A quick post about the nuts and bolts of yesterday's shoot. How good is a used, $500 all-in-one camera?

this business was operating in Austin for over 50 years.

It is now permanently closed. 

Hi Everyone. We're in high spirits here as I've devised a way to have coffee with a friend-at-a-time. Trianon Coffee is open for take out and across the parking lot is a long, unused, tree shaded line of picnic tables. We get our individual coffees and then head to the table. First arrival stakes out the prime position and then "guest" gets to pick his choice of seating locations in the 8-10 foot range. It's outdoors, which is healthier, and the space is currently not used by anyone else. I loved being able to sit and try to sort out the world's problems together with my good friend, James, today. Made me feel like we're making some progress... Masks at the ready and bottles of hand sanitizer spray in shirt pockets. 

Yesterday I had an absolutely delightful time documenting fresh art in the downtown area. Go see yesterday's post if you haven't already. Some of the graffiti and new art is wonderful.

I wanted to write a quick post today to talk about the camera I decided to use yesterday. It felt like a nutty kind of selection but I think it was the perfect camera for that particular project. The color was right on the money and the lens/sensor combo was plenty sharp. The camera I took was the recently acquired Panasonic FZ2500. I decided on it because it's a convenient video tool and has built-in neutral density filters. I ended up not shooting any video but I did use the 1/4 ND in some sun-drenched locations. If you take a look at those photos and the ones here you'll see that the camera and lens perform very, very well. No problems with any lack of sharpness or detail. 

The camera was purchased used from the folks at Precision Camera, here in Austin, for about $500. It came to me in mint condition and it's as good as I remember. (I owned one for about a year; purchased when they first hit the market some three or four years ago). 

There is an oft-repeated rumor that the camera model has a soft lens, particularly at the long end, so I was anxious to test that out for myself on this unit. I shot mostly wide open yesterday and depended on neutral density and high shutter speeds to compensate. I did this for two reasons: 1. With a small, high density sensor, the wider the aperture the less sharpness gets robbed due to diffraction (bending light rays is mind bending...) and, 2. If the lens has an issue with low sharpness or low detail that should make itself known most obviously at the wide open aperture where lenses are less well corrected. 

You can look for yourself by clicking on these images and you'll see what I saw at 3200 pixels wide. There may be some mushiness introduced by Blogger Compression but I don't think it's that much. 

Different cameras do different things well and I think this camera does video well and also has a great zoom range; in fact, some of the images are shot from across a four lane street --- but I can't tell in the finals. At a certain point you'll have to pay more attention to what I write about sharpness here than what you might see on your monitors or phones just because it's different when you can compare and see stuff at full resolution on a 5K monitor. For $500 this camera is, to me, a steal. Never should have sold the last one. YMMV.

An Austin favorite for decades, now also out of business. 

Just settling in for a week of writing proposals.

Helped Belinda paint the back porch last week. Love the new look.

Adirondack chairs for the back yard now arrived and thoroughly enjoyed. 

No new cameras to write about. Oh well. No real loss. 

Why my resurgent interest in the lowly Panasonic FZ2500? Interesting that you should ask...

Dramatic portrait of the FZ2500 taken with Sigma fp at 1/6th of a second...

I have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to video capable cameras with which to shoot; or so it would seem. There are two Panasonic S1's in easy reach. Each has been upgraded with the magic firmware that yields in-camera 10 bit, 4:2:2 capture and V-Log. On the desk in front of me is the Sigma fp which is capable of shooting raw video as well as a long list of high data rate, .Mov files in every configuration you might want. There are Sigma Art lenses and Lumix S Pro lenses littering every flat surface in the studio as well. So why would I want to buy another copy of a camera I owned three years ago, made mainly of plastic, and readily available, used, for around $500?

There is actually a very straightforward answer. It lies in the fact that all the cameras I mentioned previous to the FZ2500 are made to work as cinema cameras. Tools that are engineered to give the very best image quality possible and yet they require a lot of "add-ons" to make them more functional for ENG work (ENG= electronic news gathering, or, stated another way = documentary work without a crew). 

If I want to shoot on the fly interviews on the streets in downtown with, say, a Lumix S1 I'll need to add an assortment of neutral density filters to put on the front of the lens. And I may need several different lenses depending on the subject matter I'm going after. The larger sensor in that camera means I'll need to be extra careful to make sure I've nailed focus because the depth of field can be quite small. And, even though that camera has very good image stabilization it's not in the same class as the FZ2500 because the smaller sensor camera has....a smaller and more controllable sensor. Bring a tripod or a monopod. And then bring a permit....

The Sigma might be an even higher image quality machine but to use it I'll need to carefully manually focus, I'll need an outboard SSD drive to keep up with the data rate of the raw files and, since the camera has neither image stabilization nor neutral density filters built in, we'll have to bring a big tripod and more filters. 

If I want to go out as bare-naked, equipment-wise, as possible I want something that works like a good, old fashioned camcorder. That means I want a package that can be handled in the street by one person. It needs to have a wide ranging zoom lens. It should shoot very, very high quality 1080p in an All-Intra codec, as well as offering full UHD and even Cinema 4K. I'll need peaking and zebras. I want clean microphone inputs, and I very much want the camera to have flexible, built-in neutral density filters. Add to all that good face detect AF and a long run time and you've put together a street ready video camera that can handle a very wide range of subjects. All for (used) around $500. 

Want to use it with a clean output to send less compressed video to an external video recorder/monitor, like an Atomos? No problem. The camera will output up to 4K in 10 bit 4:2:2. Want to shoot an interview in front of a computer monitor or in a situation lit by flickering light sources. Yeah. It's got variable frame rates galore. 

The real question, if you often want to shoot seat of the pants video, on the fly, is....why would you not want to pick up one at a bargain basement price?

Does this mean I'll abandon the above mentioned, full frame cameras? Heavens no! The files out of them look so great and the ability to use a wide range of fast, best in the market lenses gives me so much more image control. The audio adapter for the S1 cameras sounds great. The full frame image is a  whole different aesthetic. The 85mm f1.4, wide open, is magic on the S1 and the Sigma fp. But they work both best on a tripod or slider or jib. They work best when you can take your time and set them optimally, manually and repeatably. 

No, the FZ2500 is for all the other times. The handheld stuff. The "Quick! Can you capture that?" And for those situations when nothing will beat being able to reach in with a 450mm lens and get the shot.

I mean, since you were asking. 

Kudos to M.J. today. I never thought anyone could use over a thousand words to say, "Eat your broccoli. it's good for you." And I never imagined that, if someone did write that much to say so little, that I would have read every word. I wouldn't enlist him as my nutritionist but Man, can that guy write!!!