▼

Friday, 31 August 2012

Panasonic G5 - Review and User Experience - Part 2


Going out to work with the G5 was even more impressive than testing it. I used the Panasonic 14-140mm lens which is another piece of m4/3 kit I've owned before and re-bought. The above shot was taken with a slow shutter speed as I was walking along with the tourists and of course nobody heard a thing. 

 It really is the case that you see the picture and its captured. In my last post I showed how it can focus and fire the shutter to "freeze" speeding cars and the only limits I can see to what it can do is my reaction time. Very impressive.






Some of the reasons I've always liked m4/3 are in the shots above. Firstly the quality of the lenses. Several of these are taken at the 140mm end of the 14-140mm zoom. They are pin sharp and also have a reasonable amount of depth of field. Now how people can see this as a disadvantage is beyond me. The dog shot at the bottom is particularly nice. The background recedes nicely into the distance, giving context to the shot. A 35mm sensor with a 300mm lens at the same aperture wouldn't have that. It also means of course that theres more focus latitude which again I like. To be honest I've never quite got the concept of bokeh. Surely whats IN focus in the image is more important than whats OUT of focus. Still, its what you like I guess. Suffice to say I thing that the extra DOF from m4/3 is very much of an advantage as far as I'm concerned.

I was really pleased with the above shot. The IS on the lens is so good I was able to take the shot at 1/15th. sec. and thus get the water to motion blur nicely. Not too much it turns into a total blur, but slow enough to get the feeling of movement.

Today I also wanted to see if I could cope with my pixel count hangup. I did some multi image shooting and was able to stitch them together in photoshop to produce some really detailed, big files.

These two below turned out to be 25MP 71MB files.



The shot below, from 6 separate images turned out to be a 36MP 103MB file, which of course is what the Nikon D800E produces.


So the G5 has lots of flexibilty and the ability to create quite different shots for different shooting scenarios. All of course in a fairly diminuitive package. I liked the images it produced very much and thoroughly enjoyed using it.

My rekindled enthusiasm for the system came from trudging around the Sussex coast with my Nikon D800E and 28-300mm lens. While I enjoy actually creating pictures with the Nikon and of course viewing them on my screen, its not a lot of fun just carrying it. I also noted after the first days shooting that the subjects I was photographing in that location were struggling to achieve the DOF I was after. Since I was staying only about 10 minutes or so from Park Cameras, one of the UK's largest photo retailers, I did in fact consider going up there to buy myself a m4/3 camera, as I hadn't taken one with me. In the end I persevered with the Nikon, but I resolved when I got back home to re-invest seriously in the system. This I have done, taking advantage of holiday deals and Panasonic cashbacks, which unfortunately end today. My last purchase this morning, to get inside the cashback deadline, was another, my 4th, I think, 20mm f/1.7. Still re-buying old lenses isn't that painful since over time they get cheaper and most of what I've "re-stocked" with has been cheaper than what I got when I sold the previous one on ebay. So it can be said that my gear is getting cheaper over time. (If you believe that you'll believe anything!!)

So very positive feelings about the G5. Its somewhat better than I thought it was going to be. I primarily wanted it because I like the eye level sensor that switches between EVF and screen and I did think the grip would work better. What I wasn't prepared for was the sheer speed of the thing, and its a real treat to use. Plus, of course, it means that I don't pass up a picture opportunity because I'm using a camera that I know isn't fast enough. Street photographers will love this and it shows up cameras like the Fuji X-Pro 1 for what they are. SLOW!!

Not much weather tomorrow apparently, unless you like rain, so I may publish the Nikon lens review I have waiting. However, next opportunity I get I'll be out with the G5 again. 

CLICK HERE for my ongoing Review and User Experience with the G5


N.B. to see more on the cameras and lenses featured in this post click on the relevant labels (tags and keywords) below.
All original material on this blog is © Soundimageplus
For comment and discussion - join me over at Google+
about soundimageplus - soundimageplus website
soundimageplus on flickr - http://www.flickr.com/photos/45203414@N06/
soundimageplus blog readers pictures group - http://www.flickr.com/groups/1705334@N24/
soundimageplus on YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/user/soundimageplus
soundimageplus on Vimeo - http://vimeo.com/user1050904/video
at