fresh doses of sanity

Even professional imagers feel the pull of gear - Kirk puts it quite eloquently, as usual. He changes massive amounts of kit in a hurry at times; perhaps as a percentage of income it's similar to my meager dealings, we'll never know of course.

His work is consistently great in any case, and like he says in the linked article the many factors that make an image is only rarely due to the gear. Certainly if one has the wrong focal length the outcome may be less ideal.. yet a great image can come even at those moments.

Good stuff, and a reminder that time spent browsing camera forums and gear sites could be spent taking photos (or organizing and removing many of them from my hard drive).

I'm writing this after an awful work day followed by a sleep-deprived night. I was up by 4:30 and read Kirk's article.

But I did get to see a beautiful sunrise!

I took several cool sunrise-and-fog images with the GX85 and 12-60mm - and later learned that two big dust specks were evident in the sky on several shots. Bummer. They were all shot in jpeg only, so solid fixes will likely show some compression artifacts.

I then took out the GX1 and 14-42 while the GX85 was occupied with downloading. The sun-beams were even more pronounced at this point and images on screen looked very nice. The light was also striking our hummingbird feeder so I tried to incorporate its ruby glow into the shot with 16:9 wide shots. Now where is that cable for downloading, the microUSB cord won't work! Ah yes, the usb reader will do.

While seeking the cable I decided to grab the YI M1 and its 12-40 kit lens. This was also shot in raw +jpeg and looked wonderful on the small screen. Here is one of the jpeg shots from the 20-mpx YI - looks good from here!


As Kirk said - timing and light are the key elements; the camera need only function to capture a great image.

big deal

So after consulting my internal reality specialist I decided to go forward with the GX1, 14mm prime, 12-60 and 45-150 Lumix zooms. The eP5 and other primes are off to a dealer for more tax relief. The 14-45 is also going back since the 12∙60 is staying.

And I'm OK with this. 
Well, today I am.

As I posted recently, the technology buried within the most recent cameras is beyond my ability to absorb right now. I barely shoot video at all, so why have 4k? I rarely use the camera for anything creative, so why deal with 4k-based focus stacking and other cool tricks? I almost never use burst mode so what's the difference to me between 4 and 9 shots per second? It all exceeds my needs now, and until something major changes in our family life it's just excess that hinders more than it helps.
compout alert - I still have 4k via the YI, since the best offer so far on the m1 is under $60!

So the GX1 and its very familiar feature set will do. Unless, perhaps, a GX7 were to appear at the dealer when the final check is ready to be cut. The EV-4 AF and touch-AE features really were useful to me, so I'll be watching.*

I do still have the 12-60 despite putting it up for cheap and owning the tiny 14-42ii. The longer range is nice, the lens only a bit thicker than the 45-150 and just as long - and to my surprise it feels better on the GX1 than it did on the eP5! Curious. I haven't offered the 14-42ii yet, might as well hold on and see what develops.

* and what if find a GX85 near my hoped-for GX7 price? Both would be acceptable but the complexity creep would be there. So would usb charging, no AA filter... argh.

live and learn: GX1 and GX7.ii sensor test

As I have noted before, I am just awful at side-by-side tests. I usually keep a few variables varying, and make changes where I don't intend to. Nevertheless I'm trying again, with a simple goal in mind: seeing with my own eyes what a 16Mpix GX1 sensor can do compared to a GX85 (GX7.ii is my preferred name for it).

So here's my testing setup -

• bright lamp shining on aluminum foil, a few bright objects and a black desk and file holder
• ISO500, tungsten light WB
• Manual exposure at 1/30 second
• Pentax DA40/2.8 shot fairly wide open (no aperture ring to read from - but the setting did not change) and focused at similar points
• framing using "just above a paper clip, top of rocket pen on right edge" precesion
• RAW exposure, opened in Cyberlink's PhotoDirector 8 software, then
• captured with PrtScrn and
• pasted into my favorite tiny graphic processor, LView 1.D2!
• Only the exposure slider was used to adjust between captures

Note that I deem many many issues to not be relevant to this specific test, so I did not work on these!

• specific point of focus
• perfect shooting posture
• absolute center of image
• 'shutter shock' and IS are not factored in - SS should not be a factor at 1/30s but my quivering is another matter!

For sensor capabilities related to gathering light, a bit of blur or imperfect focus won't blow the results to pieces. If they do I am clearly in the wrong hobby (or more precisely: my critics are).

So what did I learn, I asked myself?

First off, base shots and raw settings 'as shot' imported into PhotoDirector 8.

Hmm the upper image "P104" (from Lumix folder P104) has better white balance with the tungsten preset. It's definitely an orange-gold rocket pen not a yellow-gold. The as-shot sliders are amazingly different, but I tried similar settings and the results were definitely worse - so for each camera the choice was a decent one.

I see more detail in the P104 yellow flower, but I believe the focus was about spot on for that shot and further back in the P116 image. Since the results were not precisely the same, no doubt I wobbled slightly in my chair while swapping the lens between two bodies. That's not the goal of this test so I'm fine ignoring the flower details here.

So down to about -2EV we go, to see how the foil and other bright items hold up..

Personally I'd say the upper image P104 has preferable blowout results than P116. Differences are pretty slight though. Looks like focus differs on the far-left paper as well. Thus far P104 is holding a slight edge to my eye.

Upward to -1.3EV now..

Nothing to see here, really. Dark areas behind the foil lack detail in equal measure and the yellow WB bias in P116 gets worse in more light. The foil is a bit more blown out in P116 as well.

EV+0.25 coming next:

Looks like a bit more detail in the darkness now on P116 (lower) image. The flowers are a bit more blown out but I'll gladly take the blame for non-rigorous testing procedures. Heck I didn't even crop the same on every one, how slovenly can I get??

We'll close out with EV+1, since that's as far as my interest held tonight..

Dark areas look great and foil looks awful, pretty much in equal measure.

 = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

The results are in! My reasonably rigorous test was really disappointing, in that I feel best about the results from P104 - but my humble GX1 (P116) is not a Godawful DR-crippled pathetic excuse for a 16-Mpx sensor. I might try re-shooting these just to nail focus.. but really neither camera does poorly anywhere in the tests so I probably will not do that.

And in all honesty: as I wrote this I thought P116 was from the newer camera (higher number better, right?) so any bias I felt was in fact doubly blinded! No doubt from the foil.

the GX trio

the GX1, GX7 and GX85 (henceforth aka GX7,ii)

Not shown (as I cannot afford more) - GX8, GX9

Image taken with the still-present K∙50

new record?

I still blush to look back at my kit in recent years, and the speed at which it mutated. I've really been reckless and I see very few times where the kit could be defined as a poor one. Many of those cameras barely had my finger-prints on them before heading out again.. and often at a small but ever-accumulating financial loss.

Given my lousy track record, it's noteworthy that I have now gone Four Months with no real kit changes!
OK that's not quite accurate - my October 9th post says a lens is on its way, and that one left again soon thereafter. The photo that I posted on that day is still my kit though :^/ - so near enough. Yes I also admit to a newer faster memory card - but given the speed of previous gear changes it's pretty good.

Of course being confronted with essentially zero budget for gear, perhaps pride is misplaced here.

Cheap chips!

While working on the GX1 I encountered an error with the 'natural3' hack. The mp4 modes shut down with the complaint that my card could not keep up with the data. It was phrased far more cryptically :# but That was my inference!

 I looked for online solutions, deciding that a U3-class card should manage if others' stories were correct. A few 32G cards would serve for under $30.. but I decided to look locally just in case

After a couple of failures I visited my local Kroger store (Fred Meyer here in the Pacific NW) and hit a deal! The 64GB Sandisk Ultra Plus was on sale for just over $32. I brought it home, formatted it - and the message remained.

Now that I've shifted to a gentle version of the Galaxian hack I have no issues, and a large and fast card to hold my data. Some times I do catch a break!

GX1 hack rehack update

The system still does what I wish with no playback hassles or camera lockups - how nice!

So what I have now is a decent AVCHD update on bitrate (HD and FHD) and no change to stock MP4 files. Further reading at personal-view.com shows that MP4 bitrates over 23M/sec will not allow playback in the camera, so we'll stay at 20M. Other setings that were discussed did not provide enough reason for boosting audio as that will also 'break' GX1 playback.

I attempted to run ten-second snips at each setting to determine bitrates - but I was shooting at max ISO (3200) at our table so nothing special at all. No movement other than cats cleaning themselves, so nothing worth inspecting for difficult imaging like the website suggests to show the improvements that AVCHD should demonstrate. I'll head down the hill for some moving water in the near future, as blockiness of moving water is a known torture test.  I'll be happy if I see a minimal amount of frozen pixels in the moving water during playback. The hack settings suggest much larger bitrates than I am trying, so if some image breakup occurs I can bump these up more; I went with about half of their suggested boosts for both 1080 and 720 resolutions in AVC mode.

Here are the resulting file sizes, which did not quite align at 10 seconds. Clearly the MP4 files are smaller as expected. The stock GX1 settings for AVC are 16M/sec and 12M/sec but I bumped them up to about 32M and 20M (or thereabouts). Perhaps at some point I will re-hack at higher AVC rates, but until I see some results to justify more changes, this will serve nicely.

hack hack unhack

I've been messing up my simple life with GX1 video by 'improving' its specs. Oops.

Many of the Panasonic cameras have had their firmware inspected for video features. The video looks quite good to an average user like me, but dedicated folks on a budget want top-level quality from a bargain camera. Apparently they have succeeded to some degree that they can see, but for the most part the video looks very similar in before/after shots I have seen.

However it's not just the video specs. Beyond the MB/second bitrate one can also boost the audio quality. That sounded more appealing to me - especially since I was about to record a piano concert for the player and her family. Having a better audio track on a camera with no microphone jack would be a good thing.

And so I looked into personal-view.com and its many levels of hacking on dozens of cameras.
My first stop was the GalaXian hack from user 'driftwood', which moved several steps forward on nearly every parameter. I think I took the settings as given.. which for me was a mistake. The setting boost makes the video unwatchable on the camera! That might have been fine if I'd had time to test everything, but to learn this on the day of the event was too much to ask - so the hacked camera was set up as the 'B' camera rather than the main shooter. The video turned out fine in fact, but it was unsettling.

I then tried some other settings, and even tried to reload the original firmware. Luck was not on my side in those endeavors.

After that I went with a different hack, the 'natural3' set from user bkmcwd. It had a different error message with mp4 mode, claiming my card write speed was too slow (the AVCHD mode seemed fine). The camera then locked up on playback and I despaired of seeing the GX1 work again. (It turns out that others have reported similar camera lockups and shooting/deleting still images can reset things - now they tell me!).

Finally I put the natural3 back on the camera and it was not locking up, and I found a V3 SD card (at a great price!) hoping to get that error message to relent. Alas, luck was again not with me, even though the card speed should be sufficient; perhaps the GX1 was not the 'natural3' intended target and that has been my problem. Most users of that hack use an earlier GH camera.

After several more attempts to reset the camera to Lumix-standard v1.1 firmware I looked again at the GalaXian hack. I lowered some of the high-demand settings for mp4 images and tried again. Now the camera records both mp4 and AVCHD without hassle or lockup.
And I cannot play them back on the camera!

So at last, after further reading, I loaded firmware 1.1 and boosted the AVCHD settings but left MP4 settings untouched. At this I finally found peace: videos both work, stills look fine, nothing freezes on playback.

Maybe it will even work the same way tomorrow?

tech burnout

How many ways can one acquire technical fatigue?

Here's a few:

• dumping more gear and holding on to older, less-advanced models -again
• gear chat that leads nowhere and repeats long-settled issues
• glowing reports of gear I cannot afford taking photos of places I cannot afford to visit
• ad-friendly web advancements like turning off mute when autoplaying junk video, and loading ads before actual site content
• insert your gripe here

As a result of these issues and more it's time to declare a moratorium. Comments to gear threads must stop, even if I have a reasonable comment. Too often my unreasonable comments take precedent, whether silly or snarky; a waste of bandwidth and both the writer's and reader's time.

Wish me luck, I shall definitely need it.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

The Sigma 19mm has arrived. It's a fine lens for my use, determined after a day of tests which included a quick tour of Laurelhurst park in Portland. 

The GX7, Lumix 14 and Sigma 30 departed for evaluation and purchase. My best hope is that they overpay for the first two and send back the 30mm, so I can have a matched set of EX DN lenses!

ins & outs

As funds tighten again the GX7 and two primes departed, leaving the team photo a bit less full.

With the GX1 missing out on stabilization the primes become less useful despite their improved light-capture and overall IQ - so OIS lenses are more useful. A Sigma 19/2.8 is on its way though for 1-lens shooting days.

GX1 Gemini

The matching GX1 bodies are now at the same address.

Initial settings are almost in place to make them clones, but a few items are not in alignment yet. I sent the manuals to a print-shop so I can learn a few new things (more precisely un-learn a few newer things that  the GM1 and GX7 taught me!) so at some point I'll know why some settings are greyed out on the newer body. I think we now have five batteries for the two cameras, so running out of power is not a safe option to claim.

As shown here the spousal cam has the silver 14-42ii on it and my GX1 has the svelte 45-150 attached. I need to order the hot-shoe/dataport cover soon for comfort's sake - or plan B: attach the VF to the spousal cam and take her cover! Clever boy.

It's interesting what changes from year to year among cameras. The GX1 has the stiffest control rings I've ever owned - the power switch and mode dial are almost scary-stiff compared to what I am used to. It's strange that the GX7 did not feel as tight; one would think this was something that most people would appreciate. As I noted before, some responsiveness is lacking in the older bodies, to no one's surprise. It's not a major concern, and the K-5 is as spry as ever in that regard so I have choices. That's seldom bad, unless it leads to paralysis (or another budget crisis!).

setting up the GX1

After doing the custom settings for GM1 and GX7 bodies, it took a bit longer to find a good combination for the earlier GX1. Many features of the earlier camera are more primitive or just not invented, so settings just took a bit longer to find or make use of. Features like the touch-AF work fine but are not as quick, and the touchscreen is both lower resolution and less precise. For example, the first time I tried video with touch-AF it didn't seem to work - but the touch sensitivity and slower AF had me briefly fooled.

I now have things the way I like. For now. I shall save the custom settings for later, but when the second GX1 arrives I'll set it up to match; that way my wife and I can shoot the same things and compare results.

News flash - the 12-32 has left the building with the GM1! More cash in for future considerations. I shall replace it with.. something, but for now GX1a will have the 14-42ii while GX1b muddles along with the 14 and 30mm primes. Not a bad situation!

more trading of horses

I found someone with a GX1 and interest in our GM1. Neither of us was interested in parting with much cash, but in the end I get the body and a 14mm Lumix pancake. That's a lens with a good reputation and pairs nicely with the 30mm Sigma.

This nearly brings the team-camera concept back in alignment. Not quite though, as we have a 12-32 and 14-42ii for the two GX1 bodies. Close enough for now I think, and quite handy for trips where those wider or longer focal lengths would be missed! I do wish one were silver for the 14-42 though, both bodies are black.

The whole two-system mess was quite an accident, really. 

I planned to get another GM1 once the GX7 left, but nothing could be found for under $500! I then found the K-5 for just under $200, I already had lenses covering 28-300 in K mount, and a 50-200WR came silly cheap for $50.  Yaay! But then I decided the 12-60 sealed lens made little sense with a GM1 so sought out a trade - and a GX1 was offered a day after the K-5 deal. 

And why not give it a try?  The GX1 uses an older 16Mpix sensor compared to the GM1/GX7, but still a talented one. And the clip-on viewfinder came along in the trade, which was a nice touch since it can be removed for a simple camera. This made me wonder how much my wife really liked 'her' GM1 since a viewfinder has been a big deal to her. When the GX1 arrived I handed her both cameras and she immediately remarked that the GX1 was the best fit of any camera I had given her; that's important since we'd tried Pentax Q, Samsung NX300 and smaller K-body SLRs. The viewfinder clinched the deal - and here we are now.

• Pentax: K-5, 28-80 1:2, 55-200WR, 70-150, 100-300, 50/1.7 and 100/2.8

• µ43: GX1×2, Lumix 12-32, 14-42ii, 14/2.5 and 30/2.8 (also a 46mm adapter to make the 14 into a 10.5 and the 30 into a 23?) plus 45-150mm zoom and any Pentax lenses I choose to adapt!