Saturday, November 28, 2009

Panasonic Lumix GF1 Camera

This is Albert, the Zen master:

p_2009-11-28_14-47-54.jpg

I bought myself Panasonic Lumix GF1 camera (with small pancake lens) which - at least to me - is a breakthrough piece of hardware. It shoots almost as well as DSLR, however it's very compact (slightly larger than Canon Powershot G series including the lens). That means I can carry it with me fairly easily in the belt pouch wherever I go and use it for guerrilla-style photography (i.e. "shoot lots of trash, pick 5% of interesting stuff from it"). I just have to find the right pouch, the current one is too big.

GF1 is fairly expensive but the quality of images is noticeably better than the best digital compacts (I had Canon Powershot G10 until now). For example the above photo is very small crop from large image, basically pixel-per-pixel resolution. And that's not even RAW, just plain old JPEG on full automatic. The level of detail is excellent and exposures are much shorter meaning there is less blur.

p_2009-11-28_14-55-24.jpg

6 comments:

Case said...

Well, if pictures like this one http://www.flickr.com/photos/fuxoft/4138662374/in/photostream/ or especially this one http://www.flickr.com/photos/fuxoft/4138666150/in/photostream/ are straight from camera and not processed in any way, then it's quite far fetched to say it "shoots almost as well as DSLR". The noise is quite bad on those photos, especially in shadows, and MUCH worse than I would've expected from a four thirds camera on ISO 100 (the sensor is quite large, after all). Actually, the noise on the second photo is so bad I would've thought it was made with some kind of very cheap compact or mobile phone, on high ISO.

But anyway, the important thing of course is that you are happy with it, and obviously you are, so enjoy your new camera.

Fuxoft said...

No, those two pictures are processed (originally, the bottom part of the images was almost totally black). For unprocessed, see for example here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fuxoft/4140219029/sizes/l/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fuxoft/4136806578/sizes/l/

Anonymous said...

Pokud to porovnate prave primo s tou G10, da se to porovnat a pripadne jake tedy rozdily vidite? Prave mam G10 a jsem vicemen spokojeny, ale chtelo by to dalsi krok ... diky.

Fuxoft said...

Pokud se podivam na fotku z G10 pri maximalnim zvetseni (tzn. 1:1 pixely), tak tam jsou duchy a je to znatelne "rozpatlane", a to i pri velmi dobrych svetelnych podminkach, napr. zde: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fuxoft/4068021583/sizes/o/

Z GF1 to vypada znetelne lepe, nemluve o tom, ze u GF1 staci pri stejnem svetle kratsi expozice nez u G10.

jimmac said...

Now that you got proper gear, how about learning a bit about composition?

Fuxoft said...

jimmac: Tried that, didn't find it interesting. I want to shoot the way I PERSONALLY like it.