18th Moon Station

Lumix GX1 Software (no pics)

Continuing the part 1, this part is mostly about the software and the shooting experience when using it.

First and foremost is probably the Program AE mode, which I used most often when shooting. Although I don’t have my GF1 to do confirmation anymore, it seems that the Program AE mode would settle with lower shutter speed.

To summarized it simply, Program AE’s logic is to chase a certain shutter speed. To achieve that target, it will first try to open the aperture as wide as possible, then ramp up the ISO. When all fails, then the shutter speed will drop to keep the picture correctly exposed.

That would explain why shooting in P mode would often equals shooting wide open.

I’d like to have the ability to set the maximum shutter speed though, something closer to 1/125~1/500.

The noise reduction in higher ISO does works well though. I now set my max auto ISO at 1600 and the noise would still be not so visible when seen on screen without pixel peeping.

Setup menu

The first thing I go to when getting a new electronic is always the setting menu. This menu has became more colourful and also spiced up visually with picture of the related item in the background (such as camera or wrench). The content is basically the same, except the inclusion of new techs such as touch screen and power zoom lenses.

Button accessible functions

Luckily, many functions can still be accessed using hardware buttons.

The mode dial on top set the PASM shooting mode as well as the colour effect and scene mode.

The backside has 11 buttons.

• Directional button
  • Menu up / ISO setup. The ISO range from minimum of 160 (no fake ISO 100) up to ISO 8000. Doesn’t work in iA mode.
  • Menu left / AF Mode. There’s the old four AF mode (Face detection, Tracking, Single Point, 23-Point) also has a new more, Pinpoint. Really love this new AF mode because it will zoom the picture when focusing and then sample smaller area, giving the camera a more precise AF selection. Also work in iA mode.
  • Menu right / White Balance. Nothing change in this one. Daylight, Cloudy, Shadow, Incandescent, Flash, Auto, two custom WB and one Kelvin setting. Choose bias to amber or blue on iA mode.
  • Menu down / Drive mode. Choose between Single shot, Burst mode (with 4 speed), Bracketing or Timer. Also work in iA mode.
  • Middle / Menu. Like I mentioned in the hardware part, I’d love to have this button assignable to Q.Menu during picture shooting.
• Buttons around the directional buttons
  • Fn1. Can be set to one of the many shooting option.
  • Display mode. Cycle between the display modes, including the electronic horizon.
  • Quick Menu / Delete / Return. Depending on your current position. When in shooting mode it’s Q.Menu. When in playback mode it’s delete. When in menu it’s return. When in focus point setting, this button will also reset the focus point back to the center.
  • AF/MF. Control the AF mode. There’s a new mode called AF Flexible which will start hunting for focus again when it detects the scene has changed. Not so useful IMO.
• Buttons on upper side. 
  • Playback button. Just like other digicam, to see the pictures and videos.
  • AF/AF Lock / Fn2. Can be used as AF/AE Lock button or assigned as programmable Fn2 button..

Quick Menu

The quick menu in touch screen Lumix G is an on-screen drawer containing up to 10 different shooting related settings to be accessed quickly without digging into the Setup menu maze. Practically, it holds 5 items because that’s the maximum number that can be shown on the screen. Choose your most frequently accessed functions well.

The touch screen really shines here because you can quickly access the setting without having to repeatedly push the direction button. For the more old way shooter, you can still tap the direction buttons.

But in my opinion, the E-M5’s quick menu (only played a while with demo unit) is more pleasant because the icon size is bigger and it can be accessed with the strategically placed Menu button.

intelligent Auto

There’s two kinds of iA mode in newer Lumix model called IA+.

This is the full iA mode with several adjustable things, mainly being Exposure compensation, DoF (aperture width) and the White Balance (bias to blue / amber).

It will also choose the one of the several scene modes for the scene. This mostly means choosing between landscape, portrait, object for day and night.

Creative control

Just like previous Lumix G series, the camera offers two kind of “creative mode”, which are colour profiles and image filter.

First is the Film Mode which play with the contrast and saturation. Compared to older model, many of the modes has either been changed or renamed. All in my opinion is too saturated though. Cinema film mode is still reserved as Lumix GH’s unique.

Something complained by old time users are the disappearance of the three kinds of B&W mode. I’m not a B&W shooter myself so this doesn’t bother me, but for B&W shooter, this means you would have to tweak the setting in the camera or during post process.

Second is the Creative Control (used to me Colour Mode) which unfortunately is not so configurable. Just like the Film mode, some has changed name here. There’s also several new option available for the newest GF5 model. Depending on the object and mood, these modded P-modes can be quite interesting actually.

There’s 7 modes and basically the same as those available in Olympus’ camera.

• Expressive: high contrast, high saturation.
• Retro: low contrast, low saturation, slight colour cast.
• Low Key: darken things up to make the brightest part stands out.
• High Key: lighten the whole scene.
• Hi-Dynamic: take longer shutter to give higher dynamic range (and lower contrast, but better than clipping).
• Toy Camera: mostly means darken the corners (pinhole effect) and colour cast.
• Miniature: a.k.a diorama mode or the fake tilt-shift filter.

The newer GF5 also has several new filters such as Dramatic Tone, Cross Processing, Soft Focus and Star Filter. The last two seems to be processor intensive so it’s not available when shooting video.

These filters can be customized the same way as the iA+ mode, so you might be able to say that these filters are built on the iA mode.

Touch screen

Touch screen is nothing new. They has been in use for pocket camera years ago as somewhat premium function and also in the second generation Lumix G cameras.

As I mentioned above, the touch screen really helps in navigating on screen menu, although not the main menu itself.

But the function really touted by the manufacturer is actually the Touch Focus and Touch Shutter.

Touch Focus move the focus (sampling) point instantly to the place you pointed on the screen. This will help remove the error from re-framing.

In my case, I turned it off because I often accidentally changed the focus point when not wanting it. But this feature really helps when using manual lenses because it can move the point where picture will be expanded by focus assist.

Touch Shutter helps to quickly focus and shoot picture by just touching the screen.
I also turn this off because it combines the mistaken pointing of touch focus with an out-of-control problem.

Elaborating my personal feud with the touch shutter function. I’m used to getting auto focus then re-frame the picture first, many times even giving up the shot. Such slow luxury is not available with touch shutter. Within a second or more after touching the screen, the camera will start hunting for focus and then shoot. The screen turns black for a while as usual during the reading. That a second is long enough.

Conclusion

While I will skip the actually important photography test yet, lets get to the conclusion.

GX1 is raised as the successor of the GF1. The smaller form factor compared to its brethren of G and GH series make it have smaller perceived size. There are many voices that say just get a G3 with the same sensor, built-in viewfinder and swivel screen.

But if you’re looking for smaller visual footprint without the hump, then the choice is the GX1 for now (Or the Pen). Too bad that even the Pen still don’t have swivel screen and instead just opt for tilt screen.

From the point of view of handling, GX1 feels a little better and comfortable with the grip, yet doesn’t make the camera bulky like big DSLR cameras.

Now, I don’t put much demand to my camera ability. The thing that made it worth to upgrade from GF1 is the bump in picture quality especially in higher ISO which now looks less noisy.

The filters, while looks gimmicky, could give interesting effects to the out of camera JPG if the scene and lightning is just right for the mood.

Lumix GX1 Hardware (no pics)

It’s almost a month since I got my new Lumix GX1 camera, I’ve also made the fondling report previously so why not a longer review this time.

Yes, I know it’s ridiculous to review a product without any pictures at all, especially a camera. The picture will wait for probably the end of this week.

But rather than review, perhaps it’s more correct to call this as a hands-on experience story because I won’t be digging deep to the details and just talk about parts that got my attention while using it.

Background

My first system camera is the loved Lumix GF1 which is still deared even now by the users. Like the target market intended, I came from the point and shoot crowd instead of DSLR users, so I don’t have much experience with optical viewfinder (which by the way, the most beautiful viewfinder I’ve ever seen is a medium format Mamiya’s waist level finder in old camera shop).

The GX1 is a fork of Lumix G’s compact form factor line’s GF series which falls victim of the miniaturization race. GX is meant to be positioned as exclusive “professional” offering.

The best thing of the GX1’s launch for me is actually because Panasonic mentioned it will be available in body only kit. This will truly help reducing the cost for upgraders who already have their stash of lens while not needing yet another kit lens.

Sadly, some regional Panasonic would be hell-bent on selling the camera with kit, hence giving extra troubles to the buyers about how to throw away that extra kit lens. To be fair though, the recently sold Olympus E-M5 is also not available in Indonesia with body only option.

First, lets start from the hardware side.

Box

Just like my old phone SIM card’s case that’s more luxurious (probably brass and good enough for business card case) compared to the new one (cardboard slip case), the packaging of GX1 is one of the victim of ever increasing efficiency to cut cost.

GX1’s box is smaller and more simple compared to the GF1’s which has four cardboard insert to separate all the stuffs inside.

The Body

Size is actually close to the GF1, but felt and look a bit smaller in my subjective hand. It also felt heavier and more metal-like compared to the GF1, giving the solid impression. Interestingly, the GF1’s feel to touch actually feels somewhat like my old Magnesium alloy cased Fujitsu notebook.

The larger rubberized grip felt good in hand. I personally don’t feel much difference compared to without the grip when shooting, but it really helps to secure the camera while in stand by (hold in hand while the strap around my wrist).

Thanks to the grip, the AF assist lamp is moved to the left side. Good thing because it’ll be more unlikely to get blocked by finger.

A change to the lower side is the battery door which now has a smaller rubber covered window. This is for use with optional accessories and AC adapter so you can have unlimited battery power. Changing memory card won’t be possible in that state though.

Another changing door design is the connection ports’ cover. In GF1 the design use a solid hinge, now it’s using elastic. The previous one felt like it’ll break on slightest impact, but I never like the elastic hinge design anywhere because it feels like it will be exhausted quickly if you often open it. Luckily I transfer data using card reader and won’t use the other cables either.

Shutter release is still behind this door and Panasonic, like all digital camera makers other than Leica and Fuji, use their own proprietary electronic shutter release instead of the screw thread cable that has been in use for decades (plus cheaper and universal).

Top panel

On the top panel, the texture slightly changed into more irregular pattern instead of the plain matte surface. As they’ve done for many models, there’s a dedicated iA button to give an easier access anywhere and give the company’s Intelligent Auto mode a more prominent presence. Hopefully it will got used more.

I’m not so troubled by the lost of drive mode switch whose function is now moved to a button at the back side. But I don’t like the new power switch design. I love the old design very much. It’s one of the part of design that I think is simple yet far better than the competitor who only use non discrete button. The slide switch can be manipulated with one finger without seeing when on a walk. New design uses something like the drive mode switch, and I can’t turn it off with one finger without looking.

Backside buttons

The backside also has some inconvenient modification. First and most prominent is the click wheel, probably the second most important control when shooting after the shutter button. This wheel that control aperture, shutter speed and exposure compensation has became smaller.

The rest are just matter of habit actually.

• The AF/AE Lock button has been changed to a smaller function button, still configurable as AF/AE Lock (but smaller).
• The quick menu function has been moved to the lower left (previously upper left) and need further thumb travel from the click wheel. Luckily the place is now taken by the Fn1 button which can be programmed to one frequently accessed function (metering mode in my case). Still miss the old quick menu though.
• AF/MF button has been changed to the lower right (previously upper right), switched with the Display button. This is troublesome because I personally would like to change the focus mode more often than display mode.
• The directional buttons works mostly the same way, other than the Down button which now access the drive mode (previously Fn1).

Personally, I’d rather have the Menu and Quick Menu button switched. In my opinion, that design is more practical because the full menu would be accessed during the time when user is not shooting pictures. In the other hand, the Quick Menu which offered access to shooting related option should be placed in more prominent position, the middle button.

Flash

On GF1, the flash’s hinge is made with contraption that only allows it to point forward. Well, on the GX1, that contraption is gone and the flash can be pointed upward. But with the strength of the flash, I often time get unsatisfying result though, because the flash is not strong enough.
But I’m also an available light shooter so my flash using ability is below average.

Viewfinder

I don’t buy that electronic viewfinder and is not interested at all. If you came from long time P&S camera shooter, I think you wouldn’t find much advantage from using the viewfinder.

I rarely use the LVF-1 on my GF1 and it’s not because of the screen quality inside. It’s about shooting style. Do you feel the need of sticking the camera to your face ? Smacking the camera to your face to provide stability is an old method. There are new ways to hold camera still while using the back screen.

Lumix GX1 fondle test

Lumix GX1, picture from Four-Thirds.org

This is a pre-eliminary review… you can call it the “fondle-review” (not even pre-review) of the second newest μ⁴/₃ camera from the Lumix lineup, GX1 (the newest being GF5 currently). The usage review will be coming later after weekend.

My previous unit is the well loved GF1 model and this will be my upgrade.

Muara Angke port

Muara Angke is a fishermen port in northern Jakarta. It houses two fish auction site and markets.

I want to had another go at photo hunting with Ciel (my camera) so I tried this location. It’s filled with activity but not exactly crowded, so a quite balanced density of peoples to move around and take pictures without disturbing their mobility or getting someone blocking the view.

Frankly, I don’t know what’s wrong yet but the colours are all screwed up. Not to mention the blown out highlights which I’m not sure if it’s my fault or the minilab’s fault.

No, it doesn’t

Pentax’s new mirrorless system is released with a K-mount.

Take off the module and…

No, it wont do that.

Ciel is for CL

Finally she arrived :D
Not exactly “finally arrived” though because I have to pick her up in the post office and pay for the customs tax, which costed 25%. I’m quite lucky thanks to the dealer though, or else it would be far-far worse.

Yeah, next time it’ll be hand carry. I’m not buying anything funny above 60% of my CC limit anymore.

Something close from home

When close to my home, on weekend, there’s interesting objects to take picture of.

We have lotus flower planted near the security post. There’s also a little flowers and other plants, nothing exotic at all. Some are vegetables planted by the security staffs in their free time.

I ran a test on my Fujica SLR, so I took a walk outside. It’s no good. Teach me a lesson about buying things without proper knowledge. The film feed system seems to be broken for sure.

But anyway, there’s the lotus and bees, so I take out my digicam and take another try with macro.

The tools, Lumix G 45-200mm and a cheap no name close up filter (I think I bring either +3 or +4 dioptre).

It’s cheap, so quality is also not the best. There’s softness in the picture and on full tele length (200mm) the picture had horrible aberration.

Leitz Canvas Bag

Got my new bag yesterday! It’s the old (original) version of the M Classics bag. Bought it from eBay for a fraction of the new (replica) price finally after failing 4 auctions (twice forgetting the auction deadline).

The design is pretty. Even without bringing camera, it will still do well as a man bag. There are some loose stitching in my copy, but it helps with the rugged look together with slightly dirty colour. Vintage look it is.

Since the bag is not padded, it has a slim profile, only a bit slimmer than the biggest laptop shoulder bag. It doesn’t have the boxy look of most camera bag designed for the ubiquitous DSLR, truly does not scream it’s a camera bag (might still look stylish and get you robbed for different reason though).

Overall, there are some ergonomic problems, but I really love this bag :D

Scanned those rolls

The rolls of film is finally developed and yesterday I got myself an Epson V330 for scanning. 600 dpi seems to do, and 6 frames probably take a bit less than 15 minutes including my inexperienced handlings.

It has no hardware based film recovery though, so I got those dusts sticking on the scan result. Some are pleasant enough, but disturbing in other times.

Some stuffs to note:

• The roll from my Fujica SLR had a lot of overlapping frames. Seems to be problem with the carriage. Will need time to check the second roll after I finished it some day, which even then I worried the content might already deteriorate more after abandoning.
• My Yashica’s rangefinder seems to be off because all pictures showed consistent back-focus. Need to find a place to repair it, hopefully this weekend. Until then, had to compensate by guessing how far I should “pull” the focus before shooting.
• Being spoiled by digital white balance, shots in the shadow looks off in colour. Well, some end up looking pleasant so I don’t complain much about this.
• Resolution looks low, but probably it’s because of my scanning.

On to the pics. I used two film still commonly available in Indonesia. FujiFilm Superia 200 and Kodak ColorPlus 200. Both are quite cheap than the rarer types available in the internet.

Playing with film

Recently, I bought two film camera. A Yashica Electro 35 GS and a Nikon L35 AF. Well, want to try film shooting, and there’s still studio that process negative film in Jakarta, although I might need to start learning how to import film to get anything other than Superia 200.

Experience is quite fun, and I have small stock of film to be used. The ISO 200 Superia is still available in many places, as well as some consumer Kodak, but I’m too much a newbie to understand the character of each films. One thing I know for sure, ISO 100, 400 or 800 is hard to find.