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G3 ISO3200 in real life

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No! No!! No!!!

I have too many cameras already....

But maybe I could carry the 5D, the G3, the Samsung EX1, and for safery the Fuji F31fd and the Canon A620 :-)

BTW, tomorrow, Saturday, and Sunday I'll be at the Toronto Audio Visual Entertainment Show (TAVES), and posting a blog with photos at http://www.stereophile.com . I'm taking the G3/14-45. The show is at the King Edward Hotel downtown, not far from Henry's, a big camera store that has the Oly 45 in stock, so at least I'll have a look at it.

Bob
 
...and was able to resist. I went in to Henry's, mounted the lens on my G3, and took a half-dozen shots in the store. For this, I set the camera in aperture priority, f/1.8, ISO at 400. I chose this ISO because one of the benefits I would want from this lens is the option of shooting lower ISOs (and 400 is not THAT low). The store interior is very well lit, much brigher than the rehearsal space in which I was taking pictures with the 14-45.

Alas, of six pictures, five were blurry to various degrees. (And the sixth was not super-sharp, either.) Looking at the exif, the reason is clear: with these settings, the shutter speed was 1/80, and that's on the wrong side of the 1/90 that the reciprocal rule suggests. With the 14-45 at 45, I can get acceptably sharp images at 1/30, even 1/15. The Olympus 45/1.8 may be a lens whose sharpness exceeds that of the 14-45 in good light, but the lack of IS means that you get no help at shutter speeds lower than 1/90. If I had an Olympus m4/3 camera, I would buy the 45mm without hesitation, but with the Panasonic, I feel the combination is not as ideal. (And, no, I'm not persuaded to buy an Olympus just for this.)

So I dodged this particular bullet. Now I'm waiting to see if the new pancake style Panasonic 14-42x is as sharp as they claim.

Bob
 
I'd say it depends on what type of shots you typically take. The 14-45 OIS may be similarly useful in low light if people aren't the subjects, but I think 1/60 is a bare minimum if people are in shots, and I prefer higher. That said, I'd certainly prefer the new 45 to have OIS.
Robert Deutsch said:
...and was able to resist. I went in to Henry's, mounted the lens on my G3, and took a half-dozen shots in the store. For this, I set the camera in aperture priority, f/1.8, ISO at 400. I chose this ISO because one of the benefits I would want from this lens is the option of shooting lower ISOs (and 400 is not THAT low). The store interior is very well lit, much brigher than the rehearsal space in which I was taking pictures with the 14-45.

Alas, of six pictures, five were blurry to various degrees. (And the sixth was not super-sharp, either.) Looking at the exif, the reason is clear: with these settings, the shutter speed was 1/80, and that's on the wrong side of the 1/90 that the reciprocal rule suggests. With the 14-45 at 45, I can get acceptably sharp images at 1/30, even 1/15. The Olympus 45/1.8 may be a lens whose sharpness exceeds that of the 14-45 in good light, but the lack of IS means that you get no help at shutter speeds lower than 1/90. If I had an Olympus m4/3 camera, I would buy the 45mm without hesitation, but with the Panasonic, I feel the combination is not as ideal. (And, no, I'm not persuaded to buy an Olympus just for this.)

So I dodged this particular bullet. Now I'm waiting to see if the new pancake style Panasonic 14-42x is as sharp as they claim.

Bob
Click to expand...
 
Robert Deutsch said:
Alas, of six pictures, five were blurry to various degrees. (And the sixth was not super-sharp, either.) Looking at the exif, the reason is clear: with these settings, the shutter speed was 1/80, and that's on the wrong side of the 1/90 that the reciprocal rule suggests. With the 14-45 at 45, I can get acceptably sharp images at 1/30, even 1/15. .
Click to expand...
Don't you have to double the speed with respect to the traditional rule of thumb used for full frame ? So yes, you'd need in body IS for what you want. An E-Pl2 may be good deal right now, but the E-PM1 should be avoided because its IS doesn't seem so good from what I've read.

--
rrr_hhh
 
I would have preferred that Panasonic included IS in their camera bodies...
Robert Deutsch said:
tjuster1 said:
Wow, that looks great.

I'm assuming you were using IS on the 14-45?
Click to expand...
You bet! I've often thought that Panasonic made a mistake in not including IS in the design of the 20mm. With f/1.7 and two stops from IS this would be an unbeatable low-light combo (at least with static subjects). This is one way that Olympus, with its IBIS, has an advantage.

Bob
Click to expand...
 
...and recently, when looking at some way-back ASA 400 low-speed shots, I realized that my view of what was acceptably sharp was somewhat different back then...
LMNCT said:
Oh for the good old days when we were all able to hand hold shots down to 1/25 second and use 400 (ASA) ISO film in very low light. How did we ever live without built-in or added-on stabilization! Those were much simpler times...and I walked up hill to school in three feet of snow...in both directions.
Click to expand...
 
Did you try the tele zoom? At 45 it's f4 and has OIS. This should give an additional stop to reduce motion blur. (And is o much less expensive than the 45/f2.8 macro)
 
Robert Deutsch said:
Alas, of six pictures, five were blurry to various degrees. (And the sixth was not super-sharp, either.)
Click to expand...
Surprising, in light of my own experience, which is pretty opposite to that. But what you see is what you get.

Three days ago I took about 150 exposures with the 45mm, portraits of people at a sit-down brunch and entertainment affair, as I squeezed thru between the tables. Granted, a few weren't sharp, but I chalk that up to operator error -- rushing to grab an expression while it lasted. Of the 150, I ended up with 40 keepers -- for me, a pretty good catch. I could not have come close to that with my 14-45 or 45-200. I've tried both those options in the past. The IS helps, but alas! people move.
--
http://www.pbase.com/morepix
 
It would be also an idea to use the 45-200 @ 45 mm. In this way you would gain one stop (you could take pictures at f4 @ 45 mm) by maintaining the IS.

I'm using a lot my 45-200 in this way. It is also sharper than the 14-42 at 42 mm.

An other solution would be to use a legacy lens with adapter. A 50mm f1.4 for ex. with manual focus, which I do also a lot.
 
schirmer said:
Did you try the tele zoom? At 45 it's f4 and has OIS. This should give an additional stop to reduce motion blur. (And is o much less expensive than the 45/f2.8 macro)
Click to expand...
I actually have a 45-200. It's a very nice lens, especially for the money. I wanted to try the Oly to see how it would perform on my G3.

Bob
 
Robert Deutsch said:
What were your shutter speeds? And--relate question--what iso did you use? I'm sure that if I had use ISO800, with the shutter speeds the being 1/160, most of the pictures taken in the store would have been sharp.
Click to expand...
I (i.e., my camera) used lmost exclusively f/1.8. And equally exclusively 1/100 sec (tho both were at the discretion of P mode). And ISO ranged from 200 to 400, occasionally less, sometimes 500.

When I do portraits, I'm obsessive about hair and eye detail. If it weren't for that, I'd have an easier life. But as it was, in the light conditions I had to work in, this was the workable exposure range, and it did fine for enough of the shots to satisfy me.

So really, this is about how much light you have to work with. This lens is well adapted to the environment I work in.
--
http://www.pbase.com/morepix
 
After due consideration--having read the enthusiastic endorsements in this forum, the reviews that have appeared, and having tried out the lens again myself--I ended up buying an Olympus 45mm f/1.8. And I must say, it's a terrific lens, probably the sharpest m4/3 lens that I have. (The Panasonic 7-14 is the closest in sharpness.) I would like it even more if it had IS, or if I had a camera with IBIS, but the three-stop speed advantage over the 14-45 makes up for the lack of IS, and the resulting faster shutter speed helps in reducing blurring due to subject movement.

We had a rehearsal last night, and the director asked me to take some head shots for the show's front-of-house display. Here's one of them. The lighting was quite poor again, so that I had to use ISO1600, f/1.8, and 1/80 sec., which is just fast enough for me to hand-hold.

Bob

 
If you get a chance you should try the 25mm pan leica lens too
 
Jerodequin said:
If you get a chance you should try the 25mm pan leica lens too
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I'm sure it's very nice, but I already have the 20mm f/1.7, and it's too close to that to justify purchase. I'm actually more of a zoom than a prime person (I like the convenience of not having to change lenses very often), but I just couldn't resist the 45/1.8.

Bob
 
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