Monthly Archives: July 2009

Getting greedy

Micro Four-Thirds, Photography

What the future holds

If I am right that Panasonic will be surprised about the number of pros and serious snappers buying their G1 as a second camera, then they are thinking very hard right now how to further poach on Canon’s and Nikon’s up-market turf.

Look at how they have got to where they are.

First, they link up with Leica to design lenses for their point-and-shoots. Instant credibility with rich old guys and journalists, though ‘credibility’ and ‘journalist’ probably make no sense used in one sentence. They download Leica’s intellectual property on traditional lens design, then move on. It’s no accident that the word ‘Leica’ is notable for its absence from the splendid kit lens on the G1. Leica is on record as saying that they disapprove of software correction of optical defects (these guys would be a shoo-in at the Pentagon with that sort of intellectual firepower) and Panny, of course, knows better. They simply fix what ails the very compact 14-45mm kit zoom at the back end. The result is a near total absence of the two bugaboos of the Leica lens on my LX-1 – barrel distortion at the wide end and chromatic aberration everywhere. It’s the Software, Stupid.

Second. they make a few trial runs at Electronic View Finders which are better forgotten – like the one in the Lumix L1 – using full size, clunky and heavy Leica lenses. They realize that their state-of-the-art technology in their professional movie cameras is the answer, so they invent micro four-thirds and incorporate that EVF technology into the next two designs, the G1 and the GH1 (a G1 with video added). Now they have a great finder system, no mirror and no prism required.

Third, they state that the G1 is positioned for the upgrade amateur market. Last I checked, the Japanese are not stupid, and I do not necessarily buy that spin. On reflection, it seems to me that the G1 is as much a Trojan Horse as the original two door Honda Insight with its small 3 cylinder engine was to the car business. The Insight, a rolling test bed sold at a loss and proved the viability of a hybrid battery/internal combustion power plant as much as the G1 will convert skeptical advanced photographers to EVFs.

Fourth …. what is fourth? I don’t think that needs much of a crystal ball, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Panny already had working prototypes. Remember how they said they were retaining the prism hump in the G1 to make users feel comfortable? After all, all the ‘prosumer’ DSLRs from the competition come with one and if you are Johnny Come Lately to the game, you might as well start out by looking like the competition before you change the world. Remember also how Panny said that they could have made the G1 significantly smaller but decided not to? Partly because, I suspect, big equals good for the American consumer and partly because you can only make the body so small before it becomes hard to handle. The G1 is at the cusp on that point. So they can make the G1 a little larger, drop that dumb pentaprism hump and make it with a full frame sensor. Add credit card sized, long life flat batteries along the lines of the ones used in the latest Apple notebook computers and convert all those dated Leica full frame lens designs to lighter, smaller, aberration loaded variants with software taking out the defects and you have a shot straight at the big Canons and Nikons. (I suppose I should add Sony, but they are not really a player in the pro leagues, innovation having seemingly deserted the company). Only Canon, Samsung and Sony have the capital to compete and both Canon and Sony have access to high quality EVFs in their professional video cameras used extensively by the news media. So, I suppose it really boils down to Canon being the target as I see Nikon pretty much dead on the vine for lack of capital. Camera design as it is played today dictates that capital is king.

Imagine that new camera. With one body, a 1,000 exposure battery and maybe two or three IS lenses – 14-28mm, 28-90mm and 90-400mm, the lot weighing maybe 4 lbs., with a 7 fps exposure rate and an even better, faster EVF than the one found in the G1. A world beater. And who cares if the lenses say Leica on the front or not? Based on my early experience with the kit lens in the G1, Panasonic have got modern lens design down cold.

I am getting greedy, it’s true. Greed, as always, has a price.


Burger king. G1, kit lens @ 14mm, 1/640, f/4.5, ISO 100

I’m hoping the X1 full frame Panny with an EVF will be a tad slimmer.

A note on the manufacturing location of the G1: As with many new products designed by the Japanese, early production is in Japan by local workers. Eventually this frequently changes to China, Taiwan or some other place with lower quality standards – just like with Hondas and Toyotas. Both the body and lens in my G1 kit say “Made in Japan” so I would encourage you to look for those labels if you are a buyer. After all, you no more want a Chinese made G1 than you want an American made Honda.

Snap!

Micro Four-Thirds

At the local coffee shop


G1, kit lens at 45mm, 1/60, f/9, ISO 400, RAW original

Well, I confess that in situations like these, the G1’s LCD rotated for waist level use is just like using that old Rolleiflex, except that the image is no longer reversed and the whole thing is far less obtrusive. Plus, of course, you had to wait for Kodak to process your Kodachrome film, back when it was still available in 120 size.

I simply set the G1 to Auto ISO and let its brain, far superior to mine, do its thing. The light on the subject’s skin is simply lovely.

By the way, I had my netbook with me and the place has wifi. That little computer has an SDHC card slot and runs LR2 just fine, so this piece was completed within about five minutes of taking the snap.

Panasonic G1 grain

Micro Four-Thirds

Not at all bad

To read the whole series on the Panasonic G1, click here

Here’s a snap from a puppet show my son attended the other day. The puppeteer is explaining how he works his magic:


G1, kit lens at 45mm, 1/40, f/5.6, ISO 1250

The sensor was cranked up to ISO 1250 in the poor incandescent indoor lighting, and the lens was at its maximum aperture, fully extended, at f/5.6.

Now here’s a section of that same picture which would make a 28″ x 42″ print – a size hardly anyone is going to print at:


Section of the above

All in all, not at all bad. I’m using firmware version 1.3, the current release and Auto White Balance. IS shake reduction does its job here, the only blur visible being motion blur. The Electronic Viewfinder just shines in this sort of situation, where it seems far more comfortable than outdoors in bright light.

Here, by contrast, is a similar presentation at ISO 100 from yesterday’s piece:


G1, kit lens @ 16mm, 1/80, f/4.5, ISO 100


Section of the above

No grain to speak of.

If big prints are your thing (by ‘big’ I mean the shortest dimension is at least 18″) then the G1 will not disappoint up to ISO 400. After that, fine detail begins to disappear – this is no Canon 5D, whose sensor is almost four times the area of the G1’s. The 5D’s sensor remains the standard to judge by in the digital domain. Some say the 5D Mark II is even better, but absent a broad consensus on this point it makes no difference for other than chart-on-a-lab-wall fiends. Beats me why anyone spends time on this sort of nonsense. I should add that I have not used the 5D Mark II.

An 18″ x 27″ print is an 18x enlargement for the 5D but a 34x ratio for the smaller sensor in the Panasonic G1. If I want super fine detail in large prints at high ISOs, the 5D is the camera to use. Horses for courses.

The Panasonic G1 – Part VIII

Micro Four-Thirds, Photographs

Some field tests

To read the whole series on the Panasonic G1, click here

The ProStrap for the GI finally arrived.


ProStrap fitted to the Panasonic G1

No more excuses for deferring a proper outing for the camera so after attaching the strap I set out for the big city, spare (and very small) Panny battery in my Levis. The strap really does nothing for the handling of the camera which is a good thing. The right hand finger and thumb grip on the body are properly engineered for a secure grip and the left hand cradles the lens from below in traditional fashion. What this little strap confers is enhanced peace of mind that you are not about to drop the camera, and it’s far more functional for my intended use than a shoulder strap emblazoned with the manufacturer’s name.

Before setting out I did a little more checking of the confusing instruction book and made a couple more changes to the settings.

First I switched on AF+MF. This means that when you have locked focus with a first pressure on the shutter button, you can still make manual focus changes with the collar in the lens. When turned this renders the enlarged view in the EVF for fine changes in focus. A quick press and re-press of the shutter button then restores the full image with the focus locked on the new setting. Very clever.

i.Exposure was also turned on – this provides for automatic adjustment of contrast if the contrast range is too high for the sensor to handle. A tacit acknowledgment by Panasonic that things are not yet perfect with digital sensors.

Then I turned on i.ISO. If the subject is moving the ISO is adjusted upward automatically for a faster shutter speed. The electronics can do this as the live sensor video feed continuously measures movement blur. I had already limited the maximum ISO to 800 to mitigate grain/noise as described yesterday so it will be interesting to see how this works out in practice.

Bottom line? I should have things set just so for a very responsive …. point-and-shoot.

The major criticism to be leveled at Panasonic so far is that they have done such a poor job of the instruction manual. Multiple cross references, a near-useless index and a rote recitation of each menu choice and control function. What is needed is an approach which focuses on the user, not the camera. A section for street snappers, a section for the sports crowd, a section for landscape photographers and so on. How can a company making a multi-million dollar investment in wonderfully executed new technologies pay so little attention to the ergonomics of a user manual?

  • The camera is a sweetheart to carry around. Small, quiet, unobtrusive and very fast.
  • I have to learn to avoid depressing the front control wheel to avoid putting it into exposure compensation mode.
  • 2/3rds of a stop underexposure is just perfect for avoiding blown out highlights, with Lightroom’s Fill Light slider doing the rest
  • Based on my knowledge of what my Canon 5D’s sensor will do, any one of these will easily print razor sharp at 18″ x 24″
  • Grain is noticeable at higher ISOs but not obtrusive
  • The lens is simply wonderful. Minimal barrel distortion at the wide end, none elsewhere. Maybe this is Adobe Camera Raw doing software tricks in Lightroom 2.4 to fix things. Who cares? It works. Try saying that about barrel distortion with the Canon 24-105mm ‘L’. Further, there’s no chromatic aberration to speak of. A remarkable piece of optical + software design.

This camera may be the answer for many, like this fan of the magnificent M2 and M3 bodies, looking for that elusive replacement for the Leica M rangefinder.

Simply stated, Panasonic’s G1 is a keeper. I believe it marks a seismic change in quality camera design which will have the competition scrambling to keep up.

The Panasonic G1 – Part VII

Micro Four-Thirds

A few more tweaks and dynamic range considerations

To read the whole series on the Panasonic G1, click here

A reader mentioned that maximum ISO could be limited and, indeed, I found it in Page 4 of the Rec Menu (v1.3 firmware) under ‘ISO Limit Set’. I set this to ISO 800 as the sensor, being a good deal smaller than the one in Canon’s 5D, begins to show noise earlier and 800 is about as fast as I ever need. At 18mm x 13.5mm the sensor’s area is but 28% the size of the 5D’s, although a lot larger than the 8.5mm x 4.78mm homunculus in the LX-1. So the marketers amongst you would doubtless point out that the G1’s sensor is no less than 498% larger than the one in the LX-1. There are, as Mark Twain (Disraeli for British readers) reminds us, only three kinds of numbers – lies, damned lies and statistics. You can go to Wall Street or to camera makers for the first two. The reality is that this particular statistic just goes to show how Lilliputian the LX-1’s sensor is, not how large the one in the G1 happens to be.

For HDR fans (or for digital sensor skeptics), I note that there is a wonderful range of auto-bracketing available for successive exposures – especially useful given the sensor’s proclivity to burn out highlights. You can have 3, 5 or 7 (!) pictures in either 1/3 or 2/3 stop intervals. A very helpful graphic illustrates the spacing of your choice. Unless you like to really overdo things, I think you may find that 3 pictures at 2/3 stops is ideal. The sequence of recording of bracketed exposures can also be set between center/under/over and under/center/over, the latter being my preference.

The self timer, smartly set with a top plate switch rather than with some horrid LCD menu driven approach, is really thought out, too. You can choose a 10 second delay with one picture, the same with three pictures, with about a second between each, or a short two second delay. The red light on the top right of the G1 flashes while the self timer is running. The two second delay would seem ideal for tripod work with long lenses, especially those without IS, as it will let vibrations settle if no remote release is handy.

I confess that I find the engineering of the depth of field preview (the lower left button on the rear which doubles as the delete button in preview mode) simply magic. Magic that is only possible with an EVF camera. Depress the button for depth of field preview and that’s exactly what you get except that the screen does not dim. The software adjusts the screen brightness to compensate and, yes, you do get some EVF noise when stopped all the way down, but have you every tried making anything out on a screen using this technique with a conventional SLR viewfinder or, worse, with a large format camera and screen? If the noise bothers you, it’s easy to opt for preview on the LCD screen where there is none. Simply magic.

For Leica M2 and late M3 aficionados reading this, you will know that those Ms had a unique and effective depth of field ‘preview’ function. Notches extended in the central rangefinder rectangle allowed you to focus such that the overlap of the (non-) coincident images fell within these notches. The wider top notch would have everything in focus at f/16 with a 50mm lens, the lower one at f/5.6. That’s all you really needed, no preview was needed (or possible, obviously) and Leitz did such a truly lousy job of explaining this wonderful feature that it was discontinued with the M4 and all later bodies. Shame, I loved it. But what you get with the G1 is better – the first time I have seen non-dimming d-o-f preview in a camera, workable at any aperture. Once the Panny macro lens becomes available this feature will really sing. For that matter, you will be able to preview d-o-f on your attached 42″ LCD monitor in the studio, without any dimming, owing to the video feed provided on the G1 …. a seismic change in camera design. Add wider aperture lenses and this will become even more useful.

At the 45mm end of the kit lens’s range, focus seems to go down to one-third life size which is hardly limiting for the sort of thing I have in mind.

Boy, they must have had some real live photographers involved in the design. I simply cannot help thinking that Panny will be surprised at the sort of photographer who opts for the G1. They have stated that the G1 is targeted at the point-and-shoot user who is looking to upgrade. I think that’s a stretch – going from a $150 snapper to a $700 one is a big jump. On the other hand, Leica made, what, over one million M film rangefinder cameras and I’ll bet that at least 10% of those users are: a) Still alive, and b) Mightily disillusioned with the lack of a modern digital alternative to these masterpieces of times past. Those users have either been using a 5D for the full frame experience (and the related carpal tunnel and bad back symptoms) or been making do with a small sensor DSLR with a simply horrid viewfinder and a noisy, flapping mirror with the attendant bulky pentaprism. This camera will see a lot of those users (including Yours Truly) choosing a G1 as their daily snapper of choice.

Dynamic range: From a purely subjective standpoint (which is all I pretty much care about) the dynamic range of the G1’s sensor is inferior to that of the Canon 5D’s – I would guess by at least a stop or so. The following snap of a lovely Greek Orthodox cupola proves the point.


G1, kit lens @ 45mm, 1/1000, f/9, ISO250, 1 1/3 stops under exposed

I used the ‘click and turn’ front wheel to set 1 1/3 stops underexposure in the EVF and used ‘pattern metering’ which averages the overall exposure. A very simple operation. Alternatively, I could just as easily have taken a light reading from the overcast sky using spot metering in this very high dynamic range subject. Using average exposure measurement with no adjustment would have blown out the sky, past the point of recovery. When processing in Lightroom 2.4, I simply cranked up the fill light slider to bring detail back to the leaves framing the cupola, thus:


Fill light used to recover shadow detail

It is far easier to expose for the highlights and adjust the shadows; trying the reverse generally increases grain and seldom does a good job on the highlights, in my experience. So this is an important caveat for G1 users – take care to meter on the right thing and err on the side of underexposure.

Here’s a snap of my G1 Army and Navy white supremacist belt pouch into which I simply chuck the camera. It’s nice using a body with no attached straps. At $12 it’s neither ideal nor expensive, though I have found it poses some interesting challenges when you do your thing in the men’s room! A dirt cheap 8gB SDHC card ($20) is included for scale – the latter may not be very fast but the G1 handles it just fine.


Army and Navy special

The last thing you want in this world is a camera bag emblazoned with the word ‘Nikon’ or ‘Canon’ or ‘Tenba’ et al. Can you spell ‘Steal Me’? For that matter, much the same goes for the camera:


Stealth G1, Blue Tape Special

I have enough tape for about 750 G1s so I’m not about to run out ….