... It has been 129 days since my last G.A.S.

(G.A.S = Gear Acquisition Syndrome, number 4 in the deadly sins list for photographers after underexposure, overexposure, and using an unnecessarily high ISO. I may have committed the 3rd one today as well.)

When I bought my 7-14 f/2.8 Pro lens last December, Father Bill chastised me thusly: "Stop with these lenses! I am trying to reduce my lens addiction and here you go encouraging me to get another."

To which I repliedeth thusly: "Fear thee not Father Bill, my rapacious lensical appetite is thus satiated, for verily now I have lenses that canst shoot from an ultrawide 7 mm (14mm equivalent) all the way up to 150 mm (300mm equivalent) at a cheerily bright f/2.8, plus a stunning f/1.8 fisheye, a nice macro, and 2 primes that verily capture light in a bucket rather than a thimble. I cannot conceive of a situation where I could again be led into G.A.S., and imperil my all-too-mortal bank account."

(Yes, I know the 300 mm and 150 to 400 mm are both desirable and not beyond my price range, but certainly beyond my ability to justify paying the price.)

Um, yes, 'bout that... Remember the doors-off helicopter flight that I was supposed to take at the end of March? In an ideal world I would have had the 40 to 150 lens on the OM5, the 12 to 40 on the E-M5 Mk II, and just switch between them depending on what I was shooting. However, they let you take only ONE camera. You have to empty your pockets and leave everything behind, even though I was wearing my calcio training kit which has zippered pockets. They CERTAINLY aren't going to let you swap half a kilo worth of lens mid-flight in case it slips out of your hand and falls 500 feet onto who knows what, possibly completely ruining someone's day on the ground.

There was no single good alternative, but I figured that since we were going to be 500 feet up the 40 to 150 would be the better option even though it would be limited in getting panoramic views. It was also severely limited when we were taking off (er, I mean, TRYING to take off, for as we know that didn't happen...) and I tried to get a shot inside the helicopter. At 80 mm equivalent on the short end, that just wasn't going to happen.

Then, like a sign from the photography gods (or possibly the G.A.S. demons), I saw an ad for discounts across the entire range of Olympus lenses. And somehow my attention was drawn to... the 12-100 f/4 Pro. If I were to have a lens like that, with a nice, wide 12 mm to a relatively long 100 mm... So I did some research. And every review I came across raved about the image quality. Do I believe that it would be as good as the 40 to 150? No, but that is an extraordinary lens and a very high benchmark. The bad news is that it's f/4. The good news is that it's CONSTANT f/4, not a cheap and cheerful variable aperture one. I couldn't justify purchasing it for just one flight, and I know that I would always use the f/2.8 lenses in preference... if they were available. If I'm travelling in my car, they will always be available. If I'm travelling by air (and therefore need to be judicious in my packing) to somewhere and am not expecting to need wide open apertures, then a single lens which covers most, not all but most of the range of my 2 legendary walk around lenses could be exceedingly useful. I don't know that I'd take it to Italy, but to Melbourne, Hobart, Adelaide, et cetera, it may be the better option.

Also, it has image stabilisation which, when combined with the I.S. already in the camera body, can give you about 5 stops extra handheld ability. As a rule of thumb, you can probably manage an exposure of about 2 seconds handheld with the combination of this lens and the OM5.

It's not an exceptionally light or small lens at 116 mm and 561 g. (The 40 to 150 is 160 mm and 760 g compared to the 12 to 40 mm which is 84 mm and 382 g.) In most cases it would be an either/or proposition about which ones to take on a trip.

Anyway, this is its first outing. At the same time, I decided to try out the virtual neutral density filter in the OM5 which has apparently been enhanced over the Olympus models that preceded it. That's how I managed to shoot 2 seconds to smooth out the water in the pool. Unfortunately the sunrise light was garbage, hidden as it all too often is behind a band of clouds over the ocean. There was barely any colour in the sky at all. I did use a tripod for this simply because I was still getting used to it and didn't want to push the friendship since as I said 2 seconds is about the limit for handheld shots even with the combined image stabilisation. I pushed the boat all the way out on the neutral density using a setting of ND16 (4EV). I'm looking forward to playing around with that a bit more.

Here endeth my confession of the day. Go in peace, my photographers!