When you’re looking at resources to help develop a new course or just out of personal interest, often you browse Goodreads or Amazon looking for that perfect book. As can be read in a previous post, I found websites that really helped me focus essentials for a GCSE Photography course. Looking across my bookshelf, I realised I had quite a few photography resources already. How do they compare with supposedly more ‘current’ information on the web?

Here is a quick round up of my top five:

​What would be in your Top 5 Photography teaching books?

The original version of this blog post appeared on Damo's blog.

These wish-list specs  led me away from a traditional  DSLR into the realms of Compact System Cameras (CSC). Many of these were too slow, or had stuttering Electronic Viewfinders (EVF). Or, were simply too expensive for my budget.

After some research I bought and Olympus OMD EM5 with simply the best kit lens in the market at the time.

The Oly is packed with features, but for me the best thing is the ability to select manual and have the benefit of the outstanding ‘What You See Is What You Get’ (WYSIWYG) EVF showing me how the choices I made impacted on the final exposure prior to shooting. If you really crave creative control, then this is really something to look at.

Ninety percent of the time, the Oly with its kit lens suits me fine, but for the other 10 percent?

Back in the 1970’s when David Bailey was the Olympus guy, the OM1 and OM2 were cameras to dream about. Partly this was their small  size; something the new Oly cameras have adopted, but for many it was the superb  Zuiko lenses.

One of the massive advantages of the smaller CSC cameras is that, with an inexpensive adaptor, you can fit older ‘classic’ lenses. As I had a 50mm f1.8 Zuiko lens, it was an obvious choice for use on the new body.

A disadvantage of smaller sensors is that they create more depth of field. It’s really quite hard to separate the plane of focus from it’s surroundings.  The Micro four thirds sensor used by Olympus is a case in point. In the camera, it is very difficult with the kit lens to obtain any real sense of differential focussing.  However, the addition of my ‘classic’ 50mm to the OMD  body means that I can achieve something that would normally cost a substantial sum.

This does mean that I actually have to adjust the camera settings (including focus) manually, but again the WYSIWYG  EVF is very useful.

The image stabilisation within the camera helps as well. In my Nikon, the sensor is simply stuck onto the back of the camera. In the Oly, the sensor floats in a magnetic  field, and constantly adjusts to movement I make. Shooting at F1.8 usually means high shutter speeds, but the combination of a large aperture and the image stabilisation means that I can reduce the ISO to 100, and even in poor lighting conditions safely hand-hold the camera for static subjects.

Is it perfect? Of course not. Even within Olympus, there have been great technological advances since the introduction of the model I use, and other manufacturers have pushed the boundaries in other ways.

For me, though, it allows me to use my knowledge and skill to produce the type of photographs which have a distinctive style; a style which cannot easily be copied.

This post originally appeared on Ian's fantastic photography blog. Check it out!