Olympus – Built for Adventure

THE PERFECT KIT

Throughout her career Ellie has regularly worked with high end broadcast cameras, but although these are designed to deliver awesome quality they are, by their nature, heavy and cumbersome and have to be treated with respect. Not the ideal companion for those capturing action sports in other words, and what was required was a model that was both robust and weather-sealed to the point where it wasn’t going to be scared of water but was also compact and lightweight and a true hybrid, capable of delivering both pro-spec video and stills.

The answer lay in the Olympus MFT OM-D system which, while a fraction of the size of a full frame rival and with fast and beautifully scaled down lenses, could still perform to the high standard required. Having been approached by Olympus after they’d encountered a short film she’d made with British Number One female surfer Lucy Campbell, Ellie became the brand’s Video Mentor and she’s hugely enjoyed working with the system ever since.

“I love the lightweight nature of the Olympus lenses and camera bodies,” confirms Ellie. “I started off with a trip to frozen Lake Kerkini in Greece with Wildlife Ambassador Tesni Ward to film her capturing Pelicans on the OM-D E-M1X, and this was followed by a road trip around Scotland shooting with the E-M1 Mark II.”

To celebrate the launch of the E-M1 Mark III Ellie was tasked with creating a series of films about the new camera and the adventures it can take you on. She consequently travelled with Olympus Ambassador Geraint Radford on his first trip abroad to the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador, where he photographed outlandishly huge bugs using his macro kit, and then it was on to the mountains of Madeira with fellow Olympus Mentor Tom Ormerod to film his quest to photograph the variety of landscapes the island has to offer.

“The highlight of the trip with Geraint was a canoe trip down the inner Amazon to see all the wildlife there,” recalls Ellie. “In Madeira, meanwhile, each day began with a 4am alarm call to capture the sunrise on top the highest peaks and stunning beaches of the island. To this day these trips have been the highlight of my career.”