My First Week With my Lumix G7

I received my G7 from B&H Photo a week ago to the day I'm writing this. This is my first time with a proper enthusiast camera to learn with. I just thought I would post some pictures to see what you all thought.

This is the first picture I took with the out of the box settings.

Pretty much immediately I was taking pretty good photos (at least in my opinion). This one was taken with the "Dynamic Monochrome" filter. The result is this super dramatic photo of one of my roommates eating cereal.

Unfortunately, due to my college classes, for the first couple of days my shoots were done in the early evening and at night. This kind of steepened the learning curve.

This is one of the better photos to come from my first nighttime photo shoots. There's quite a bit of grain and it's especially present in the evening sky. Editing this photo was challenging because any manipulation would brig out the grain further and it can't be alleviated without softening the entire picture.

Here's the edited photo with (in hindsight) perhaps a little too much colorization. I used PhotoScape X to edit.

This is one that's okay enough for me to not embarrassed posting, but definitely still bad. I swear I've progressed alot since then.

This is my first exposure bracketing, which was done on Wednesday right before a thunderstorm rolled in. The images were combined in GIMP, now if only it could open RAW format files...

The second night (Thursday) I went back out and decided to try night shooting again now that I knew my camera better. These photos turned out much better than the first night.

This is the photo of the Airbus building on campus. The street lights are harsh and knowing what I know now I would have moved behind the lamps.

This was taken with a vintage filter on. in a perfect world i would like to not have the more modern looking bicycle in he background but the striking yellow of the cruiser bike steals the attention away.

Late Friday afternoon I finally found the time after class to take pictures around the main campus area in daylight.

This was a photo taken outside of the fine-arts hall. It isn't the most interesting photo ever but I think the flowers add some color to the otherwise red and green campus.

This is one I really liked. The hill made the stadium in the background appear like a UFO had landed just behind the trees

And yes if you've been looking at the EXIF data (hopefully It's being included) I had calculated the shutter speed and aperture for the bright day without looking at the ISO. These photos are thankfully still nice but cropping the photos is an issue

This was where I realized I was shooting at 2000 ISO.

Here i tamed the settings.

Everyone's right! Blown highlights cannot be recovered!

Thankfully I took a second photo with better settings. This is an edited RAW though, there was a lot of contrast between the shaded and highlighted parts in the original. Here I balanced the shot out.

This first daytime shoot was very fun. i could finally use color in my shots and I didn't have to stand still for a long time. The next day I went out in the midday sunlight and spent a good two hours walking around photographing

This is another dynamic mono shot, this time of a winding road and median.

I had wanted to take a photo of the sunflowers behind this man-made pond but I wouldn't have been able to see where I was walking in the dense brush. I'll need to get a larger lens. I was using the 14-42mm kit lens.

Case in point of me needing a larger lens.

This is brand new. Those bowls I suspect have gas lines and they're supposed to light up at night.

Thankfully due to the bright sunlight I was able to get a fast enough shutter speed to stop the water in the frame.

This is one where the colors have been balanced better. The sky still has a lot of grain though. Am still shooting at too high an ISO?

This is the mural outside of the art museum . The sky and the background are overexposed but I think it adds to the abstract art in the foreground. Edited RAW by the way.

I used the Kaleidoscope effect on the mural for a further abstract effect

I've never seen this sign before.

This is the oldest building on campus (built 1904). The vines growing on the building seem to be almost as old.

This is one set of images where i can't decide which one I like better: This one...

Or this one...

I tried my hand at photographing this squirrel but he was a terrible model and just kept running around the tree. On top of all that the brush would confuse the autofocus system and I didn't have the chance to manual focus.

Should this one be cropped?

Another difficult model. I had to lock the focus and track the bee until it finally rested and I could fully press the shutter.

yes... I like monochrome.

This photo might stand some shadow curve editing.

So anyway i really enjoyed shooting with my G7. This is a really fun way to get out of the house er... dorm and i plan on redoing a lot of these shots come fall. The campus will almost be unrecognizable when the leaves change colors. Like I said in one of the captions, I did notice a lot of noise in the sky when editing some pictures. I shoot for 800 ISO. Should I be lower?

It’s great to see that you’re enjoying your new camera! I particularly like the visual patterns and composition in your black and white shot of the winding road. The exposure bracketed clouds have some great colours too!

I typically try to shoot around ISO 200, and rarely ever exceed 1600. As you’ve already noticed, noise becomes a problem rather quickly!

To compensate for keeping the ISO as low as possible, I shoot wide open (most of my lenses are around f2.8, but on a kit lens that’s usually around f3.5-f5.6). Combined with proper handling (multiple points of contact with the camera and well-braced arms), I can usually survive with some slightly longer shutter speeds. Even 1/30 of a second shutter speed if the lens is zoomed out.

Back when I shot film (35mm and medium format), the general rule I was taught for hand held shutter speeds was 1/focal length. Because of the crop factor, that would double for MFT. So if you’re zoomed out to 14mm on your kit lens, you might be able to shoot with a shutter speed as slow as 1/28 of a second without noticeable motion blur. I’m sure more experienced photographers than I will have plenty to say about this approach! Haha.

If you’re shooting on a tripod and not trying to capture motion (especially at night!), the good news is that you can use really long exposures (no handheld rules). Keep the ISO at 200, set your aperture for a depth of field that’s appropriate for your subject, and then use the shutter speed to control the exposure. That should help control noise significantly.

Random side note: I live in Michigan and work just a couple blocks from one of 3Desault’s offices! It was funny to see one of their other buildings featured. Haha.

Iaian7 wrote:

Random side note: I live in Michigan and work just a couple blocks from one of 3Desault’s offices! It was funny to see one of their other buildings featured. Haha.

I'm on the Wichita State campus. we have a lot of aerospace companies here like Airbus, Dassault (if i spelled it correctly) and and I think Beechcraft at least has a wind tunnel here.

Rupert The Camera Man wrote:

I'm on the Wichita State campus. we have a lot of aerospace companies here like Airbus, Dassault (if i spelled it correctly) and and I think Beechcraft at least has a wind tunnel here.

You did, I did not (and I’ve worked with one of their subsidiaries, so that’s not great, haha).

Iaian7 wrote:

Rupert The Camera Man wrote:

I'm on the Wichita State campus. we have a lot of aerospace companies here like Airbus, Dassault (if i spelled it correctly) and and I think Beechcraft at least has a wind tunnel here.

You did, I did not (and I’ve worked with one of their subsidiaries, so that’s not great, haha).

Yeah It's spelled like Assault but with a D in the front:-)