I decided to start a series that will take a look at everyday photographers. People who does it for a living as well as people enjoying photography purely as a hobby. If you a hobby or professional photographer then you more than welcome to contact me and I am happy to add a short story about yourself plus 30 to 40 images to this series. I saw images from Walter and contacted him. Walter immediately came back to me with a short feedback on himself plus a beautiful set of images. You can see the images in the Picture Section.

My name is Walter Soestbergen, I live in the Netherlands nearby Utrecht. I have been doing nature photography for almost 5 years. Doing photography is second nature for me and that without any photography classes. I worked with a Pentax K100D and K10D fitted with a 600mm tele-lens from Pentax. With my Olympus I used the 300mm f2.8 together with 2x and 1.4x tele converter. I was also happy with my Sigma 150mm HSM EX f2.8. At this moment I am working again with Canon fitted with the 500mm IS USM f4 and the new Sigma 150mm f2.8 EX DG OS.

I had many requests for photography workshops and I then decided to start with a few workshops a year. Not many because I prefer to do photography myself and when giving workshops it is not always possible to do photography myself. I offer 3 different types of photography workshops. First is photographing the white-tailed eagle in Poland. Most of these workshops are filled very quickly and I give this course three times a year. It is a great experience to see these eagles flying outdoors so nearby and also having the opportunity to photograph them.

Macro photography I do closer to home. This is one of my favorite photography disciplines. I enjoy to get up very early in the morning and to then do early morning dew walking. Its a great way to experience sunrise. That is a true nature experience for me, especially when it was warm the evening before or a breeze with a cold night is perfect for great morning conditions :-)

Then of course I love bird photography. That is my main or first passion. I find birds are so beautiful, they are difficult to approach, also when you have a place to get close to them. It is a real pleasure to photograph birds.

I am hoping to do a 2 days photography in the week, regardless of the weather. It is good to walk around in Nature and like this I find new spots to photograph. Like this one can discover many rare species.

Photography in nature is a way of life I think, walking through the bush with your gear and then come home with a good photo is really great.

Regards Walter

Panasonic DMC GF1

Must admit I was a little biased or lets say a little tough on the GF1. Good thing was it was sort of borderline in terms of its selling price one the 2nd hand market right now and that prevented me from just going ahead and sell it again. It was a good situation or decision and worked in my favor. In terms of absolute image quality its not better than my E-PL2 I believe and the focus speed is also not that important to me either. Its a kit I build up over a number of months, the GF1 body, the original 14 - 45 mm kit lens and the 45 - 200 mm zoom lens, all from Panasonic.

This is the best view I think with this camera. I like the E-P1 and E-P2/3 original look and build of the PEN cameras, much more than the E-PL2 look. That said the E-PL2 is the most comfortable in the hand and please do not make the mistake believing it is not that significant. Spend a morning or a day with it and then we talk again. The GF1 has a typical range finder look and feel...one without the finder yes I know. Its look, the way it rest in the hand, the look with a pancake lens fitted, really a awesome toy.....

Then finally the images you get from this camera is good, they are up there with the best. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that the image quality of this camera is not far of the best you can get in mirror-less cameras today. Is it important? Not really I think. Reason is this camera matched with a good lens can really give you a lot of pleasure doing videos and image photography. Its images opened in a capable software package typically results in really great looking works of art.......

Some people like it and they kindly gave me good feedback. I was working on another editing technique when getting all caught up “painting this image. Least on my mind was dynamic range, image quality, noise, basically the stuff they write about on large forums. The technique is about painting the image with light using layers. Sounds difficult but it is not, all you need to learn is how to duplicate the bottom layer and how to apply a mask. If you can do that then the fun can start.

It did not stop there, I continued doing a few more variations of that same image. I ended with a black and white image also using layers but this time painting with color and light. With the above image I reduced the Saturation just a little and selectively. The image below is the original to the above image. Be careful the “original” has also been painted. I used several images from a bracketed HDR series to create the original.

I used a deeply saturated image to create the black and white image below. What I like most is the fact that its all the same image. Once you have a good quality image plus good editing software then the sky is the limit. Having said good software, Photoshop Elements together with the aftermarket add-on from Elements Plus is more than enough.

Image was taken with the Olympus E-PL2 plus 14 - 150 mm zoom lens.

It was only recently that we saw the new E-PL2 launched. It was a welcome addition to the PEN series because it rounded of the excellent range of existing PEN cameras. That is what many fans believed and I am sure many E-P1 and also E-PL1 owners considered switching over to the new E-PL2. It was also then that Olympus launched its new 14 - 42 MKII Kit lens with improved focus speed, significantly reduced lens noise while filming movies and fitted with the new MSC lens technology of Olympus. But that was not enough, the market were demanding more and like we now see the E-PL2 was just a bridge from the old to the new. The E-PL2 could not fix the strongly intrenched weaknesses that was hammering the PEN range. Things like focus speed, dynamic range, sensor size, movie quality were all things the competition were using to fight of the PEN series.

Olympus announced the new improved PEN camera range

Siegfried