How We Take Our Photos | Updated

This post is sponsored by Olympus. As Always all thoughts and opinions are my own.

Our Camera History

Luke and I have come a LONG way with our photography skills. From crappy IPhone 4 pics circa 2012, things have much improved. A lot of that due to the increase in accessibility to high quality technology. When I first started blogging the only “starter” cameras on the market were Canon Rebel series… so that’s what we got. It was okay, but once I upgraded my phone to the 8+ a few years ago I rarely used our Canon anymore unless I needed raw files. A tight crop sensor is tough to deal with indoors.

Tight corners become impossible to capture… and you can rarely get a full frame shot with a crop sensor camera. I’m sure you’ve dealt with that if you’ve tried taking photos inside with a crop sensor.

After that we added in a mirrorless camera… the Sony a6000. It has been okay, but I find the auto focus to be lacking and the color quality is VERY cool tone. It’s hard to create a natural looking image straight out of the camera. We loved how light weight it was, but it didn’t do all the things we needed. I will also say that video on the a6000 is so frustrating. The screen doesn’t flip all the way up to allow for vlog style video… and I found the video to be no better than my IPhone with the exception of creating bokeh in the background.

Our New Olympus PEN-E PL9

There are so many things I love about this camera. I’m going to list them out in detail below.

  • Sleek Styling: This camera is so high-tech, but looks like a vintage camera! Such a good combination. I got the black onyx, but it comes in three other colors. I also love the honey color.
  • Amazing auto focus: The auto focus on our other cameras is very tricky. We do shoot in manual, but the focus has always been an issue. The Olympus E-PEN PL9 has amazing auto focus in manual mode and it has been life changing. This camera also has touch focus which makes it super easy.
  • Battery Life: The battery life on our last camera was TERRIBLE! I was shocked when this one held up to 90% even after being used for an hour. I can’t say that’s ever happened. We used to have to bring backup batteries EVERYWHERE because the camera was always dying. So not okay in my line of work.
  • 4k Video: Yep, this baby shoots in 4K video. I was BLOWN away when I realized this. For a camera at this price point I would never expect that, but was so pleasantly surprised.
  • Flip up Display: This was a disaster with our last camera. The whole reason we went mirrorless was for the hopes of vlogging travels. That’s kind of impossible when you can’t see what’s going on with the screen. Having this as an option with the 4k video makes this camera a dream.
  • Menu Navigation: This camera is so easy to learn to use. It took me and Luke both less than 5 minutes to find what we needed to adjust settings.
  • Weight: This baby is SO lightweight. It’s under .75 lbs. Very hard to find in a camera that has this kind of capability.

There are so many other things that I LOVE, but I will save those for the next post. I’m so excited to be partnering up with Olympus the next few months to share more about this amazing camera.

For now, I’ll let ya’ll know that for Black Friday it’s $150 off! I have the E-PL9 with the M.Zuiko 25mm F1.8. It’s currently $400 off! Under $600 for both! You can get yours here.

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