they often backlit; not so in the evening. They were relatively scarce yesterday, but I liked how this bluebird turned out.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 08:57 Thursday, 15 February 2024

I was sitting in the office, going over Medicare and Tricare EOBs, as one does, when I noticed my glass was empty. I went back to the kitchen for a refill and saw a red sky through the trees.

I skipped the beverage and threw a battery and memory card in the DJI mini 2. These things only last minutes. Got GPS lock pretty quick and managed to get aloft while the show was still underway.

It was pretty damn red.

"Sailor take warning," and all that.

Looked like sunset was shaping up to be something nice last night. I walked across the street with the OM-5 waited to be amazed.

This is as long as I could wait. The gnats were out in force and drove me back to my house. Should've worn a long-sleeved shirt or sweatshirt. I can kind of tolerate them buzzing around my face, but they were all over my arms.

Still, it was pretty.

Kind of a test post to see what else is working, or not.

I had three rolls of 35mm film laying around here for quite some time. Took it in to be developed when I sold some camera gear to KEH. This is one of the shots. I'm not sure which camera this was. I had two Olympus Stylus point-and-shoots and a Minolta. I'm going to guess this is the Minolta, because I think it had a "close-up" setting.

Anyway, the shots were, for the most part, nothing. But I do like this one. Karma lived a long time. More than 18 years, I think. I think I did what was necessary in 2018, but I'm not sure. Her last few years weren't pleasant for her, and I probably should have been a bit more proactive. But she came into my life when I needed something to think about besides myself, and I loved her.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 08:10 Saturday, 10 February 2024

Mitzi spotted the sky while I was in the office. Grabbed the drone and went aloft. This is about 3 min before sunrise.

I went over to visit with a friend last night and we looked at Jupiter through his large Meade Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope. Some clouds, mostly clear. The seeing wasn't ideal, but got better as the night went on. I could make out two bands and four moons, but no red spot.

I'd brought over a couple of cameras and a tripod and I tried to get a shot of the Orion Nebula. I got a few, but nothing was I really pleased with. I was trying to use the OM-1 with handheld high-resolution shooting from the tripod. I kept getting failures.

So before I turned in tonight, I looked outside and the sky was clear so I set up on our back patio.

I'm still not thrilled with this result, but I had a little better luck getting successful HHHR shots. This is a crop of a 50MP RAW. PhotoPills said my slowest shutter speed for 300mm effective focal length was .7s, and this is nearly double that at 1.3s. Rule of 500 suggests I might have gotten away with 2s, but I don't think so.

I think the longer exposure (1.3s) stretches the stars a bit and gives the processor more data to align, though it doesn't seem to be doing it exceptionally well. I think folks have more success at shorter focal lengths, but some have done well with longer ones.

I had trouble with Starry Sky AF last night, so I did a little homework on that today. I enlarged the AF target and had much more success in the sense that the camera reported it had achieved focus. I don't know if these blobs are artifacts of the stacking, or if focus was actually off. I need to play around with it some more, and I was just trying to see what I could do quickly tonight.

All in all, I'm happy that I seem to be making progress. I've got a little bit of sky I can see out back. (My friend has a much better view, and darker I think.) I'll keep trying.

I ended up deleting the Miami Herald RSS feed from my subscriptions in NetNewsWire. Too much "news" I can't use, and it was just depressing. Murders, grotesque accidental deaths, lottery nonsense, celebrity sightings.

I was watching YouTube videos about photography and composition, how to "see." I'm challenged by my suburban surroundings. What is the story they tell?

And I've also been thinking about blogging and working on the marmot, getting ready for this meet-up later this month about blogging with Tinderbox. Why should anyone blog? Why should anyone read blogs?

Well, because we're social creatures and it's another way to experience that.

I struggle a little with that too, sometimes. If you look around, things are not going so well. But I guess that's subjective, right? Steven Pinker would say these are the best of times, right? I wanted to call the image above, "Crime in progress," but that wasn't what I wanted to call this blog post so I made it the caption.

But does it look like a crime?

I think most people would say it looks like a nice neighborhood where everybody recycles. What's wrong with that?

Except recycling is mostly a fraud perpetrated on the public by the plastics industry. Most of that stuff winds up in a landfill anyway, but folks think they're doing the responsible thing.

It goes deeper than that, though. All those neatly manicured lawns. That long strip of asphalt. Near the bottom left of the image, beneath the street sign and to the left of the yellow fire hydrant, there's a dark strip in the curb. That's a storm drain. We cover that grass with chemicals. Fertilizers to make it grow. Weed killers, pesticides, herbicides to make sure only "grass" grows. And we water the hell out of it, and that water runs off into the street, over to that storm drain and into the retention ponds. Which we then have to treat to make sure the fertilizers don't cause an algae bloom.

And let's not mention the cars.

"I'd like to report a crime in progress."

But there's no one to report it to. And if you try to suggest there should be, you just sound like a malcontent.

Blogging about the collapse of civilization has to be a downer. I mean, you're only going to attract a certain kind of reader, and they're probably not a lot of fun to hang around with.

On a recent walk, thinking about blogging and "what to blog about," I figured I'd just stop with the doom stuff. It's too late to really stop it; but does it help anyone to know that? And it'll make itself known eventually anyway. But here I am, blogging about it! Obliquely, maybe.

Which is the titular crime. "Disturbing the peace." Who needs it? On a Sunday, no less!

I wanted a line from Joe Versus the Volcano, and I found this page. Here's the line:

“Joe, nobody knows anything. We'll take this leap and we'll see. We'll jump and we'll see. That's life!”

(There are some other great lines there too. I should watch that movie again.)

All we ever have are moments to live. "Yesterday is history. Tomorrow's a mystery. Today is a gift, that's why it's called 'the present'." (Different movie. Kung Fu Panda)

Every moment is a leap of faith.

Thanks for dropping by.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 06:46 Sunday, 4 February 2024

One of the shots I got this morning. There weren't many. I went down to the river at the launch point first. It was low tide, and I think the birds are more numerous after the rising tide has brought in a bunch of fish. When I was there last week, it was slack water, just before the ebb tide.

This is also a test to make sure everything is functioning properly.

Didn't make it into the preserve this morning, but I brought along the OM-1 on my walk hoping to see a bird or two. Got shut out on wading birds, saw a bunch of mockingbirds, but then I spotted a pair of whistling ducks headed my way. I got the camera up in time and managed to get them in the frame for a few shots.

I wasn't configured for birds in flight, but "you miss all the shots you never take." This cleaned up fairly well in Topaz SharpenAI.

I'll try and get into the preserve more often before the weather gets hot.

Mitzi's in St. Pete visiting a museum exhibit and an old friend (and her financial advisor), so I'm rattling around here by myself.

I had my eyes examined the other day to make sure there weren't any issues with my retinas. There aren't. We discussed "floaters" and I told him that I've always had them. I seem to notice them more when I'm reading and he said that's not unusual. They're most visible when you're looking at a blank surface and so the brain "notices" them more, whereas it's busy constructing the visual scene in other environments, and they just become part of the noise.

I suppose something similar goes on with tinnitus. Last night it was screaming. Normally Mitzi has her CPAP machine going, and I don't notice my ears ringing. Once I notice it, it's hard to let it go. So I played some music through the little HomePod mini on the nightstand and fell back asleep eventually.

Before I went to bed, I kind of made plans to get up early this morning and head down to the kayak launch point and watch the sunrise. I overslept a little because of the tinnitus interruption, but managed to make my way down there in time.

I brought along two cameras. I had the OM-5 on a sling with the 12-45mm/f4 zoom; and I carried the E-M1X with the 100-400mm zoom mounted on the Cotton Carrier on my chest. Spent a little over an hour down there with no discomfort anywhere. I could have stayed longer, but I'd taken a lot of images and wanted to get home to look them over.

Ran into someone leaving as I got there. He said I'd just missed a pod of dolphins. Water was slack and like glass, but the tide started coming in while I was there. The most exciting thing was a dolphin surfacing and exhaling not more than a few yards from where I was standing. Of course, I didn't have a camera raised. I got a shot of the ripple where it descended.

Sunrise was unspectacular, so I went wandering back on the trail north of the launch point and spotted a bunch of snowy egrets, ibises, egrets and a little blue heron. There was even a wood stork, but I didn't get a shot of it, it left as I came upon them. I put a dozen or so up on Flickr, beginning with this one and you can work your way back if you're so inclined.

I took the RAV4 down this morning, rather than the golf cart. The road is a mess and beats the hell out of the golf cart. The RAV4 handles it much better, and is faster too.

I should do this more often.

(Larger version here.)

I've been watching some YouTube videos from Serif on using Affinity Photo 2. I've really been impressed with the value and capability of Affinity Photo, though I mostly only use it for stitching panoramas, which it does really well.

I've never really grasped the concept of "layers" in photo editing. In Aperture, you could brush adjustments in, you didn't have to create a mask in a separate layer and composite it in. In Topaz SharpenAI, you can create masks so that you're only sharpening the subject, but there are no "layers" involved.

Mostly I do global adjustments in Photos, to my own philistine taste, and then run it through Topaz SharpenAI since you can round-trip that right from Photos. I used to use DeNoise AI, but you can no longer do that from within Photos, and Topaz Labs doesn't seem inclined to restore that capability. But SharpenAI includes a nice noise reduction feature as well.

I'm somewhat dissatisfied with all that. Or I feel as though I want to try to do something a little more sophisticated, where I have a bit more control over what's going on. I think you can accomplish a great deal in a good global editor, which I think Photos is; but I often struggle with the sky and color shifts so I think I want to try and figure this layers thing out. (I qualify all this by saying "I think" because I may wind up feeling as though it's more effort than it's worth.)

So I started with something that doesn't really require masking, and usually turns out pretty well in right from Photos with some help from Topaz, the moon.

I take pictures of the moon a lot, just because it still thrills me that I even can. I usually work from the jpeg from the camera. There is a high-res RAW file as well, so I figured I'd try to work on one of those in Affinity Photo 2.

So this was one I took the other day, on the 19th. And what is posted here is a jpeg created from editing the RAW image.

I posted the original jpeg to Flickr after I'd cropped it and made some adjustment in Photos, then ran it through SharpenAI. I liked it, but it seemed a little flat. I probably could have added some additional contrast.

The two images appear sequentially, though the one above appears first in the photo stream. I think the one I processed through SharpenAI does appear sharper, but the newer version seems better to me in terms of the contrast and range of tones.

Anyway, something new to learn.

It was 36°F out, but there was a little breeze too. Crisp and clear though. I brought along the E-PM1 in case I didn't see any birds. (I did see a hawk catch a frog or something. Sequence on Flickr.)

Figured I'd play with taking a selfie. I liked this one because of the shadow, and the silhouette of the OM-5 hanging on my hip.

I bought the hat at an alpaca farm up on Cayuga Lake a couple of years ago. Don't get to wear it too often, but I like it so I enjoyed the opportunity to put it on.

<img src=“https://nice-marmot.net/Archives/2024/Images/P1190170.JPG" alt=“Low angle shot of a yellow fire hydrant against a blue sky with a suburban landscape in the background with a contrasty “dramatic tone” filter.">

Went out for a walk yesterday afternoon and took along the little Oly E-PM1 with the Lumix 12-32mm/f3.5-5.6 zoom. I should've brought one of the OM-Ds with a long zoom, since there was a hawk perched in a tree at about eye level by the back pond. Would have been a nice shot.

Anyway, it's a suburban landscape of new houses and manicured lawns so you have to kind of make do to find something visually interesting. I used the "dramatic tone" filter for a lot of the shots, because it turns everything into this kind of post-apocalyptic, gritty, high-contrast image. For whatever reason, I'm always drawn to fire hydrants and on some kind of whim, I decided to give this hydrant its moment in a "hero pose." This was pretty much a blind shot, since the E-PM1 doesn't have any kind of articulated LCD. Shot three. I thought this one turned out well.

And it is kind of heroic infrastructure. Always ready, standing there, silently, day or night, in the heat of summer or freezing nights.

Yeah, I know, "Don't anthropomorphize fire hydrants. They hate that."

Went to the Florida Forum last night. It's a fund-raising program for Wolfson Children's Hospital. Mitzi bought the tickets, I'm not sure I would have. I am glad I went. Of course, we talked about wearing masks, which we had in the car. Somehow, after finding parking, it completely slipped our minds again until we found our seats. So I'm hoping I haven't contracted COVID.

Surprise bonus, Apollo astronaut David R. Scott was in the audience and was recognized by the moderator before the interview started. He stood up and waved at the audience, which gave him a standing ovation. He was in the expensive seats and I tried to get a shot, but it wasn't great. As heroes go, he's perhaps the closest I've ever been to one. Pretty cool. Though I did speak to Senator John Glenn in 1987. He visited STEPHEN W. GROVES after STARK was hit, and I described the FFG-7 detect to engage sequence in CIC for him and Senator John Warner.

Anyway... At the opening they announced that photography was strictly prohibited. But I'd brought a camera and so I made a calculated decision to be "one of those guys" and take a couple of pics anyway. I understand the nature of the prohibition. Some folks can't figure out how to turn off their flash. Some would bring monster gear that would be distracting. There'd be focus confirmation beeps, focus-assist lamps, LCDs glowing everywhere, shutter sounds, etc.

Well, I brought the little Olympus Stylus 1s. 1/1.7" sensor (smaller than a 1" sensor, bigger than 1/2.3" which is typical on most compact super-zooms). The big attraction is a constant f2.8 aperture throughout the zoom range which extends to 300mm effective focal length. It has a tiny leaf shutter which is for all practical purposes silent. I turned off the LCD panel and relied on the electronic viewfinder. I also turned off the focus assist lamp and confirmation beep. Unless they were looking directly at me, I doubt anyone would know I was taking a picture.

The result seen above is straight out of camera, cropped a little. Not a "professional" image by any stretch, but enough to share.

Woz was fascinating. He rambled a bit, and occasionally forgot what he was originally responding to, but he was very entertaining. Mitzi said he sounds like me when he was complaining about how we don't own anything anymore, and they keep changing everything. He said something like, "In the old days, you'd buy a tool and it'd do the same thing it did on the first day, the whole time you owned it." Today, they keep changing our tools. And not always for the better.

The moderator asked him what his favorite device was, and after "the computer," it's his Apple Watch. He interacts more with his watch than with his phone. He doesn't like the e-sim in the iPhone 14. He said that Apple caused a Denial of Service attack on a cruise he was on. The ship had "adequate" internet access until 100 or so people with iPhones all tried automatically downloading a 1GB software update! When he pulled into port, he bought a data sim for his iPhone 13 and he had high-speed internet while everyone else basically had none.

He mentioned a few times that he decided very early as a young man that he would never be political, and that he'd never voted in an election. This was dismaying to me, as there were a lot of young people in the audience and Jacksonville already has an indifferent and disinterested electorate, and the faithless, feckless, Republican-dominated city council to prove it.

Toward the end of the conversation he mentioned it again, "I've never voted in an election..." Adding, "Until the last one."

He's not big on AI. He thinks it may be another dot-com bubble. He does appreciate that technology empowers the good and the bad alike. He's in litigation over a deep-fake that had his voice calling people about a bitcoin scam, "You send me one, I'll send you two."

My impression is that he's every bit the very nice guy that everyone I've ever heard talk about him has described. Very humble. He wants to be happy and "Happiness is smiles minus frowns." Don't do the things that cause frowns. He said he doesn't like blaming people when things go wrong, he just wants to fix them. Which is admirable, unless there are a bunch of powerful people who rely on things being broken to keep their power.

All in all, a very pleasant evening.

Maybe this is becoming a photo blog.

I'm wrestling with the usual anxiety and discomfort that comes with having to interact with the healthcare system. I'm glad it's there, but I don't like using it.

Anyway, I've figured out why living here imposes its own sort of cognitive dissonance. This is an over-55 community, and for many of the residents, significantly over-55. The ambulance is a regular feature at night, red lights intruding into the living room darkness during the movie.

I now know some of the people living here.

Anyone over-55 has lived what, for most of human history, is a lifetime. Faces and frames show age and injury and experience. Yet they all live within these brand-new suburban houses. They hide the struggle and worry inside. Not that it's all "struggle and worry," a lot of these folks are party animals and they've got the COVID infections to prove it!

Nothing in the landscape reflects that experience. It's all a masquerade.

(What I thought was a throw-away shot from the E-PM1 this morning. For some reason, which I now think I understand, these rows of perfect suburban homes demand my attention and arouse some discomfort.)

Not that this is going to become a photo blog or anything, but I wanted to mention the little E-PM1 I got the other day.

The Olympus E-PM1 was my first micro-four thirds camera back in 2011, I think. I'd been shooting with an E-520 and later an E-30 four thirds cameras for about three years. Micro four-thirds was the new hotness, and I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Long story short, I was sold on the system and haven't looked back since, though I've bought some used four thirds bodies just to play with from time to time (E-410, E-420, E-500, E-1, E-620).

The E-PM1 was something of a revelation, given its size and the kinds of images it was capable of producing. Today, it's something of a relic. As an entry-level camera, it was never as advanced, sophisticated or robust as its more expensive siblings. But it had the same sensor and image processor.

People like to talk about "a look" that certain cameras offer, and it's true. Different manufacturers have different formulas for rendering their jpegs, the sensors have differing characteristics that affect that as well, even though when all is said and done, it's just numbers. I've always liked the E-PM1's jpegs. They're rich, saturated and contrasty. Just don't pay too much attention to the highlights and shadows, because there isn't much there. You can turn on "auto-gradation," which lifts the shadows, but this is "normal" and straight out of the camera.

Well, I wanted to play with an E-PM1 again, so I bought one from Japan. Was supposed to be in excellent condition, and for the most part it is. But the image stabilizer is broken. Happens to a lot of this series. A nylon gear comes off the shaft and a lot of unfortunate noise happens at startup and the camera tells you the IS has failed.

Not a huge deal. I turned IS off, and I think, though I'm not certain, that when the camera knows IS is off, it'll send power to the lens' IS system, if it has one. In good light, you seldom need IS anyway. I put a little Lumix 12-32/f3.5-5.6 collapsing zoom on the E-PM1 and, as small as it is, it supposedly has an image stabilizer.

The big advantage is that it's a tiny zoom, with a 24mm effective focal length at the wide end. It fits easily into my vest pocket, where I would often carry a compact like the XZ-1 or XZ-2 in case I didn't see any birds.

So that's what I did this morning. Stuffed the E-PM1 in my vest pocket and put the 75-300mm zoom on the OM-5, hoping for a bird or two. These clouds were cool, I thought. You look for relief wherever you can find it in a landscape that resembles a real estate development sales brochure. This cloud made me smile.

Thought I might have been shut-out on birds, but a little blue heron landed just before I had to turn around for home. More pix at flickr for those inclined. Most lightly edited and cropped.

The sun came out yesterday afternoon, hallelujah! I went out and took some pics with the OM-5. Nothing spectacular, because I just walked around the house.

But around dinner, I recalled I'd gotten a text from Spot the Station, that the ISS would be overhead that night. (Often, I forget these things unless I create a reminder. Most often, it's too cloudy to get a shot.)

I thought I'd try something different and use the MEIKE 3.5mm/f2.8 circular fisheye. It's kind of a gimmick lens in that it covers a 220° diagonal, meaning it's nearly impossible to keep yourself out of the frame. (It can see behind itself a little.)

Because I figured I'd forget between when I remembered and when it appeared, I set a timer on my watch and went ahead and set up the tripod before sunset. The ISS would be visible an hour after sunset. I also put the MEIKE on the E-M1 Mk3, which usually does star trail Live Composite duty for me.

About 15 minutes before it was to appear, I mounted the camera on the tripod, checked to see if the focusing ring was at infinity, the aperture was fully open and the camera was pointed directly overhead. I should have bumped up the exposure because the MEIKE is a little more than stop slower than the mZuiko 8mm/f1.8, but the ISS Is pretty damn bright so I knew I wouldn't miss it. Wasn't sure how the stars would turn out.

I pressed the shutter and hoped for the best. The result is above.

This is the text you get from Spot the Station:

Time: Sun Jan 14 6:57 PM, Visible: 5 min, Max Height: 44 degrees, Appears: WSW, Disappears: NNE­

Looking at the image above, south is at the top of the frame, where my giant head appears. The ISS track is in the lower left quadrant. It appeared at the left edge of the frame, near the 3:00 o'clock position, just below the crescent moon. Max "height" appears a bit less that 44° because we're looking at 220° of coverage, so 110° to zenith from the edge of the frame. It tracks north-northeast, away from my giant head, and disappears in the trees northeast of the house.

The usual north-south commercial air traffic is visible in the frame, along with a few other aircraft. This is about a 30 minute "exposure" or perhaps, "integration" time.

If I do this again, and I probably will, I'll think about putting the top of the camera pointing to the north, so the image isn't "upside down."

Another radical celebration of life amidst decay.

Weather was decidedly "meh" yesterday. Windy too, which made this little weed tilt and sway like it was dancing. But you make do with what you find on a cloudy day in a bourgeois suburban landscape. Not sure I'd send it to Mom, but good enough for the marmot.

The OM-5 with the, also new to me, 12-45mm/f4 I got on a refurb sale. I haven't photographed a brick wall with it yet, so I'm not sure the lens is "perfect."