Lately I’ve lamented my lack of motivation to use my existing camera equipment. I’ve even contemplated selling some of it, the most expensive and salable bits, because they’ve been sitting unused in my bag or on my shelves for some time now. Then today I grabbed my Olympus E-M5 Elite with an m.Zuiko 1.8/75mm lens attached and started to take candid photos of some of the little creatures as they enjoyed the afternoon outdoor weather on the lanai. I then moved the digital photos off the E-M5’s SDXC card and onto my 2016 iPad Pro and post-processed them in Lightroom, uploading them to my Flickr account. I found enjoyment again in the entire creative process of using the E-M5 through posting the photos to writing about it here. I suppose I’m not quite ready to give up my “real” cameras. I like the look of the 75mm; it’s so different from the look I get from my iPhone 11 Pro, a look that I prefer depending on the lighting, subject matter, and general composition.

For those of you who know about the original Olympus E-M5, but don’t know about the Elite, that was the originally released E-M5 with a new paint job and outside cladding that also fixed the rear swing-up LCD panel. I got the body for free when I purchased my first PRO lens, the 2.8/12-40mm, with which the Elite body was bundled. It was a special deal from B&H Photo the Christmas season of the year the Elite was introduced. I still have my first E-M5 and will never give that up due to its historical value. No one remembers anymore, not with the massively expensive cameras from Canon, Nikon, and Sony, but the E-M5 really set the camera world on fire for a time because of all it could do in such a small and compact DSLR-like body. For all practical purposes the E-M5 was the first serious mirrorless camera, at least from Olympus. I’m sure that Panasonic Lumix fans would argue the point that it was one of the first Lumix cameras that should hold that title.