Yellowstone Panasonic
Delving into some of my other photographs from West Yellowstone I came across some images from my point-and-shoot taken from one of our initial “scouting” trips and became captivated by them. In some ways, they were much better than many of the images I took earlier that day with my “real camera.” That’s as good a reason as any to develop them a bit further.
I haven’t really talked much about my point-and-shoot. And while it’s that, it’s not “just” that. I chose to buy it instead of a Sony similar to Ann’s (and to the one I used when in Liberia and gave away) not because the images I got from the Sony were bad (they were excellent, and had more megapixels) but because of what the Panasonic LX100 ii has. Two things really. First is physical controls for key photographic settings. It has an aperture ring and a shutter speed dial - no menu driven system, or scroll wheel adjustments. It has plenty of menus and other things, but those physical controls mean I don’t have to relearn the camera every time I pick it up and that the camera operates similar to my Fujis.
Second is that the Panasonic has a larger sensor than most point and shoot camera - a micro-4/3 sensor. Think the difference between your pinky fingernail and 1-1/2 the size of your thumbnail. Sensor size matters in many situations and with the smaller cameras, they matter a lot.
Third (I know I said two, but I’m exercising writer’s prerogative!), the camera has a Leica lens (there is a Leica branded equivalent camera, but that’s several hundred dollars more . . . just for the red dot). And as you can see below, the optics are great.
No, it’s not a perfect camera. I still don’t have a feel for how what’s on the screen fully translates (exposure wise) to the sensor, accessing the histogram is one of those things I have to learn (which means I usually don’t bother) each time I pick up the camera, and despite the sensor size, I can tell the quality differences between the micro-4/3 sensor and my Fujis, despite how well sensors have progressed. Still, for a scouting camera, it allows me to actually make some decent images so long as I don’t plan on enlarging them too much or the contrast of the scene isn’t too great.
The images come from a couple of locations we scouted that afternoon. One, the area where Tangled Creek passes by Grand Loop Road, you’re already familiar from the fog photographs. Different, in sunlight isn’t it?
Looking through these images I chuckled a bit because several of the fog shots were “scouted” during this afternoon’s explorations. Many of those have bright blaring sunlight in them and are less appealing - I knew we were going to come back and I just wanted to see the image in a frame composition-wise.
Other images though, I realized were images wanting to be made right then and there. This one I had to wait several minutes before a cloud passed over the sun so the scene would not have the stark shadows and extreme contrast range it had in sunlight. It was amazing how the scene would change from this assault on the eyes to this silvery forest as the clouds passed by.
There was no question in my mind that the image was a black and white. How could it not be?
One of the other things the LX100 ii has is a physical image format lever on the side of the lens (as well as a manual focus-auto focus-auto focus macro lever). You can switch from the standard full-sensor 4:3, to 1:1, 16:9, or 3:2 formats (warning - Dan rant: why can’t the Fuji give us 4:3, and 4:5 and 5:7 in addition to the 1:1 and 16:9 - it’s only software, and you do it for your medium format cameras?). However, unlike the Fuji, the Panasonic burns in the format so that it comes up in Capture One as a square, or as 4:3, or as below, 16:9. And you can’t recover the other parts of the sensor frame as you can when you shoot the Fuji. It commits you to the image (and reminds you that you made a conscious choice at the time to have that particular format.
Anyway, this is one of the few times I’ve intentionally changed the format to a more linear 16:9 in camera. And I think it’s a good choice.
And the lovely reds and yellows of the grasses? Well they were there like that. You can thank Leica as well, their lenses seem to capture those colors like no other lenses.
One final point to make about the two above images. For those of you who have been following the blog for awhile, you might recall a post where I analyze a John Sexton image of trees (with his permission to use the image of course). Both of the above images draw from the lesson learned from that effort. What is it? Find the post and read it for yourself. You can’t expect me to do all the work!
The last image comes from Firehole Lake Drive which loops around the area photographed above. The loop around that time was interesting because for once I was seeing images where I’d previously drawn a blank.
Take this one for example. A clean leading line to the geyser mound.
I only wish it had gone off while we were there. Then again, I would have had to change the format of the frame to get all the smoke in.
Working on these images has really given me confidence in what the Panasonic can do. It’s not just a scouting camera, but something I can do some real work with if necessary. That’s a very good thing, because sometimes you want something a bit better than your iPhone, but not quite the full rig.