Nature and Photography

Reports from the Wild

Posted on May 15, 2013 by Rob Sheppard

Finally, my fully interactive and multimedia photo e-book, Reports from the Wild, for the iPad is out and available. And it will only cost you $2.99! You can find it here = Reports from the Wild - Rob Sheppard.

This truly has been a journey, and one that has helped me grow as a photographer, naturalist, writer and communicator. Plus, I had to learn a lot about photo e-books along the way. I know that not all of you have iPads, and one thing on my list of projects to do is to create a pdf version of Reports. But I have not been in a hurry to do that yet because then I lose all of the interactivity, and that is one thing that makes working with a tablet like the iPad so cool.

I really believe that there is much potential for photographers with these devices and they are worth investing in as a way of learning about the future as well as simply giving you a great way to display your photos (and videos). The iPad does a wonderful job in showing off photography and video – I believe it is one of the best ways we have today of sharing our photos in a high-quality, easily accessed way.

The publishing industry today, from books to publications, has become a stressed industry that struggles with the new realities of today's digital and Internet connected world. I think that photo e-books offer photographers a way to deal with these new realities in a positive and exciting way. You have total control over your photography, how it is displayed, how it is presented with text, interactivity and multimedia. And this type of book is available for anyone, from the seasoned pro to an amateur who simply wants to make a photo book for his or her family.

This is not to say there are not challenges for this type of project, too. I often use the analogy of the time when cars first appeared in our country. As cars appeared, they needed gas stations. But investors didn't want to build gas stations until there were enough cars. And people didn't want to buy cars until they were sure they could get gas. Today, photographers don't want to create photo e-books until they are sure enough people will buy them. And the public is slow to buy them because there aren't enough yet to reach a "tipping point" for them to think about photo e-books and tablets. They don't know about them. (This is why I ask a favor of you if you get Reports from the Wild – please write a review on the iTunes iBookstore page for my book and let others know about it at your photo club, in Facebook and so forth.)

I did Reports with iBooks Author. This is a really excellent program for photographers. It is not hard to learn and all of the cool things that are possible with a multimedia, interactive e-book can be done largely by clicking and dragging. Want a photo on the page? Drag an image file from Finder onto the page, drag the photo into place and click and drag edges and corners to size. Text automatically wraps around it.

iBooks Author is template based which means when you choose a design for your e-book, you don't have to think about font selection, styles for captions and so forth. It is all there for you, nicely designed. Yet, this is not a fixed option – you can modify any template however you want. You can totally make a book YOUR book, yet you are not having to start from scratch.

Now some of you may have a PC. iBooks Author only works on a Mac. However, you could buy a Mac Mini for less than $600 (and use your existing keyboard and screen), then download the iBooks Author software for free. That is less than buying any other option, such as InDesign (that will set you back about $700), plus the learning curve is reasonable (InDesign has a big learning curve and no templates). How often do photographers buy an accessory such as a lens for more than $600? And that won't give them as much pleasure as doing their own photo e-books!

You can do a simple pdf photo e-book quickly and easily in iBooks Author that you can make available to anyone with a computer or tablet. This can be a good way to start if you don't want to deal with interactivity at first. I have done this for classes where I have students select a group of photos, compose a short text, then we quickly put together a simple pdf book for everyone to take with them. We are going to do this at the California Photo Festival this fall, too.

Posted in Books, iBooks, Nature photography, Photo e-books | Tagged iBooks, iPad, photo e-books | 13 Comments

Using Black-and-White for Better Color

Posted on May 8, 2013 by Rob Sheppard

These two images show a before and after using a technique that combines black-and-white with color for better contrast and color in a color photo.

This past weekend I was doing some presentations at the Big Photo Show in Los Angeles. Lee Varis was also there doing presentations and he spent a little time talking about his workflow with black-and-white images affecting how a color image was adjusted. That reminded me how often I do this and that I had promised to talk about it here, but I had not done it yet! Lee uses more complex steps than I do, so check out his website if you are interested in that (10-Channel Workflow). My workflow is pretty simple.

Combining black-and-white with color is not some magic trick that will work with every photo. But it is a great tool to understand and try at times. You need to have a program that uses layers – either Photoshop or Photoshop Elements works fine (the most recent versions of Photoshop Elements work great). You also need to be able to work on an image so that you have a color and black-and-white version. Lightroom does that job for me. Here are the steps using Lightroom:

1. Process your photo in to get a quality color image – do the important work of setting blacks, checking whites and adjusting midtones, as well as correcting color and doing any needed local adjustments.

2a. Next you need a quality black-and-white image. One way to do that is to make a virtual copy of your color image (right click on the photo and you will see this option). Make that virtual copy your black-and-white image, working on it with the Black-and-White panel. Remember that good black-and-white is not simply removing color. Use the sliders in the panel to lighten and darken colors as they change to shades of gray. Create contrast to define the black-and-white image.

2b. Another way to get a quality black-and-white image is to use Nik Software Silver Efex Pro 2 (my preferred method). Right click on the color photo for a menu, go to Edit In and choose Silver Efex Pro 2. Allow Lightroom to create a new copy of the photo and process it as it is sent to the black-and-white software. In Silver Efex Pro 2, it is very important that you try the Color Filters at the right to find the best contrast for the photo. Also use the Amplify Blacks and Amplify Whites sliders as appropriate. Be sure to increase the Structure slider to enhance detail, and add control points as needed to balance tonalities in the photo.

3. Select both the color and black-and-white photos in the Filmstrip (click on one then Cmd or Ctrl click the other).

4. Send the images to Photoshop (or Photoshop Elements). Right click on either photo to get a menu. Go to Edit In and choose your Photoshop program (if you have Photoshop, you can also choose Open as Layers in Photoshop). You may need to do this twice, once for each photo.

Now you move to Photoshop.

5. You need a layered file with the black-and-white photo over the color. If you chose Open as Layers, you will have one layered file. Otherwise you need to choose the Move tool, hold down the shift key, then click and drag the black-and-white layer on top of the other (if you keep the shift key depressed until after you release the mouse button, the two images will line up as the layers). If these two photos first show up as tabs rather than separate, floating photos, drag the selected photo up to the tab for the other image until it displays, then down onto the photo. In either case, it is important that your cursor moves all the way onto the second image or else you will get a warning that you can’t do what you wanted to do.

(Technically, you can have either the black-and-white or color image as the top layer, but the steps are slightly different, so I am keeping it simple by saying to put the black-and-white photo on top.)

6. Change the layer blending mode. Go to the layer blending modes at the top left of the layers palette. This will say “Normal” by default. Click on the word, Normal, then a big menu appears. Go down to the bottom and click on Luminosity. This makes the color image take on the “luminosity” or brightness range of the black-and-white photo.

The results will really vary depending on the combination of black-and-white and color. Sometimes the results are perfect right away, or with just a little tweaking of the effect by changing the opacity of the top, black-and-white, layer. Sometimes it is worth making a new black-and-white interpretation of the color shot to give different emphasis to tonalities. And sometimes, it never quite looks right, so you quit that line of attack and move on to something different.

I am doing a black-and-white workshop at Light Photographic Workshops in July. This is going to be a fun class where we will explore both shooting and processing black-and-white. We will include some work with combining black-and-white and color, too. This is a great time to be on the Central Coast of California where Light Photographic Workshops reside – days are sunny, rain is rare, and temperatures are nearly always moderate, rarely over 75 degrees (with low humidity).

Posted in Black-and-White, Lightroom, Nature photography, Photoshop | Tagged black-and-white, black-and-white for color, Lightroom, Photoshop | 4 Comments

Better Sharpness Up Close

Posted on April 23, 2013 by Rob Sheppard

I know, a lot of folks up north got hit by a whole mess of snow. But for most of the country, spring is here and that means great opportunities for close-up and macro photography, from flowers to bugs and more. In the classes I teach, I find that many photographers struggle with focus and sharpness up close.

There are three major challenges we face up close. First, as you get closer, depth of field declines, period. When you get to macro distances, depth of field can be very small no matter what you do. This is why where you are focused, your focus point, is so critical. Second, autofocus really causes problems up close because there are so many points that the camera can focus on and it often focuses on the wrong one. Third, camera movement during exposure is intensified as a problem and this causes unsharp photos for so many photographers. If you shoot a landscape and your camera moves a millimeter during exposure, you won't see much of a problem. That millimeter means nothing for the size of the scene. But when you are close, even a millimeter can shift the scene enough to cause unsharpness. I find that many, many students do not have critically sharp close-ups for this reason.

Let's look at what we can do with these challenges. First, depth of field: Telephoto focal lengths decrease depth of field, wide-angle focal lengths increase it. This is not simply a wide-angle/telephoto thing -- this applies to any focal length compared to any other. For example, a 60mm macro lens is wider than a 100mm macro lens which is wider than a 180mm macro lens, so the 60mm has the most depth of field, the 180mm the least. This applies to lenses used up close with extension tubes, too, so an 80-200mm zoom lens will have more depth of field at 80mm than at 200mm. While you have limited depth of field no matter what focal length you have, sometimes changing focal length will help. I often use a really wide-angle lens up close for its depth of field. I love using a fisheye lens that is inches away from a flower for this purpose.

There is a specialized technique called focus stacking where you take multiple pictures of a subject at different focus points, then you bring the images together to increase depth of focus with a special program in the computer. I have only experimented with this, though I know some photographers who do a wonderful job with it, such as David FitzSimmons.

Here are some ideas for dealing with the close focusing challenge. Where you focus when you have limited depth of field is really, really important, and you need to pay attention to this. I am often challenged by this issue as my eyes age. First, do not focus with the focus ring or use autofocus. When you are up close, changing focus with the focus ring also causes the size of the image to change so this makes focusing distracting. Do a rough focus, then physically move the camera toward and away from the subject as you watch what is going in and out of focus. Since you are not moving side to side, this can be done without causing major camera movement problems during exposure.

Be sure your diopter setting for your camera's viewfinder is set correctly for your eyes (whether you wear glasses or not) -- this is a little dial or lever by the viewfinder. Focus on something that is supposed to be sharp in your viewfinder, such as the focus points displayed there or the text for exposure. This is such a critical thing for me, and unfortunately, you cannot lock the diopter setting on my Sony EVF finder so I constantly have to check it.

Next, look for contrast, not just sharpness as you focus. When something is sharp it will be more contrasty, which can be easier to see than sharpness itself.

Finally, back to the camera movement issue. The closer you get, the more sensitive the image is to this problem. A tripod can help, but I know that a tripod can also be a challenge to use at times. Don't be afraid of using higher ISO settings so you can use a faster shutter speed to minimize camera movement. Cameras today are outstanding at higher ISOs. On almost all cameras today, you can easily shoot at ISO 400 and even 800 without much of a change in image quality (if any).

And don't be afraid to shoot with using a wider aperture that allows you to shoot at a faster shutter speed. So often I see photographers shooting with f/16 or something like that because they feel they have to have depth of field, knowing it is so narrow up close. Yet, that might mean a shutter speed of 1/60 sec., a speed that is very difficult to handhold when shooting up close unless you have a very wide-angle lens. Yet at f/5.6, the same conditions would allow a 1/500 sec. speed, a speed that pretty much guarantees sharpness for moderate and wide-angle focal lengths (you do need faster for focal lengths of 200mm and higher).

All of the photos here are from the Valley of Fires Recreation Area in SE NM (not to be confused with the Valley of Fire State Park near Las Vegas, NV), shot when I was in NM a little over a week ago. The top photo is a small onion, the cactus is claret cup also known as hedgehog cactus. I don't know the yellow flower and have not been able to find it in any of my guidebooks. It appears to be a member of the mustard family based on the flowers, but I don't know. Any ideas?

Check out my class on flower photography at BetterPhoto.com.

Posted in Close Up Photography | Tagged autofocus, close up photography, close-ups, flowers, focusing, macro, sharpness | 25 Comments

Sharing Nature

Posted on April 8, 2013 by Rob Sheppard

Recently, I shared a link on Facebook to a new advertising campaign from Cabela's, It's In Your Nature. This campaign has really gotten me thinking about how we communicate about and share our connection with nature. This post is about this campaign and what it might inspire us to think about as nature photographers. I am always interested in things that might make me a better photographer and better able to communicate to people, no matter the source.

First, a look at the campaign – if you have not seen it, click HERE to see a whole webpage about it. Also, here is their opening statement, something I find remarkable – it could be a mission statement for we nature photographers who also love nature for itself:

"It's your unquenchable passion to experience the outdoors. It's a deeply ingrained desire to personally connect with wildlife and untamed places. More than a pastime, a hobby or a diversion, it's in all you do and how you live. At home, at work and, of course, out there, it's always present, fueling your thoughts and guiding your actions. Because It's in Your Nature."

The campaign includes a "long" (2 minute) video, some commercials, a behind the scenes video and more. It also includes some "testimonials" about "in your nature" from well-known sportsmen and women, though what makes them more interesting to me is to see how good some of them are and how bad others are. That says a lot about the power of video if done well or done badly.

I find a number of things really interesting about the videos you see posted on the webpage, and these notes relate to still photography as much as video. We can learn from this work even if one never shoots video:

They are beautiful.
There are no big iconic locations, yet the locations impress because of they way they are shot.
Nature and the outdoors is shown as impressions, not as a big landscape that shows everything.
A lot of wonderful light is captured.
There is no attempt to keep everything in focus or to fit some classic ways of composition.
Images are as a whole very tightly framed.
There are a lot of small, telling details.
An impression is built from a series of shots. Never do you see a single big shot trying to tell it all.
They are short. Even the behind-the-scenes video is less than 5 minutes.

But probably the biggest thing is the way that in a very short time, a very evocative and emotional connection is made with the viewer. Notice that nothing is actually promoted for sale! Except to acknowledge the viewer's connection to the natural world (obviously in a way related to what Cabela's does sell).

Now here's something that has really made me think. This campaign connects with the viewer because it relates to our experience. It does not try to make you feel inadequate because you don't have certain gear or because you don't go to some special location. It acknowledges something basic, that being outdoors in nature is "in your nature", something I have rarely seen done so directly and so evocatively.

Much of nature photography and writing talks at readers rather than connecting with readers like the Cabela's campaign does. I think every nature photographer and writer is guilty of this at times. I know I am. We care so much about nature and want so much for others to see what we do that we send out our images and thoughts without thinking about how we can best connect with people. We try to impress rather than connect.

That is what is so fascinating to me about the Cabela's campaign – it does not try to impress you. It tries to connect with you. It is personal and emotional rather than "objective."

There is a very interesting book by Randy Olson called, Don't Be Such a Scientist, which could apply to a lot of us nature photographers, too. Olson is very much about being personal and emotional in communicating, not simply being the "objective scientist." I grew up when science was "king" and could do no wrong. If you were smart at all, you were expected to be a scientist. And you learned that if you just had the facts right, just presented the facts in the best way, everyone would discover the "truth" and would make the right decisions. Well, that's a bunch of nonsense, and even science is not always the best way to find "truth." Olson gives a lot of thought to how people communicate (or actually, don't communicate) because they are stuck in the mode of being that scientist who just wants to lay out the "facts."

I have a feeling Olson would love the Cabela's campaign because it connects with people on a deeper level than simply and "objectively" laying out the "facts." I think there is much to learn here and I am still learning.

Posted in Nature photography | Tagged Cabela's, sharing nature | 2 Comments

The Urban Myth of Auto White Balance and RAW

Posted on March 28, 2013 by Rob Sheppard

I believe there is a persistent “urban myth” that if you shoot RAW, you don’t need to set white balance, you can just shoot with auto white balance. Now, it is true that you can easily change white balance in RAW and there is no quality issue with doing that. (Another “urban myth” is that you cannot change white balance for JPEG – of course, you can! You just have less flexibility before image quality is affected.)

If someone had asked me if I could spot auto white balance ten years ago, I would have said, no way, that is crazy. Yet, since I see my students’ work for critiques with BetterPhoto.com, I can consistently spot auto white balance before I even see metadata to confirm it because of a serious problem that definitely affects nature photography. The photo above looks "okay", but it is not. What shows here is something I see consistently, a bluish color cast that hurts warm colors. I even see this in pros’ work. Friends don't let friends shoot auto white balance if they care about nature's colors! The correct image is next:

If you shoot RAW and auto white balance, you must pay attention when processing and be sure that you do change white balance as needed.

That is not as simple as it seems. Our eyes are amazingly adaptable to color and light (and light is exactly what we are seeing on that computer monitor). This is why colors look good to us indoors or out, regardless of the light, even though the camera perceives each light differently and therefore changes how it deals with color. So as you adjust images on screen, your eyes adapt and you begin to accept colors that are less than the best, including compromised colors due to auto white balance. The image of rhododendrons in the redwoods above looks "okay", but it is not. That subversive blue cast of auto white balance is compromising the greens, but especially the warm colors of the flowers.

Here are a couple more shots with the blue of auto white balance and then the correct color (the bluish shot will actually make the better shot look warmer because of the way our eyes compare photos):

The only way to avoid the problem of not adjusting auto white balance on the computer properly is to have a consistent color (or neutral color) on your monitor that you can compare as you adjust the image (or just don't shoot auto white balance in the first place). A problem with that is that the photos shot with auto white balance are inconsistent in color. Auto white balance is supposed to be “inconsistent” – it is designed to change to adapt to change because it was originally developed for shooting indoors where the color of light can change immediately as you change your shooting angle.

The result is that you can shoot something with the same color, such as a flower, and if you take one picture looking down on the flower with a ground background then a second picture of the same flower from a low angle so it is against the sky, the auto white balance will typically shift colors and your flower will not stay the same color. Now even if you are in RAW, you have a problem. Which color is correct? Is either color correct? Even if you say that you’ll adjust the shots anyway, you now have to adjust both images most likely, so you are increasing your workflow time.

And you cannot use your pictures as a consistent look at color so that you can make comparisons to decide when colors are off. When you shoot a specific white balance, whether that is a preset such as Cloudy or Sun, or a set white balance using a white card or some other white balance aid, you are locking down your color so that there is consistency from picture to picture. Simply having that consistency from picture to picture allows you to better see what is happening to the colors of your images. Because you have this consistent look to images, you are more likely to see something is off.

I can tell you that so often I see images from photographers who shoot RAW and say that they check and adjust white balance yet the images have compromised color because of that auto white balance. White balance was not corrected properly in the computer because of the challenge of our eyes adapting to the images.

Color in nature is just too important to me to allow the camera to arbitrarily be changing its rendering of color because it uses the wrong white balance. I want my warm colors to be warm and not damaged or compromised by the all too common blue cast that comes from auto white balance. Green foliage generally should not be blue-green and reds and yellows with less saturation because of the blue color cast. I also don’t want important color casts to be removed from a photo, color casts that are important to a natural scene at sunrise and sunset, for example. Auto white balance is designed to try to remove them.

Generally, I will choose a specific white balance preset. Most the time I am using Cloudy early and late in the day because that gives the best warm colors for early and late light, Sun for the rest of the day when the subject is in the sun, and Shade when the subject is in the shade. Occasionally I will go to Kelvin when I am high in the mountains and am having trouble getting rid of a blue cast.

A great help for shooting white balance is Live View. I think Live View is a key tool for digital photography, and if you aren’t using it, try it and practice with it so that you learn its great advantages as a tool. With Live View, you can see the changes in your white balance displayed on the LCD as you make your choices in the white balance menu or dial. Live View also “reminds” you when you have the wrong white balance set for a particular scene.

Once you start getting in the habit of setting white balance, you will find this really isn’t a lot of work to do. You don’t have to change it very often and I believe it also makes you more aware and sensitive to the light in front of you. One of the big problems that I see with a lot of photographers of nature is that they get so overwhelmed by the subject that they only see the subject and they don’t see the light. The camera doesn’t see the subject, it sees the light and will overemphasize that light. So becoming more aware of the light, including becoming aware of its color and how you adapt to that color with your choice of white balance, can make you a better photographer.

Posted in Nature photography | Tagged auto white balance, RAW, white balance | 20 Comments

Equipment Lust

Posted on March 20, 2013 by Rob Sheppard

Okay, what can I say? I learned about a new camera and I can’t stop thinking about it. I thought I was over the adolescent-like lusting after equipment, but maybe we don’t ever get over that! Just to keep me grounded, I am throwing in a photo to start from when I was in Florida last month (this is also part of a new Skill Snack video course I did at Skillfeed.com on controlling perspective).

Seriously, I’m not yet ready to sell all of my gear right now and change brands, though I have done that in the past. I did think my “lustful feelings” about gear might be a good opportunity to talk a little bit about equipment and how we look at it. I feel that camera equipment is very important because it represents the tools that we use to create our images. I’ve found that in all of the discussion about gear that you see in magazines and on the Internet, very rarely do you see the background of why a pro has chosen the tools he or she is using. There is too much discussion on some arbitrary factors as if there were such a thing as a perfect camera for everyone that can be chosen purely by those factors (there isn't).

Years ago I first went to Olympus E-series Four Thirds format cameras (from being a Canon user) because Olympus made the first DSLR to have live view and a tilting LCD (the E-330). The tilting LCD is a big deal for me because it strongly affects my ability to take certain types of pictures. I also liked their compact size (including lenses) which made them more portable for field use.

Then came video in DSLRs. I shot video professionally during the 1980s and 1990s, so I was excited about the possibilities of DSLRs and video. Canon had much better video than anything Olympus had, so I went back to Canon for those capabilities. I really wasn’t crazy about going to a larger camera size, but good video combined with excellent still photography was important. I first had a 7D, but when the 60D came out, I immediately went to that because of the swivel live view LCD, even though theoretically the 60D is not as “good” a camera body as the 7D (the sensors are identical). Such an LCD is hugely versatile for nature photographers because it allows you to change the height of your camera and still see through the lens very easily and without doing contortions to see through the viewfinder. It also allows for better focusing, sharper photos (no mirror bounce) and easier visualization of how the camera is seeing the scene.

The Canon cameras were fine, but I wasn’t completely happy. One of the big things was gear size. As you can probably tell, I am not a big fan of the 35-full-frame cameras because the cameras are huge as well as the lenses that are required to use them. Image quality is not that much different to make them all that worthwhile for me as a tool.

I started seeing some interesting things with the Sony NEX cameras, and there seemed to be a lot of potential for the future in them. I loved the size and yet the sensor was nearly identical in size to my Canon cameras. These little cameras were a fraction the size of my Canon APS-C format cameras, yet they were also APS-C. They also had a tilting LCD – though I would have preferred a swivel LCD because the purely tilting LCD makes verticals harder to do.

When I got an NEX 5n and tried it out, I was really pleased. I felt image quality was as good or better than my Canon equipment, plus video was excellent (one would expect that from Sony). I added an NEX F3K for its really wide articulation of the LCD and for backup. I have to tell you that it was pretty amazing to add a camera body so that a combination of both my camera bodies were about the size of my Canon 60D and weighed less.

Now I have been shooting with the Sony NEX cameras for well over a year. I love the size and portability of my gear. Image quality and video is excellent. But I have been challenged by Sony’s lack of creating a true system for the NEX cameras. Flash capabilities are minimal, actual e-mount lenses are limited in selection, and not all of the e-mount lenses are as good as I would like them. You might remember a blog I did about shooting with the 16mm f/2.8 lens. I was really excited about that lens because its focal length is a really sweet spot for me and the lens was so small. But results were not at the level I expected. I was able to get image quality I wanted by using Nik Software Sharpener Pro, but I expected more from the lens.

I ended up getting a Zeiss 16-80mm lens that I adore (which is what I shot the opening image with on the NEX 5n), it is a beautiful lens, and is a big reason why I might not change camera gear in the future. But it is a larger lens designed for the Sony Alpha cameras and I need an adapter for it. In fact of my two most used lenses, the Zeiss and a Tokina 10-16mm fisheye (Canon mount) need adapters and neither is an e-mount lens (and neither can do autofocus). I do love the Sony 50mm f/1.8 e-mount lens, and the kit lens is not bad, but the 30mm macro is too short (which I why I use a Tamron 90mm macro) and the 50-200mm is okay, but could be better (which is why I use a beautiful old manual Nikkor lenses of 200mm with adapter).

Another challenge that I found with the NEX cameras is that like other cameras in this price range, they are not particularly well sealed against the weather or dust. I had some problems with this when I was recently in Florida, and it was raining, with the result being I had to have some repairs made. In addition, through a trusted source in the photo industry, I hear that Sony is putting their efforts toward professional level photography into their Alpha cameras and not into the NEX cameras. That is disappointing.

Enter the Panasonic Lumix GH3 – the camera that I seem to be lusting after. Well, I suppose that is better than lusting after some other things! This camera got my attention for a number of reasons, including some discussions I had with other photographers at NANPA last month and a recent serendipitous discussion with a friend. Let’s look at if my lust is justified based on the camera as a tool.

As you can tell, I am not afraid of changing brands. That’s another good thing about not investing in a big, heavy 35-full-frame camera. They are very expensive cameras because of the size of the sensor. All of that money used to purchase that camera is not because you’re getting a superbly better camera body. You’re putting much of that money into the camera because big sensors are expensive to produce. And frankly, camera manufacturers know they can charge a bit more for these cameras to make up for the reduced profit margins they have on the least expensive cameras. So I can actually afford to change cameras and lenses at less than the cost of a single 35-full-frame camera body.

But that is not something I can afford to do right now. Sometimes the universe acts in unusual ways, though. I was telling a good friend of mine in the photo industry about my interest in the GH3, and it so happened that he had just talked with a manager at Panasonic who worked with the GH3. They are going to send me a GH3 to work with for a few weeks later this spring, and I will be sure to tell you all about my experience with it. A nice perk of being in the industry for so long.

So why should I consider the GH3 and what can it do as a tool for me? First, obviously this is a very small camera using the Micro Four Thirds format. Micro Four Thirds and Four Thirds use identical sensor sizes for a format slightly smaller than APS-C. Micro Four Thirds is designed for the very compact digital single lens mirrorless (DSLM) cameras and has a different lens mount. Like all mirrorless cameras (including the NEX cameras), the GH3 can use adapters to use almost any lens that is available today.

The GH3 has a greater range of lenses than the NEX, and Panasonic seems to be making a commitment to work with Leica to gain higher quality from all of their lenses. You can see this right away from looking at the way Sony and Panasonic present their lenses on their web sites – Panasonic gives lots of details about each lens, including some performance charts. Sony basically gives a paragraph or so and little else – that is a clue to how these companies think. Combined with the ability to adapt other lenses to the system (including all of Olympus’s Micro Four Thirds lenses), this makes the GH3 a much better system camera.

The GH3 has a fully swiveling LCD rather than a tilting LCD. I have been noticing that I have been reluctant to shoot verticals with my NEX cameras of late, not necessarily a good thing. As I was working on my photo e-book, Reports from the Wild, I ended up having to crop horizontal pictures vertically to fit certain layouts that I wanted to do because I had never shot the verticals (I hope to have this book available by the end of March). A swivel LCD is a tool that makes verticals much easier to do.

One thing that is very impressive with the GH3 is that the body is designed to be rugged with a splash/dustproof design, something none of the NEX cameras have (or frankly, any low-priced DSLR). That makes this a tool that is pretty useful for the work that I do outdoors. Based on the specs, the body should easily match body quality of the Canon EOS 5D Mark III (again, you can’t go by price alone because the big 35mm-full-frame sensor is very expensive to produce and higher priced cameras have higher profit margins).

Image quality should be excellent. I remember shooting with my Olympus E-series cameras that had Four Thirds LMOS sensors originally designed by Panasonic, and I was always impressed by the color and tonal rendering of the cameras. The GH3 uses a 16 MP LMOS sensor (don’t ask me to explain LMOS – all I know is that they worked very well in the cameras I owned that used them).

Here’s a list of some additional things that look very favorable as tools that could help my work:

Superb video quality with specs that beat the Canon EOS 5D Mark III, plus a 2x lossless “telextender” feature for video (this is possible for any DSLR, but few other manufacturers have done it)
Full AF possible while shooting video, plus you can use touch screen zooming
Special low-pass filter over sensor (this is becoming a big deal with a lot of manufacturers now because it affects ultimate sharpness of images, much more than pixel number or sensor size)
Full-sensor autofocusing and pinpoint AF as needed
Touch screen focusing (if you have never had this experience, it will blow you away)
Built-in WiFi so you can set up your camera then move away with a smart phone or tablet and actually see what the lens is seeing through the camera and take the picture from your handheld device! (This seems to be a wave of the future for many manufacturers and could be a great tool for putting a camera in a location where you might scare off your subject yet you’ll be able to get the shot.)
Wireless external flash capability

Finally, a little thing. This camera has a headphone jack. It might seem like a rather stupid little spec. But it tells you a lot about Panasonic’s attention to detail. One of the big problems of shooting audio when shooting video with a DSLR is that very few DSLRs include this cheap little jack. Being able to listen to the audio that your camera is recording, especially when you can plug in a good microphone to the camera, which you can with the GH3, has a huge impact on getting quality audio because you can place your mic more carefully to get the best sound.

I know that this is a bit of a unusual blog for me. But I also know that it is rare for people to hear all of the considerations that can go into a camera system choice based on the tools needed by a professional. And after doing this, I am a little concerned about having the chance to work with that GH3 for a few weeks. I’m afraid that I might be even more seriously thinking of changing camera brands once again!

Posted in Gear | Tagged equipment, gear, GH3, NEX, Panasonic, Sony | 20 Comments

Reports from the Wild

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Better Sharpness Up Close

The Urban Myth of Auto White Balance and RAW

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