A spot of luck.

I was gazing at this fine mural off 24th Street in San Francisco, trying to figure out the meaning of the bubble or raindrop between the fingers, when the pedestrian chanced along.

Mission District at 24th and York. G1, Olympus 9-18mm MFT @ 18mm, 1/800, f/7.1, ISO 320.

He glanced up for a moment and I had the snap.

The Olympus 9-18mm MFT lens is great for this sort of thing; it focuses almost as fast as the 14-45mm Panny kit lens and what distortions it leaves behind are easily fixed in LR3 using my custom, downloadable correction files which you can find here. The lens is an outstanding optical performer, especially given its pocketable size. Optically it is easily the equal of the kit lens, which is to say very good indeed. And at 9mm (18mm FFE) it’s as wide as you need in all but the most demanding settings. While Panny’s considerably costlier 7-14mm MFT goes quite a bit wider, there’s no way to protect the protruding front glass with a filter, so Panny’s glass does not pass my ‘throw it in a jacket pocket test’, given that I have no inclination to futz with lens caps.

The only drawback the 9-18mm Oly has compared to the kit zoom is that there’s no OIS and you have to extend the lens from its collapsed position for use. If you forget to do that the G1 will refuse to work.