Category Archives: Hardware

Stuff

Working with Custom Sets

Micro Four-Thirds

A useful feature in the Panasonic G1

Given the myriad of adjustments which can be made to the Panasonic G1’s custom settings, it’s nice that Panny has provided the option of saving up to three custom sets in the Custom Menu.

After banging away for a while and getting generally familiar with the camera over the past month, I have pretty much settled on a set of street snapper settings whose goal is to have a camera that is as responsive and fast to use as possible, while at the same time having a minimum of clutter on the EVF screen to get in the way of seeing pictures.

To save these setting, I start the camera in Aperture priority mode to which I apply the usual defaults, such as iISO (intelligent selection of ISO by the camera’s CPU), RAW picture quality (I have no use for RAW + JPG) and, of course, shake reduction. The EVF display is set to minimal display by toggling the ‘Display’ button on the rear, so that only Aperture, Shutter Speed and over/under exposure adjustment is shown, the latter set to 2/3rd stops under-exposed. I do not use the LCD screen on the rear and have it turned face in, as LCD settings are irrelevant to street snapper mode.

Custom Sets allow no fewer than ten additional settings to be saved, so with the camera still set on ‘A’ on the mode dial (for Aperture priority), I set the remaining variables as follows:

AFL/AE: AE. I want the rear panel button to lock exposure only, when depressed and held. I prefer to lock focus with a first press on the shutter button, when needed.

AFL/AEL Hold: Off. The problem with this setting is that the ‘hold’ remains in place after the picture is taken, which is exactly wrong. So ‘Off’ it is.

AF + MF: On. This allows for fine tuning focus, even though the camera is set to auto focus, by turning the focus collar on the lens. Very handy if you are shooting through a window or a wire fence, for example, as the camera can get confused and focus on the obstacle rather than on the subject.

Focus: Off. This allows the shutter button to work even if the image is not in focus. Better a slightly unsharp picture than none at all.

AF*: Off. This makes sure the bright red auto focus ‘assist’ light stays off in dim light. The very last thing you want for unobtrusive snapping is for a bright red LED to broadcast your presence.

P-AF: Off. This disables continuous pre-focusing before the shutter button is released. A waste of battery power and you need all you can get.

Fn: Set to Aspect Ratio. This dictates the action of the small Fn button on the rear panel. I have it set to allow choice of aspect ratio (4:3, 3:2, 16:9) as the other choices (RAW or JPG, Metering mode, iExposure or Guidelines) are of no use on the street. For that matter, setting the aspect ratio is of little use to me as I always use 3:2. You can take the man from his Leica but you cannot take the Leica from the man, and film Leicas are 3:2.

Auto Review: Off. The last thing you want is to be presented with an Auto Review of the last snap when you are desperate for the camera to free up for the next picture. Anyone who complains about the picture-to-picture times of the G1 being too slow is ignorant of this setting option. Unfortunately, Panny ships it with Auto Review set to ‘On’ which hardly helps matters.

NR: On. Reduces noise in long exposures. Why not?

Shoot without lens: Off. This allows adapted lenses to be used but, for now, I have all I need with the 14-45mm kit lens.

To save these, all you have to do, with the camera still in ‘A’ on the top mode dial, is to go to the Custom Menu->Cust.Set.Men (the very first choice), right arrow, hit Menu ->Yes and your settings are now saved to Custom Set 1.

Then rotate the mode dial to ‘CUST’ and the first Custom Set, the one you just saved, is in effect. If you create other Custom Sets, then you have to depress the Menu button and choose the one you want. For example, you may want an auto-bracketing set for HDR photography, or a ‘100 ISO’ only set for highest quality images, and so on. However, at my time of life, when I’m happy just getting the right leg in the right half of my pants, one custom set is just fine, thank you.


G1 – Custom Set 1 at work

Fighting for dynamic range

Micro Four-Thirds, Photographs

Lightroom 2 to the rescue

Sometimes there’s no alternative but to restore dynamic range using some manipulation at the processing stage. The Panasonic G1’s smallish sensor does not help in the dynamic range department – the Canon 5D’s, almost four times the area, is better in this regard.

The following is a case in point – I exposed for the brick wall, which is in bright sun, knowing the fire truck would be lost in gloom. Exposing for the fire truck would have burned out the wall and foreground.

After round-tripping the image from Lightroom 2 into PS CS2 to correct leaning verticals (Image->Transform) I saved back into Lightroom and used the Brush with AutoMask switched on to outline the garage bay, first hitting Option-O (this toggles mask visibility) to see exactly what I was masking. Then a quick tweak of exposure and an overall increase in red saturation and the picture was finished.

Here’s the ‘before’ and ‘after’ in Lightroom 2:


Shadow recovery – before and after

As the shape I was outlining had straight edges, I reduced the ‘feather’ setting to zero for a hard edged mask.


Fire truck. G1, 31mm.1/200, f/9, ISO 160

When God gives you lemons, make lemonade ….

From light to bulk

Canon 5D, Micro Four-Thirds

Quite a contrast

I took our boy to a show of Russian and Chinese 1950-era aircraft the past weekend and, because detail was the order of the day, took along the 5D and a couple of lenses.

Quite a change from the G1 when it comes to bulk and weight!

The 5D has marginally better shutter and focus response, though unless sports action is your thing, it’s not a significant difference. On the other hand, the 5D is much noisier (the camera, not the images!) and of course weighs several times as much. The 5D’s viewfinder seems positively dim after the G1’s EVF, although it renders colors and dynamic range more realistically outdoors. Indoors, while the G1 may show some noise, it is in a different league. I simply fail to understand why so many commentators have criticized the G1’s EVF for noise in poor light. Which would you prefer? A dim image in a 5D or like camera, or a really bright and easily discerned one in the G1 with a touch of noise? No contest. Maybe these critics should try to take pictures with their charges?


Commie prop. 5D, 200mm ‘L’ at f/3.5, ISO 250

It was an interesting exercise. Simply stated, comparing digital and film eras, the 5D is to medium format what the G1 is to the Leica M. With the 5D grain is not an issue and just about anything you snap will enlarge to a print size of choice. The G1, like 35mm film equipment, needs greater care. If you are going to push the size of your prints and the ISO setting, be prepared for compromises. The difference is likely to be less as time passes and technology marches on. While film peaked in quality years ago, digital is just getting started.

Olympus EP-1 …. woof!

Cameras

A real dog

Coming from David Pogue, the New York Times’s technology writer with a knack for making the technical understandable, is a review of the new Olympus EP-1.



Click the picture for the review

Well, sorry to say, the camera is an awful disappointment, and an expensive one at that. No viewfinder, horribly slow focusing (Panasonic refused to share its superbly fast focus technology from the G1 with Olympus) and, yes, you guessed it, miserable shutter lag. Hard to understand why anyone would waste the development budget on a camera which, while adding interchangeable lenses to a small body, otherwise does absolutely nothing to conquer the three bugbears of compact point-and-shoots.

An LCD screen passing as a ‘viewfinder’, slow focus and shutter lag.

And, at $800, considerably more than the G1 which, for a little more bulk, has none of these problems.

A real dog.

And thank you, Mr. Pogue, for pulling no punches.

Where is the genius of the company that gave us the stunningly original Pen F half frame SLR or the ‘better mousetrap’ of the Olympus OM1 full frame film SLR under designer Maitani?

The G1 kit lens

Micro Four-Thirds

In a word, impressive

I continue to be mightily impressed by the kit lens which comes with the Panasonic G1. At 14-45mm (28-90mm full frame equivalent) it has a most useful range of focal lengths and while the maximum aperture of f/3.5, falling to f/5.6 at the long end, is nothing to write home about, the lens is a fine performer. Back in the days of film, the Leica M street snapper found himself carrying 35, 50 and 90mm lenses for a similar focal length range. Swapping these was no fun, though the offset was that they were 2-3 stops faster in a very compact size. And the lenses were as good, if no better, than the kit lens supplied with the Panny.

Witness this snap taken at the crack of dawn.

G1, kit lens at 37mm, 1/50, f/5.6 iISO at 500

It’s a picture which discloses two things. First, the Electronic Viewfinder in the G1 renders an early dawn scene as if it was bright daylight, making composition incredibly easy, even if it makes pre-visualization of the final picture difficult.

Second, check out the near total absence of halation (light halos around bright objects) in this enlarged view.

Finally, there’s only minor chromatic aberration (red fringing in this case) to speak of in this very high contrast, challenging subject.

That’s no mean performance from an inexpensive zoom loaded with plastic components. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that many of the ‘glasses’ in the lens are made of plastic. Who cares? It’s the results that count. And this is at full aperture for the 37mm focal length used.

It’s also just visible in this snap that the limiting factor in definition is grain (sensor noise), not lens definition. At 500 ISO things begin to deteriorate as image size grows. The larger image above is consonant with a 30″ x 45″ print, so it’s not like I’m complaining. On the other hand, had this been taken on the Canon 5D, the fine detail, such as the print in the menu on the wall, would have been easily resolved whereas it’s lost in grain here. And, whether you like it or not, if you make big prints viewers will invariably stick their noses in them.

For film aficionados, the ‘grain’ is much finer than that delivered by, say, TriX film. It’s comparable to a medium speed black and white emulsion like FP5 or to Kodachrome 64 in color slide film. So those extolling the wonderful definition of Leica M lenses at f/2 should pause. What use is great definition if your sensor – be it film or silicon – cannot resolve the detail?

All in all – decent sensor, great kit lens – it’s not a bad compromise given how diminutive the G1 is. Absent the usual sharpening on import of the RAW image into Lightroom 2.4 (Amount=100, Radius=1.1), the image is completely unprocessed. And Panny will only improve things, based on their recent rate of progress.