manueljenkin
TPF Noob!
- Joined
- May 28, 2017
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- 19
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- Can others edit my Photos
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I am looking to buy a new camera, and I need help in choosing between Panasonic GH5, Olympus EM1 mkii (or EM5 mkii), and Fuji XT2 (or Xpro2). I have never owned any SLR cameras or any real pro level photo gear before. This is going to be my first high budget camera purchase. My noteworthy old cameras are Sony K810i phone, Sony DSC H50 point and shoot, Lumia 720, Lumia 920, and my current oneplus 3. But I know quite a bit in photography and with my mobiles, I generally prefer to use things in manual shutter speed (since lumia 720) and recently started using manual white balance on my oneplus 3 as well. And since they are phones with small sensors I try my best to keep iso at 100. I have fairly steady hands and can manage 4 second exposures on my lumia 920 and oneplus 3 handheld (both of them have image stabilization of some sort).
Now I'm looking to explore more into photography with some fairly sophisticated equipments. Over the past 6 months I have read and seen hundreds of reviews, articles and videos from sites like stevehuffphoto, photographyblog, david thorpe, etc and countless sample photos at flickr and other places. I have even learnt a bit of the engineering behind cameras and their optics and what are the compromises for each engineering decisions. Learnt about vignetting, fringing, their corrections, demosaicing, moire, even into MTF graphs and all those stuff. Know what makes a cine lens, what makes a macro lens. Also about the autofocus technologies and types. I kind of know what reviews to take seriously and what to take with a grain of salt. But the only thing is, I have never personally used any of these. I had been doing a similar thing with headphones last year. I research and learn about things for atleast 6 months before I purchase my products. Then I narrow down my feasible choices and ask for advice from others.
The reason why I mentioned these is that, I am an amateur photographer, and dont exactly know how each camera's result actually is, but I kind of know what things are like, what compromises are there in each and what I want. I am kind of PICKY ABOUT COLOURS and ergonomics. I kind of have a feel of how things would function. I know stuff about ISO, shutter speed, white balance (and also about aperture, though I never had an equipment where I could control it). My dream setup is a leica M10 with 28mm summilux, 50mm nocticron and 90mm summicron for photography and something else like A7S II for videography. Recently my dreams have shifted to the Fuji GFX50s and 32-64m f4+,110mm f2 lens. Dreams are nice lol, I wish they never come true so that I can save some money. Coming back to reality, I'm currently, and possibly for a long time to come, looking at GH5, EM1 mkii, or XT2 for my first good camera setup. I would love a camera that gives me lot of control over how I want it to shoot, but I also need the camera to capture good texture and colours. Or I should be able to extract from it in post.
Photography and videography are ART forms and art is subjective. There is no right or wrong, only preferences. I'll describe what I am planning to shoot, what I like and what I dislike so that I'll be able to find the tool that suits my needs.
I am going to shoot places, streets, people (some portraits in events, but mostly random people), dance and some small action. My preference is 65% photography and 35% videography. I would be willing to compromise on videography if photographic quality advantage of a camera are much higher but with compromise in video. I MIGHT be doing some short films and, small 5-10 minute videos like travelogues. I'll be recording dance sequences quite often as well. I am only looking to feed my creativity and not going to do any sort of paid professional work. I am NOT going to shoot marriages or such events, at best I'll shoot a few people at that time. So autofocus is not a major issue for me. Same is the case for extremely fast bursts. 5fps is plenty enough for anything that I might shoot and all three cameras well exceed that. And I mostly don't use flash anymore. I dont do vlogging, so I dont need continuous autofocus in video. Heck, I prefer to focus manually even on my phone. But programmed focus pulls in GH5 is something that I might quite use a lot. I'm mostly going to be shooting handheld (not really a gimbal or tripod guy), so image stabilization is welcome, but I can manage without it as well.
I am not very excited about one single parameter of an image. I like bokeh, but it is not the only thing that i'd be looking for. I love sharpness, but once again it is not the only thing I'd be looking for. If there is one thing I am freakish about, it is texture - the colour quality and how subtle colour transitions in skin, etc are captured. Texture is not just about colour, texture is a parameter that can be associated with black and white images as well. Texture conveys emotion. I love anything that conveys emotion. Being able to feel things as natural. I hate gaudy colours, the ones in which images look overly flashy (like as if a flash was fired up on them) and waxy texture. I want images to have colours that move from the subtlest of blues, greens, reds, pinks, browns to the deepest of them and not a single blob of thick colour splashed all over, especially in lips and clothes.
If that was very vauge, let me explain where you can spot that TEXTURE. It is visible in a lot of things. For photos of buildings and walls, they shouldn't look like someone used windows paint program and pushed some random colour onto a square block. There are subtle imperfections, and subtle colour changes. For a yellow wall, it is not always a constant yellow, it moves from very light yellow to light yellow back to very light yellow. And also the shadows which fall on certain places giving a slightly darker look there. I want my camera to capture and express these properly. Another place you can see this is in clothes. How well the camera captures subtle colour changes across the clothes, the wrinkles, etc and capturing the 3 dimensionality of it and make it feel lifelike. One more area is in hair. Being able to capture individual hair is resolution. But being able to capture the colour transitions from face to hair, the reflections bouncing off of it, etc are the ones that make an image feel pleasant. One of the standard tests for this is taking photos of flowers. Flowers have a lot of subtle transitions in their colours and texture that can test a camera. Cameras especially struggle with red tones, resulting in thick red all over making it unnatural. And there are patterns of rainbow like colours arranged manually or on kites/chairs,etc that can also be used to test it.
The other thing I really really want is a nice smooth transition from foreground to background. I dont want my photos to look like 3 or 4 planes of images layered together, in the name of 3d look. Instead I want layers to blend smoothly (and somewhat softly). Good colour texture also helps in a smooth transition from foreground to background. And being able to capture all sort of subtle reflections and colour changes at the edges off face/hair and the reflections off glasses and liquids that contribute to the 3 dimensional feeling. And I hate oversharpened images that remove all sort of 3 dimensionality from the image. Quite often I have seen awesome images spoiled by disturbances in the background caused by bad colour rendition in those places. Such a thing distracts our eyes from the subject. I would be happy to give up resolution and sharpness for texture and colour.
There are two types of colours I like. My SECOND preference is a cinematic, film/painting like look - the somewhat low contrast, slightly soft, matte look but colorful and retaining the texture and emotion. My gripe with this look is that it doesn't look lively enough. Still i find it more pleasing than and oversaturated, overcontrasty gaudy look, so I'll be happy with this. I adore film like filters, but not my first priority. My FIRST preference is the right amount of pop and glossy look, but it shouldn't go overbearing, in which case it will become my worst preferred look. I know this type of colour is not accurate, but for me the perfect balance of being close to the actual scene but also having a mild flavourish vibe and looking more modern and dynamic. Leicas, Canons and Fujis achieve this awesome balance of pop and contrast without going too far and overbearing. In both cases, what I want is a very colourful picture that doesn't look gaudy. I am not a fan of the national geographic like look with contrasty browns and greens, but I dont hate them either - in some cases they work and I like the look, but it is my least preferred tone on most cases.
I really really love images from film cameras, especially the medium format ones. The Mamiya 7 (or 7 II), Fuji GF670, Leica M3 and Plaubel Makina 670. I really love the Makina and Fuji for their foldable form factor, but Fuji has been jacking up GF670 prices lately, and I think it was quite a bit overpriced to begin with. Makina is more expensive, but has a wider aperture lens. Below are some awesome film images showing their texture retaining capability. You can easily see it in the walls, the patterns, the shadows and the reflections and how they are able to capture all those details with a natural appeal.
GF670-NO.45
Trentemoult-II
Trentemoult-V
Trentemoult-III
Good bye snow plow
Within Without
BALI, Nusa Pendia
Ektar 100
Ektar 100
47740006
Some awesome images of people
GF670+NO.46
Ridge way
ektar 100
ektar 100
Some black and white images
Ema left hanging up at the shrine
XP2400MAY16-2
Corey at Filoli
And a video of Leica M3 (all images above were from medium formats)
I love film images but not really because of the vintage look or anything. I do love the film look, but the primary reason is becasue they capture texture and subtle imperfections so well. There is almost no pixel in the scanned film image that is in a confused state. You can't say that off a image from a digital camera. There is something special to those film images, I find them very resolving in colour space. The grain on them, if any is very pleasing to look. Sometimes this grain adds imperfections, but still the images feel great. And they have practically almost infinite resolution. And if I want black and white, I can just switch to black and white film roll and get the full benefit of using black and white, the higher sensitivity, lesser artefacts. Analog colours aren't perfect. For example I can never get a very modern looking image like the one below on an analog camera. But what they have in exchange is that feel and texture when I want them, especially for portraits and special moments in life. That lack of digtal issues that benefit certain scenarios. And not to mention, the medium format film cameras are much more compact and portable than their digital counterparts.
http://static.boredpanda.com/blog/w...rld-Photography-Awards-58c68f7e4f5cb__880.jpg
There are limitations, but I actually love these limitations as they would actually force me to alter more things than just doing some extra setting in the camera, and since I had been shooting with limited gear I don't think I'd have that much of a problem. Digital images are great and gives you lot of options in post. But they don't always have that feel. There are quite a lot of instances where I can feel the limitations of demosaicing and digital noise and other digital issues. Film cameras do have their own drawbacks, I can't take shots whenever I like, colour grading options is very less and I won't be able to get that modern saturated contrasty look when I want. And I can never think of shooting videos with film. So they will never be my primary camera. But I'd love to own a film photo camera at some point in time as a secondary camera for those really special shots that I don't think I'd get enough of on a digital camera, and unlike M10 or GFX50s, I actually intend to buy them someday.
Someday... Until then, the next best option for me is using filters on the digital camera I would buy when I desire that feel. While they dont eliminate the digital problems, they atleast can give me the film image feel which I also love at times.
Now the reason I explained my love for film cameras is because I wanted to convey what things I love and feel in photography. Here are examples of how I like skintones and lipsticks to be portrayed. These images taken on a leica is my most favourite rendition of skin tones and lipstics, walls and cloth texture. The images are a combination of different colour profiles, but one thing they all have in common is that they have awesome texture and convey a lot of emotion.
Erfrischung
http://www.stevehuffphoto.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/dow8.jpg
http://www.stevehuffphoto.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/dow10.jpg
http://www.stevehuffphoto.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/dow12.jpg
http://www.stevehuffphoto.com/2015/...summilux-f1-4-lens-review-bykristian-dowling/
f/0.95 Blütentraum
L1000258
der sprung.
For video, I am not a fan of 24fps. The only reason I might take at 24fps, is to put a 25% speed up and render at 30fps. I am actually a fan of 60fps since I find it smooth and fluid (If you game a lot, you can understand this), and this is the primary reason why I am looking at GH5. Dance/action feels a lot more lively and same is the case when shooting natural scenery and flowing fluids. I am okay with 30fps because there are technical difficulties in 60fps especially given that under low light, getting good 60fps video might be difficult as well. It's just that I find 60fps far more lively and much better for recording and playing back dance/action videos. So I'd really love to have high frame rate options but I can compromise if required. But one thing that I really really hate is choppy/jerky footage rising due to using a shutter angle significantly less than 180 degrees. Literally gives me headaches. There is no continuity, looks like individual frames and not a continous action.
Now I'm looking to explore more into photography with some fairly sophisticated equipments. Over the past 6 months I have read and seen hundreds of reviews, articles and videos from sites like stevehuffphoto, photographyblog, david thorpe, etc and countless sample photos at flickr and other places. I have even learnt a bit of the engineering behind cameras and their optics and what are the compromises for each engineering decisions. Learnt about vignetting, fringing, their corrections, demosaicing, moire, even into MTF graphs and all those stuff. Know what makes a cine lens, what makes a macro lens. Also about the autofocus technologies and types. I kind of know what reviews to take seriously and what to take with a grain of salt. But the only thing is, I have never personally used any of these. I had been doing a similar thing with headphones last year. I research and learn about things for atleast 6 months before I purchase my products. Then I narrow down my feasible choices and ask for advice from others.
The reason why I mentioned these is that, I am an amateur photographer, and dont exactly know how each camera's result actually is, but I kind of know what things are like, what compromises are there in each and what I want. I am kind of PICKY ABOUT COLOURS and ergonomics. I kind of have a feel of how things would function. I know stuff about ISO, shutter speed, white balance (and also about aperture, though I never had an equipment where I could control it). My dream setup is a leica M10 with 28mm summilux, 50mm nocticron and 90mm summicron for photography and something else like A7S II for videography. Recently my dreams have shifted to the Fuji GFX50s and 32-64m f4+,110mm f2 lens. Dreams are nice lol, I wish they never come true so that I can save some money. Coming back to reality, I'm currently, and possibly for a long time to come, looking at GH5, EM1 mkii, or XT2 for my first good camera setup. I would love a camera that gives me lot of control over how I want it to shoot, but I also need the camera to capture good texture and colours. Or I should be able to extract from it in post.
Photography and videography are ART forms and art is subjective. There is no right or wrong, only preferences. I'll describe what I am planning to shoot, what I like and what I dislike so that I'll be able to find the tool that suits my needs.
I am going to shoot places, streets, people (some portraits in events, but mostly random people), dance and some small action. My preference is 65% photography and 35% videography. I would be willing to compromise on videography if photographic quality advantage of a camera are much higher but with compromise in video. I MIGHT be doing some short films and, small 5-10 minute videos like travelogues. I'll be recording dance sequences quite often as well. I am only looking to feed my creativity and not going to do any sort of paid professional work. I am NOT going to shoot marriages or such events, at best I'll shoot a few people at that time. So autofocus is not a major issue for me. Same is the case for extremely fast bursts. 5fps is plenty enough for anything that I might shoot and all three cameras well exceed that. And I mostly don't use flash anymore. I dont do vlogging, so I dont need continuous autofocus in video. Heck, I prefer to focus manually even on my phone. But programmed focus pulls in GH5 is something that I might quite use a lot. I'm mostly going to be shooting handheld (not really a gimbal or tripod guy), so image stabilization is welcome, but I can manage without it as well.
I am not very excited about one single parameter of an image. I like bokeh, but it is not the only thing that i'd be looking for. I love sharpness, but once again it is not the only thing I'd be looking for. If there is one thing I am freakish about, it is texture - the colour quality and how subtle colour transitions in skin, etc are captured. Texture is not just about colour, texture is a parameter that can be associated with black and white images as well. Texture conveys emotion. I love anything that conveys emotion. Being able to feel things as natural. I hate gaudy colours, the ones in which images look overly flashy (like as if a flash was fired up on them) and waxy texture. I want images to have colours that move from the subtlest of blues, greens, reds, pinks, browns to the deepest of them and not a single blob of thick colour splashed all over, especially in lips and clothes.
If that was very vauge, let me explain where you can spot that TEXTURE. It is visible in a lot of things. For photos of buildings and walls, they shouldn't look like someone used windows paint program and pushed some random colour onto a square block. There are subtle imperfections, and subtle colour changes. For a yellow wall, it is not always a constant yellow, it moves from very light yellow to light yellow back to very light yellow. And also the shadows which fall on certain places giving a slightly darker look there. I want my camera to capture and express these properly. Another place you can see this is in clothes. How well the camera captures subtle colour changes across the clothes, the wrinkles, etc and capturing the 3 dimensionality of it and make it feel lifelike. One more area is in hair. Being able to capture individual hair is resolution. But being able to capture the colour transitions from face to hair, the reflections bouncing off of it, etc are the ones that make an image feel pleasant. One of the standard tests for this is taking photos of flowers. Flowers have a lot of subtle transitions in their colours and texture that can test a camera. Cameras especially struggle with red tones, resulting in thick red all over making it unnatural. And there are patterns of rainbow like colours arranged manually or on kites/chairs,etc that can also be used to test it.
The other thing I really really want is a nice smooth transition from foreground to background. I dont want my photos to look like 3 or 4 planes of images layered together, in the name of 3d look. Instead I want layers to blend smoothly (and somewhat softly). Good colour texture also helps in a smooth transition from foreground to background. And being able to capture all sort of subtle reflections and colour changes at the edges off face/hair and the reflections off glasses and liquids that contribute to the 3 dimensional feeling. And I hate oversharpened images that remove all sort of 3 dimensionality from the image. Quite often I have seen awesome images spoiled by disturbances in the background caused by bad colour rendition in those places. Such a thing distracts our eyes from the subject. I would be happy to give up resolution and sharpness for texture and colour.
There are two types of colours I like. My SECOND preference is a cinematic, film/painting like look - the somewhat low contrast, slightly soft, matte look but colorful and retaining the texture and emotion. My gripe with this look is that it doesn't look lively enough. Still i find it more pleasing than and oversaturated, overcontrasty gaudy look, so I'll be happy with this. I adore film like filters, but not my first priority. My FIRST preference is the right amount of pop and glossy look, but it shouldn't go overbearing, in which case it will become my worst preferred look. I know this type of colour is not accurate, but for me the perfect balance of being close to the actual scene but also having a mild flavourish vibe and looking more modern and dynamic. Leicas, Canons and Fujis achieve this awesome balance of pop and contrast without going too far and overbearing. In both cases, what I want is a very colourful picture that doesn't look gaudy. I am not a fan of the national geographic like look with contrasty browns and greens, but I dont hate them either - in some cases they work and I like the look, but it is my least preferred tone on most cases.
I really really love images from film cameras, especially the medium format ones. The Mamiya 7 (or 7 II), Fuji GF670, Leica M3 and Plaubel Makina 670. I really love the Makina and Fuji for their foldable form factor, but Fuji has been jacking up GF670 prices lately, and I think it was quite a bit overpriced to begin with. Makina is more expensive, but has a wider aperture lens. Below are some awesome film images showing their texture retaining capability. You can easily see it in the walls, the patterns, the shadows and the reflections and how they are able to capture all those details with a natural appeal.
GF670-NO.45
Trentemoult-II
Trentemoult-V
Trentemoult-III
Good bye snow plow
Within Without
BALI, Nusa Pendia
Ektar 100
Ektar 100
47740006
Some awesome images of people
GF670+NO.46
Ridge way
ektar 100
ektar 100
Some black and white images
Ema left hanging up at the shrine
XP2400MAY16-2
Corey at Filoli
And a video of Leica M3 (all images above were from medium formats)
I love film images but not really because of the vintage look or anything. I do love the film look, but the primary reason is becasue they capture texture and subtle imperfections so well. There is almost no pixel in the scanned film image that is in a confused state. You can't say that off a image from a digital camera. There is something special to those film images, I find them very resolving in colour space. The grain on them, if any is very pleasing to look. Sometimes this grain adds imperfections, but still the images feel great. And they have practically almost infinite resolution. And if I want black and white, I can just switch to black and white film roll and get the full benefit of using black and white, the higher sensitivity, lesser artefacts. Analog colours aren't perfect. For example I can never get a very modern looking image like the one below on an analog camera. But what they have in exchange is that feel and texture when I want them, especially for portraits and special moments in life. That lack of digtal issues that benefit certain scenarios. And not to mention, the medium format film cameras are much more compact and portable than their digital counterparts.
http://static.boredpanda.com/blog/w...rld-Photography-Awards-58c68f7e4f5cb__880.jpg
There are limitations, but I actually love these limitations as they would actually force me to alter more things than just doing some extra setting in the camera, and since I had been shooting with limited gear I don't think I'd have that much of a problem. Digital images are great and gives you lot of options in post. But they don't always have that feel. There are quite a lot of instances where I can feel the limitations of demosaicing and digital noise and other digital issues. Film cameras do have their own drawbacks, I can't take shots whenever I like, colour grading options is very less and I won't be able to get that modern saturated contrasty look when I want. And I can never think of shooting videos with film. So they will never be my primary camera. But I'd love to own a film photo camera at some point in time as a secondary camera for those really special shots that I don't think I'd get enough of on a digital camera, and unlike M10 or GFX50s, I actually intend to buy them someday.
Someday... Until then, the next best option for me is using filters on the digital camera I would buy when I desire that feel. While they dont eliminate the digital problems, they atleast can give me the film image feel which I also love at times.
Now the reason I explained my love for film cameras is because I wanted to convey what things I love and feel in photography. Here are examples of how I like skintones and lipsticks to be portrayed. These images taken on a leica is my most favourite rendition of skin tones and lipstics, walls and cloth texture. The images are a combination of different colour profiles, but one thing they all have in common is that they have awesome texture and convey a lot of emotion.
Erfrischung
http://www.stevehuffphoto.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/dow8.jpg
http://www.stevehuffphoto.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/dow10.jpg
http://www.stevehuffphoto.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/dow12.jpg
http://www.stevehuffphoto.com/2015/...summilux-f1-4-lens-review-bykristian-dowling/
f/0.95 Blütentraum
L1000258
der sprung.
For video, I am not a fan of 24fps. The only reason I might take at 24fps, is to put a 25% speed up and render at 30fps. I am actually a fan of 60fps since I find it smooth and fluid (If you game a lot, you can understand this), and this is the primary reason why I am looking at GH5. Dance/action feels a lot more lively and same is the case when shooting natural scenery and flowing fluids. I am okay with 30fps because there are technical difficulties in 60fps especially given that under low light, getting good 60fps video might be difficult as well. It's just that I find 60fps far more lively and much better for recording and playing back dance/action videos. So I'd really love to have high frame rate options but I can compromise if required. But one thing that I really really hate is choppy/jerky footage rising due to using a shutter angle significantly less than 180 degrees. Literally gives me headaches. There is no continuity, looks like individual frames and not a continous action.
I love slow motions as well. But my first priority in video will always be colour and texture and conveyance of emotion. Fast framerates are just one of the tools to convey emotion. I want good rolling shutter performance for taking certain actions and panning. I might run with the camera, jump, pan and roll when taking videos once in a while, and most stuff that I take would he shot handheld. Another thing I hate is jellows, unnatural motion blur and other jerkiness caused by electronic stabilization, pixel binning or interlacing.
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