12 December 2015

yet another bag

I swear I have nearly a dozen camera bags. Some were claimed from my dad's supply, but many are my very own.  Like so many purchases we all make, each made sense at the time.  And now another is coming?

from huntsphotoandvideo.com
Any micro:43 kit is relatively tiny and does not need a 'normal' sized camera bag to rattle around in.  I saw a great little Tamrac Jazz 52 on sale and almost bought it - then noticed that $hipping charge was nearly as much as the bag itself!  Err no thanks.  I then sought it elsewhere on the web but found something even slightly smaller: a  brand-new new Jazz 36 bag was available (last one!) for a slightly lower purchase price + Free Shipping.  Much better, both for price and volume; I can just toss under the tree, let my lovely spouse know of it & then forget about it for a few weeks.  The way my memory misfires have increased, that part will be easy.

As illustrated, this bag barely holds a standard DSLR plus one lens and flash.  In other words it will be very nice fit for a G7 with two zooms plus + a 7.5mm prime* perhaps? The Jazz 36 will definitely serve the purpose that I have in mind - and like no current bag can manage.

As to the G7 itself: so far so good, but wow it's complex!  And with several function buttons and a dozen or two possible settings for each one, it could take a month or more before the camera is functionally set to use.  I hadn't really thought about that!  And I've just installed v2.0 firmware so it's even more complex - Panasonic added the focus-stack-to-video option where you can choose which frame ahs the point in focus that you wanted most & save that shot as an 8Mpx still.  And if you like several planes of focus for the image, go ahead and extract/save them too!  What a clever way to play with 4k video.

I've been testing its low-light abilities first, seeing how close to EV-4 it can focus, how iso 6400/12800 look and how OIS does at such stupid-low exposure levels.  No surprise that details are smudged at such high settings, but very good results in the worst of circumstances.  I'm more than satisfied with these, so I doubt that iso200 shots will be troublesome.  I will check on that too, someday soon. Now to find a website that determines EV levels for a given shutter/aperture/ISO combo!

* Done deal!  I offered below someone's auction price but did not hear back, then found another one ending soon for cheaper.