Yearly Archives: 2010

Travelling Light

★ Posted on at 10:11 am ★

august

August has grown quite a bit since I last saw him. Doing some editing using Picasa on my Eee PC and the adjustments are quite limited, so I’m really keen to get back to a proper desktop and Lightroom to see how much I can push the GF1 next month.

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Back home now and working with my limited hardware. Have only picked up the GF1 to take photos in the last few days. Heh, limiting myself to the choice of equipment does present its opportunities and challenges.

The GF1 isn’t instant on, so you have to be ready to take the picture in advance. Adjustments of settings, while faster than a compact, does not really compare to the D300. The rear dial requires quite a bit of turning to adjust settings, while the D300′s dial has less travel distance, so changing aperture is really quick. Autofocus is erratic as you rely on the camera to decided on the focus points for you. You could manually select that but it would be a few extra button presses before you get to the correct spot. On the other hand, the GF1 fits in whatever pocket I put it into, meaning I’d actually bring the camera along and when I need hands free, there is somewhere to stash it away. THe 20mm provides enough light and depth of field at f1.7 that I think the low light limitation of the GF1 doesn’t hamper me as much.

The Eee PC is good for transferring photos, but editing RAW files is a no no. Didn’t think that Lightroom would function on it, so I just used Picasa instead. Even then, basic editing takes a while to process and this is on the speedier SSD I installed a few months ago. Heh, the 11.6″ Macbook air is starting to look more and more tempting as a travel companion, as it will still slip into the side pocket of my camera bag and weigh pretty much the same.

Have no WiFi at home (something I hope to rectify soon), so often times I need to plug the Eee PC straight into a LAN cable port to get Internet. At least it’s speedy enough that I don’t fall asleep waiting for pages to load.

I’m a more prepared traveller this time, but there’s still things I’d try to lighten over the next few trips. Will see how it goes.

The GF1

★ Posted on at 09:20 pm ★

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This is the Panasonic GF1. Taken with my D300 and 105mm macro lens. Flash was bounced off a reflective umbrella. I try to think outside the box and not produce static views of the subject matter.

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I quite like it in white, just so that it stands apart from the regular boring black cameras. Well, it was also partly because Jun Kit has the same camera and I didn’t want to confuse mine with his. White has its charms.

Having spent a couple of days with it, I do at least have some opinions on it. The camera is intuitive to me, and while I’ll need to browse through the manual to make sense of some of the menu items, most of the basic camera settings are accessible and simple to get to. With my style of shooting, I can get to the functions I normally use pretty quickly, and the functions are all there, compared to a compact like my IXUS. Comparing it to a D300, you can’t change settings as quickly, so if you want to pump out consecutive shots with changing light conditions, it doesn’t quite reach those heights.

Image quality isn’t everything, if it was, I would have opted for Sony’s NEX 5 instead. I picked the GF1 over the former for the handling and the choice of lens. The 20mm is a pancake, keeping the form factor small enough and the strange 20mm angle of view actually allows you to take pictures in most scenarios.

Post processing takes a little longer compared to editing images from my D300. The WB of the GF1 is not very consistent, so a little more tweaking is required to get your set of photos to have the same feel. The lack of an orientation sensor in the 20mm also means I have to manually rotate portrait pictures to get them the right side up.

The thing with the GF1 is that because it isn’t as intimidating as a D300 with the huge lens and flash slapped on, I feel more comfortable pointing it at people. At least there is eye contact as you are not hidden behind the camera, and I’d feel more comfortable using it to take candids.

Heh, if you haven’t figured it out by now, I really like this camera.

Starting December

★ Posted on at 10:27 pm ★

tomatoes

Today should officially be summer, but the weather is still a bit of a nutcase. It’s been raining a lot this year, which has been good for my potted plants. I now know that moist soil is good soil. The tomatoes in my garden are growing well and I’m thinking I can pluck them a couple of days from now.

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Will be on the plane in a few days back to KL, spending some down time before going on tour to Yunnan. I finally caved in to getting myself a Panasonic GF1 with the 20mm pancake as I couldn’t stop obsessing over it and the only way to resolve that was to purchase it. Heh, I’ve only had the evening to try it out, but it is intuitive enough for me to pick up immediately. Image quality so far has been impressive and I will be doing further testing on it over the next few weeks.

I had wanted it as a possible replacement travel camera where an entire kit of lenses would only be around 1kg. There is the 14mm f/2.5 and maybe the 45-200mm zoom which I’d be interested in. They won’t be anytime soon purchases, as I think I’ve already eaten into next year’s budget for stuff (it was supposed to be either this or the guitar, and I ended up getting both). The picture of the tomatoes above are taken with the GF1 and when you shoot RAW, you get pretty decent results.

* * *

It’s a little too early to do a review of the year, and there’s still plenty of the month left to do other things. Trying to cram the many things I need to do in the last few days I’ll be in Melbourne. It’s already way past my bedtime, so I’ll write more when I get the time.