From Lightroom

Lightroom makes it easy to summarize statistical data about your photos, so after a month with the Panasonic G1 I thought it would be fun to see some analytics.

Of the 750 pictures I have taken with the camera so far, 275 survived the cull (36%) as ‘keepers’ and the following data are for these 275 keepers. My hit rate has really been little changed over the past 40 years or so – if anything, it’s increasing suggesting I am getting better at pre-visualization or less discriminating in my old age ….

I have the camera set for Aperture Priority with iISO (the camera selects ISO) for all of these.

As you can see, the CPU selects shutter speeds which favor the lowest possible ISO, consistent with the best image quality:

I select the aperture in Aperture Priority, and tend to the large aperture end of the range (f/3.5 to f/5.6 for the kit lens – 64% of the total), where the lens delivers its best quality – quite a tribute to Panny’s hardware and software genius; I also thus force faster shutter speeds to minimize definition loss from camera shake:

Here are the shutter speeds set by the CPU:

Interestingly, I have a significant preference for portrait orientation, with fully 58% being in portrait mode (LR incorrectly refers to this as ‘Aspect Ratio’):

And, finally, as will come as no surprise to readers of this journal, I am very much a devotee of color, though I started life as a monochrome snapper:

Home under the freeway. G1, 21mm, 1/500, f/5.6, ISO 160

I have yet to figure out how to summarize which focal lengths of the kit zoom’s are most used – that would be most interesting – but if I do, I will add a piece on that.

As for my preferred color palette, what most catches my eye on the street, red and blue seem to dominate, as this extract shows:

My G1 color palette

The snaps with a ‘2’ or ‘3’ at the top left indicate that the image has been round-tripped to Photoshop CS2 – 20% in this sample. This is almost always to correct leaning verticals as I am anything but a Photoshop maven. In fact, I detest the product and avoid using it whenever possible. Were Adobe to add perspective correction to Lightroom I would probably completely cease using PS.

Looking at your statistics can be both fun and a learning experience.