Exposing my equipment

Sometimes people ask about my equipment. It's not very impressive, not overly big or powerful, however it serves me well and I believe I use it to good effect.

I'm talking about my photography equipment of course, a rather basic set up but one that gives me the opportunity to snap a photo now and then and obtain an average result commensurate with my skills. I'm certainly not a photographer by any stretch of the imagination, but I know how to point a camera and click a shutter release button...what else is there?

For these images I used my lightbox, a box open at the front only with a hole in the top to shoot through also, and it has a light-ring in the top to illuminate subjects. It's a super-cheap one my girl-person bought for me but it does the job. Maybe someday I'll invest in a better one but for now, like the rest of my equipment, it works and that's good enough.

My camera is an Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark III mirrorless and I purchased it in 2020 in a kit that came with three lenses. I thought it was good value although was at the upper end of what I'd wanted to spend at the time. The three lenses sold me though as I figured it would mean I'd not have to get any others...but then I wanted to do macro shots.

The lenses I have are all Original Olympus lenses as below however the macro lens wasn't part of the kit:

• 14-42mm
• 40-150mm
• 25mm fixed
• 60mm macro

Not long after getting the camera and playing around with it a little I started to investigate the macro lens and decided I wanted it...but it was bloody expensive. I saved up for a while and got it though, the 60mm macro lens pictured above, and I've really enjoyed shooting with it.

The photos I have included in this post are all shot using the macro lens other than the shots of the camera itself, I took those with my Samsung S22 Ultra and the one two images down which I shot with the 25mm. In some of the shots you can see some coloured light patterns in the lenses which comes from the light-ring in the top of the lightbox. I think they look kind of cool, although the shots themselves probably aren't all that great.

I'm certainly no great photographer, I bumble my way through mostly and play around with the settings here and there hoping for a good result. Being a digital camera, I one can take many pictures and delete those that are rubbish...I get many of those. But I enjoy it, I have fun taking the shots, and that's what counts to me. I don't take photos for other people, I'm only on Hive so don't use them on social media; I take them for me, for fun, and fun is what I have.

So there's my equipment in a nutshell. I have a tripod of course, but that's the only other thing I use. I get creative with lighting making use of torches, natural light and the light-ring in the lightbox but mostly I keep it simple. I'm planning to do a course one of these days, but until then bumbling along is good enough.