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Michael Hurren
Michael HurrenAustralia
Michael Hurren is a Melbourne-based Cinematographer / Photographer and the founder of Filmic Productions, focusing on commercial, corporate and editorial film and stills work. From capturing fly-fishing in the icy high country, to off-road motorsports in the rugged red centre, Michel effortlessly creates heart-pumping content for top brands, magazines, broadcast television and social media.
The OM-D E-M1X is the perfect camera for shooting motorsport, particularly desert racing. I’m often walking kilometers into the desert and the E-M1X and lens system is small and light weight enough for me to carry a full kit on my back without fatigue.
The body design with built-in grip balances long lenses like the M.Zuiko Digital ED 300mm F4.0 IS PRO and the new ”Multi-Selectors” fall to hand beautifully, allowing me to access focus points and camera settings quickly. Focus speed, burst rate and reliability is everything when shooting an off road race car, like the ’Greg Gartner Racing’ trophy truck on the iconic Finke Desert Race track in Australia’s red center.
Trophy trucks travel on rough terrain sometimes faster than 200kmph, and in a race situation I might only see the car once and only for a split second. The E-M1X acquires focus quickly, tracks focus extremely fast and the 18fps burst rate while tracking lets me capture all the action between the bumps. The new Intelligent Subject Detection feature also identifies that I’m shooting a race car and tracks the truck through frame, without me having to move focus points. That’s one less thing for me to worry about.
When shooting panning shots, the E-M1X 7.0 stops of stabilization, helps me capture pans at lower shutter speeds than I could ever do before. Combined with lenses like the M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-100mm F4.0 IS PRO with lens sync IS, giving me 7.5 stops, I can go even slower. This combination is also perfect for shooting out of a helicopter, the range the lens covers means I only have to carry one body in the cockpit and stabilizer soaks up any vibration.
Desert racing is dusty, hot and sometimes when it rains, very muddy. Over the years shooting on the OM-D system, I have put my cameras through so much punishment, but I have never had to clean my sensors and I have never had a camera stop.
Reliability is everything, and the OM-D E-M1X’s improved weather sealing and dust reduction gives me piece of mind that I can keep shooting even when the conditions are tough.
