One Morning - One Lens

One fine morning early in the summer when I headed out to forest and field I decided to take my camera and but one lens. Those of you who are photographers probably know that there’s a lens for every purpose: telephotos for far away subjects or small birds, wide angles for scenic panoramas, macro for close-ups of tiny subjects like insects, etc. – until you have quite a collection.

As you may know, I use Olympus (now OM Systems) cameras and lenses that are smaller and lighter than gear from the more well known camera manufacturers. My favorite camera is the Olympus OM-1 and my favorite lens is the 40-150mm f/2.8 which is often coupled with a 1.4x teleconverter. This combination allows for a focal length range of 40-210mm – the equivalent of an 80-420mm lens on a Canon, Nikon or Sony camera. Plus the OM-1 camera has a very good internal 2.0x digital teleconverter that doubles the previous numbers.

Now a single lens would normally be thought of as limiting, but I decided to give it a try since this lens focuses as close as 2¼ feet (0.7 meter) and it could, therefore, produce close-ups of flowers and insects.

So off we went, the camera and lens and me.

First came a surprise, an osprey on top of a dead tree far from any lake or river, in a dull gray sky –

Next up, actually down on the forest floor, a ghostly indian-pipe in bloom –

And nearby the fading flower of an indian cucumber-root –

The route through the woodland was along an old woods road –

To the side of the old road there’s a dying tree with a large cavity in which a barred owl has spent the daylight hours –

A dead hemlock had several of the fungi called varnish conks –

One tree dies and another begins to take its place; in this case a white pine seedling –

On I went to leave the woods and walk into an old field with a lot of common milkweed. On that milkweed there were butterflies – a lot of great spangled fritillaries –

And a few small skippers –

Toward the edge of the field was a flash of color in the form of another butterfly, a red-spotted purple –

Unfortunately, birds were scarce so there were no other bird photos on this day. The morning was pleasant; the lens is a gem that is in many ways a jack-of-all-trades and is my favorite lens.