Friday 19 April 2013

New looking

It's a funny thing how a change of camera can change your way of looking. With an hour to spare yesterday afternoon I took the new one for a walk to see if some ideas it had given me could be worked on. Certainly the light helped but for the first time I have begun to see pictures where I live, and get ideas for more. I'm even growing to like, if not prefer, the 4:3 format.




Originally I had thought of using the small camera as a sketchbook and to return with a  'proper' camera to make finished pictures. However, I thought I'd make an A3 print (of the first picture here, as it happens) because at small screen sizes it looks to be very contrasty as if there is nothing in the shadows. What a revelation. The print is fine by my (admittedly uncritical) standards. But then the X10 has made nice prints too. I think the new toy makes slightly nicer ones.

This evening I made a point of shooting the same thing with both small cameras. What surprised me most was not any difference in 'image quality' but in the colours. Those from the Panasonic seemed more natural, 'smoother' too, than those from the Fuji.


The shot above is a fine example of Sod's Law at work. I saw the way the light was catching these three bottles in three stages of emptiness (which must be symbolic of something or a metaphor at the very least) and couldn't resist trying to make a picture. The first was a wider shot and reasonable - although better cropped, the second was more tightly framed but the sun was in the wrong place and burned out the lip of one bottle. This third and final frame got the composition right. It works uncropped but I like it like this too. Typically the first two frames are pin sharp. The sell by information printed on the bottles can be seen clearly at 100%. I can't fault the kit lens on the sharpness front. This frame on the other hand is slightly out of focus. It's OK at web size, but inspected closely it's rough as a bear's behind and no amount of fiddling will save it. Story of my life...

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