What do we think about G9's, brand new, at $899? I think Panasonic is targeting me....
What do we think about G9's, brand new, at $899? I think Panasonic is targeting me....
I thought these tulips looked nice sitting on the dining room table next to the large glass doors to the garden. I was playing around with one of my older, Olympus Pen FT lenses and thought I'd see how it worked on the Panasonic GH5ii. The lens was set at f2.0 and I used the camera's aperture priority setting. The file might have been more flexible if I'd shot in raw but in this instance Jpeg was the recipe of the day.
I like to have flowers around the house. There's always something to photograph...
The lens was the Pen FT 40mm f1.4 for the original half frame cameras. I think it's a very nice lens. Especially for portraits.
A variation:
I had two video cameras set up and I was just marking time before the start of a concert. There would be a rehearsal prior. This was the first of four musicians to show up and to pass the time I grabbed the camera I wasn't using for video and snapped a few pix. I think the Leica SL2 and the Leica 24-90mm do work together to create a nice sense of depth and structure to an image. Or maybe it's just the placebo effect of spending too much money on gear.
I was looking for an older photograph that I wanted to send to an art director who works in an ad agency in San Antonio. We'd been e-mailing back and forth about a project and I remembered an image of a woman working in an office that more or less encapsulated the look and feel that I was trying to steer him towards in a contemporary project. I found the image but I also stumbled across this image from about a decade ago. If you compare it with images from a similar viewpoint today you'd find that this image is missing three or four (or more) tall buildings.
It was taken with a Sony RX10-2. A camera with a one inch sensor and a lens that went from 24-200mm. Just right, I think. The f-stop for this photo was 6 and the focal length for the shot was 8.8mm. The shutter speed was 1/125th of a second.
It's not a particularly clever shot but it does show off what smaller sensor cameras can do well. The can include huge swaths of a scene in sharp focus. The depth of field is different from current tastes.
I walk through this area frequently and seeing this image from a long time ago brings me back to how fresh this particular retail development (a re-use of a retired electric generating plant) looked and felt at the time. And how much fun it was to document progress in the downtown Austin area.
I haven't seen any announcements or rumors that would lead me to believe that Sony is on the cusp of introducing a new model in the RX10 series and I think that's too bad. The final one, as of now, is the RX10-IV and it's pretty darn good. It's got an enormous range of angles of view, fast AF, great color, good 4K video and also good image stabilization.
The retail price is still around $1600 for the camera and to my mind you are getting an amazingly good lens; it may be the selling point of the whole package. If the camera used a bigger battery it would be close to perfect for those photographers and videographers who really aren't smitten by super thin slivers of sharp focus. This camera trades "bokeh" for information.
I'll be a bit sad when the RX10-4 is finally discontinued. For some people it's the perfect imaging solution.
Just a quick walk down memory lane.
Over the weekend I grappled with the idea of picking up a used Olympus EM-1X at a low, used price. I looked at a bunch of reviews and they tossed cold water on the idea not because of the quality of images that one could get from the camera but because both the EVF and the rear screen of the camera are so...unappealing. The EVF in particular is very old tech and uses an LCD screen instead of the mostly current OLED screens. The consensus is that the view through the viewfinder is quite flat and that the shadow areas are milky and veiled. I may be a bit eccentric but I still like a good finder image much more that I like a nasty one.
I'm glad I considered the EM-1X though because it convinced me to chalk it off the list in perpetuity and that's probably a good thing.
But in the process I started pulling up images I'd made with G9s almost four years ago. And I still find them to be among the best images I've made. Not necessarily because the sensor is special (it's not) or because the lenses are magical (they are not) but because it's a camera and a system that just gets out of the way. I found myself consistently not concerned with the well-being of the cameras because I knew I had a backup in the bag and that if a camera met its demise via my neglect it would be inexpensive and easy to replace. It's the same kind of transparency you can get from a good point and shoot camera if you let your mind go there. Insouciance maybe. Diffidence to a certain extent. Since the camera is "nothing special" it becomes incumbent on the operator to actually supply whatever magic might be in the resulting photograph. And knowing that the camera is no "silver bullet" means less leaning on instruments and more time and energy working on the images themselves. Does that make sense? I think it does.
The image above came from an early morning photography project at a rural construction site. I believe the company the subject worked for was in the process of making a.....lake. It was a big project but my brief had nothing to do with the actual construction and everything to do with the people who supervise and do the work. I'd flown into some town (no longer remember which) around 1 a.m. that morning, grabbed a rental car and some quick sleep and then drove a couple hours to be in place when the half dozen or so people on my shoot list showed up. Since the overall job called for me to be in nearly 30 locations over the course of a couple weeks it was important to me that the cameras travelled well. That meant safety for the gear but a small enough complete package that would fit anywhere. Under any airline seat. In any overhead compartment.
If you've read the blog over time you'll know I have a thing about back up gear. Redundant equipment. Fault tolerant inventory. It was no different on this trip. My small backpack contained two identical G9 bodies and two lenses that both covered the focal lengths that were most critical to me; a 12-100mm lens and also a 12-60mm lens. In my mind, at the time, they were interchangeable tools and one accompanied the other in case of a singular catastrophic failure not because one had different visual properties than the other. There were also plenty of batteries for the cameras as well as some wider and weirder lenses; just for fun.
When I look at images from 2018, either from Iceland or from the P&J shoots out on locations, even in 2022 I don't see many (if any) faults. The files seem to have good dynamic range, great flesh tones, very good sharpness and everything else that we use as a measure of image quality. The only thing that's "missing" is sheer resolution. The G9 is a 20 megapixel camera.
If you are doing an art project where you'll be doing profound manipulations to the images and then outputting at very large print sizes I can see that advantages of a 50 or 60 megapixel camera but the reality for most of my commercial jobs is that the images "might" get used as a full page or double truck print asset in a brochure, and 20 megapixels is fine for that, but mostly the images will be used as content on websites and in email marketing. All well within the realm of "no problem" for almost any modern camera.
Will I now rush out and buy yet another G9? Probably not. I understand that there is a certain placebo effect that goes along with successful projects and the success, while real, might not be assignable to something as simple as the right camera. It could have been my motivation at the time, my insertion into new and interesting environments with new people. It could have been all down to the general positivity of the times for me. Or just having a fun, new challenge.
I don't think the G9 will give me files that are any better than those I can get from the GH6 and I can't think of a feature that the G9 delivers that the GH6 doesn't match or exceed.
Some have written to say that the G9 is old tech and that they are pretty sure the sensor being used in the GH6 will find itself integrated into an upcoming G10 model. But that's really not the point of our general attraction to the G9 right now. The real attraction is the combination of that camera being a proven commodity, a workhorse, a highly reliable tool, a full featured, modern camera and being offered at the low, low price point.
I too am almost certain that a G10 or similar camera is on the horizon (far horizon or close? I don't know) but I am always cynical that camera makers will figure out how to make what was a great camera worse in a newer model because they find ways to make it cheaper and less rugged while goosing up sales with better specsmanship. They'll bend to pressure to make the new model smaller or lighter and in that quest will also make the battery smaller and ever more incompatible. I don't know that this is a certain pathway but consumer marketing can be a nasty brew of giving people mostly what they think they want even if it is to their own detriment. Right?
I finished up two environmental portraits today both shot at ISO 800 with the GH6. The files look good. A bit more "computational" than the old G9 files. But that's only when I'm peaking at 100%. But still, I think there's a lot to be said for less computer assistance and more attraction to less processed and more authentic files. And that keeps the G9 in the running. At least for now.
First I have to thank DP Review for alerting me to the fact that Leica has released firmware 4.0 for the Leica SL2. They've also released new firmware for the SL2S but I don't own one of those so it's not really on my radar.
Then I have to take a poke at DP Review and Leica USA for completely fumbling the link that actually gets one to the new firmware. The link at DPR takes one to the USA site's Italian .PDF about the firmware but has no clickable link to actually access the firmware. None. Not at all. You are welcome to download the Italian language .PDF and read a dozen pages of fun details but it won't get you any closer to upgrading your camera. I would think a big, global site would at least click on the link they are sharing to make sure it works. This applies to either/both DPR and LeicaUSA.
The solution is to track down Leica's international site and go straight to the support page. They actually make the upgrade quick and easy to find.
The download is straightforward and the installation is quick. All the usual caveats apply: fully charged battery, clean, formatted SD card, no monkeying with buttons during the process.
The firmware tightens integration between the camera and L mount lenses from companies other than Leica. It adds layers of controls to face detect AF. And allows for greater customization of some of the buttons and wheels.
I like firmware updates. They are generally always things that improve either image quality or operational flexibility. Or both.
We're all set and ready here.
Wanna go straight to the source and start your download? Here's a good link: