Landscape Photography Using M43 – No Tripod Required


Green Landscape with Waterfall

M43 is One of the Best Ideas for Exploring the World

Landscape Photography using M43 is one of the best ideas for people that want to explore the world and capture all its greatness with extraordinary quality.

However, when you want to shoot some gorgeous landscapes, the last thing you want is to carry stacks of equipment with you. And that’s where you can get excellent value with the M43 camera systemsOpens in a new tab. from Panasonic and Olympus.

You Don’t Need a Tripod

One of the main benefits of shooting landscapes is that you can create your own story and go anywhere you want without any hassle.

It gives you a lot of creativity, and you can focus on exploring everything and any place you wish to as you see fit. Plus, the M43 units are very portable, making them amazing.

A lot of people like landscape photography with the M43 cameras because they are very light, and you don’t need a tripod either.

Their stability and other adjacent features help create an outstanding and very immersive experience.

Even if it does take a bit of time to get used to all their features and complicated ideas, it’s something you want to try out and use at your own pace.

You Should Always Shoot in RAW

I’m confident that you’ve been told many times to “Shoot in RAW.” By doing this, you allow yourself the highest level of latitude on your post-processing of the image in Lightroom or Photoshop.

Especially when using the smaller sensor of micro four-thirds, the RAW file will let you maximize the highlights and shadows of your images to enable you to show a stunning final photograph.

You Should Use a Low ISO

Usually, the M43 cameras tend to suffer from image noise at times. However, if you use a low ISO, you will find that the disturbance is not as severe.

The trick here is to learn how to minimize that noise and even eliminate it whenever you get the chance. That will help quite a bit, making the entire process better and more convenient.

Using High ISO settings will make more noise; therefore, it’s imperative to use a low ISO as much as you can. I pretty much always leave my Olympus OMD EM-1 Mark II set to ISO 200.

This minimizes the noise level, allowing the sensor to capture the highest dynamic range.

This results in the reduction of highlight and shadow clipping. Higher ISO lessens the sensors’ dynamic range, thus producing more noise.

You Should Use the Right Aperture

M43 landscape photography is the best with the correct aperture. Ideally, you want to go with 12mm as you are using f/7.1.

You can then go onward and continue to see just how everything blends together. It will be a worthwhile idea if you avoid any rush and actively focus on completing this with success.

As a rule of thumb, opening up the aperture fully wide open often leads to softness. On the other hand, stopping down the lens will lead to better sharpness.

However, if you stop down too much, you’ll experience diffraction, which will start to degrade the image by softening the fine detail.

You Should Use Filters

If you don’t use filters for landscape photography, you have dark foregrounds and lots of noise. The same thing happens for M43 cameras.

This is why you want to use filters here, as that will help eliminate flare problems, unwanted shadows, and so on.

And while there, you also want to make sure that you put the right lens. Every lens comes with its features.

Some people use lenses specifically to improve quality; others want a bit of distortion. Identify the type of image you want to get and go with it. That will be good in the end.

Lately, filters have been less accessible for most shooters, who believe that better results can be achieved in post-processing with filters and blending in the latest software.

Despite having some truth, I think that using filters helps hone your skills and understanding of Landscape Photography.

Filters can bring balance to bright skies and dark foregrounds, letting the photographer capture a better dynamic range and reduce noise in the shadows.

This is achieved by protecting highlights from overexposing and not allowing the shadows to become too dark.

With the deft employment of Neutral Density Graduated Filters (ND Grads), the dynamic range of a landscape can be reduced.

The micro 4/3 camera can have less trouble handling the lighting conditions, which usually leads to only a single shot being needed to capture the moment.

You Should Choose the Correct Lens

There have been critics of Micro 43 cameras who have complained of poor image quality. They based this on sample photos taken using a very cheap kit lens in unfavorable lighting.

These cheaper lenses are excellent in good light but will not capture the best shots when pushed.

However, the higher-end lenses from Olympus and Panasonic are fantastic lenses that can hold their own with any manufacturer in design, build quality, and optical performance.

I’m telling you, these are excellent lenses and, paired with any of the M43 camera offerings, will give you beautiful photos that you’ll be delighted with.

For instance, Olympus has three versions of the 17mm lens, the f/2.8, the f1.8, and the f/1.2. These lenses are entirely different in both price and build quality.

The image quality from the f/1.2 is out of this world; the f1.8 is fantastic, the f/2.8 version is more than satisfactory.

This shouldn’t really be any surprise considering the brightness and price differences. What’s great is that you have so many choices.

MFT for Landscape Photography

M43 units don’t need a tripod, making them perfect for landscape photography.

Plus, you don’t have to carry any heavy equipment with you either, so you get all the value and portability.

This is why you need to give this type of camera at least a shot. As it’s up, the m43 camera systems are up there with the best of them for landscape photography.

John Kilmerstone

I'm an Aussie living in Japan who enjoys traveling and photography. Please visit this website and explore the wonderful world of Micro Four Thirds photography. Discover the advantages of carrying a small yet powerful camera system.

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