Images of New Zealand by Christian Delbert

Images of New Zealand

by Christian Delbert – See his Zenfolio Site HERE

Hi Steve,

Most “photographers” are always striving to get the very latest cameras and best lenses possible. The fact is, they never even get close to utilizing the potential of the equipment they have. Poor Edward Weston had to deal with “crappy” lenses ( he couldn’t afford good ones ) and leaking bellows cameras. Yet look at the amount of great images he created.
Anyways, I just got back from a 3 weeks trip to New Zealand and shot everything with basically an old camera ( Olympus EM5 ) and cheap lenses ( 12-50 & 40-150 ). I want to share with your readers exactly what can be done with what might be considered “outdated” equipment. No f/2.8 lenses here!

Christian Delbert

17 Comments

  1. All are nice, but I like the blue sky and the stormy sky ones. Very well composition and good use of available resources (your old equipment).
    I believe 50% go to the photographer, 30% equipment and 20% luck to be at the right spot.

  2. Thanks for all the kind replies. I realize that the processing is a 50/50 thing. Half like it and half don’t, just like most elections. A lot of photographers also complained about Ansel Adams’s overly contrasty skies. It was his interpretation and he became famous for it. And in painting, how many people like Picasso’s portraits? After all, art is primarily to please oneself. If someone else likes it, so much the better!

    • This reminds me of a thought I read somewhere. “It’s very important to make somebody else happy, but it’s the most important to make yourself happy”. Or a paraphrase of your words. 🙂

  3. Super images . I have seen enough now here and elsewhere to convince me of the merits of the Olympus cameras -especially for travel photos.

  4. I took similar equipment to New Zealand myself. The kit is there to enable you to express yourself and not get in the way too much. In my opinion, the lenses you mention do a great job for the travel photographer, especially that 12-50, which is weather-sealed (like the E-M5 body) – essential in the NZ climate. For the natural history photographer, the 12-50 provides a respectable macro capability as well. The ‘cheap’ 40-150 also punches well above its weight, though I wish Olympus could have fitted a metal mount.

    More importantly than the kit, I think your photos capture a lot of NZ ‘character’, which I think you have enhanced (mostly) by your post-processing, although I find Mt.Cook far too blue – but that’s your interpretation. Doubtful Sound (I believe) looks just as I remember the conditions on the days I was there!

  5. The equipment one has is always the equipment that will take the best photos for them. I see some liked your processing and some did not. I can see it took time and that it was different for each photo. Whether I would do it that way or not does not matter. You took took the time to make the photos yours. I appreciate that as it lets us know more of you and makes it something other than just another photo. I saw one of them that seemed to have a strong mood and feeling. Anyone can push the shutter release and have a photo. You have done more. Thank you for sharing your visions with us.

  6. I own and use both of those lens on the EM1 and ONE 10 bodies. If you take pictures in good light, not action, and not video than if you stop down to 5.6 to 8 these lens do a great job as you demo’d for us. Like em all but last 2 are special.

  7. This shows what you can do in post processing. Has nothing to do with the camera and lens. You can have the same output from a phone camera. Show us what it looked like straight from camera.

  8. very nice compositions! but overdone processing imo. especially the last 2 pictures. These almost look like they were entirely created in some digital drawing application.

    But composition wise, it looks very appealing to me.

  9. Absolutely beautiful.
    And, you’ve proven the point yet again that any ‘decent’ equipment will take excellent photos. It’s mostly up to the person holding it. I can’t remember which famous photographer it was, but when asked what his most important piece of equipment was, he replied, “Very good shoes.”

  10. Great photos. I really like the one of the mountain. But the processing was unnecessary. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should!

    You are right that we don’t need the latest and greatest. I use superceded cameras myself, and I’m very content with their performance.

    I do love the Micro 4/3 system. It’s certainly superior to full frame 135 for some applications, IMHO, especially the very newest bodies. I think I’d be happy with the 16Mpx sensor.

  11. Christian, thanks for sharing. Great photos and a good example of the notion that we get rid of camera equipment while they still have a lot of life left in them. Particularly love the last two photos. Well done.

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