Monday, February 29, 2016

5 Months with the Panasonic GX8

Hello everyone, today I want to share a little bit about my experience with the Panasonic Lumix GX8 after a few months using it. This is sort of like a follow-up review after my previous initial review at here. Please treat this post as merely personal opinion, I'm not an expert whatsoever, I'm just an enthusiast. I'm not paid by anyone to write this post, and I bought the GX8 just because I like it. I have no brand loyalty whatsoever. Heck, I'm not even a pro photographer!! But even so, I hope you'll still find this post to be useful.
   
   

5 Months?

I bought this GX8 at the end of September 2015, and the camera arrived at early October 2015. It was one of my most anticipated new camera. I researched so many articles and videos about the GX8 on the internet, looked at so many sample photos and videos, as well as weighing the GX8 against other cameras in similar spec and price range (Olympus E-M5 Mark II, Panasonic GH4, Olympus E-M1).
   
Yes, this is the first MFT camera to feature a full-blown 20MP sensor on the history, and I was one of the very first few people to actually receive this camera in Indonesia. But now things have changed, we have Olympus with its PEN-F that also has the 20MP sensor(the same sensor?). I don't know a thing about who made the sensor on the GX8, but some said that it's Sony this time as opposed to the in-house Panasonic sensor that has been the tradition in most Lumix camera line-ups.
   
 
   
Moving on. Fast forward today, it's my main camera for taking serious pictures and to record video. I have two other cameras, the Panasonic GX7 and the Panasonic LX100, and both act as secondary or EDC cameras. However, none of them has the specs that the GX8 has, thus they were rarely taken out by themselves when I need to produce high quality photos or videos.
  
For the whole 5 months, the GX8 had gone to many different places, felt extreme heat, felt some cold weather, shot gigabytes(probably almost terabytes) of stills and videos, being thrown around, got splashed in the rain, got food spilled all over it, being sanitized frequently, being stored in a room for almost a week without doing anything, and being taken in-and-out so many times in a single day. I think I had enough experience with the GX8 to finally go deep-down into the details and analyze what works well for me and what doesn't.
   
   

What I like

The GX8 is very substantial! It has the best grip that even rivals small DSLRs like the Canon Rebels or the entry-level Nikon DSLRs. I do love that it fits well in my hands, and I can still shoot one-handed easily with the camera even though it has a really big grip.
   
The controls are very nice and the camera is highly customizable. After a few weeks of using the GX8, my fingers kind of already knew where the buttons are and they can find the buttons even without the need to look to the camera. There's so much custom buttons that I can set to so many things, I can literally tailor the camera to fit my needs.
   
Speaking of controls, the placement of buttons are almost identical to the GX7. Owning both cameras in my collection, I find that switching between the GX8 and the GX7 is pretty much seamless and feels very natural. Therefore, I can put two different lenses on both cameras so I can quickly use those lenses without having to change the current lens on a camera if I only use one body. This is a real time-saver and it has allowed me to take many critical shots during an event photography session.
   
I prefer using big lenses on the GX8 like the Panasonic 12-35mm f/2.8, 14-140mm f/3.5-5.6, and 100-300mm f/4-5.6. They feel so right with the GX8 and they match very well in terms of balance and ergonomics. However, I don't really like to put the smaller primes or small lenses on the GX8, like Olympus 17mm f/1.8, 45mm f/1.8, Panasonic 20mm f/1.7, or the Panasonic 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 II, simply because they fit much better in the GX7. I really think that the GX8 is aimed to be the "main" camera, not the "supplemental" or "secondary" camera. It's for those of us who like to use Micro Four Thirds for everything.
 
  
The EVF really spoils me badly. I don't even want to use EVF on any other cameras, or even OVF in that matter. It's one of the biggest in the market, and it really feels so crisp and smooth. It's more than good enough to be used in bright sunny day to combat glare from sun light. The resolution is quite high, and the refresh rate is pretty fast too! It's like watching a hi-def video!
   
Weather sealing had saved me sooooo many times. I took the GX8 out to shoot some landscape a few months ago in Bali, not knowing that it was going to rain cats and dogs. I wasn't carrying a camera bag, so when the rain come, the GX8 was hanging on my shoulder, getting pounded by the rain. It survived a rather dangerous 15 minutes of pouring rain with no problem. I felt pretty ballsy after that experience, so I went out again the next day, and the day after, only to photograph more landscape with the GX8 during some more rain, and the GX8 take all the rain pouring down again on it just fine. One caveat, I was using a weather-sealed Panasonic 12-35mm f/2.8 lens, so the camera-lens combo is fully weather-sealed. I don't know what will happen if I used a non-weather sealed lens on the same condition, and I don't want to find it out. Please do take care though, just because it's weather-sealed doesn't mean you can be careless.
   
Autofocus is crazy good! It really is fast, and it's fast enough to use in any condition. I don't use the continuous autofocus, I just prefer the single shot most of the time, and not even once did the single shot AF disappoint me. It's just so fast and accurate, even in low light. This is the first camera that just lets me shoot in any lighting condition without having to worry about AF speed and accuracy. As I mentioned, I never use continuous auto-focus, but a brief moment of trying the continuous AF confirms that the AF algorithm doesn't cause the AF to hunt back-and-forth too much like the GX7.
  
Overall performance is also good! With my SD cards(Transcend MicroSD class 10), I can shoot 32 RAW photos before the buffer fill up. Or 80ish JPEGs. It's just a whole lot better than a lot of other cameras on the price range. It really matters to me and the improvement really helped me significantly to shoot during events, where I need to pop a lot of bursts photos to capture moments. Never again I miss a moment because the buffer is still waiting to be emptied or because the camera slow downs after shooting too much bursts.
 
Video quality is simply top notch. It's just razor sharp at 4K, and the 1080p isn't really a slouch. I do prefer to shoot 1080p for casual videos, but when it's time to get serious I'll switch to 4K. The codecs are great, the files are grade-friendly even in 1080p, thanks to the Cine-D profile. Also, the good news is 4K doesn't cause overheating issue, it just makes the camera slightly warmer at the grip area. Combined with the full-articulation LCD, the GX8 is simply ultra flexible video recording device.
 
RAW to JPEG in camera combined with built in Wi-Fi really translates to instant photo sharing at high quality. I don't need to bring a laptop anymore to process my files on the go. I can just edit in-camera, and send it to my phone via Wi-Fi and have my photos on social media right away, or share to friends/family/clients right away. Holy smoke, the smartphone app for the Android is fast and glitch free too!
 
    

What I don't like

Although I love the big grip and the substantial form factor of the GX8, it's kinda big. It's almost GH4-like big, and it's just simply not small enough to be my EDC camera. I mean, with Micro Four Thirds things are supposed to be smaller and lighter, but the GX8 isn't exactly small and light. I don't find it to be a big problem for me though, because I have other cameras that can fill-in as EDC cameras.
 
The initial launch price of the GX8 is kind of high, it was the most expensive camera that I've ever owned so far. I do hope that the GX8 will get more price reduction in the future, especially for market outside of US and Europe, so that the GX8 can compete with other similar spec'ed camera at lower price point, which will translate to better value for the money.
 
2.5mm mic jack is good, but I'd love to see a full blown 3mm mic jack, I don't want to carry my adapter everywhere. Also, no headphone jack? C'mon Panasonic, I thought you could do better than this! It's not ultra suck, but it's enough annoyance that I can't monitor the audio in the camera, might as well use an external audio recorder so I can record and monitor safely and avoid myself from having to fix audio in post.

  
Shutter shock is still annoying, especially with the 14-140mm lens. But now that the E-shutter is getting really good, I shoot E-shutter all the time when the subject isn't moving too fast. Remember that there's still that 1/30 sec sensor-read-out speed when using the E-shutter, but now it doesn't cause weird banding and artifacts under some artificial lighting conditions, so all you have to take care of now is the rolling shutter effect. I do really wish that Panasonic will implement electronic first curtain shutter for its future cameras, because it's proven to solve shutter shock issue in small mirrorless cameras while keeping all the benefits of the regular mechanical shutter.
  
1/250 sec sync speed isn't fast enough! I don't want to shoot at f/8 to compensate for the shutter speed with MFT cameras! F/8 will start to expose the tiny dust spots on the sensor, no matter how careful I cleaned my sensor. Faster sync speed please? I use a lot of off-camera flash techniques when I'm shooting, and I need my camera to be able to underexpose the ambient at any condition without going smaller than f/8!! For now, I temporarily combat this issue by using the LX100 instead of the GX8 in such condition, because the LX100 uses leaf-shutter that allows me to sync my flash up to 1/1000 sec when using remotes. That's 2 stops of extra exposure headroom! I really wish the successor of the GX8 will come with ultra-fast global shutter read-out to replace the regular focal plane shutter mechanism, or something like that, so I can sync up to any shutter speed.
 
One last thing that really bugs me is the preview exposure problem. When I half press the shutter button, the real exposure settings lock, just as expected and as it really should. However, the preview exposure doesn't lock at all. If I recompose the image after I half-press the shutter, the preview will still change depending on your metering method. This drives me crazy! I want my preview exposure to be exactly the same as what my real exposure will be! This is quite stupid honestly, and it caused under/overexposure on some of my keepers image, which resulted on blown highlight or noise due to over-cranking the shadow. Right now, the only work-around is to use AE Lock button just after I half-press the shutter but before I recompose, or just shoot in full-manual with Constant Preview on. Yes, I know you can use the function button to preview exposure, including the depth of field and the shutter effect, but it takes too much time to get that preview.
  
   

The "Grey" area

There are some things that I kind of feel like in between good or bad, and I can't decide if it is good or bad.
 
The dual stabilizer and IBIS is kind of in between. I found the IBIS to be an improvement over the GX7 when using non-stabilized lens, but it's not substantial enough in most cases, although if you try to be as steady as you can, you can still get more stable result in slower shutter speed. The dual IS works great, and I can shoot at 1/2 second easily at 35mm. 1/4 second is as slow as I want the shutter speed to be most of the time, so the dual IS gives me more than enough stabilizing power when I need slow shutter speed. But the dual IS doesn't work in video, so it's kind of a disappointment for me since I'd love to see it works, even only in 1080p and not in 4K. Right now, I will have to invest to some mini 3-axis pistol grip gymbal to go with the GX8, because the stabilization in 4K is just lens-IS only, which isn't bad but not steady enough.
 
The software-based E-stabilizer for 1080p video, however, does work nicely to stabilize the footages, but it somehow does silly things at the beginning of every footage. It kind of leans a little bit to the left or right, sort of in tilting motion, before it finally starts to properly stabilize. I'm guessing that the e-stabilizer software is trying to calibrate itself before properly stabilizing the footage. The motion takes time to settle in before it engages into full stabilization, so this could potentially cause some issue in the footages, especially when you need to record right away quickly. I still keep it on and I'm still trying to figure out how to work around that. Apart from that minor tilting issue, I found the e-stabilizer works quite well and stable when it finally function properly.

  
The swivel screen is really more flexible than the old tilt-only screen found in the GX7 as it allow for weird angle vertical shots. However, it's not really that inconspicuous when shooting from the hip. And because of that, I really don't think the GX8 is the best camera for street photography, it's simply not low-key enough with its size and with its swivel type screen. I do prefer to use the GX7 for more stealthy street photography.
 
The 4K video quality is really good. And I really mean so damn mother-faux-ing good for a non-dedicated video camera. It's at least as good as the GH4's 4K. However, having been shooting 4K exclusively for a few months really introduced me to the storage-shortage problem. My 2TB hard drive took a toll after being bombarded with hours of 4K footages, and I was forced to buy a few more terabytes of hard drives. And for that reason, I now switch back to 1080p if I don't shoot something critical as I am not ready to spend more money on storage devices.
 
The image quality is really really good, really crisp and has more details compared to both the GX7 and LX100. But there's no real improvement in dynamic range and noise performance in the GX8. Both dynamic range and noise performance stayed on almost the same level as the GX7. But the good news is, the extra 4MP really translates to more detail in the shot. It's noticeable when you've shot both the GX8 and the GX7 side-by-side very frequently, and I can kind-of tell if it's shot with the GX8. I thought 4MP is very minor, but I think I underestimated that 4MP more than I should. I really think this 20MP has all the potential in the world though, and I'd like to see more advancement in the development of the newer generation of 20MP MFT sensor in the future. But for now, it's simply only adding more sharpness without adding too much to the dynamic range and noise performance.
 
Oh and I'd love to see better back-lit performance too with this sensor, right now it's still producing that purple tint on the highlight area of most back-lit subjects, just like every other MFT cameras. Anyone with the new PEN-F, can you please confirm an improvement in this area? If not, you guys are probably having the same sensor in your PEN-F as me. :)
   
   

GX8 compared to other cameras?

G7

Reviewers online aren't too excited with the GX8, and they tend to prefer the G7 instead for its cheaper price. I really feel that this camera deserves more attention from the market as it has more to offer than just specs. It really can do so many things greatly, and all of those things aren't exposed just because the 20MP doesn't offer significant improvement over IQ.
  
Yes, the G7 offers more bang for the buck, but that doesn't mean the G7 can do all the things that the GX8 can do. Yes, the G7 looks like the child born from the combination of the GH4 and G6, which makes it attractive for those who are interested in that GH4-ish form factor, which is great and also makes a lot of sense when being used.
  
To the advantages of the GX8, the flat top of the GX8 really helps the GX8 to be slightly more compact and easier to fit in your camera bag, if that matters. The GX8 will also provide overall faster performance in burst shooting department, as well as bigger buffer when shooting RAW and JPEG. AF performance will be the same though, since both are using DFD technology derived from the GH4. Before I forgot to mention, the IBIS of the GX8 will let you stabilize unstabilized lens, the G7 doesn't have that and you'll have to crank up the shutter speed to compensate for that. The weather sealing is also going to somewhat matter if you plan to use the camera outdoor a lot.
   
But apart from that, the G7 will provide you with the capabilities that both the GX7 and the G6 have, with some added GH4-ish video capabilities. If that's all you need, then by all means G7 will be a better buy than the GX8. If you are looking for something a lot punchier in a slightly more compact package, GX8 is definitely worth the money though!
   

PEN-F

I haven't got much information about the PEN-F but I was able to study this camera from the existing reviews in Youtube and in the webs. Yes, the PEN-F offers retro styling in a more handsome-looking camera that will appeal to street photographers. I admit, the GX8 isn't the best form factor for shooting street photography. Ironically, the PEN-F also isn't the best street camera, due to the fully-articulating LCD screen. There's a lot of things that the PEN-F offers with much of its features, including stabilizing the stills and videos with the super steady 5-axis IBIS, which is better than what the GX8. But apart from that, there's not a single thing that the PEN-F can do that the GX8 can't do. In fact, there's a lot of things that the GX8 can do that the PEN-F can't do like the 4K video, the beefier buffer and burst performance, the faster DFD single AF, and the ability to mount heavier lens. I'd say the PEN-F is still too early, and way too overpriced for what it is. I'd definitely wait a few more months until the price adjust. Then, we can compare the GX8 with the PEN-F slightly better.
  
 

A7RII and A7SII

All of us MFT shooters are often presented with the thought and temptation of switching to the new full frame Sony A7 series. To be honest, that's our wildest fantasy, and some already pulled the trigger. With the fact that there's now 24-70mm f/2.8 and 70-200mm f/2.8, the possibility of using the A7 series for serious photography works is now stronger than ever. I was tempted to switch too because of the availability of those lenses too, but looking again on the facts, those lenses are undoubtedly big and heavy, almost as big and as heavy as their DSLR counterparts from Nikon and Canon(although I'm sure the Sony lenses are sharper than Canon or Nikon). And they're priced rather as high as the full frame DSLRs too, so there's not much extra benefit to switch to the Sony A7 series. One benefit is that they now offer 4K video internally(A7RII, and the A7SII), so they'll give better video output than any of the current full frame DSLRs.
   
Yes, switching to A7RII or A7SII will give better image quality, and I mean BETTER. Low light performance, details, shallower depth of field, you name it. If you are a commercial photographer who lives by the megapixel of the camera and the ability to enlarge the file size to a very huge print, then by all means, A7RII will be a much better choice than the GX8. But if you don't need to print really huge, the GX8 can accommodate you with plenty of stuffs. You can still enlarge and print huge, like above-1-meter-in-length-huge, using Micro Four Thirds sensor. You just cannot print that huge like side-of-the-road-ad-banner-huge using the GX8, this will require really high-megapixel camera(or can you?? hmmmm....).
  

OM-D E-M5 Mark II and E-M1

As with the GX8 vs Olympus OM-D E-M1 or E-M5 Mark II, you will need to decide if you require that 5-axis 5-stop internal body stabilization. The GX8 does have that built in IBIS, which provides 2 to 3 stops of extra stabilization when used with an unstabilized lens, which is still 2 stop less than what the E-M1 and E-M5 provide, but the GX8 offers better menu system, better customization, faster single AF, and stronger buffer performance for both JPEG and RAW shooting. No need to mention video here, I know that Olympus shooters usually don't need crazy video, I'm comparing stills performance between the GX8 and the OM-Ds. However, those OM-Ds can now be had at slightly cheaper price than the GX8, and those guys could offer you with better value for the money if you are primarily still shooters. Unfortunately, I need high quality video for a lot of stuffs that I do too, so I can't fully jump in to Olympus.
  
   

Fuji X-T1 and X-E2

Just like Olympus, Fuji is more photo-centric, with cameras that aimed more toward still-picture. But Fuji offers a slightly better image quality, at a slightly higher price, and at slightly heavier lenses too compared to what the GX8 offers. The X-T1 will give you high performance while the X-E2 will give you a more traditional range-finder form factor. The GX8 will compete fairly with the X-T1 in terms of performance, at a slightly lower price too. The GX8 will be snappier than the X-E2 for sure in terms of performance, but the X-E2 isn't really a slouch. Weigh in the lenses and the cost of the system should you invest in Fuji, as the GX8 will offer slightly cheaper lenses for the same capabilities, and the GX8 will also offer some lenses that aren't offered in the Fuji world.
  

My point is

I love the GX8! The cons don't outweigh the pros, the pros are definitely making the GX8 worth the investment, and I can work around some of the "grey" area things that I mentioned.
  
It's a shame that the Panasonic GX8 got drowned badly under the wave of new generation cameras. The Sony A7RII, A7SII, G7, Fuji X-Pro2, and the Olympus PEN-F, all those cameras really gained a lot of attention while the GX8 is just sitting in the corner alone doing its own thing. 
   
Sometimes you pick up a camera that has an impressive list of specs and it turns out to be meh for you, but other times you pick up a meh spec'ed camera that turns out to be a really great camera with a lot of mojo. The GX7 and the GX8 are both the kind of that "mojo" cameras! I put a lot of pressure to the GX8 when I'm shooting stuffs and never once did the GX8 failed to deliver what I want. It's simply a camera that can shoot anything, both stills and videos. It's the camera that can shoot for fun and for serious jobs at the same time. It works very well in so many conditions, even on weird ones, and it's highly functional and efficient at the same time.
    
The GX8 works extremely well as an event documentary camera, and that's how I use the GX8 50% of the time. Whether I'm shooting the event with on camera flash, off camera flash, or no flash, it all just works really well with the GX8. I bet this camera will work well in wedding too! The image quality, while not matching the image quality of a full frame camera, is more than good enough for most of the situation, even at ISO 1600 or 3200, with high detail in the shot. The JPEG is okay, but the RAW file is fantastic and very flexible. Add the fact that the GX8 shoots nice 4K video to the list, and suddenly you have a great hybrid package in the form of GX8.
   

    
This camera is intended to be a photographer's main body, as I previously said. It's for those who haven't invested in any other system and are brave enough to jump into the world of Micro Four Thirds. It's not small enough to be a secondary body in my opinion, but it doesn't mean that the GX8 can't function that way. For travel photographer, this body coupled with the 12-35mm f/2.8 is good enough for most situation, and it will generate more than 80% of the shots that you need during travel. Add an UWA and a small tele, you'll cover everything you need for travel.
    
But again, all cameras are made of compromises. The GX8 is no exception. With the GX8, you'll sacrifice a bit of sensor size for a high performance camera. It's not a lot of sacrifice to be honest, but what you gain back is a very capable camera that does everything you want. In this case, it's my perfect main camera.
    
That's it for my thoughts on the GX8. I hope you find this post useful, cheers and God bless!

Wednesday, February 17, 2016

How I Shoot It #4: Northern Light, Aurora Borealis - Aurora Photography

Hello everyone, welcome back to this series of "How I Shoot It". Today, I want to share one of the most difficult photos that I ever take: The Northern Light or Aurora Borealis. Here's the photo:
  


  
This picture of Aurora Borealis was taken back in 2013 when I was still using my old trustee Canon EOS 650D. This was my pre Micro Four Thirds era, and this was back in the time where I just started to shoot RAW. Just for your information, I shoot RAW 100% these days, I never shoot JPEG unless I know what I'm doing.
  
The photo was taken at Tromso, Norway. This was my lucky day because we've been waiting for the Northern Light to show up for two days.
 
The concept of this photo is simply just a landscape photo with added layer from the Aurora Borealis, which is essentially Aurora Photography in its simplest form. As with many landscape photo in general, wide-angle focal length is more preferred, and this was no exception.
 

Mechanics of the Photo

Camera Setting

This was shot using Canon EOS 650D, with Tokina 12-24mm f/4 DX lens which I really love. I shoot at 12mm, f/4, ISO 1600, for as long as 30 seconds. Tripod is a must, so not bringing one for this kind of shot is simply killing yourself. Remember to shoot in RAW, this is the kind of picture that requires a lot of pushing/pulling in the post-processing that's simply cannot be done in JPEG. I didn't meter the shot at all, which means I'm guessing the exposure without knowing if it was right or wrong, and all is done in Manual mode (M dial).
  
The white balance goes really crazy with my old 650D, and that is another reason why I shoot RAW. The manual white balance isn't spot on, there is no way to shoot in Kelvin, there's no way to specifically adjust tint/hue separately, and the Auto WB is just pretty much garbage in that camera. If you want to get your WB as close as possible, set the WB to as low as possible (2500K).
 

Technique

Composition wise, rule of thirds is your safest bet. I chose the mountain as my foreground, the Aurora Borealis as my background, and the starry night sky as my background. It's not the best, but it's passable. We didn't scout for the location and just go look for a place outskirt of the town, so we had to make due with whatever composition that was present at that time.
  
As with all wide-angle lens, you'll have to really work yourself to find the composition that you like. On the other hand, you'll have to include at least 2/3 of your frame in Aurora photography for the sky so that the Aurora will stand out in the photograph. The composition rarely works if you have less than 2/3 of the frame for the sky/Aurora. Focal length, again, is also important, anything that's tighter than 24mm on full frame won't easily work, although you can still use it.
  
As I mentioned before, tripod is a must for a 30 second shot. Find a good sturdy tripod that won't shake easily during long exposure shot like this. Your average 20 bucks Excell or Velbon vacation tripod won't cut it, get a nice tripod with good ball-head for the ultimate stability and flexibility. But the shooting session itself shouldn't be your only concern; we spent more time and resource to prepare for the Aurora hunt itself.
  
First, find the country where you want to shoot the Aurora at. Norway has a nice city called Tromso, which was where I shoot this picture, and it's one of a few cities that are actually very close to the actual north pole, which makes it ideal for Aurora photography since Aurora tend to spawn closer to north pole. I believe Finland, Canada, Alaska(US), and some other parts in the world do have similar accessible location that has some Aurora activity.
 
The best time to see Aurora Borealis is around fall or winter on the northern hemisphere of the earth. It will be very active from November to around February. So plan your traveling date accordingly.
 
Before you do the actual shoot, which is usually after the sun set, make sure you scout for the best location on the morning or noon. Keep in mind, during that time, the sun will only available for a few hours everyday. Usually, Aurora photography requires as little ambient light as possible for the Aurora to really shine, but you can get slightly more creative and shoot where there is some ambient light(city light, house light), and blend the exposures. And also take into account the effect of moon light if there's moon present on the night sky. Moon will help to lit the ground, but it will also make stars disappear from the night sky.

The weather will be crazy cold, so dress accordingly, and protect your gear. Bring extra batteries, because in cold weather the battery will die faster. Keep your extra batteries in the pocket, so that they'll stay a bit warmer. Before you actually shoot with your camera, get the camera to the same ambient temperature so that the sensor is cooler and will produce less noise in high ISO.
  

Post Processing

I used Canon Digital Photo Professional app to process the RAW files. This was the days when I haven't use Lightroom yet. I mainly raise the shadow a whole lot in the picture, keep the highlight from blowing out, and use some noise reduction tool to kill the noise at this long-exposure-low-light-high-ISO shot. I manually adjusted the white balance until the color looks good. I don't really remember the setting, but I'm pretty sure it's around 2500K.
 
Shooting RAW is the key here as I mentioned before. If I shot this picture using JPEG, definitely the mountain will lose detail when I raise the shadow, and the highlight can't be controlled which translates to blown-out-overly-bright Aurora. Also the WB can't be corrected with JPEG, and that will cause problems.
  

How To Improve?

As I mentioned before, I didn't really scout for a good location due to the constraint of my travel, so I couldn't get a desired landscape that I want to shoot. If I researched better during the daytime to find the desired landscape, I will probably be able to improve the photo.

My Tokina 12mm isn't as wide as I want it to be, but it was the widest lens that I had at the time. I will probably use my MFT 7mm lens instead right now, or rent/buy a very wide fish eye lens. I couldn't capture as much things in the frame, and it really frustrated me.

I could improve the photo also by adding another element in the shoot, like a person or something. Asking someone to stand still for 30 seconds is impossible, so I would probably use a very low power flash to lit the person and use second curtain sync to get the best result.

I could also go another route and add another landscape element such as the view of a whole city from above shot from a higher ground. I will probably mess up the exposure of the city because 30 seconds exposure will definitely blow out city lights, so if I were to shoot this picture again with the city light included, I will utilize exposure blending technique. That means, I will shoot two different exposures of the same frame and later combine them together using Photoshop or Gimp.

That's all for today's How I Shoot It post, I hope you find this post useful. Until next time, good luck, and keep shooting! God bless you :)

Thursday, February 11, 2016

How I Shoot It #3: Flaming Hot Ice Cream

Hello all, today I want to post another "How I Shoot It" material here. This time, it's somewhat a food photograhy-ish kind of photo, but it's actually more of a art-ish kind of photo. It's a photo of a flaming ice cream that you can probably find in Japanese Tepanyaki styled restaurant. I shot this around September 2015, using my Olympus E-PL6. Here's the photo:
 


  
The concept here is just an artsy kind of photo, utilizing shallow depth of field to soften the background and using relatively low key exposure to get rid of the room's ambient. The key here is to have a relatively still ice cream while having the flame burning with slight movement blur. A short telephoto lens was used as a crucial gear that can help to achieve shallower depth of field.
 

Technical Mumbo Jumbo

Camera Setting

I shot this picture using the already-sold Olympus PEN E-PL6, using the legendary M. Zuiko 45mm f/1.8 lens (90mm equivalent). This was shot at f/2.0, shutter speed of around 1/100, and ISO 3200. This was shot using Aperture Priority mode but with the spot metering on the ice cream/flame, so that the background is underexposed. This shot was taken indoor in a restaurant on a very dim lighting, so high ISO is a must.
  

Technique

 There's not a lot of technique here, it's all just a matter of framing the shot. The shutter speed was deliberately chosen at 1/100 sec because I could steadily handhold it to get the ice cream to look very still, while the flame could still move and have some deliberate movement blur.
  
The composition is just straight forward rule of thirds, with the ice cream slightly on the camera lower right, right where the rule of thirds guidelines crossed at that particular point. I filled the frame with the flame, and because it was very difficult to predict where the flame will move, I just shot a whole bunch of frames and pick the one where the flame looks the best.
  

How to Improve?

I could use off camera flash technique to further enhance the low-key feel of the image, and to get sharper ice cream. It will probably cause the flame to look washed out, but I haven't tried it yet, so I can't really comment on that.
  
I could also use a longer lens like the 75mm(150mm equivalent) to get shallower depth of field, but at the risk of having the ice cream only partially in focus. But the 75mm lens will definitely help to remove more background elements that are distracting.
  
Using a shorter focal length won't really give any benefit to the picture, it will introduce more background which could be distracting. The point here is to get rid of the distraction as much as you can. However, if you feel like the background should be included in the shot, that's entirely your artistic choice.
 
Processing wise, I don't do much on this picture. I did raise the shadow to get the ice cream to a more proper exposure, while I reduced the highlight to slightly tame the flame exposure. Noise reduction was necessary to reduce the grain on ISO 3200. But other than that, it pretty much looks almost like straight OOC.
 
That's all for today's "How I Shoot It" post. I hope you find this post to be helpful. Please stay tune for more posts like this in the future. In the meantime, good luck, happy shooting, and God bless you!

  

Wednesday, February 10, 2016

How I Shoot It #2: Ultra Wide Urban Street Photograph

Hello all, today I want to share another photo for the "How I Shoot It" series that I started a few weeks ago. The first post of the series was posted on my other blog: bejo-photography.blogspot.co.id if you want to check it out. The purpose of this series is to share the techniques, settings, and all behind-the-scenes stuffs that were involved to create some of my photos in the series, so that you can implement those aspects in similar shots.
  
Today, the photo that I want to share is a street photograph of a lady crossing the street in Ginza, Tokyo. This was taken sometime in December 2014, which means I was already equipped with Micro Four Thirds gear and no longer shooting with Canon.
  
  
The concept of this picture is just a straight forward street photography in an urban setting, but with a little twist, so that it doesn't look similar to other street photographs. As people are used with 35mm or 50mm focal length for street photography, they are quickly becoming a cliche. So I used a 14mm equivalent focal length instead, which is more suited for landscape, and tried to come up with something new and original for this genre.
 

How Did I Shoot It?

Camera Setting

I shot this picture using my old trusty Olympus PEN E-PL6 that I already sold. The lens that I used was the Panasonic 7-14mm f/4.0. This was shot wide open at f/4.0, at the widest 7mm focal length (14mm equivalent), at ISO 200, on aperture priority. The camera chose 1/500sec for the shutter speed, as dictated by the metering system that I used at the time.
 
The metering mode was set to spot metering, right in the middle of the camera. So naturally, it metered at the lady wearing the red coat, which resulted in her being in the right exposure and everything else was slightly overexposed. FYI, I spot meter almost 100% of the time these days, it just works wonderfully for portrait, although it doesn't work as well in landscape.
 

Technique

As with any street photography, the most important thing to remember is to be at the exact right place just before the subject arrives. Choose your "backdrop" first, then wait for your "prey" to walk into your "backdrop".

For this photo, my "backdrop" is simply the Ginza road, stretching as long as my line of sight, and my "prey" is the lady wearing the red coat. I saw her walking from far away, and I was in the middle of the road when I saw her approaching and crossing the road. I quickly positioned myself at the center of the crosswalk right across from her, and waited until she walked right in the middle of her crosswalk.

The 7mm lens (14mm equivalent) is an important part of the image, as street photographs are usually shot at 35mm equivalent or 50mm equivalent. It really brings a lot of unique characters to the picture that you don't usually see in street photographs.

Keep in mind: with ultra-wide-angle(UWA) lens, you have to be very careful with how you position the camera. Any slight tilt will get exaggerated greatly on UWA, and keeping the vertical lines under control requires raising/lowering the camera to get them all as correct as possible. Depth of field is going to be very wide, even on larger aperture; it's the nature of UWA. Also, the foreground will always look large and the background will always look small with UWA due to its perspective distortion, so you have to compose the picture carefully. One more thing, you'll really have to be VERY close to your subject if you want your subject to fill the frame; not just close, but really at his/her personal space!
 
However, these problems shouldn't discourage you, because you can treat it to your advantage.
 
First, I tilted the camera just a little to look up from the hip level, so that the vertical lines start to tilt a little bit, just to artistically add some "surreal" feel to the picture, which I couldn't achieve if I was shooting all straight and distortion free.
 
Second, I need the wide depth of field to show the urban environment of the Ginza street, so that it can be more recognizable; if I blur the background, the element of the environment won't get too recognizable and I don't want that. This of course made separating the subject from the background more difficult, but that's when I was being pushed to become creative.
 
Third, I shot her close enough (5 meters approximately from the subject), but not that close because I want a lot of space around her. I could fill the frame with her and make her really stand out from the background, but I want her to almost become a part of the scene without under-powering her presence as a subject too much. I was pretty lucky because there was no one else on the scene that was on the same parallel-plane as her from where I stand. If there was someone else in the same distance from my camera to her in the frame, that person will stand-out too and it could ruin everything.

How To Improve?

The picture that I shot isn't exactly perfect as I had in mind. I had to crop, and even it wasn't enough; see the white umbrella on the lower-right of the frame? The lighting was pretty flat due to the cloudy day, and the sky wasn't interesting at the time. I would love to take this picture again under sunset/sunrise sky with just enough clouds to make the sky interesting.

The focal length that I chose was near ideal. I would love to try to use fish-eye sometimes to artistically add more interesting visual elements to the picture and further enhance the surreal-feel of the picture.

If I shot this with a 35mm equivalent lens, I could blur the background and make the subject stand out significantly, but I'll have to sacrifice the Ginza road stretching to the horizon, and turn it simply into a bokeh; it's simply not what I want.

Processing wise, I cropped the image slightly to center the subject right in the middle of the frame. I added just a hint of contrast, raised a bit of shadow to show more detail in the buildings and on the people, and lower a bit of highlight to expose for the sky, and add just a slight clarity to enhance some mid-tones in the picture. Honestly, it looks so much better in black and white, but I thought the red coat that the lady wore really needs to be shown in color, as it lose so much "power" in black and white.

That's all for this "How I Shoot It" post, I hope you find this post to be helpful for you. If you have any question or anything in mind, please comment below and I'll do my best to get back at you. Until next time, good luck and God bless you :)

Thursday, February 4, 2016

Panasonic Lumix LX100, The Perfect Strobist Camera?

Hello guys, today I want to talk about my experience with the new Lumix LX100 that I just bought a few weeks ago. I previously own three Micro Four Thirds bodies: a GX8, a GX7, and an Olympus E-PL6. Unfortunately, I often times only use two bodies, and the Olympus was the one that I rarely bring with me unless I really need something small.
   
  
I can't justify having a camera that I don't use much, so I sold the E-PL6 with a lot of sadness. I really love the E-PL6 as it's a very nice little camera that has grown over me for more than a year. Meanwhile, I needed a camera with MFT quality sensor with leaf shutter mechanism so that I could use my speedlights in high shutter speed during daylight and not having to have a HSS mode on the flash. Obviously, the only option is the LX100. So, is the LX100 the perfect strobist camera?
  
Let's find out! This is my personal review of the Panasonic LX100:
  

Design

It's a compact camera with 16MP multi-aspect ratio Micro Four Thirds sensor with a fix 24-75mm(equivalent) f/1.7-2.8 lens. The maximum actual image size is 12MP due to the multi-aspect ratio thing, on 4:3. You'll get a slightly wider image at 3:2 and at 16:9 than what you'll get at 4:3, and this could be helpful to some people. However, I love the 4:3 ratio and even sometimes I also like shooting at 1:1.

The LX100's body is designed to look like a modern rangefinder with electronic viewfinder and dedicated shutter and aperture dials. There's also an exposure compensation dial on the top of the camera. There are three dedicated function buttons and also another control wheel that you can use to adjust shutter speed or to scroll through the menu/gallery. There's also two weird buttons that can't be customized for anything: an iA button and a Filter button. They're pretty useless for me to be honest, and I think those buttons don't add any value to this camera that's supposed to be aimed to enthusiast, not to everyday snapper.
  
The aperture ring is very nice, it has a very strong click-resistance between 1.7 and A, so that you don't accidentally change it. Meanwhile, between the manual values, the click-resistance is quite poor so you'll get accidental aperture change all the time. The click stops at 1/3 stops, so it's quite flexible.
  
The rear screen is almost as big as the GX7's screen, but minus the tilting and the touchscreen capabilities. It's bright enough for daylight use, and the color reproduction on the screen is very nice. The lack of touchscreen really throws me away at first, but after two weeks using it, I started to get used to it.
  
The electronic viewfinder is also very similar like the GX7, but now the eye-sensor is placed on the right instead of the left to prevent accidental auto-switch. There's still that smearing for those who can see it, and the aspect ratio is pretty weird inside the viewfinder. But fortunately, with the multi aspect ratio sensor, the viewfinder now makes a lot of sense to use at 16:9 or during video recording. The EVF doesn't tilt, which may or may not be important to some. It's not important to me, but I still love a tilting EVF for the flexible shooting angle when shooting on a bright environment.


The overall from factor is really small. It's very comparable to a lot of compact camera and it's more portable than both the GX7 or the E-PL6 (don't even mention the GX8, it's a beast of a camera both in quality and in size!). The lens when not being used will retract itself so that the camera becomes really small. It's a tiny bit smaller than an E-PL6 combined with a Panasonic 20mm f/1.7. When the lens is extended, it's as long as a GX7 with a 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 II at the longest zoom.
  
The lens requires a few moments to fully zoom from 24mm to 75mm. It's really annoying most of the times, and I really hope that if Panasonic decides to re-work on this camera into an LX100 mkII, I want them to employ manual zoom mechanism instead.
    

Auto Focus Performance

Auto focus is quite fast, but I somehow feel that it's very slightly not as fast as my GX7 or my GX8. It has the DFD(Depth from Defocus) technology that's supposed to enhance the AF speed in both single AF or continuous AF, but I don't feel like it's any faster than the GX7 without the DFD.  But overall, it's still fast. One of the fastest for compact camera, definitely.

There's an AF Macro switch that you can enable on the lens to focus on close subject. It will slow down the focus speed, but it'll give you close macro capabilities. The macro performance is very good to say overall. At the longer zoom, the macro capabilities rather decreases rapidly; at 70mm equivalent, my 12-35mm f/2.8 lens can focus closer at 35mm(70mm equivalent) than the LX100's lens at 70mm equivalent at AF Macro setting. But at 24mm equivalent, you can literally photograph something that's touching the front element of your lens! The 12-35mm at 12mm can't do that at all.

There were a few times when the LX100's AF miss-focused badly even when I was shooting in good light; it was able to confirm focus, but it's actually not in-focus at all. This already happened many times and I was forced to abandon a few of my keeper shots because of this issue. There's no real workaround right now, but I'm now using the AF Macro permanently, so that the focus is slower but more assuring, rather than using the regular AF which is fast but more prone to accidental miss-focus.

I'm not sure if my camera is a lemon, but it seemed that I've found many other people on the internet reporting for the same thing. Fortunately, this happens only a few times, but it's enough to make me aware of such issue.
     

Burst Shooting

The burst shooting capability of this camera is quite good. It can give you around 8fps when you shoot RAW, and definitely 10 or 11fps when you shoot JPEG. You can activate the super burst mode when you shoot JPEG and shoot around 40fps mid-sized JPEG for a few seconds. The buffer capacity isn't so great with this camera, so you can't really do burst-shooting for too long, but it's slightly more capable than what other compact cameras can do, especially when considering that this has an MFT sensor in it.

There's a 4K photo mode, something that might be beneficial for someone who requires a camera that can shoot fast action. It will shoot 8MP images at 30fps in a form of a video that will allow you to pick a frame from that video later to be chosen as the best image.
  

Shutter

There are two shutter mechanisms that you can use with the LX100. For regular shooting, the LX100 will employ leaf-shutter mechanism. This mechanism will allow you to use flash at higher shutter speed, depending on your flash's t.1 time. For my YongNuo flashes, they'll still sync at 1/2000 seconds when fired on camera, but when fired wirelessly using remote triggers, they'll sync only at 1/1000. The leaf shutter itself won't go above 1/2000sec if you shoot at larger apertures.

The other shutter mechanism that you can use is the electronic shutter. It's pretty good, and it will give you a completely silent operation. The caveat when using electronic shutter is that you'll see some "jello" effect when you're shooting moving object, due to the relatively slower sensor read-out capability of the LX100. However, as this is a relatively newer generation of MFT cameras, the electronic shutter no longer produces weird banding and artifacts in the image on certain lighting conditions. As a bonus, the electronic shutter will shoot as fast as 1/16000sec, perfect for those who need to shoot at such high speed.
  

Stabilization

There's actually nothing to rave about in the stabilization department, it's pretty much as good as a standard Panasonic Power OIS, so it's not crazy stable, but it's good enough for the focal length range of the LX100.
  

Video

Speaking of video, this camera is actually a perfect little video camera with tons of great features for shooting video. First of, you can't really say video these days without mentioning 4K, so here it is: it has 4K. At 100Mb/s, it's the same bitrate as the one that you'll find in GH4, G7, and GX8. There's also a whole bunch of 1080p bitrate options with the maximum of 28Mb/s at 50fps/60fps.

Unfortunately, there's no cinematic color profile like Cine-D or Cine-V available, and there's obviously no V-Log or anything like that. You'll have to make do with the standard profiles and try your best to get the most out of them by reducing sharpness, contrast, noise reduction, and saturation.

There's no mic input or headphone jack, so you'll have to either rely on the on-camera mic, or use an external recorder and sync the audio in the post. The zooming mechanism of the lens will give you a smooth zooming experience, and the focus won't change too much when you're zooming, but the sound of the lens zooming will get picked up by the camera's mic.
  

Flash

  
Okay, this is the part that got me excited the most!! I'm not gonna lie to you: I don't find a lot of usefulness of having the addition of an LX100 on my current gear setup, but the fact that it's one of a few cameras that has large-ish sensor and leaf shutter mechanism is really important for me, because it'll enable me to use flash at higher sync speed(which I really need) with image quality that is comparable to the rest of my gear setup. This means it's the right camera for strobist portrait(thanks, Mr. David Hobby for getting me addicted to this kind of photography).

With the leaf shutter, I can sync at 1/1000sec using remote trigger, or 1/2000 when using the on camera flash. My flash's t.1 dictates the limit of the shutter speed, but not the shutter speed itself. If I have a flash that has a very fast t.1 time, then I could probably shoot at the whole shutter speed range from top to bottom and sync my flash. If only that kind of flash exists in the form of a compact speedlight like a YongNuo YN560EX with retail price that is less than $199.99 hmmmm......

Anyway, what is the advantage of having a high shutter speed sync you might ask? It's because now I can use my flash AS A KEY LIGHT to light my portrait's subject, outdoor, ON A BRIGHT SUNNY DAY, while still UNDEREXPOSING THE AMBIENT LIGHT! O. M. G.

Think about that for a second..........

Flash as a portrait key light? On a bright sunny day? Why would someone need that? Why don't you just shoot natural light portrait instead? It's bright enough that the exposure won't become a problem...

Yeah, right. On a bright sunny day, what you'll get on your portrait subject is a lot of harsh shadow and contrast. You'll have to use a reflector to fill the shadow, or find a place where there's enough shade for the subject. Those methods will result in a better subject lighting, but unfortunately they will also cause over-exposed background in my experience.

With just a couple of speedlights and a soft modifier, you can have a total control of both your ambient exposure and your subject exposure with the presence of high shutter sync speed. With the Sunny 16 rule, you can shoot 1/200 sec at f/16 ISO 200, that is 1/500 sec f/11 ISO 200 or 1/1000 sec f/8 ISO 200, or 1/1000 sec f/5.6 ISO 100, and get a perfectly exposed ambient. Drop that ambient with a low-power ND, or shoot at f/8 1/1000 ISO 100, and you'll underexpose your ambient. All you need now is a couple of off-camera speedlights set at full power, firing through an umbrella at 1 meter from the subject. Or if you need more power, use only one without modifier at full power, and you can now control both the ambient and the subject individually by changing the aperture, the shutter speed, the ISO, or the flash power. You'll get total control over your whole exposure!

My GX7 can only sync at 1/320sec, my GX8 only at 1/250sec. When I shoot at 1/1000sec, they won't register the flash at all, so the only way to get the ambient exposure at the right value is to drop the aperture and the ISO, which means my flash power gets reduced too. By the time I shoot at f/11 or f/16, my flash won't have enough power to provide any key or fill light to my subject, even at full power without modifier. I'll have to use mono-light instead or something with at least 240Ws light output.

So yeah, the LX100 is the right tool for that kind of strobist photography. If you want to learn more about this whole strobist shebang thing, head to strobist.blogspot.com for more information. Anyway, moving on....

Talking about regular flash specification, there's no built in flash, but there's a small flash unit being supplied in the box. That little flash is good enough to use as an emergency fill light. You can even use that flash in the GX8, but not in the GX7 because it requires an additional pin for transferring power from the camera to the flash. The flash doesn't have batteries inside, obviously.
      

Battery Life

Battery life is quite average, I could get 300 shots easily on a single charge, and if I want to squeeze more shots I can use the electronic shutter. The battery life is as good as the GX7 although not on the same performance as the GX8. In fact, it uses the same battery as the GX7, which means I can share and swap batteries between the LX100 and the GX7.
  

Wifi

The LX100 is equipped with Wifi capability so that you can transfer JPG images from the camera to the phone. It also enables you to actually control the camera from your Android or iPhone. The feature is pretty standard, all you need to do is to download the app to your phone and connect to the camera's access point. After that, it's pretty much straight forward.
  

RAW to JPG In Camera

Yes, as with the GX8, there's a RAW to JPG function built in the LX100. This eliminates the need to shoot RAW+JPG all the time. I actually shoot RAW only, and when I want to quickly share the image, I can just go to the image, convert it to JPG in camera, and wifi it away to my phone and get it in Instagram in less than a minute.
  

Image Quality

At 12MP, the LX100 is the laughing stock of all cameras these days. I mean, my smartphone can even shoot at 20MP!! But then again, mega pixel isn't everything and this camera isn't a slouch at all when it comes to image quality.

High ISO is quite on par with what the GX7 and GX8 offer. It's very usable up to ISO 1600. ISO 3200 is still okay, but I'd only use it only when I need to use it. The level of detail on high ISO isn't as good as the GX8, but it's roughly about the same quality as in the GX7. It should come to no surprise though, as the LX100 uses the same sensor as the GX7.

Dynamic range is okay, it's on par with the GX7. I can pull up the shadow a few stops easily while keeping the noise reasonably low with as much detail as possible. Highlight is a bit more dangerous as you can only pull down the highlight 2 stop at the most before it'll show the clipping. For landscape shooting, I'll suggest to slightly underexpose the foreground to keep the background and the sky from clipping the highlight.

I'd say the dynamic range of the GX7 and the GX8 are slightly better. But then again, the dynamic range of the LX100 isn't as bad as my Canon EOS 650D or my Canon EOS M, so it's all good!

Sharpness wise, it's actually a very sharp camera, even at its 12MP resolution. When the images from the LX100 and the GX7 are downsampled to a specific smaller resolution, you won't be able to notice much difference. Pixel peep wise, you'll see that the GX7 will be able to retain a bit more detail due to its higher megapixel, but the LX100 isn't bad at all to be honest. As a comparison, the images my Sony Xperia Z2 phone with 20MP sensor shows so much less detail when compared to the LX100, even with the LX100 being down-sized and the Xperia not being down-sized.
  

What I Don't Like

With the fixed zoom lens design of the LX100, you'll have to wait for the lens to extend everytime you turn it on. It takes time to get the lens to be ready for shooting. That could cause you to miss a shot. This makes this camera a less ideal action street-photography camera. I really wish the next iteration of this camera will employ a manual zoom lens instead of the electronic zoom that's currently being implemented in the LX100.

The LX100 requires you to switch to Macro AF mode if you want to take a picture of something close. It drops the focus speed a bit when you switch to Macro AF, but you can use the Macro AF mode for regular shooting mode too.

The multi-aspect ratio thing gave me a bit of a mixed feeling. I like that I can switch from 4:3 to 1:1 or to 16:9 so that I don't need to crop later. But sometimes, I really wish that the camera's design utilizes the whole sensor to get the most resolution out of the sensor, because I'm shooting at 4:3 most of the time anyway.

There are only three dedicated function buttons. It really limits the customization level of this camera, especially for someone like me who come from both the GX7 and GX8 that have a lot of customization options in the function buttons. However, to be fair, I honestly don't need to have that much function buttons anyway with this camera.

The two things that I really find annoying with this camera are: the lack of touchscreen and the lack of tilting LCD screen. The UI of this camera really begs me to touch the screen, and it's no surprise that I keep accidentally touching the screen even until today. Also I can't shoot low angle anymore with this camera because it doesn't have that tilt screen like the GX7 or GX8. I learned to live without them just fine, but it's just a shame that those features didn't make it to the camera.

Also, as mentioned before, the autofocus is a bit inaccurate, so be careful. Re-focus as many times as possible, and focus to the most contrasty objects that you can find.
  

The LX100 For Non Strobist?

Yes the LX100 is a hell of a compact camera. It's smaller than how it looks in the photos actually, and it packs almost the same power as the GX7. It has the nice 24-75mm f/1.7-2.8 lens built in, and it has 4K. Now the question is, how does it compare to a GX7 with 12-35mm f/2.8 if you don't need another lens besides that?

The GX7 will perform better in the still department, and the GX7 is actually faster and much more snappier than the LX100 when in use. However, the final result in image quality will be very comparable, and the LX100 will deliver pretty much the same result in a smaller form factor.

So if you need to use a compact camera that packs a Micro Four Thirds glorious punch with a built-in high quality large aperture lens, this LX100 is for you. The price of the LX100 is the same as the price of the Lumix 12-35mm f/2.8 lens itself, so it makes more sense economically to go with the LX100 if you don't need to change lens on your GX7. Plus you get 4K in the LX100, the GX7 only delivers 1080p.

This camera will not fit into your pocket unfortunately, but it's very easy to carry around and it doesn't take up a lot of space in your camera bag. It's a bit thicker than a Fuji X100 even, but the Fuji X100 is also not pocketable.

I now take the LX100 for regular outings, dinner, social meets, and things like that. I can sacrifice a bit of mega pixels for some convenience, and the LX100 makes that sacrifice a no brainer.
   
     

LX100 Vs The Competition

Sony RX100 series? 

Ha! The Sony RX100 actually isn't bad at all and it's very comparable to the LX100. The RX100 will pack more megapixel if you need it, but the overall performance is the same. The law of physics dictates that the smaller the sensor, the lesser the image quality will be. The RX100 uses a 1 inch sensor that is a bit smaller than what's inside the LX100. However, the processing power of the RX100 is very good, that the difference of image quality between the LX100 and the RX100 is not too far. Both RX100 and LX100 have almost comparable performance, but the LX100 has the advantage in easy-to-navigate menu, high ISO, manual control, and better video. The RX100 is a bit fiddly to use because it lacks manual control on the camera. Keep in mind, the RX100 is truly pocketable and it's something that the LX100 is not. If you decide to choose the RX100, go with the mark III or mark IV for the best performance possible out of the RX100.
  

Fuji X100 series?

With the X100S and X100T, you'll have better image quality than the LX100. In fact, the X100S and X100T will give you the same image quality as in the top of the line Fuji X-T1. Dynamic range is good, high ISO performance is amazing, color is nicer, everything is nicer. However, X100S doesn't have both zoom lens, and good video performance. That's exactly the reason why I picked up the LX100 over the X100S or X100T. If you can live with 35mm equivalent lens for your whole life, and you don't need video, X100S or X100T is your choice.

Keep in mind, both the RX100 and X100 have leaf-shutter mechanism too, so you can sync your flash at high shutter speed. The RX100 doesn't have hotshoe to mount your flash/trigger, but you can trigger optically using the built in flash. The X100, however, has the hotshoe, and it also has a built in 3 stop ND to further kill your ambient or to allow for shallower depth of field, allowing you to be even more creative with your strobist photography.
  

Conclusion

You may wonder why I kept comparing the LX100 with the GX7 and the GX8 throughout the post while in fact they are not even on the same level? Because the GX7 and the GX8 are my main cameras for most shooting situation, both stills and video. I really didn't think the LX100 will do any good besides as a dedicated strobist camera, but the LX100 has really grown more and more in me, and tomorrow I'll be taking the LX100 alone to a short trip. It's a very good companion camera if you are intending to use it that way. But as I said, it is my best strobist camera.

Not everything is sweet with the LX100. As mentioned before, I wish the autofocus is better, and I really want the touchscreen and the tilting screen capabilities. As of right now, with the AF on Macro AF mode, I can tolerate the LX100 and at least tame the autofocus to a certain degree for a predictable result.

I'm not sure if Panasonic will develop the successor of this camera, given the fact that now the competitions from both compact camera and mirrorless interchangeable camera are quite aggressive. But if Panasonic decides to produce LX100 Mk II or LX200, I would say touchscreen, tilting screen, mic input, headphone jack, and weather sealing. 16MP would be nice too!

As for now, I'll gladly recommend this camera for anyone who's looking to buy a compact MFT-grade camera.
  

In summary:

PROS:

- Good image quality at 12MP
- LEAF SHUTTER!!!!
- 4K video
- Good manual control
- Nice performance
- Small camera, although not pocketable
- RAW to JPG in camera
- Sharp 24-75mm lens
- It says Leica on the lens, if that matters to you

CONS:

- A few occasions of inaccurate autofocus
- No touchscreen
- No tilt screen
- A tiny bit on the expensive side
- No weather sealing
- No mic jack, no headphone jack
   

Sample Picture


Just a demonstration of the dynamic range of the LX100


Food photography at high ISO

Another food photography at high ISO


Bokeh thingy with the LX100


High ISO shot


Another high ISO shot


My rite of passage, two off camera flashes to lit this stuffed animal


Macro shot of the LX100


This is what I'm talking about, the perfect strobist camera!



Another strobist shot demonstration


Putting the LX100 to its strobist pace!
I hope this post helped you to understand more about the LX100. Please note that this is my personal review, so YMMV. Cheers and God bless you!

Tuesday, February 2, 2016

Hello, World!

 

Hello all,

My name is Gary Wiryawan, and some of you might know me from my other blog. I'm an amateur photographer and I want to share my photography thoughts on this blog. I mostly shoot with Micro Four Thirds cameras, but anything that I'll share here isn't strictly micro four thirds stuff.

You'll find all photography related stuffs in this blog, ranging from review to tutorial. Keep in mind that I'll mostly share things that are based on my very own personal experience and opinions, so this isn't entirely an objective blog. Nevertheless, my goal is to share my knowledge with you so that you'll be able to gain something from my posts.

Thank you for visiting my blog, and I hope you'll enjoy my posts!

Cheers!