Modern Cameras are wonderful things, until they go wrong. My OM Systems M5 (a camera I really like) decided that it was going to forget the date/time when I changed the battery. Not a showstopper but annoying for cataloguing reasons. So as the camera was just within it's warranty period I decided to bite bullet and send it for repair. For OM Camera's this mean's a little trip to Portugal so being a bit pessimistic about it I assumed that would be a month without my 'big camera' or camera friend as the family call it.
While it was away I did have a couple of trips to the woods with my compact. For me that means no filters and without the tripod - it was an interesting experience. Apart from working in a different way, I was keen to see how the change affected how I made images. Two things struck me. Firstly I found myself raising the camera much higher that I normally would to get the trees in a better perspective. The danger with the tripod is that because of the overhead of changing it you stick to the same (lower) height. The other thing I found was that because the camera was less able to cope with variance in light & dark I kept clear very contrasty scenes. So my two learnings - move the camera around and look for scenes the camera can best cope with. As a result I think there is more creativity in those images.
And the M5? OM Systems did a great job and the camera was back in a week, fixed, cleaned, and updated. I think I’ll buy the extended warranty!
