Posts Tagged ‘digital SLR’

Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF1 Review

When Panasonic exhibited us the first Micro Four Thirds camera, the Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF1, our 1st question was ‘why does it look like an SLR?’. We had been hoping for a much more compact body, something that more effectively straddled the line between the convenience of a compact and the quality and versatility of a digital SLR. Well, a couple of months ago we were ushered into a private meeting with Panasonic to see the GF1, Panasonic’s response to all those critics who failed to see the point of Micro Four Thirds if it was simply going to ape conventional SLR styling.

And, once we had been fully briefed on just how secret this all was, we got our hands on what Panasonic hopes will be the camera to convince those put off by the limitations of the Olympus E-P1.

The E-P1 looms large over any discussion of the GF1; rarely has a single model caused so much excitement – and fevered discussion – inside and outside the photographic community, with even Panasonic apparently surprised by just how much press it has been getting.

Read more about the product and order online: Panasonic Lumix DMC-GF1

Why dSLRs Are Better

Point-and-shoot digital cameras are ballyhooed as great close-up gear because the LCD display makes it easy to frame your photo accurately without fear of accidentally clipping off part of the image due to the parallax error difference between what the optical viewfinder sees and what the sensor actually captures. Yet, can you really view an image and check focus on an LCD with a 1.5-inch diagonal measurement?

I’ve used non-SLR digital cameras with generous 2.5- inch LCDs and worked with EVF cameras with decent-sized internal LCD viewfinders, and none of them were as good as the least expensive dSLR when it comes to framing and viewing an image.

If it seems as if shutter lag and other features of digital cameras were designed to make action photography difficult, the reverse is true for the macrophotographic realm. Many features built into every digital camera make these image grabbers ideal for taking close-up pictures. If you’ve been doing macrophotography with film cameras, a few sessions with a digital camera will convince you that digital technology is exactly what you’ve been waiting for.

Back panel LCDs are no picnic to use outdoors in bright sunlight, either. The image is often washed out and difficult to see. Although an increasing number of point-and-shoot cameras boast close focusing capabilities down to less than one inch, they really aren’t the ideal camera you’d choose for macrophotography.

On the other hand, dSLRs not only provide a big, bright look at what you’re shooting, you can press the depth-of-field preview to gauge the sharpness, too. Their zoom lenses focus close even at telephoto positions—something lacking in many snapshooter-oriented digital cameras, which work in macro mode only at the wide-angle setting.

Digital SLR autofocus is faster, and the lack of shutter lag means you can snap off a picture  the instant your dragonfly hovers into the field-of-view—not a second or two later. A dSLR is more likely to have an external flash connection than a non-dSLR, so your close-up lighting setups can be more sophisticated. There are special macro lenses and other close-up accessories like ringlights for digital SLRs that aren’t readily available for fixedlens cameras.

How To Use White Balance

The type of light falling on your subject makes a massive difference to the colour of the scene. The light in the middle of the day is much more blue than it is at sunrise or sunset, while a household bulb produces light with a strong orange cast. This is due to what’s known as the colour temperature of the light source. Our eyes adjust to these changes automatically, but that’s not necessarily how your digital camera will record the scene. Every digital SLR has a white balance (WB) setting to adjust the way it records colours, so to get the most out of your camera you need to know when to use the settings available.

Auto

As the name suggests, this mode adjusts the white balance automatically for different lighting conditions to give neutral results. This mode works well for point-and-shoot situations or if there’s a mixture of light sources. The problem with auto white balance is that it will try to produce a neutral image, even though you may want the image recorded as a warmer or cooler tone. This is especially true when you’re shooting at the start or the end of the day. Sunrise or sunset shots will be ruined by the neutral results of an automatic setting.

Raw Advantage

Using the RAW file format means that you can change the white balance after shooting when you convert your images. You should still try to choose the right setting when you take the shot though, as this will save you time having to change the setting later on.

Pre-Set White Balance

When you’re shooting under a fixed type of lighting you can use one of the pre-set options available on your camera. This means that you’ll get consistent results while the lighting remains the same. This is especially important when you’re using many filters, as using the automatic setting will try to compensate for their effect.

Custom Pre-Set

This mode works out the correct colours for a scene by taking a reading from a neutral subject and recording this setting in the memory. To use this setting you need to select the custom or pre-set option in the white balance menu on the camera. Then fill the frame with a white or neutral grey subject in the same lighting as your main subject.

A grey card or white reflector is ideal for this. You then have to measure the white balance, which is usually done by pressing the shutter release. Once this white balance setting is settings available programmed into the camera you’ll get consistent results as long as the lighting remains the same, so it’s more useful under artificial lighting rather than the changing conditions usually encountered when shooting in natural light. Some pro D-SLRs allow you to pre-program a number of different custom white balance settings, but most models only offer one pre-set option.

You don’t always have to select the ‘correct’ white balance to get a completely neutral result. Using the cloudy setting on the camera has a similar effect to fitting a warm-up filter to your lens. Use this in sunny conditions and you’ll add extra warmth to your images, which is great for portraits, or for eliminating the slight cooling effect of using a polariser filter.

How To Improve Your Photography with a dSLR

The differences between digital SLRs and the camera you were using before you saw the light depends on where you’re coming from. If your most recent camera was a point-and-shoot digital model, you know the advantages of being able to review your photos on an LCD an instant after you took them, and, if you’re serious about photography, you also understand the benefits of fine-tuning them in an image editor. If you’re switching to a digital SLR from a film SLR, you’re likely a photo enthusiast already and well aware that a single lens reflex offers you extra control over framing, using focus creatively, and choosing lenses to give the best perspective. And, if you’re making the huge leap from a point-and-shoot non-SLR film camera to a digital SLR, you’re in for some real revelations.

A digital SLR has (almost) all the good stuff available in a lesser digital camera, with some significant advantages that enable you to take your photo endeavors to a new, more glorious level of excellence. Certainly, you can take close-ups or sports photos with any good-quality film or digital camera. Lowlight photography, travel pictures, or portraits are all within the capabilities of any camera. But digital SLRs let you capture these kinds of images more quickly, more flexibly, and with more creativity at your fingertips. Best of all (at least for Photoshop slaves), a digital SLR can solve problems that previously required working long hours over a hot keyboard.

Despite the comparisons you can make to other cameras, a digital SLR isn’t just a simple upgrade from a conventional film camera or another type of digital camera. A dSLR is very different from a film SLR, too, even though some vendors still offer film and dSLRs that look quite a bit alike and share similar exposure metering, automatic focusing, and other electronics, as well as interchangeable lenses. If you look closely, you find that the digital SLR camera is different, and how you use it to take pictures is different.

Why Should You Use dSLR Cameras?

Perhaps you’re not convinced that a dSLR is for you. Don’t feel guilty. Many serious shooters are in the same position. You’ve been getting good results with your non-dSLR camera and wonder if you’ll see any improvement with a single lens reflex camera. Perhaps the 28-200mm (35mm equivalent) zoom lens on an SLR-like camera with electronic viewfinder has the range you need for 95 percent of your photographs. Why purchase a dSLR if you won’t need interchangeable lenses, or can’t afford them?

The truth is that there is a lot more to a digital SLR than the Single Lens Reflex part of the equation. I’ll get into more detail in Chapter 2, but here’s a quick summary of the pros and cons of dSLRs, and why you might get much better results from a dSLR with 6 megapixels when compared with a non-dSLR model with the same nominal resolution. Note that the first bunch of the advantages I’m touting are only incidentally related to the fact that the camera is a single lens reflex.

The Advantages of dSLR Cameras

Higher sensitivity and reduced noise: The images from most non-dSLRs begin to break down when sensitivity is increased to ISO 400 or more, primarily because of excessive noise. Few of these cameras have an ISO setting that’s usable. In contrast, many dSLRs generate relatively low noise at ISO 800, and produce acceptable images at ISO 1600, ISO 3200, and beyond. The improved quality offered by digital SLRs is due to the larger sensors available in these cameras. As vendors pack more and more pixels into the tiny CCD sensors found in non-SLR cameras, the pixels become smaller and more prone to noise. The larger pixels in the CMOS and CCD sensors of dSLRs have much less of a tendency to produce the random grain we see as noise, and are more sensitive, to boot, producing higher effective ISO speeds.

Control over depth-of-field: The larger sensors require lenses with longer focal lengths, so the dSLR use regains the control over depth-of-field that is such an important creative tool. Ignore those “35mm equivalent” specs you see posted for non-dSLR cameras. That “38mm” zoom setting on your point-and-shoot digital may provide the same field-of-view as the moderate wide angle you’ve used on your film SLR, but the depth-of-field is more akin to what is native to the 6mm actual focal length of that lens. You’d think the “380mm” setting would give you roughly the same narrow depth-of-field you’d expect from a 400mm lens on your film camera, but what you end up with is the same field of sharpness offered by a 60mm lens. Anyone who’s used a consumer digital camera knows that at non-macro shooting distances, virtually everything in the picture is sharp, at any zoom setting and at any f-stop.

Digital SLRs work like a camera, not a VCR. I own a Nikon CoolPix 995, which was one of the best $1,000 digital cameras of its time, and still a champ among 3.3MP models for sharp images and macro performance. Still, this camera drove me nuts. Even after I’d owned it for a year I had to take along a cheat sheet that told me how to activate infrequently used features, such as manual focus. I used the 995 a lot, but I still had to refer to my crib notes to see which menu I needed to refer to to activate a particular feature, and then which buttons to press to make it work. It was a great camera, but it didn’t work like one.

The same situation exists today with the vast majority of non dSLR cameras. I have the opportunity to test eight or ten point-and-shoot cameras in all price ranges each month, and virtually all of them operate more like VCRs rather than like cameras. When you zoom in and out, do you want to press a couple of buttons and wait while a teeny motor adjusts the lens elements for you, or would you rather twirl a zoom ring on the lens itself and be done with it? To switch to manual focus, wouldn’t you prefer to flip an AF/MF button and then twist the focus ring on the lens, instead of pressing a Menu key, finding the Focus setting, switching to Manual focus, and then pressing a pair of left-right cursor buttons?

Photo enthusiasts won’t put up with that nonsense when they’re trying to take pictures. The dSLR I use has separate buttons for burst mode, ISO settings, white balance, EV adjustments, metering mode, and resolution. To adjust any of those, I hold down the appropriate button and thumb the command dial to choose the setting I want. Set the camera to shutter- or aperture-priority (with a dial, not a menu) and move the command dial to adjust the f-stop or shutter speed. In manual exposure mode, there are separate command dials for shutter speed and aperture. That might seem like a lot of buttons to master, but, trust me, you’ll learn to use them much more quickly than you’ll memorize the menu system of the typical point-and-shoot.

Faster operation: You’ll find that dSLRs work much faster than point-and-shoot digital cameras. One of the metrics used to measure point-and-shoot performance is “time to first shot.” That is, once you decide to take a picture and switch the camera on, how long must you wait until the camera is actually ready to shoot? Generally, you’ll have to wait 3 to 5 seconds or more; then wait another second while the camera autofocuses and calculates exposure after you’ve pressed the shutter release. Switch a dSLR on, and it’s ready to go. On more than one occasion I’ve spotted an unexpected opportunity, switched my digital SLR on as I brought the camera to my eye, and then took a picture, all within less than one second.

Five-Step Digital SLR Shooting Checklist

Your digital SLR is a highly sophisticated piece of kit but it will only do what you tell it to do. And if you’ve told it to do one thing on one day it will do exactly the same the next, unless you override those instructions. As a result, perfectly good pictures can be ruined simply because you forgot to press a couple of buttons. It sounds obvious, but running through a simple checklist in your head will prevent silly mistakes from occurring and ultimately mean better pictures. Here are five simple but important things you need to remember every time
you plan a photo-session.

- Have you charged your batteries?

A digital SLR is completely powerreliant, so if your battery is only half-charged or, worse still, completely dead when you come to shoot, then you’ll be down the pub earlier than expected. It’s best to slot batteries into the charger after every trip out and give them a blast. When they’re fully charged pop one set back into the camera itself and tuck a spare (you should always carry an extra set) safely in your camera bag.

- Have you formatted your memory card?

By formatting the memory card you wipe all the information held on it. So when you do format, be certain that any images on it you want to keep have already been downloaded and safely stored. If you haven’t, you can still shoot as the card will store your new images into a separate folder, but space on the card will be limited. To format your card, simply access the Format Card option in your  camera’s menu. Once you’ve hit the Okay button and formatting has started there’s no going back.  Once formatted, you will have plenty of free card space on which to store your new images.

- Have you checked the ISO setting?

Back in the ‘old days’ of film and manual cameras, when you put a roll of film into your camera you needed to set the ISO manually too. Then along came modern electronic film cameras and the DX coding on the film allowed the camera to automatically rate the film at the required ISO. With a D-SLR, of course, there’s no film at all, but ISO rating still plays a role.

It effectively alters the sensitivity of the camera’s sensor, allowing you to continue shooting in different light levels. But larger ISO also brings greater visible noise (unwanted graininess) on an image, meaning it’s best to use as low an ISO setting as possible. So if you have used ISO 800 to shoot fast-moving action in low light and then forgot to change back to ISO 100 for a landscape shoot, you may feel your resulting pictures are ruined by excessive noise. Remember, on a D-SLR you can change ISO from shot to shot.

- Have you selected the right file type?

A D-SLR gives you various options as to what format your digital file is saved in. The most popular is JPEG, but even this gives you various choices that relate to the final quality of the image itself. All you need to know is how big you are likely to want to print your image at and how much postcapture control you want over it. If, for example, you want a small image for use only on a website or for e-mailing, you may choose to shoot the smallest JPEG option available. On the flip side, if you want as big a fi le as possible and as much post-capture control over
it, then shooting RAW is the best option. From a Digital SLR shooting checklist perspective, you just need to have the right file option selected for the job at hand.

-  Have you chosen the white balance?

There’s a whole issue wrapped up in white balance choice that we will cover later, but at the checklist stage just be sure that you don’t have a completely inappropriate white balance selected that could make your picture look a bit weird. If you’re in any doubt as to which white balance you should use, then go for the fail-safe of auto white balance. The camera will make the decision for you.2v7hbnyu4k