Travelling Light – Photographing Light
Safari is a Swahili word that means journey. In the “bad old days” a Safari was all about big game hunting, fortunately to a large extent those days are past and now Safari has come to mean a vehilcle based wildlife watching/photography trip and whilst the concept of a Safari orginates in Africa, Safaris can now been indertaken in many parts of the world often in search of specfic species, for example Tiger Safaris have become huge business in India.
I mentioned one of the things that I don’t like about the GX9 is the location of the tripod socket, I was concerned about how close it is to the front of the camera.
So here it is the Lumix GX9.
I opted for the silver version, that is to say, the top plate is silver rather than black, that said in the metal I would describe it more as gun-metal grey rather than silver, still, I think it is rather a handsome fellow. As an aside what is the fashion for all cameras being black ? They never used to be, all my early cameras, Olympus’ and Canons had at the least a silver top plate and were all the better for it IMO, so well done to Panasonic for giving us the choice on this camera.
Well not for me at least !
As I blogged yesterday I have been very pleased with the G9 over the last 7 months and have no desire to return to a heavy-weight DSLR format, I recognise that there are some shortcomings with the m43 format but for me they really don’t amount to much and where they do I have easily found workarounds that get me where I need to be.
7 months ago I made the decision to give m43 a try, I won’t rehash the reasons for my move from Canon FF & APS-C suffice to say that size and weight had a lot to do with it.
On 30th May Panasonic issued the first firmware update for the G9. It can be downloaded from Panasonic’s website here.
Diffraction is an optical effect which limits the total resolution of a camera — no matter how many megapixels the camera sensor has. It happens because light begins to disperse or “diffract” when passing through the small opening that is the lens aperture. The smaller the aperture the greater the diffraction.
There have been a couple of reports online of a magenta colour cast appearing when G9 raw files are exposure lifted in Adobe Lightroom. I have to date not noticed this myself although I have to say I am not wholly convinced by Lightroom’s raw conversion of the G9 files. It may well be that I have not noticed this reported issue since I tend to ensure that I do not significantly under-expose images and therefore tend not to have lift exposure significantly in post processing.
Patterns in nature and man made can make great photo opportunities – here are just a few spotted when out and about.
So yesterday I decided to do some more long exposure photography and push the boundaries a bit with really long exposures of several minutes, so with my Lee Super Stopper in hand I trotted off to the Faro de El Toston (Lighthouse) which I thought would make a good subject with the clouds skudding overhead.
A trip down to Bexhill on Sea today to give the G9 a run out.
The De La Warr Pavilion is an Art Deco grade 1 listed building buit in 1935 – it makes a fine photographic subject.
As a mirrorless camera the G9 has an electronic viewfinder (evf) – in the case of the G9 this is a 3,680k dot OLED panel.
Panasonic have clearly spent a lot of time working on the ergonomics of the G9 and it really shows. They have managed to squeeze into a relatively compact body the best features of both m43 and DSLR formats. In the hand this camera feels superb – it is as good if not better to handle than any other camera that I am aware of and feels exceptionally well built. For me it is neither too big nor too heavy.
There can be no doubt that moving to a m43 system can lead to a very significant reduction in the weight that you will be carrying, particularly if you need a wide range of focal lengths. At longer focal lengths the weight advantage is very significant indeed.
Quite a lot to digest !
I received a call from Park Cameras yesterday to say that my new G9 had arrived and was ready for collection.
A mirrorless camera from Sony with one of their great sensors is surely the way forward – that was my initial thought based on all the talk about the size advantages of such cameras. But here’s the thing – the Sony mirrorless cameras are in essence just like any DSLR but without the mirror, the lenses are to all intent and purposes the same size and weight as my Canon offerings, so yes you can save a few grams and centemeters on the camera body but in the overall scheme of things little is to be gained.
So what to do ?
A Good Place to Stand 