Micro Four Thirds cameras get a bad rap. Everyone acts like the minute the sun goes down the camera's ability to handle low light turns to mush. "Noise the size of golf balls!" I know that's not true but every once in a while I have to see (again) for myself.
I was tired of re-ordering my studio yesterday. The sun was about to set. The temperatures started dropping towards the 40s. I picked up the Panasonic GH5 from the top of my desk and checked to make sure it had: a charged battery, a useful lens ( the Sigma Contemporary 56mm f1.4) and a memory card. Then I hopped in the car and headed over to the theater to park, walk across the pedestrian bridge, and visit downtown as night fell. There was an hour and a half available before dinner time.
While it's the same basic route I usually follow it's amazing how different everything looks when the light outside drops and the lights inside come up.
The GH5 has very good image stabilization and I was able to handhold all my shots in a low range of shutter speeds. Mostly between 1/8th second and 1/60th of a second. Of course if stuff was moving during the exposures all bets were off. I set the camera to Auto ISO and set the top of the range to 3200. I shot raw and Jpeg. All of these are from the raw files.
I think the GH5 is trouble free right up past ISO 800 and very useable for photography right up to ISO 3200 as long as you are willing to get the exposures just right. If you like to underexpose and bring up your shadows in post (which I admit I do like to do) then you might want to cap the range at 1250 or 1600.
I shot most of the images with the lens set either wide open or one stop down at f2.0.
It was nice to be in cold air. It feels so different from my baked in impression of the city as being in a perpetual heat wave...
2 comments:
your last shot takes the cake Kirk
(BtW, i took your son's advice, and am limiting my use of ... )
Ditto on the last photo. Love the colors.
I've been shooting with my Olympus OMD2 for a couple years. I've used it at multiple events as well. Sometime sit can be really dark at venues so the micro 4/3 struggles in those settings. Nothing some good noise reduction can't handle.
As I walk around with a new Sony A7III full frame camera, I come to realize that shallow depth of field can be over rated. Micro 4/3 cameras are great at giving you more of the scene in focus at larger apertures. More depth of field can be especially cool for walkabout, found scenes.
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